Confucianism

A Short Introduction

John Berthrong, Evelyn Berthrong

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780746739
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Asian Religions

Blending scholarship with an original approach, this new introduction to Confucianism is an informative and intriguing guide to China's ancient philosophical tradition. Against the backdrop of 17th century China, the book follows a Confucian couple, together with their family, friends and staff, through a typical day. The result offers a fascinating insight, not only into the intellectual and scholarly aspects of Confucianism, but also into the nature of belief, culture and society in a living philosophical tradition. The key topics covered include: the intellectual and social role of women; Confucianism, art and poetry; the relationship with the western world and western faiths. Capturing the full scope of an ancient tradition, this innovative, well-research and accessible text should be of interest to anyone interested in Confucianism, scholars, students and general readers alike

Plate 1 Guardian figures at the entrance to a temple in the Forest of Confucius, Qufu, the ancestral burial ground of the Kong family. The Forest includes a tumulus believed to have once held the remains of Confucius himself. Photo: Evelyn Berthrong.

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INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS

INTRODUCING CONFUCIAN LIVES

Confucianism has been and still is a vast, interconnected system of philosophies, ideas, rituals, practices, and habits of the heart that informs the lives of countless people in East Asia and now the whole inhabited world. Although known in the West mostly as a philosophic movement, Confucianism is better understood as a compelling assemblage of interlocking forms of life for generations of men and women in East Asia that encompassed all the possible domains of human concern. Confucianism, at various times and places, was a primordial religious sensibility and praxis; a philosophic exploration of the cosmos; an ethical system; an educational program; a complex of family and community rituals; dedication to government service; aesthetic criticism; a philosophy of history; the debates of economic reformers; the intellectual background for poets and painters; and much more. For instance, we owe to Confucians in East Asia the most extensive written historical record for any human civilization from its beginning down to today. We also owe Confucians medical prescriptions, vast hydraulic works, bonsai and wonderful gardens.

In China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, Confucians historically created worldviews, ways of life, and deeply shared cultural orientations and sensibilities that are still alive today. Confucians paid attention to art, morality, religion, family life, science, philosophy, government, and the economy. In short, Confucians were profoundly concerned with all aspects of human life. Moreover, Confucians played a distinguished role in creating innovative reflections and achievements in all dimensions and endeavors of human life. The collected modalities form the tapestry of civilization. The Confucians have always had a complex, holistic and organized view of human life, nature, character, thought, and conduct. It is also a fascinating question to explore how Confucians understood their “culture,” or Dao/Way as they called it, over long centuries and vast spaces.

We have created an iconic (and fictional) Confucian husband and wife, Dr. and Mrs. Li, living in the famous, cultivated, and beautiful city of Suzhou (situated in central China just south of the great Yangtze river) in 1685. The Lis are what is called an “ideal type” or prototype, a generalized portrait of what the lives of a late imperial Confucian couple might have been. We have chosen this method in order to make the point that Confucianism is so much more than the history of ideas. It was and is a complicated pattern of human life, which affected men and women differently. Furthermore, how they understood Confucianism depended on their social position: elite couples like the Lis could be self-consciously Confucian whereas a poor peasant family in the southeast of China might only have the faintest understanding of the teaching of the Confucian tradition. However, as we shall see, Confucianism touched the lives of all the peoples in East Asia. Of course, it formed the lives of such a prototypical couple as Dr. and Mrs. Li more closely and more richly in 1685 than anyone else in Chinese society. It is because of the richness and influence of such elite Confucian culture at the end of its grand imperial career that we have dared to resort to such a narrative strategy.

By choosing 1685, we will be viewing Confucian society in one of its more accomplished moments. The ruler was the great Kangxi emperor (1662–1723), who, although a Manchu noble from beyond the ethnic world of traditional China, was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant men ever to hold the throne. He was fascinated by the world around him and, from what we can tell, was dedicated to the just and harmonious rule of an expanding empire. Whatever his ultimate personal commitments, Kangxi was clearly interested and educated in the broad sweep of traditional Confucian culture. He also illustrates the fact that Confucianism was already a multicultural and international movement. The Confucian tradition itself was undergoing the effects of the development of the last great traditional Confucian philosophic movement, the justly famous school of Evidential Research. Though the Evidential Research scholars were critical of the philosophy of their Han, Song, Yuan, and Ming forefathers, they carried the scholarly aspects of Confucianism to new heights.

“Confucianism” is a Western term but everyone recognizes Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.) as the founder of the movement that takes his name. This would have struck Master Kong, to use his Chinese title and name, as suspect. Master Kong believed fervently that his role was to restore the way of the ancient sages rather than to propound some novel set of doctrines. However, as is so often the case with great religious and cultural reformers, the more they seek to renew the past, the more they generate a new culture out of the old. This is precisely what Master Kong achieved.

Master Kong had a grave problem. By his time, the Zhou dynasty was in obvious decline. Although the Warring States period would not begin until after his death, Master Kong’s question was, how to revive the Zhou? His answer was simple: we need to study the history of the great Zhou founders in order to recover and restore the Chinese world.

A CONFUCIAN WORLD

Returning to the era of Dr. and Mrs. Li, by 1685 China (and other countries in East Asia) had been thoroughly steeped in Confucian culture for centuries. For instance, in 1313 the Mongol court declared one form of Confucian thought, namely the synthesis of Zhu Xi (1130–1200), the basis for the imperial examinations. The local, provincial, and national examination system was based on the Confucian classics and became more and more powerful in the later Ming and Qing dynasties. But this was not the only story. Along with formal education for the imperial examinations came many other Confucian influences in art, poetry, family life, and local social organization.

Late imperial China was a “Confucian” culture in the sense that intellectual concerns, moral axioms, education, family rituals, and political ideology all bore the marks of Confucian reflection and action. Confucianism permeated all levels of Chinese life. Even the classes that did not have access to formal Confucian education and social status firmly believed that if a family were to climb the ladder of success, Confucian education and culture were the only sure ways to move up the social scale. Of course, there were dissenters among Daoists and Buddhists, though even the learned clergy among these two alternative traditions also knew the Confucian classics as well as they did their own scriptures. The majority of the Chinese people were touched in almost every aspect of their lives by Confucian activities.

Was this vast Confucian influence on Chinese culture a good thing? This question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Most Confucians thought so; but sometimes the best and most critical Confucians harbored their own doubts. Had Confucianism lost its ethical edge? Had it become too rigid? Had it become too closely linked to an authoritarian state apparatus? Many modern Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Western critical scholars have blamed the late Confucian social system and imperial system for fossilizing East Asian culture in the name of the First Sage. The Confucian world became backward looking and fossilized. But was this really the case? This is another question with no simple answer. From the perspective of the 1920s, the veritable low point of modern Chinese history, the criticism of Confucianism seemed eminently justified. Like a ship’s captain, the wreck of the Sinitic culture and the loss of respect for that cultural world happened on the Confucian watch. Something new was desperately needed to save China and the rest of East Asia.

Now, however, Confucianism shows signs of internal renewal and the remarkable contemporary economic success of East Asia is being linked to enduring Confucian values of love of education, respect for family, hard work, and the desire for a social order built on consensus and harmony rather than individual competition. What is Confucian and what is not in Chinese culture is another hard question to answer when so many things were defined as “Confucian.” Nonetheless, it is accurate to say that Confucianism is one major aspect of a shared Chinese cultural sensibility. The Confucian Way lives on in complicated modalities in the people of East Asia and in the wider Asian Diaspora. Only time will tell what will happen to this great living cultural artifact.

INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL CONFUCIANISM

Because of limitations of format and space, we cannot extend our discussion to the role of Confucianism in all the diverse countries of East Asia. This is a pity. Although in the West Confucianism is considered a prime marker of Chinese culture, Confucianism is an international religious and philosophic movement. It spread from China into Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. But Confucianism was more than just a borrowed morsel of Chinese cultural life, it became an active part in the lives of the Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese people over the centuries. Moreover, it was creatively developed in unique ways in each new cultural situation.

Each East Asian country adapted Confucianism as part of the Chinese cultural package. The case of Korea is particularly fascinating. As the Korean state emerged, Confucianism became more and more important in Korean culture. By the end of the fourteenth century, the long-lived Choson dynasty (1396–1910) declared Confucianism to be the orthodox philosophy (and religion) of Korea. In the centuries that followed, Korean scholars appropriated and refined the Neo-Confucian tradition. It is not an exaggeration to say that the best philosophic work of the sixteenth century in East Asia was done in Korea. No one advanced the specifics of Zhu Xi’s synthesis more than the Koreans. Moreover, the Koreans even drastically transformed their family structure, including marriage ritual, to conform to orthodox Confucian models. The Koreans could say without fear of contradiction that by the eighteenth century they were the most Confucian country in East Asia.

Confucianism spread to Japan after it was introduced in Korea. In the early part of Japanese history, Confucianism was taught in Buddhist monasteries as part of the general education fit for the aristocracy. Since the Tang period (618–907) in China, the Japanese were highly impressed with all aspects of Chinese culture, although it was Buddhism that was more important spiritually and culturally. But with the rise of the Tokugawa (1600–1868) shoguns, Confucianism played an increasingly important role in Japanese culture. The shoguns made use of Confucian statecraft and Japanese intellectuals became as fascinated by the philosophical and historical intricacies of Confucian thought as were their Chinese and Korean cousins. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as in Korea, Japanese scholars were expanding the range of Confucian thought in new directions. At the end of the Tokugawa period, for instance, many of the young reformers who carried out the great Meiji (1868) reforms, were inspired by an activist vision of Confucian social morality. Even today Confucianism contributes to the unique mix of modern Japanese culture.

We know much less about the role of Confucianism in Vietnam save for the fact that the kings and scholars of Vietnam also imported Confucian texts as part of their general appreciation of Chinese elite culture. Confucianism, perhaps less so than in either Korea or Japan, also plays a role in the modern life of Vietnam.

Both Korea and Japan are fascinating modern societies. They are industrial powers, as modern as any countries in the world. They are now also robust democratic societies, the roles of women are changing rapidly in both societies, yet Confucian culture continues to play a role in the lives of their people. One point illustrates the continuing role of Confucian thought. Traditionally, descent was through the male line in a Chinese family for ritual purposes. However, with smaller and smaller families, sometimes with a single daughter, the Chinese have kept the style from former times in terms of family shrines, but now will cheerfully place a daughter where a son would have gone traditionally. Times change but Confucian sensitivities continue to play a remarkably persistent and complex role in the life of East Asia.

We will return to the history of Confucian thought in the chapter on Dr. Li’s lecture to the academy on the theme of Confucian history and in the chapter on Confucian teachings. However, the two presentations will be different. The chapter on Confucian teachings is what is called an etic history and the second, Dr. Li’s lecture, is called an emic account. The terms “etic” and “emic” are taken from anthropology; the former refers to an external telling of the tale, the latter to an internal one. We have tried to write Dr. Li’s lecture in an emic style, in the way a late Qing literatus Confucian would have told the story. But emic accounts assume that their audience already knows a great deal about the story. Dr. Li is lecturing serious young men who have been studying Chinese thought for around twenty years before they arrive at the academy. Conversely, an etic narration sees other things that might be overlooked because they are so commonplace to an emic scholar. There is value in both, and a balance of etic and emic narrations of the story will help a new audience better understand the contours of the Confucian Way.

A LIVING TRADITION

It is vital to understand that Confucianism is a living religion and a way of cultural formation: its religious dimension is accompanied by philosophy, ritual theory, historical studies, poetic craft, the arts of calligraphy and painting, and political ideology as well. All of these form what we call the Confucian Way. The Confucian Way is a total way of life within the East Asian world. This is one of the reasons that many modern East Asian people pause when they are asked about their “religion.” They understand this question to mean, are they a “member” of a specific religious tradition in the manner of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Because Confucianism is organized and understood differently from the great religious traditions of the West and Middle East, many East Asians will pause and say that they have no religion because Confucianism has never been defined as religion with initiation or membership (i.e., you are not initiated into Confucianism in the ways common to the religions of the West). But ask a second question (suggested insightfully by Jordan Paper), to whom do you owe sacrifice? The answer will be completely different. The question of family ritual and sacrifice, as we shall see, cuts to the heart of the religious dimension of the Confucian Way.

Confucianism has always been linked to a classical education, and education in traditional China was the mark of elite culture. Confucianism, therefore, has always been seen as the domain of China’s cultural, economic, and political elites. This is true again to a certain extent. However, because of its leading social role in Chinese society, Confucianism was more and more attractive to all levels of the expanding Chinese cultural world. One of our arguments is that this was a complex problem, and Confucianism’s success was merited by its intrinsic impetus. One of the lessons of Chinese history is that no one, not even a supremely powerful emperor such as the great first founder of the unified imperial state, Qin Shi Huangdi, could impose an ideology upon the population if those people do not accept it in their mind-hearts. More and more through the long history of China Confucian thought and practice suffused all levels and domains of Chinese life, and later, the lives of the people of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam as well.

Confucianism rests, as do all the various paths or religions of China, on the cultural foundations of the sinitic world. Confucianism is one major expression of the genius of Chinese cultural sensibilities. Modern scholarship suggests that the Confucian impact on Chinese culture can be divided into three different modalities. Confucianism was first a particular popular form of pan-Chinese thought and practice; in fact, Confucianism represented itself as the epitome of classical Chinese culture. We call this popular Confucianism. The second form consists of the uses made by the various dynasties of China of Confucians in order to rule China and to create an ideology that relied on Confucian themes for its justification. This is imperial, political, or ideological Confucianism. The third can be labeled reform Confucianism. This is the Confucianism of reforming intellectuals who took their Confucian thought very seriously as a way to renew or reform the Chinese cultural world. All three forms of Confucianism interacted with each other, and oftentimes it is hard to distinguish one form from another.

CULTURAL CONCERNS

Merely to describe the intellectual history of Confucianism, a worthy enterprise from the Confucian point of view, misses much about the lives of ordinary and extraordinary Confucians over the centuries. No single academic disciplinary approach covers all that needs to be presented in order to introduce the Confucian world to people living beyond its home in East Asia. We need a mixture of art history, ethics, religious theory, philosophy, science, political science, and economics just to begin the project.

Dr. and Mrs. Li are in early middle age; he is in the early 40s and she is in her early 30s. Dr. Li is an official of the Qing dynasty serving as a local magistrate in the beautiful garden city of Suzhou. Mrs. Li is his first wife and mother of four children, two boys and two girls. She is also an accomplished poet in various forms of classical Chinese genres. Our fictional couple is what the great German sociologist Max Weber would have called an “ideal type.” Another way to see this social construction of reality is to call the Lis a prototype following contemporary metaphor theory. Metaphor and prototype theory says that we have favorite cultural and linguistic models, such as the robin being the perfect image of a bird for English speakers.

The Lis are a composite family we have invented so as to introduce the diverse aspects of Confucian life. In order to provide such a portrait, it is important to include Confucian women, as well as men. As we shall see, Mrs. Li plays a very important role not only in her family but also in the larger cultural world of late imperial China. Educated Confucian women took on the crucial task of first teacher for their children; they also took part...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS
• 2 THE CULTIVATION OF THE SELF
• 3 EDUCATING THE PERSON
• 4 TRANSMITTING THE DAO
• 5 EXAMINING EVIL AND GOVERNING THE QUOTIDIAN
• 6 MEETING A WESTERN SCHOLAR
• 7 FURNISHING THE STUDY AND HOSTING A READING
• 8 INTO THE GLOBAL AND MODERN WORLD
• Dynastic and intellectual chronologies
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index