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Who was Confucius? - Bryan W. Van Norden

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The civil service examinations of Imperial China allowed the state to find the best candidates to staff the vast bureaucracy that governed China from the Han Dynasty onwards (206 BCE - 220 CE). The exams were a means for a young male of any class to enter that bureaucracy and so become a part of the gentry class of scholar-officials. The exams had multiple levels and were extremely difficult to pass, requiring extensive knowledge of Confucian classics, law, government, and oratory amongst other subjects. For the state, the system supplied not only able candidates who were selected on merit but also ensured an entire class developed which had sympathy with the ruling status quo. The exams were in place for over a thousand years and are the principal reason why education is still particularly revered in Chinese culture today.

Historical Development

The idea of recruiting officials to staff the imperial bureaucracy developed from the Han Dynasty. An Imperial Academy had been established in 124 BCE for scholars to study in depth the Confucian and Taoist classics, and by the end of the Han period, this institution was training an impressive 30,000 students each year. In general, the state held the view that education was a mark of a civilised society and in order to get the best administrators to run China's vast territories efficiently, an entire class of scholar civil servants was required. This view would prevail under varying dynasties right up to the mid-20th century CE. From the early 8th century CE the military had its own separate set of examinations.

The rulers of the Sui Dynasty (581-618 CE), who had once again unified China, were keen to further improve and centralise the traditional administration system set up by the Han. There was now a much greater emphasis not on an officials' family connections and their letters of recommendations from powerful friends but on the abilities demonstrated in their performance in civil service examinations held in the capital. These examinations combined elements from tests used in previous regimes such as questions on government and knowledge of the classics of Chinese literature, especially those on Confucianism.

Extremely testing, only about 1% of examinees actually passed, although it was possible to retake the examinations an unlimited number of times.

Emperor Gaozu (r. 618-626 CE), founder of the Tang dynasty (618-906 CE) continued with the same policy and added further refinements such as testing a candidate's speaking skills. The examinations themselves were now more sophisticated with both regularly held ones and special event exams to weed out the very best recruits. Now fully established, the civil service examinations tested a young man's knowledge of the following:

writing and calligraphy

formal essay writing techniques

classic literature

mathematics

legal matters

government matters

poetry

clear and coherent speaking

Young men also had to present themselves as 'worthy and upright', and for this reason, certain males were excluded, for example, slaves, actors, criminals, and children of prostitutes.

Examinations were initially organised by the Board of Civil Office and thereafter by the Board of Rites, they were held annually, and they attracted up to 2,000 candidates. Extremely testing, only about 1% of examinees actually passed, although it was possible to retake the examinations an unlimited number of times. Those who passed then faced another examination at the Board of Civil Office.

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During the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) the examinations were restructured to meet greater demand - five times that seen during the Tang. Now a qualifying examination was imposed to select those candidates more likely to do well in the examinations proper. These pre-tests were usually carried out in the local provinces and by the end of the dynasty, some 400,000 candidates were sitting them each year. Successful candidates could then participate in the now three-day examination event held annually in the capital. Those who passed that examination were invited to sit another examination in the imperial palace. From 973 CE, the emperor himself personally supervised this last round of exams. There also began in this period certain measures to limit (but certainly not eliminate) corruption such as the introduction of anonymous marking, the use of a number instead of a candidate's name to avoid bias, and, in the case of the second and third level exams, even the copying of handwriting by a clerk to disguise who had answered the papers.

As if the prize ticket of a place in the state apparatus were not enough of an inducement to candidates, there were other benefits, too. Successful candidates were allowed to wear certain robes which became status symbols in wider society, they were given certain tax benefits, and their new status meant they avoided corporal punishment for some criminal offences. As ever, though, candidates had to be male and reasonably well-educated to start off with. Peasant children who could not write or had no access to scholarly texts had no chance of bettering their position in society. Indeed, such were the demands of the exams that parents had to spend a good deal of money on private tutors to get their sons ready for the most important test of their lives. Candidates were helped by the greater availability of printed books, some of which would be compiled specifically to aid exam-takers.

The special 'scholarly' (jinshi) section was given great weight & it was essential to pass this part to take up senior civil service positions.

When the Mongols ruled China during the Yuan Dynasty (1276-1368 CE) the exams were first cancelled altogether and then reinstated but with quotas based on a candidate's ethnicity - Han Chinese were only allowed 25% of the exam places. The civil service examination system was fully revived, though, in 1370 CE under the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE). Adding their own refinements to the traditional setup of previous Chinese dynasties, the Ming introduced a geographical quota system so that the richer regions did not, as was previously the case, dominate all the positions in the civil service. Meanwhile, the increase in the number of schools meant children with parents who could not afford private tuition could now, at least in some areas, receive the essential education necessary to prepare for the exams.

Ming era exams were held every three years - each autumn in the provinces, then each spring in the major cities for level two, then immediately after, level three in the imperial palace. There were no limits to the number of candidates until numbers grew to such proportions that a measure in 1475 CE limited the candidates to 300 per sitting. There was also some attention given to the degree with which a candidate passed and in which sections. The special 'scholarly' ( jinshi) section was given great weight, and it was essential to pass this part to take up senior civil service positions in a candidate's future career. Those who got the best marks in the jinshi section could look forward to a plum job in the prestigious Hanlin Academy, where state documents such as new laws and imperial decrees were compiled, checked, and amended. Despite the rise in candidates, success was still relatively low as examiners kept increasing the challenges. During the Ming, only 2-4% of candidates passed the second level exams and 7-9% the third level.

With the spread of Neo-Confucianism, the Ming Dynasty exams also favoured knowledge of the 'Four Books': Analects of Confucius, , Great Learning, and Doctrine of the Mean. Study of these texts became essential to pass the examinations until their abolition in the 20th century CE. The exams themselves became more exacting with levels one and two each having three separate parts. Candidates had not only to answer questions but also write extended essays, intended to allow examiners to assess the political views of candidates, not just their academic ability. Finally, under the Ming, successful candidates in the lowest level exam who had not passed the second level had to periodically take tests if they wanted to keep their status.

Under the Qing dynasty (1644-1911 CE) yet another layer of complication was added to the exam system. An examination for younger boys, which they had to pass in order to be eligible to take the level one regional civil service exam, was introduced. Although aimed at developing the skills of younger boys, a male of any age had to have passed this exam before proceeding further through the system. The Qing also added another level at the other end of this academic obstacle course. Now candidates who passed the level three palace exam had to do yet another written test, this time set by the emperor himself. The good news was that success in this final paper meant an immediate senior appointment.

A Student's View

The practical implication of such a challenging series of exams was that young boys had to start learning early if they were to have any chance at all of ultimate success. Private tuition from the age of four or five ensured they learnt how to read and write in classic Chinese, which was different from everyday spoken Chinese. Classic Confucian texts had to be memorised if not actually fully understood. Calligraphy skills had to be developed to give a pleasing impression on the first level exams (the other levels had copyists for impartiality as mentioned above). Sound knowledge of China's history was another good foundation to acquire at this stage. Next, they had to acquire the skills of the 'eight-legged' essay, a formalised presentation of ideas with set phrases and structure needed for some of the exam responses.

Closer to the exam, students swatted up on the one classic text they could choose to be tested on in depth (they would be tested on others, too) as well as brushing up their essay writing skills on practical policy issues of the day. For the second and third level exams, a knowledge of imperial edicts, government decrees, and judicial rulings was essential as they would be tested on their ability to draft such official documents.

Come exam day in the provinces, all candidates sat in a hall or courtyard of a local government office. The all-day event (repeated twice within a week), was an important one in the community, with stalls being set up to sell food and family and well-wishers gazing on from outside. The second level exams in the cities were spread over a week. Candidates had to present themselves the week before the actual exams with all their paperwork in order (although there was still the odd case of students sending a more able substitute), arrange their accommodation, and make sure they had all the necessary brushes, ink, and paper they would need. Indeed, expected to stay closeted in individual exam cells, they also needed food, candles, and blankets. A cell had an open front so invigilators could check up on everyone. Inside was a number of plain wooden boards to make a desk and seat or a bed. Here, each candidate would spend three days taking the exam. Before entering, each candidate was searched and anyone caught cheating was thrown out, banned from taking the exam the next time it was held, and in some cases, stripped of the certificate they had gained at level one.

The writer Pu Sung-ling (d. 1715 CE) gives the following vivid account of what it was like to sit such an exam:

When he first enters the examination compound and walks along, panting under his heavy load of luggage, he is just like a beggar. Next, while under-going the personal body search and being scolded by the clerks and shouted at by the soldiers, he is just like a prisoner. When he finally enters his cell and, along with the other candidates, stretches his neck to peer out, he is just like the larva of a bee. When the examination is finished at last and he leaves, his mind in a haze and his legs tottering, he is just like a sick bird that has been released from a cage.

(quoted in Dawson, 35)

Once collected, the papers were checked, copied, and presented to the examiners who generally gave out the results within 20 days. Those who passed were invited to a special banquet with the examiners. Those who failed would invariably try again next time. The average age of successful candidates was around 30, with those passing the third level palace exam perhaps being 40 years of age.

Social Impact

The civil service examinations system had several important effects on Chinese society. The very idea that ability was more important than one's family connections and social background was a radical idea that stirred in people of all types the realisation that one did not have to follow the same life and work of one's parents. There were limited places, even more limited jobs at the end of the process, and one needed a basic education to begin with (not to mention one had to be male, too), but there was, at least for some, a possible pathway to social progression.

A side effect of the examination system based on merit was a reduction in the grip on power and wealth held by the hereditary aristocracy. There was, too, a reduction in the potential for corruption by replacing the old system where local officials appointed their own subordinates based on family connections and bribes rather than merit (although high-ranking officials could still circumvent the exam system and nominate people for low positions right through the history of Imperial China). Another side effect of creating this desire to join the scholar-official class was the creation of a compliant section of society who shared common values, one of which was to preserve the system they aspired to join and actively participate in. A fundamental principle of Confucianism was, after all, a sense of duty. Finally, as those taking the exams had to move great distances to do so and, if successful their civil service appointment could be anywhere, at least one section of society became more mobile, continuing the general trend of sections of the population moving from rural to urban communities.

There were several negative consequences to the system, too. Many of those who repeatedly took the exams but failed ended up as frustrated teachers helping other hopefuls or were obliged to find positions as junior clerks, sometimes unpaid. The whole uniformity of the examinations systems encouraged conformity rather than new thinking. In addition, as with any system based exclusively on examinations which hardly ever changed in scope, those who were successful were the ones who best studied how to pass rather than those who best understood the subjects they were questioned on.

The examination system was imitated in other Asian countries, notably in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. However, as the medieval period wore on and scientific advancements were made elsewhere, particularly in the West, China did lag behind as the exams system emphasised knowledge of classic literature and the cultivation of moral sensibility rather than of scientific and technical subjects. For this reason, after a thousand years and having become part of the very fabric of Chinese public life, the Qing abolished the civil service exams system in 1905 CE. Its legacy remains, though, in the particularly high regard, indeed, almost reverence with which education is held in Chinese culture today.

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The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China

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The civil service examinations of Imperial China allowed the state to find the best candidates to staff the vast bureaucracy that governed China from the Han Dynasty onwards (206 BCE - 220 CE). The exams were a means for a young male of any class to enter that bureaucracy and so become a part of the gentry class of scholar-officials.

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1. Confucius as Chinese Philosopher and Symbol of Traditional Culture

Because of the wide range of texts and traditions identified with him, choices about which version of Confucius is authoritative have changed over time, reflecting particular political and social priorities. The portrait of Confucius as philosopher is, in part, the product of a series of modern cross-cultural interactions. In Imperial China, Confucius was identified with interpretations of the classics and moral guidelines for administrators, and therefore also with training the scholar-officials that populated the bureaucracy. At the same time, he was closely associated with the transmission of the ancient sacrificial system, and he himself received ritual offerings in temples found in all major cities. By the Han (202 BCE-220 CE), Confucius was already an authoritative figure in a number of different cultural domains, and the early commentaries show that reading texts associated with him about history, ritual, and proper behavior was important to rulers. The first commentaries to the Analects were written by tutors to the crown prince (e.g., Zhang Yu 張禹, d. 5 BCE), and select experts in the "Five Classics" ( Wujing 五經) were given scholastic positions in the government. The authority of Confucius was such that during the late Han and the following period of disunity, his imprimatur was used to validate commentaries to the classics, encoded political prophecies, and esoteric doctrines.

When Confucius became a character in the intellectual debates of eighteenth century Europe, he became identified as China's first philosopher. Jesuit missionaries in China sent back accounts of ancient China that portrayed Confucius as inspired by Natural Theology to pursue the good, which they considered a marked contrast with the "idolatries" of Buddhism and Daoism. Back in Europe, intellectuals read missionary descriptions and translations of Chinese literature, and writers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc (1726-1798) praised Confucius for his discovery of universal natural laws through reason. Enlightenment writers celebrated the moral philosophy of Confucius for its independence from the dogmatic influence of the Church. While at times he was criticized as an atheist or an advocate of despotism, many Europeans viewed Confucius as a moral philosopher whose approach was in line with rationalism and humanism.

Today, many descriptions combine these several ways of positioning Confucius, but the modern interpretation of his views has been complicated by a tendency to look back on him as an emblem of the "traditional culture" of China. In the eyes of some late nineteenth and twentieth century reformers who sought to fortify China against foreign influence, the moral teachings of Confucius had the potential to play the same role that they perceived Christianity had done in the modernization of Europe and America, or serve as the basis of a more secular spiritual renewal that would transform the population into citizens of a modern nation-state. In the twentieth century, the pursuit of modernization also led to the rejection of Confucius by some reformers in the May Fourth and New Culture movements, as well as by many in the Communist Party, who identified the traditional hierarchies implicit in his social and political philosophy with the social and economic inequalities that they sought to eliminate. In these modern debates, it is not just the status of Confucius in traditional China that made him such a potent symbol. His specific association with the curriculum of the system of education of scholar-officials in the imperial government, and of traditional moral values more generally, connected him to the aspects of tradition worth preserving, or the things that held China back from modernization, depending on one's point of view.

As legacies of Confucius tied to traditional ritual roles and the pre-modern social structure were criticized by modernizers, a view of Confucius as a moral philosopher, already common in European readings, gained ascendancy in East Asia. The American-educated historian Hu Shi 胡適 (1891-1962) wrote an early influential history of Chinese philosophy, beginning with Laozi 老子 and Confucius, explicitly on the model of existing histories of Western philosophy. In it, Hu compared what he called the conservative aspect of the philosophy of Confucius to Socrates and Plato. Since at least that time, Confucius has been central to most histories of Chinese philosophy.

2. Sources for Confucius's Life and Thought

Confucius was born in the domain of Zou, in modern Shandong Province, south of the larger kingdom of Lu. A date of 551 BCE is given for his birth in the Gongyang Commentary ( Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳) to the classic Spring and Autumn Annals ( Chunqiu 春秋), which places him in the period when the influence of the Zhou polity was declining, and regional domains were becoming independent states. His father, who came from Lu, was descended from a noble clan that included, in Sima Qian's telling, several people known for their modesty and ritual mastery. His father died when Confucius was a small child, leaving the family poor but with some social status, and as a young man Confucius became known for expertise in the classical ritual and ceremonial forms of the Zhou. In adulthood, Confucius travelled to Lu and began a career as an official in the employ of aristocratic families.

Different sources identify Confucius as having held a large number of different offices in Lu. Entries in the Zuo Commentary ( Zuozhuan 左傳) to the Spring and Autumn Annals for 509 and 500 BCE identify him as Director of Corrections ( Sikou 司寇), and say he was charged with assisting the ruler with the rituals surrounding a visiting dignitary from the state of Qi, respectively. The Mencius ( Mengzi 孟子), a text centered on a figure generally regarded as the most important early developer of the thought of Confucius, Mencius (trad. 372-289 BCE), says Confucius was Foodstuffs Scribe ( Weili 委吏) and Scribe in the Field ( Chengtian 乘田), involved with managing the accounting at the granary and keeping the books on the pasturing of different animals (11.14). In the first biography, Sima Qian mentions these offices, but then adds a second set of more powerful positions in Lu including Steward ( Zai 宰) managing an estate in the district of Zhongdu, Minister of Works ( Sikong 司空), and even acting Chancellor ( Xiang 相). Following his departure from Lu, different stories place Confucius in the kingdoms of Wei, Song, Chen, Cai, and Chu. Sima Qian crafted these stories into a serial narrative of rulers failing to appreciate the moral worth of Confucius, whose high standards forced him to continue to travel in search of an incorrupt ruler.

Late in life, Confucius left service and turned to teaching. In Sima Qian's time, the sheer number of independently circulating texts centering on dialogues that Confucius had with his disciples led the biographer to include a separate chapter on "The arranged traditions of the disciples of Confucius" ( Zhong Ni dizi liezhuan 仲尼弟子列傳). His account identifies 77 direct disciples, whom Sima Qian says Confucius trained in ritual practice and the Classic of Odes ( Shijing 詩經), Classic of Documents ( Shujing 書經, also called Documents of the Predecessors or Shangshu 尚書), Records of Ritual ( Liji 禮記) and Classic of Music ( Yuejing 樂經). Altogether, some 3000 students received some form of this training regimen. Sima Qian's editorial practice in systematizing dialogues was inclusive, and the fact that he was able to collect so much information some three centuries after the death of Confucius testifies to the latter's importance in the Han period. Looked at in a different way, the prodigious numbers of direct disciples and students of Confucius, and the inconsistent accounts of the offices in which he served, may also be due to a proliferation of texts associating the increasingly authoritative figure of Confucius with divergent regional or interpretive traditions during those intervening centuries.

The many sources of quotations and dialogues of Confucius, both transmitted and recently excavated, provide a wealth of materials about the philosophy of Confucius, but an incomplete sense of which materials are authoritative. The last millennium has seen the development of a conventional view that materials preserved in the twenty chapters of the transmitted Analects most accurately represent Confucius's original teachings. This derives in part from a second century CE account by Ban Gu 班固 (39-92 CE) of the composition of the Analects that describes the work as having been compiled by first and second generation disciples of Confucius and then transmitted privately for centuries, making it arguably the oldest stratum of extant Confucius sources. In the centuries since, some scholars have come up with variations on this basic account, such as Liu Baonan's 劉寳楠 (1791-1855) view in Corrected Meanings of the Analects ( Lunyu zhengyi 論語正義) that each chapter was written by a different disciple. Recently, several centuries of doubts about internal inconsistencies in the text and a lack of references to the title in early sources were marshaled by classicist Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚 in an influential 1986 article which argued that the lack of attributed quotations from the Analects, and of explicit references to it, prior to the second century BCE, meant that its traditional status as the oldest stratum of the teachings of Confucius was undeserved. Since then a number of historians, including Michael J. Hunter, have systematically shown that writers started to demonstrate an acute interest in the Analects only in the late second and first centuries BCE, suggesting that other Confucius-related records from those centuries should also be considered as potentially authoritative sources. Some have suggested this critical approach to sources is an attack on the historicity of Confucius, but a more reasonable description is that it is an attack on the authoritativeness of the Analects that broadens and diversifies the sources that may be used to reconstruct the historical Confucius.

Expanding the corpus of Confucius quotations and dialogues beyond the Analects, then, requires attention to three additional types of sources. First, dialogues preserved in transmitted sources like the Records of Ritual, the Elder Dai's Records of Ritual ( DaDai Liji 大戴禮記), and Han collections like the Family Discussions of Confucius ( Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語) contain a large number of diverse teachings. Second, quotations attached to the interpretation of passages in the classics preserved in works like the Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals, or Han's Intertextual Commentary on the Odes ( Han Shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳) are particularly rich sources for readings of history and poetry. Finally, a number of recently archaeologically recovered texts from the Han period and before have also expanded the corpus.

Previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations have also been unearthed. The Dingzhou site also yielded texts given the titles "Sayings of the Ru" ( Rujiazhe yan 儒家者言) and "Duke Ai asked about the five kinds of righteousness" ( Aigong wen wuyi 哀公問五義). A significantly different text also given the name "Sayings of the Ru" was found in 1977 in a Han tomb at Fuyang in Anhui Province. Several texts dating to 168 BCE recording statements by Confucius about the Classic of Changes ( Yijing 易經) were excavated from the Mawangdui site in Hunan Province in 1973. Additionally, a number of Warring States period dialogical texts centered on particular disciples, and a text with interpretative comments by Confucius on the Classic of Poetry given the name "Confucius discusses the Odes" ( Kongzi shilun 孔子詩論), were looted from tombs in the 1990s, sold on the black market, and made their way to the Shanghai Museum. The 59 BCE tomb of the Marquis of Haihun also contains a number of previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations on ritual and filial piety, along with materials that overlap with sections of transmitted texts including the Analects, Records of Ritual and the Elder Dai's Records of Ritual. Another unprovenanced manuscript, now curated by Anhui University, "Zhong Ni said" ( Zhong Ni yue 仲尼曰) has around two dozen sayings, seven of which overlap with the modern Analects. Most recently, initial reports about a 2021 excavation at Wangjiazui 王家嘴 in Hubei province of an unknown number of sayings entitled "Kongzi said," ( Kongzi yue 孔子曰) indicate it only partially overlaps with the Analects. These new finds suggest that a larger number of sayings attributed to Kongzi once circulated together, with certain ones being selected out for inclusion in works like the Records of Ritual and the Analects.

3. Ritual Psychology and Social Values

The Records of Ritual, the Analects, and numerous Han collections portray Confucius as being deeply concerned with the proper performance of ritual and music. In such works, the description of the attitudes and affect of the performer became the foundation of a ritual psychology in which proper performance was key to reforming desires and beginning to develop moral dispositions. Confucius sought to preserve the Zhou ritual system, and theorized about how ritual and music inculcated social roles, limited desires and transformed character.

Many biographies begin their description of his life with a story of Confucius at an early age performing rituals, reflecting accounts and statements that demonstrate his prodigious mastery of ritual and music. The archaeological record shows that one legacy of the Zhou period into which Confucius was born was a system of sumptuary regulations that encoded social status. Another of these legacies was ancestral sacrifice, a means to demonstrate people's reverence for their ancestors while also providing a way to ask the spirits to assist them or to guarantee them protection from harm. The Analects describes the ritual mastery of Confucius in receiving guests at a noble's home (10.3), and in carrying out sacrifices (10.8, 15.1). He plays the stone chimes (14.39), distinguishes between proper and improper music (15.11, 17.18), and extols and explains the Classic of Odes to his disciples (1.15, 2.2, 8.3, 16.13, 17.9). This mastery of classical ritual and musical forms is an important reason Confucius said he "followed Zhou" (3.14). While he might alter a detail of a ritual out of frugality (9.3), Confucius insists on adherence to the letter of the rites, as when his disciple Zi Gong 子貢 sought to substitute another animal for a sheep in a seasonal sacrifice, saying "though you care about the sheep, I care about the ritual" (3.17). It was in large part this adherence to Zhou period cultural forms, or to what Confucius reconstructed them to be, that has led many in the modern period to label him a traditionalist.

Where Confucius clearly innovated was in his rationale for performing the rites and music. Historian Yan Buke 閻步克 has argued that the early Confucian ( Ru) tradition began from the office of the "Music master" ( Yueshi 樂師) described in the Ritual of Zhou ( Zhou Li 周禮). Yan's view is that since these officials were responsible for teaching the rites, music, and the Classic of Odes, it was their combined expertise that developed into the particular vocation that shaped the outlook of Confucius. Early discussions of ritual in the Zhou classics often explained ritual in terms of a do ut des view of making offerings to receive benefits. By contrast, early discussions between Confucius and his disciples described benefits of ritual performance that went beyond the propitiation of spirits, rewards from the ancestors, or the maintenance of the social or cosmic order. Instead of emphasizing goods that were external to the performer, these works stressed the value of the associated interior psychological states of the practitioner. In Analects 3.26, Confucius condemns the performance of ritual without reverence ( jing 敬). He also condemns views of ritual that focus only on the offerings, or views of music that focus only on the instruments (17.11). Passages from the Records of Ritual explain that Confucius would rather have an excess of reverence than an excess of ritual (" Tangong, shang" 檀弓上), and that reverence is the most important aspect of mourning rites (" Zaji, xia" 雜記下). This emphasis on the importance of an attitude of reverence became the salient distinction between performing ritual in a rote manner, and performing it in the proper affective state. Another passage from the Records of Ritual says the difference between how an ideal gentleman and a lesser person cares for a parent is that the gentleman is reverent when he does it (" Fangji" 坊記, cf. Analects 2.7). In contexts concerning both ritual and filial piety ( xiao 孝), the affective state behind the action is arguably more important than the action's consequences. As Philip J. Ivanhoe has written, ritual and music are not just an indicator of values in the sense that these examples show, but also an inculcator of them.

In this ritual psychology, the performance of ritual and music restricts desires because it alters the performer's affective states, and place limits on appetitive desires. The Records of Ritual illustrates desirable affective states, describing how the Zhou founder King Wen 文 was moved to joy when making offerings to his deceased parents, but then to grief once the ritual ended (" Jiyi" 祭義). A collection associated with the third century BCE philosopher Xunzi 荀子 contains a Confucius quotation that associates different parts of a ruler's day with particular emotions. Entering the ancestral temple to make offerings and maintain a connection to those who are no longer living leads the ruler to reflect on sorrow, while wearing a cap to hear legal cases leads him to reflect on worry (" Aigong" 哀公). These are examples of the way that ritual fosters the development of particular emotional responses, part of a sophisticated understanding of affective states and the ways that performance channels them in particular directions. More generally, the social conventions implicit in ritual hierarchies restrict people's latitude to pursue their desires, as the master explains in the Records of Ritual:

The way of the gentleman may be compared to an embankment dam, bolstering those areas where ordinary people are deficient (" Fangji ").

Blocking the overflow of desires by adhering to these social norms preserves psychological space to reflect and reform one's reactions.

Once, when speaking of cultivating benevolence, Confucius explained how ritual value was connected to the ideal way of the gentleman, which should always take precedence over the pursuit of conventional values:

Wealth and high social status are what others covet. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not dwell in them. Poverty and low social status are what others shun. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not avoid them. (4.5)

The argument that ritual performance has internal benefits underlies the ritual psychology laid out by Confucius, one that explains how performing ritual and music controls desires and sets the stage for further moral development.

4. Virtues and Character Formation

Many of the short passages from the Analects, and the "Thicket of Sayings" passages excavated at Guodian, describe the development of set of ideal behaviors associated with the moral ideal of the "way" ( dao 道) of the "gentleman" ( junzi 君子). Based on the analogy between the way of Confucius and character ethics systems deriving from Aristotle, these patterns of behavior are today often described using the Latinate term "virtue". In the second passage in the Analects, the disciple You Ruo 有若 says a person who behaves with filial piety to parents and siblings ( xiao and di 弟), and who avoids going against superiors, will rarely disorder society. It relates this correlation to a more general picture of how patterns of good behavior effectively open up the possibility of following the way of the gentleman: "The gentleman works at the roots. Once the roots are established, the way comes to life" (1.2). The way of the gentleman is a distillation of the exemplary behaviors of the selfless culture heroes of the past, and is available to all who are willing to "work at the roots". In this way, the virtues that Confucius taught were not original to him, but represented his adaptations of existing cultural ideals, to which he continually returned in order to clarify their proper expressions in different situations. Five behaviors of the gentleman most central to the Analects are benevolence ( ren 仁), righteousness ( yi 義), ritual propriety ( li 禮), wisdom ( zhi 智), and trustworthiness ( xin 信).

The virtue of benevolence entails interacting with others guided by a sense of what is good from their perspectives. Sometimes the Analects defines benevolence generally as "caring for others" (12.22), but in certain contexts it is associated with more specific behaviors. Examples of contextual definitions of benevolence include treating people on the street as important guests and common people as if they were attendants at a sacrifice (12.2), being reticent in speaking (12.3) and rejecting the use of clever speech (1.3), and being respectful where one dwells, reverent where one works, and loyal where one deals with others (13.19). It is the broadest of the virtues, yet a gentleman would rather die than compromise it (15.9). Benevolence entails a kind of unselfishness, or, as David Hall and Roger Ames suggest, it involves forming moral judgments from a combined perspective of self and others.

The second virtue, righteousness, is often described in the Analects relative to situations involving public responsibility. In contexts where standards of fairness and integrity are valuable, such as acting as the steward of an estate as some of the disciples of Confucius did, righteousness is what keeps a person uncorrupted. Confucius wrote that a gentleman "thinks of righteousness when faced with gain" (16.10, 19.10), or "when faced with profit" (14.12). Confucius says that one should ignore the wealth and rank one might attain by acting against righteousness, even if it means eating coarse rice, drinking water, and sleeping using one's bent arm as a pillow (7.16). Later writers like Xunzi celebrated Confucius for his righteousness in office, which he stressed was all the more impressive because Confucius was extremely poor (" Wangba " 王霸). This behavior is particularly relevant in official interactions with ordinary people, such as when "employing common people" (5.16), and if a social superior has mastered it, "the common people will all comply" (13.4). Like benevolence, righteousness also entails unselfishness, but instead of coming out of consideration for the needs of others, it is rooted in steadfastness in the face of temptation.

The perspective needed to act in a righteous way is sometimes related to an attitude to personal profit that recalls the previous section's discussion of how Confucius taught his disciples to recalibrate their sense of value based on their immersion in the sacrificial system. More specifically, evaluating things based on their ritual significance can put one at odds with conventional hierarchies of value. This is defined as the root of righteous behavior in a story from the late Warring States period text Master Fei of Han ( Han Feizi 韓非子). The tale relates how at court, Confucius was given a plate with a peach and a pile of millet grains with which to scrub the fruit clean. After the attendants laughed at Confucius for proceeding to eat the millet first, Confucius explained to them that in sacrifices to the Former Kings, millet itself is the most valued offering. Therefore, cleaning a ritually base peach with millet:

would be obstructing righteousness, and so I dared not put [the peach] above what fills the vessels in the ancestral shrine. (" Waichu shuo, zuo shang " 外儲說左上)

While such stories may have been told to mock his fastidiousness, for Confucius the essence of righteousness was internalizing a system of value that he would breach for neither convenience nor profit.

At times, the phrase "benevolence and righteousness" is used metonymically for all the virtues, but in some later texts, a benevolent impulse to compassion and a righteous steadfastness are seen as potentially contradictory. In the Analects, portrayals of Confucius do not recognize a tension between benevolence and righteousness, perhaps because each is usually described as salient in a different set of contexts. In ritual contexts like courts or shrines, one ideally acts like one might act out of familial affection in a personal context, the paradigm that is key to benevolence. In the performance of official duties, one ideally acts out of the responsibilities felt to inferiors and superiors, with a resistance to temptation by corrupt gain that is key to righteousness. The Records of Ritual distinguishes between the domains of these two virtues:

In regulating one's household, kindness overrules righteousness. Outside of one's house, righteousness cuts off kindness. What one undertakes in serving one's father, one also does in serving one's lord, because one's reverence for both is the same. Treating nobility in a noble way and the honorable in an honorable way, is the height of righteousness. (" Sangfu sizhi " 喪服四制)

While it is not the case that righteousness is benevolence by other means, this passage underlines how in different contexts, different virtues may push people toward participation in particular shared cultural practices constitutive of the good life.

The mastery that "ritual propriety" signaled was part of a curriculum associated with the training of rulers and officials, and proper ritual performance at court could also serve as a kind of political legitimation. Confucius summarized the different prongs of the education in ritual and music involved in the training of his followers:

Raise yourself up with the Classic of Odes. Establish yourself with ritual. Complete yourself with music. (8.8)

On one occasion, Boyu 伯魚, the son of Confucius, explained that when he asked his father to teach him, his father told him to study the Classic of Odes in order to have a means to speak with others, and to study ritual to establish himself (16.13). That Confucius insists that his son master classical literature and practices underscores the values of these cultural products as a means of transmitting the way from one generation to the next. He tells his disciples that the study of the Classic of Odes prepares them for different aspects of life, providing them with a capacity to:

at home serve one's father, away from it serve one's lord, as well as increase one's knowledge of the names of birds, animals, plants and trees. (17.9)

This valuation of knowledge of both the cultural and natural worlds is one reason why the figure of Confucius has traditionally been identified with schooling, and why today his birthday is celebrated as "Teacher's Day" in some parts of Asia. In the ancient world, this kind of education also qualified Confucius and his disciples for employment on estates and at courts.

The fourth virtue, wisdom, is related to appraising people and situations. In the Analects, wisdom allows a gentleman to discern crooked and straight behavior in others (12.22), and discriminate between those who may be reformed and those who may not (15.8). In the former dialogue, Confucius explains the virtue of wisdom as "knowing others". The "Thicket of Sayings" excavated at Guodian indicates that this knowledge is the basis for properly "selecting" others, defining wisdom as the virtue that is the basis for selection. But it is also about appraising situations correctly, as suggested by the master's rhetorical question: "How can a person be considered wise if that person does not dwell in benevolence?" (4.1). One well-known passage often cited to imply Confucius is agnostic about the world of the spirits is more literally about how wisdom allows an outsider to present himself in a way appropriate to the people on whose behalf he is working:

When working for what is right for the common people, to show reverence for the ghosts and spirits while maintaining one's distance may be deemed wisdom. (6.22)

The context for this sort of appraisal is usually official service, and wisdom is often attributed to valued ministers or advisors to sage rulers.

In certain dialogues, wisdom also connotes a moral discernment that allows the gentleman to be confident of the appropriateness of good actions. In the Analects, Confucius tells his disciple Zi Lu 子路 that wisdom recognizes knowing a thing as knowing it, and ignorance of a thing as ignorance of it (2.17). In soliloquies about several virtues, Confucius describes a wise person as never confused (9.28, 14.28). While comparative philosophers have noted that Chinese thought has nothing clearly analogous to the role of the will in pre-modern European philosophy, the moral discernment that is part of wisdom does provide actors with confidence that the moral actions they have taken are correct.

The virtue of trustworthiness qualifies a gentleman to give advice to a ruler, and a ruler or official to manage others. In the Analects, Confucius explains it succinctly: "if one is trustworthy, others will give one responsibilities" (17.6, cf. 20.1). While trustworthiness may be rooted in the proper expression of friendship between those of the same status (1.4, 5.26), it is also valuable in interactions with those of different status. The disciple Zi Xia 子夏 explains its effect on superiors and subordinates: when advising a ruler, without trustworthiness, the ruler will think a gentleman is engaged in slander, and when administering a state, without trustworthiness, people will think a gentleman is exploiting them (19.10). The implication is that a sincerely public-minded official would be ineffective without the trust that this quality inspires. In a dialogue with a ruler from chapter four of Han's Intertextual Commentary the Odes, Confucius explains that in employing someone, trustworthiness is superior to strength, ability to flatter, or eloquence. Being able to rely on someone is so important to Confucius that, when asked about good government, he explained that trustworthiness was superior to either food or weapons, concluding: "If the people do not find the ruler trustworthy, the state will not stand" (12.7).

The presence of themes in the Analects like the ruler's exceptional influence as a moral exemplar, the importance of judging people by their deeds rather than their words (1.3, 2.10, 5.10), or even the protection of the culture of Zhou by higher powers (9.5), all highlight the unsystematic nature of the text and underscore that teaching others how to cultivate the virtues is a key aspect, but only a part, of the ethical ideal of Confucius. Yet there is also a conundrum inherent in any attempt to derive abstract moral rules from the mostly dialogical form of the Analects, that is, the problem of whether the situational context and conversation partner is integral to evaluating the statements of Confucius. A historically notable example of an attempt to find a generalized moral rule in the Analects is the reading of a pair of passages that use a formulation similar to that of the "Golden Rule" of the Christian Bible (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31) to describe benevolence: "Do not impose upon others those things that you yourself do not desire" (12.2, cf. 5.12, 15.24). Read as axiomatic moral imperatives, these passages differ from the kind of exemplar-based and situational conversations about morality usually found in the Analects. For this reason, some scholars, including E. Bruce Brooks, believe these passages to be interpolations. While they are not wholly inconsistent with the way that benevolence is described in early texts, their interpretation as abstract principles has been influenced by their perceived similarity to the Biblical examples. In the Records of Ritual, a slightly different formulation of a rule about self and others is presented as not universal in its scope, but rather as descriptive of how the exemplary ruler influences the people. In common with other early texts, the Analects describes how the moral transformation of society relies on the positive example of the ruler, comparing the influence of the gentleman on the people to the way the wind blows on the grass, forcing it to bend (12.19). In a similar vein, after discussing how the personal qualities of rulers of the past determined whether or not their subjects could morally transform, the Records of Ritual expresses its principle of reflexivity:

That is why the gentleman only seeks things in others that he or she personally possesses. [The gentleman] only condemns things in others that he or she personally lacks. (" Daxue " 大學)

This is a point about the efficacy of moral suasion, saying that a ruler cannot expect to reform society solely by command since it is only the ruler's personal example that can transform others. For this reason, the ruler should not compel behaviors from his subjects to which he or she would not personally assent, something rather different from the "Golden Rule". Historically, however, views that Confucius was inspired by the same Natural Theology as Christians, or that philosophers are naturally concerned with the generalization of moral imperatives, have argued in favor of a closer identification with the "Golden Rule," a fact that illustrates the interpretative conundrum arising from the formal aspects of the Analects.

5. The Family and the State

It is rare for a person who is filially pious to his parents and older siblings to be inclined to rebel against his superiors... Filial piety to parents and elder siblings may be considered the root of a person. (1.2)

This section examines Confucius's social and political philosophy, beginning with the central role of his analysis of the traditional norm of filial piety.

Just as Confucius analyzed the psychology of ritual performance and related it to individual moral development, his discussion of filial piety was another example of the development and adaptation of a particular classical cultural pattern to a wider philosophical context and set of concerns. Originally limited to descriptions of sacrifice to ancestors in the context of hereditary kinship groups, a more extended meaning of "filial piety" was used to describe the sage king Shun's 舜 (trad. r. 2256-2205 BCE) treatment of his living father in the Classic of Documents. Despite humble origins, Shun's filial piety was recognized as a quality that signaled he would be a suitable successor for the sage king Yao 堯 (trad. r. 2357-2256 BCE). Confucius in the Analects praised the ancient sage kings at great length, and the sage king Yu 禹 for his filial piety in the context of sacrifice (8.21). However, he used the term filial piety to mean both sacrificial mastery and behaving appropriately to one's parents. In a conversation with one of his disciples he explains that filial piety meant "not contesting", and that it entailed:

while one's parents were alive, serving them in a ritually proper way, and after one's parents died, burying them and sacrificing to them in a ritually proper way. (2.5)

In rationalizing the moral content of legacies of the past like the three-year mourning period after the death of a parent, Confucius reasoned that for three years a filially pious child should not alter a parent's way (4.20, cf. 19.18), and explains the origin of length of the three-year mourning period to be the length of time that the parents had given their infant child support (17.21). This adaptation of filial piety to connote the proper way for a gentleman to behave both inside and outside the home was a generalization of a pattern of behavior that had once been specific to the family.

In my circle, being upright differs from this. A father would conceal such a thing on behalf of his son, and a son would conceal it on behalf of his father. Uprightness is found in this. (13.18)

In this way, too, Confucius was adapting filial piety to a wider manifold of moral behaviors, honing his answer to the question of how a child balances responsibility to family and loyalty to the state. While these two traits may conflict with one and other, Sociologist Robert Bellah, in his study of Tokugawa and modern Japan, noted how the structural similarity between loyalty and filial piety led to their both being promoted by the state as interlinked ideals that located each person in dual networks of responsibility. Confucius was making this claim when he connected filial piety to the propensity to be loyal to superiors (1.2). Statements like "filial piety is the root of virtuous action" from the Classic of Filial Piety connect loyalty and the kind of action that signals the personal virtue that justifies political authority, as in the historical precedent of the sage king Shun.

Of the classical sources from which Confucius drew, two were particularly influential in discussions of political legitimation. The Classic of Odes consists of 305 Zhou period regulated lyrics (hence the several translations "songs", "odes", or "poems") and became numbered as one of the Five Classics ( Wujing) in the Han dynasty. Critical to a number of these lyrics is the celebration of King Wen of Zhou's overthrow of the Shang, which is an example of a virtuous person seizing the "Mandate of Heaven":

This King Wen of ours, his prudent heart was well-ordered. He shone in serving the High God, and thus enjoyed much good fortune. Unswerving in his virtue, he came to hold the domains all around. (" Daming " 大明)

The Zhou political theory expressed in this passage is based on the idea of a limited moral universe that may not reward a virtuous person in isolation, but in which the High God ( Shangdi 上帝, Di 帝) or Heaven will intercede to replace a bad ruler with a person of exceptional virtue. The Classic of Documents is a collection that includes orations attributed to the sage rulers of the past and their ministers, and its arguments often concern moral authority with a focus on the methods and character of exemplary rulers of the past. The chapter "Announcement of Kang" (" Kanggao " 康誥) is addressed to one of the sons of King Wen, and provides him with a guide for behaving as sage ruler as well as with methods that had been empirically proven successful by those rulers. When it comes to the mandate inherited from King Wen, the chapter insists that the mandate is not unchanging, and so as ruler the son must always be mindful of it when deciding how to act. Further, it is not always possible to understand Heaven, but the "feelings of the people are visible", and so the ruler must care for his subjects. The Zhou political view that Confucius inherited was based on supernatural intercession to place a person with personal virtue in charge of the state, but over time the emphasis shifted to the way that the effects of good government could be viewed as proof of a continuing moral justification for that placement.

Confucius himself arguably served as a historical counterexample to the classical "Mandate of Heaven" theory, calling into question the direct nature of the support given by Heaven to the person with virtue. The Han period Records of the Historian biography of Confucius described him as possessing all the personal qualities needed to govern well, but wandering from state to state because those qualities had not been recognized. When his favorite disciple died, the Analects records Confucius saying that "Heaven has forsaken me!" (11.9). Wang Chong's 王充 (27-c.97 CE) Balanced Discussions ( Lunheng 論衡) uses the phrase "uncrowned king" ( suwang 素王) to describe the tragic situation: "Confucius did not rule as king, but his work as uncrowned king may be seen in the Spring and Autumn Annals" (80). The view that through his writings Confucius could prepare the world for the government of a future sage king became a central part of Confucius lore that has colored the reception of his writings since, especially in works related to the Spring and Autumn Annals and its Gongyang Commentary. The biography of Confucius reinforced the tragic cosmological picture that personal virtue did not always guarantee success. Even when Heaven's support is cited in the Analects, it is not a matter of direct intercession, but expressed through personal virtue or cultural patterns: "Heaven gave birth to the virtue in me, so what can Huan Tui 桓魋 do to me?" (7.23, cf. 9.5). As Robert Eno has pointed out, the concept of Heaven also came to be increasingly naturalized in passages like "what need does Heaven have to speak?" (17.19). Changing views of the scope of Heaven's activity and the ways human beings may have knowledge of that activity fostered a change in the role of Heaven in political theory.

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Because of the wide range of texts and traditions identified with him, choices about which version of Confucius is authoritative have changed over time, reflecting particular political and social priorities. The portrait of Confucius as philosopher is, in part, the product of a series of modern cross-cultural interactions.

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Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are considered the "three pillars" of ancient Chinese society. As philosophies and religions, they not only influenced spirituality, but also government, science, the arts, and social structure. Though their specific beliefs and teachings have occasionally been at odds with each other, there has been much room for overlap. Instead of one tradition taking over and pushing the others out, the three philosophies have influenced society alongside each other, changed each other, and at times blended together. Understanding the unique interplay between these three traditions gives great insight into ancient Chinese society, as well as modern times.
Confucianism
Though closer to a philosophy than a true religion, Confucianism was a way of life for ancient Chinese people, and it continues to influence Chinese culture today. The founder of Confucianism, named Confucius, lived from 551 to 479 B.C.E. He was a philosopher and political figure who lived during a time when traditional Chinese principles began to deteriorate under competing political states. He took older religious precepts and translated them into guidelines for social mores. His teachings gave guidance on all levels of ancient Chinese life, from interactions between family members and in the public sphere, to educational standards and how states should be governed. Confucius saw every aspect of life as being made up of obligations between people and entities, and rituals to convey the mutual dependency between them. His teachings focused on humanism, including treating others the way you would want to be treated. He taught that if everyone fulfilled their roles and obligations with respect and kindness towards others, it would build a stronger state. While religious rituals were mentioned alongside all of the other rituals a person was expected to perform, Confucius did not focus on spiritual concerns like the afterlife, gods and goddesses, or mysticism. This is why Confucianism is considered a philosophy rather than a religion, even though it is often lumped in with other major religions.

Confucianism became the dominant political philosophy during the Han Dynasty from 206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. Because Confucian teachings were conservative and told people to maintain their role in social order, the philosophy was used by the state to keep the status quo from that time forward. The structure of Chinese society and its focus on rituals, familial respect and obligation, worship of ancestors, and self-discipline, remains greatly influenced by Confucius and his teachings.
Taoism
Taoism (also called Daoism) is a Chinese religion that developed a bit after Confucianism, around two thousand years ago. In contrast to Confucianism, Taoism is mainly concerned with the spiritual elements of life, including the nature of the universe. The guiding principle of Taoism is roughly translated as "the Way," which is a harmonious natural order that arises between humans and the world, and that Taoists should strive to achieve. In the Taoist structure of the universe, humans are meant to accept and yield to the Tao and only do things that are natural and in keeping with the Tao. This is the concept of wu-wei, which translates as "non-action," but really means to go with the true nature of the world and not strive too hard for desires. This puts Taoism in opposition to Confucianism in another way: it is not concerned about with humanistic morality, government, and society, all of which Taoists see as inventions of humans and not necessarily part of the Tao. At the same time, Taoists were interested in longevity, both of the human body and the soul. Achieving spiritual immortality through becoming one with nature is an important part of the Taoist religion.

Despite their differences, Taoist and Confucian ideas are not completely at odds with each other, so Chinese society was able to absorb concepts from both traditions. Taoism had influence on literature and the arts, but the biggest area of Taoist influence was in science. The Taoist focus on natural elements and observing how the natural world works helped to create Chinese medicine. Similar to the modern scientific method, Taoists observed how different medicines affected people and animals through experimentation. Their collective knowledge gained through trying to improve human longevity made a huge contribution to health sciences.
Buddhism
Buddhism was the third major belief system of ancient China. It was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, also called the Buddha, who lived in India around the sixth century B.C.E. Buddhism is a philosophy that focuses on personal development and attainment of deep knowledge. Buddhists seek to achieve enlightenment through meditation, spiritual learning, and practice. They believe in reincarnation and that life is impermanent and full of suffering and uncertainty; the way to find peace is through reaching nirvana, a joyful state beyond human suffering. There are many different sects that place different emphasis on various aspects of Buddhism. The two largest sects are Theravada Buddhism, which is found primarily in southern Asia, and Mahayana Buddhism, which is found in east Asia, including China.

After its founding in India, Buddhism spread to and became popular in China in the first century C.E. Part of the reason Buddhism became popular in China was because of Taoism. Some Buddhist practices were similar to Taoist ones, and Buddhist monks would use Taoist concepts to explain Buddhism to the Chinese, overcoming the cultural and language barrier between Indian and the Chinese people. Buddhism also influenced Taoism with its institutional structure, which Taoists copied and modified. A competition between Buddhism and Taoism arose to gain more followers and greater government influence, and this competition increased the vitality of both religions. As Buddhism became more prevalent, its concepts merged with Taoist and Confucian ideas to become the basis of ancient Chinese society and government. Its influence is seen in Chinese art, architecture, and literature.

Values and ideas from Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are still prevalent in Chinese culture today. Despite the differences and occasional contradictions between the three traditions, the ancient Chinese society held each of these philosophies in high importance and incorporated the different teachings into multiple areas of life.

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Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are considered the "three pillars" of ancient Chinese society. As philosophies and religions, they not only influenced spirituality, but also government, science, the arts, and social structure. Though their specific beliefs and teachings have occasionally been at odds with each other, there has been much room for overlap.

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The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Scholar-Officials of China | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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"Scholars increasingly turned to the arts, the study of which was considered a path to the cultivation of the moral self."

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China was the most advanced place in the world. recognized this when he got to China in the late 13th century after traveling through much of Asia. In what is now Europe, this was the period now referred to as the "high" Middle Ages, which fostered the Crusades and witnessed the rise of Venice, the mercantile center that was Marco Polo's home.

A painted by a Chinese artist in the 12th century provides us with a look at society and urban life in China during this time.

During the Song (Sung) Dynasty (960-1276), technology was highly advanced in fields as diverse as agriculture, iron-working, and printing. Indeed, scholars today talk of a Song economic revolution.

The population grew rapidly during this time, and more and more people lived in cities.

The Song system of government was also advanced for its time. The upper-levels of the government were staffed by highly educated scholar-officials selected through competitive written examinations.

Many ways of living and acting that are now seen as most "Chinese," or even characteristically East Asian, did not appear before the Song.

and are historically important crops/staple foods in China; but most Chinese during the previous Tang dynasty and before ate wheat and millet and drank wine. Rice and tea became dominant food and drink in the Song.

China's is large, and tends to "explode" in certain periods; its first explosion occurred in the Song.

Many Chinese are "Confucians"; but the kind of that served as government orthodoxy throughout late-imperial times was a Song reinvention.

Chinese are known to have bound their feet; but they did not bind them until the Song.

Even the with its turned-up corners is by origin a Song Chinese roof.

Yet, despite its political and economic strengths, Central to its engagement with the outside world were efforts to maintain peace with its powerful northern neighbors and extend its trading networks.

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The Song Dynasty in China | Asia for Educators

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China was the most advanced place in the world. recognized this when he got to China in the late 13th century after traveling through much of Asia. In what is now Europe, this was the period now referred to as the "high" Middle Ages, which fostered the Crusades and witnessed the rise of Venice, the mercantile center that was Marco Polo's home.

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"Neo-Confucianism" is the name commonly applied to the revival of the various strands of Confucian philosophy and political culture that began in the middle of the 9th century and reached new levels of intellectual and social creativity in the 11th century in the Northern Song Dynasty. The first phase of the revival of the Confucian tradition was completed by the great philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200) and became the benchmark for all future Confucian intellectual discourse and social theory. Especially after the Song, the Neo-Confucian movement included speculative philosophers, painters, poets, doctors, social ethicists, political theorists, historians, local reformers and government civil servants. By the 14th Century Zhu's version of Confucian thought, known as daoxue or the teaching of the way or lixue or the teaching of principle, became the standard curriculum for the imperial civil service examination system. The Neo-Confucian dominance of the civil service continued until the whole system was abolished in 1905.

The greatest challenge to Zhu Xi's initial synthesis of the various themes and praxis of daoxue was presented by the great Ming philosopher, poet, general, and civil servant, Wang Yangming (1472-1529). Wang, while continuing many of the characteristic practices of the movement, argued for a different philosophical interpretation and cultivation of the xin or mind-heart, so much so that Wang's distinctive philosophy is known as xinxue or the teaching of the mind-heart in order to distinguish it from Zhu's teaching of principle. In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) there was a further reaction against the speculative philosophy of both Zhu and Wang and the movement known as hanxue of the learning of Han [Dynasty] arose to combat what were taken to be the grave mistakes of both Zhu and Wang. This last great Chinese Neo-Confucian movement is also know as the school of evidential research because of its commitment to historical and philological research in contradistinction to the Song and Ming fascination with speculative metaphysics and personal moral self-cultivation.

It is important to remember that along with being highly philosophical, the Neo-Confucian masters where also teachers of various forms of personal moral self-cultivation. From the Neo-Confucian perspective, merely abstract knowledge was useless unless conjoined with ethical self reflection and cultivation that eventuated in proper moral behavior and social praxis. The Neo-Confucians sought to promote a unified vision of humane flourishing that would end with a person becoming a sage or worthy by means of various forms of self-cultivation.

It is also vital to remember that Neo-Confucianism became an international movement and spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Neo-Confucianism flourished in all of these East Asian countries and since the 16th Century some of most creative philosophical work was achieved in Korea and Japan.

In the 20th Century, even amidst the tremendous political and military upheavals throughout the East Asian region, there was yet another revival movement based on Neo-Confucianism now known as New Confucianism. While the New Confucian movement is clearly an heir of its Neo-Confucian past, it is also deeply engaged in dialogue with Western philosophy and is emerging as fascinating form of global philosophy at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Table of Contents

1. Defining the Confucian Way

Before we explore the revival of Confucian learning throughout East Asia, we need to reflect on just what was being revived. Prior to the emergence of the "Neo-Confucian" thinkers, the Confucian tradition already had a long and distinguished tradition of commentary on the teachings of the famous teachers from the legendary past into the historical world of the Warring States and later.

The English labels "Confucianism" and "Neo-Confucianism" imply a close connection to the life and thought of Master Kong or Kongzi (Confucius), whose traditional dates are 551-479 BCE. If the term "Neo-Confucianism" is considered problematic because of its modern origin, its ancestor, "Confucianism," is likewise imprecise and without a clear reference in traditional East Asian philosophical usage. Critical scholars have pointed out that there is no single Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Vietnamese traditional term that matches "Confucianism." The closest term would be the hallowed Chinese designation of ru or scholar. Some have suggested that Confucianism should be renamed, they have suggested Ruism or the Ruist tradition; they point out that this would match more closely what Master Kong thought he was doing in teaching about the glories of Zhou culture. The problem is that ru originally meant a scholar of ritual tradition and not just followers of Master Kong. While it is true that, by the Song dynasty, ru did indeed come to mean a "Confucian" as opposed to Daoist or Buddhist scholars, this was not the case in the classical period. Therefore, it is true that all "Confucians" were ru, although not all ru scholars were followers of Master.

As we shall see, the use of the term "Neo-Confucian" is confusing and needs some careful revision. By Song times, there are some perfectly good Chinese terms that can be used to define the work of these later Confucian masters. There are a number of terms in use after the Song such as ru or classical scholar, daoxue or learning of the way, lixue or the teaching of principle, xingxue or teaching of the mind-heart, or hanxue or Han learning just to name a few. All of these schools fit into the Western definition of Confucianism, but the use of a single name for all of them obscures the critical differences that East Asian scholars believe are stipulated by the diverse Chinese nomenclature. While Confucians did almost always recognize each other across sectarian divides, they were passionately concerned to differentiate between good and bad versions of the Confucian Way.

Is it possible to provide a perfect and succinct definition of the Confucian Way? Modern critical scholars are extremely wary of any hegemonic set of essential criteria to define something as vast and diverse as the Confucian Way in all its diverse East Asian forms. For instance, is the Confucian tradition to be defined as an East Asian philosophical discourse or is it better understood as one of China's indigenous religious wisdom teachings? Or is the Confucian Way something entirely different from what would be included or excluded by the criteria of the Western concepts of philosophy or religion?

Notwithstanding such proper scholarly reticence, two contemporary Confucian philosophers, Xu Fuguan and Mou Zongsan, have offered a suggestion about at least one sustaining and comprehensive motif that suffuses Confucian thought from the classical age to its modern revivals. First, Xu and Mou argue that Confucianism has always generated and sustained a profound social and ethical dimension to its philosophical and social praxis. This kind of commitment has lead many western scholars to define Confucianism as an axiological philosophical sensibility, a worldview ranging from social ethics to an inspired aesthetics. Second, accepting for a moment the axiological nature of much Confucian discourse, Xu and Mou give such philosophic reflections a particular name and call this informing motif of the Confucian Way "concern consciousness." First, concern consciousness speaks of the perennial Confucian "concern" for proper social relations and hence the tradition's abiding interest in ethical reflection and ethically edifying ritual praxis. Secondly, concern consciousness is always set within a social context. For instance, Confucian teachers have often taught that the folk etymology of ren or humaneness makes the point of social nature of all proper Confucian action: humaneness is at least two people treating each other as they ought to in order to sustain human flourishing. Therefore Xu and Mou argue that all Confucian thinkers will eventually return to an explication of some form of "concern consciousness" when they are giving a robust and detailed explanation of the rich teachings of the Confucian Way. An unconcerned Confucian is an oxymoron. The content and context of their concern for the world and the Dao will vary dramatically, yet the sense of concern, of having a care as the Quakers taught on the other side of Eurasia, remains a hallmark of Confucian philosophical sensibilities.

2. Historical Background

The historical development of the Confucian Way or movement has been variously analyzed in terms of distinct periods. The simplest version is that there was a great classical tradition that arose in the Xia, Shang and Zhou kingdoms that was perfected in the works and records of the legendary sage kings and ministers and was then continued and refined by their later followers such as Kongzi, Mengzi (Mencius) and Xunzi. The death of Kongzi in 481 BCE marked the end of the Spring and Autumn periods of the Eastern Zhou kingdom and the beginning of the era called the Warring States period. On the one hand, although later Chinese thinkers decried the ceaseless interstate warfare that characterized the era, on the other hand the Warring States period is remembered as the most creative philosophical epoch in Chinese history. All of the great indigenous schools of Chinese philosophy find their origin in this period from 480 to 221 BCE when the Qin state finally unified the empire under the rule of the First Emperor of the Qin. After the incredible cultural efflorescence of the Warring States intellectuals, all future philosophical achievements were deemed to be commentary on the depositions of the classical masters.

Later scholars have suggested that this binary division of Chinese philosophical history is too simple and that there are three or more clear divisions for the Confucian movement because it has demonstrated a longevity and continuity of maturation for more than two thousand five hundred years. For instance, some modern scholars suggest that, based on creativity and transformation of the tradition, there was a three-fold division of the classical period, the Neo-Confucian movements of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and most recently the era defined by the impact of the modern West on the East Asian philosophical and religious Confucian worlds. The most complex periodization differentiates the achievement of Confucian thinkers over the centuries more subtly than either the binary or triadic divisions allow. A strong case can be made for defining six discrete eras in the historical development of the Confucian tradition in East Asia:

1. The classical period beginning in the Xia, Shang and Zhou kingdoms: includes the justly famous Warring States philosophers (c. 1700-221 BCE)

2. The rise of the great commentarial traditions on early classical texts during the Han dynasty (206 BCE-200 CE)

3. The renewal of the Daoist tradition and the arrival of Buddhism (220-907 CE)

4. The renaissance of the Song ["Neo-Confucianism"], the flowering in the Yuan and Ming dynasties, and the spread of Neo-Confucianism into Korea and Japan (960-1644 CE)

5. The "Han Studies" or "Evidential Research" movements of the Qing dynasty and the continued growth of the movement in Korea and Japan (1644-1911 CE)

6. The impact of the West, the rise of modernity, and the decline and reformation of the Confucian Way as "New Confucianism" (1912 CE to the present)

In order to give a capsule outline of the development of Confucianism down to the rise of the great Neo-Confucian thinkers in the Song, what follows is a very short set of outlines of the first three of these six periods, which preceded the rise of Neo-Confucian movements. It is important to remember that although Confucianism began as a Chinese tradition it became an international movement throughout East Asia. A full understanding of Neo-Confucianism requires that attention be paid to its advancement in Korea, Japan and Vietnam along with the continuing unfolding of the tradition in China.

a. The Classical Period

According to Master Kong, there was a long and distinguished tradition of sage wisdom that stretched back even before the Xia and Shang dynasties. Master Kong sought to collect, edit and transmit these precious texts to his students in the hope that such an education project would lead to the renewed flourishing of the culture of humaneness based on the teachings of the sage kings and their ministers. Master Kong was followed by a stellar set of Confucian masters, the most important being Mengzi and Xunzi. These great Confucian masters not only argued among themselves about the nature of the Confucian way, they confronted the attacks of the other great schools and thinkers of the Warring States period. The texts attached to the names of these great scholars have served, along with the other early canonical material, to define the contours of the Confucian Way ever since the Warring States period.

While Master Kong would have rejected the notion that he founded or created a new tradition, it is to his Analects that countless generations of Confucians return to discover wisdom and insight into the nature of Confucian culture. Further, great teachers such as Master Meng and Master Xun continue to defend and refine the teachings of Master Kong in robust debate with the other schools of the Warring States period. Although there has always been skepticism about the claim for such authorship, traditional Confucian scholars held that Master Kong himself had an editorial role in the compilation of many of the canonical texts that became ultimately the Thirteen Confucian Classics.

b. The Han Dynasty

The Han dynasty contribution to the growth of the Confucian Way is often overshadowed by the grand achievements of the classical period. Yet the Han scholars edited almost all of the texts that survived and began to add their own critical commentaries and interpretations to the canonical texts. In many cases these Han commentaries are now recognized as classics in their own right. One of the features of the Confucian tradition is the use of various forms of commentaries as a vital philosophical genre. It is a period that reveres historical traditions and hence the commentary is viewed as a proper way to transmit the traditional learning.

c. The Daoist Revival and the Arrival of Buddhism

After the fall of the Han dynasty, there was a marked revival of various facets of the earlier Daoist traditions. The movement was called xuanxue or arcane or abstruse (profound) learning. Xuanxue thinkers were highly eclectic; sometimes they praised and used the great Warring States Daoist texts such as the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi to frame their complicated philosophical and religious visions, and sometimes they reframed materials drawn from the Confucian tradition as well. It is universally recognized that the great xuanxue scholars brought a new level of philosophical sophistication to their analysis of the classical and Han texts. Moreover, this was also the epoch of the emergence of the great Daoist religious traditions that mark the Chinese and East Asian landscape from this era down to the present day. The Daoist religious founders and reformers also claimed the early texts such as the Daodejing, Zhuangzi and the Yijing [The Book of Changes] as their patrimony.

The xuanxue revival was ultimately eclipsed by the arrival of Buddhism in China. The era stretching roughly from 200 to 850 marks the height of the influence of Buddhism on Chinese culture. Along with the translation of the immense Buddhist canon into Chinese, the scholar monks of this era also created the unique Chinese Buddhist schools that went on to dominate the religious life of East Asia. The Buddhists also introduced novel social institutions such as monastic communities for both men and women. Great Chinese schools of Buddhist philosophy and practice were founded, such as the Tiantai, Huayan, Pure Land and Chan traditions. In short, the impact on Chinese society and intellectual life was immense and shaped the future of Confucian philosophy.

It is very important to remember that Confucianism continued to play a vital and even creative role in the history of Chinese philosophy while Buddhism was ascendant. Confucianism never "disappeared" from sight and in fact continued to dominate elite family life and governmental service. Confucianism remained the preferred approach to political and social thought and much personal and communal ethical reflection was concurrent with the powerful contributions of Daoist and Buddhist thinkers.

3. The Emergence of Neo-Confucianism

Both traditional and modern historians of China mark the year 755 CE as the great divide within the Tang dynasty. This was the year of the catastrophic An Lushan rebellion and although the Tang dynasty formally lasted until its final demise in 906, it never recovered its full glory. And glorious the Tang was; it is the dynasty always remembered as one of the high points of Chinese imperial history in terms of political, military, artistic, philosophical and religious creativity. For instance, it was the flourishing and cosmopolitan culture of the Tang world-with everything from metaphysics to painting, calligraphy, poetry, food and clothes-that spread throughout East Asia into the emerging societies of Korea and Japan. Moreover, while the Tang is noted as the golden age of Buddhist philosophical originality in terms of the formation of important Chinese schools such as the Tiantai, Huayan, Pure Land and Chan [Zen in Japanese pronunciation], a number of important Confucian thinkers began to challenge the intellectual and philosophical supremacy of Buddhism.

Three great Confucian scholars stand out as the earliest "Neo-Confucians": Han Yu (768-824), Li Ao (ca. 772-836) and Liu Zongyuan (773-819). All three scholars launched a double-pronged attack on Buddhism and a concomitant appeal for the restoration and revival of the Confucian Way. Just after the deaths of this trio of Confucian scholars, a late Tang emperor began a major persecution of Buddhism. Although not a bloody event as persecutions of religions go, many major schools failed to revive fully after 845 and this date, along with the earlier rebellion of An Lushan, marks dramatic changes in the philosophical landscape of China.

Along with his friends Han Yu and Li Ao, Liu Zongyuan was regarded as one of the most famous scholars of his time. Liu is perhaps more of a bridging figure between the early and later Tang intellectual worlds, but he still expressed a number of highly consistent Neo-Confucian themes and did so with a style that links him forward to the Song masters. For instance, Liu, unlike many earlier Tang Confucians, was interested in finding what he thought to be the principles expounded in the classic texts rather than a convoluted, arcane if compendious commentarial exegesis. He searched for the true meaning of the sages in the texts and not merely to study the philological subtlety of traditional commentarial lore. Further, Liu passionately believed that the authentic Dao was to be found in antiquity, by which he meant the true ideals of the Confucian teachings of the early sages. Along with this commitment to finding the confirmed teachings of the sages in the historical records, Liu was committed to political engagement based on these sage teachings. Like all the later Neo-Confucians, Liu asserted the need to apply Confucian ethical norms and insights to political and social life.

Han Yu is considered to be the most important and innovative of the Tang Confucian reformers. He was a true renaissance man; he was an important political figure, brilliant essayist, Confucian philosopher and anti-Buddhist polemicist. What gives his work such power is that he carried out his various roles with a unified vision in mind: the defense and restoration of the Confucian Way.

In order to restore the Confucian Way, Han Yu developed a program of reform and renewal manifested in a literary movement called guwen or the ancient prose movement. But Han was doing much more than simply calling for a return to a more elegant prose style. He was urging this reform in order to clarify the presentation of the ideas of the Confucian tradition that was needlessly obscured by the arcane writing styles of the current age. He wanted to write clearly in order to express the plain truth of the Confucian Way. Moreover, Han stressed a profound self-cultivation of the Dao. In order to do so, Han accentuated the image of the sage as the proper role model for humane self-cultivation. And last, but certainly not least, Han and his colleagues proposed a Confucian canon-within-the-canon of a select set of texts that especially facilitate such a quest, namely such works as The Doctrine of the Mean, The Great Learning, the Analects and the Mengzi .

Along with his reform of the style and canon of the teaching of the Confucian Way, Han also explained his philosophical program in terms of the vocabulary and sensibility of the later Song Neo-Confucian revival. As Han put it, the sage seeks "to develop one's nature to perfection through the penetration of principle" or qiongli jinxing. Han himself wrote in an exegesis of a passage in the Analects in the examinations of 794:

Answer: The sage embraces integrity ( cheng) and enlightenment ( ming) as his true nature ( zhengxing); he takes as his base the perfect virtue; this is equilibrium and harmony ( zhongyong). He generates ( fa) these inside and gives them form outside; they do not proceed from thought, yet all is in order. This mind [-heart] set on evil has no way to develop in him, and preferable behavior cannot be applied to him; so only the Sage commits no errors (Hartman 1986: 201).

Han Yu's friend Li Ao shared similar views and wrote a highly influential essay on human nature that sounded more of the philosophic themes that would dominate the Song Neo-Confucian revival. While Li's vision of the self might be a bit too quiescent for the tastes of the more activist Song literati, it still captured the tone of the philosophical revival:

Therefore it is sincerity that the sage takes as his nature, absolutely still and without movement, vast and great, clear and bright, shining on Heaven and Earth. When stimulated he can then penetrate all things in the world. In act or in rest, in speech or silence, he always remains in the ultimate. It is returning to his true nature that the worthy man follows without ceasing. If he follows it without ceasing he is enabled to get back to the source (Barrett 1992: 102).

In many ways it was this attempt to "get back to the source" in the classical Confucian texts that characterizes the philosophical endeavors of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing masters. There is a continuous debate about what this nature is, whether it is in constant movement or is still; what "the ultimate" ultimately is or what the nature of the source of all of this is.

4. Traits, Themes and Motifs

One of the most common assumptions about the philosophical achievements of the Neo-Confucian literati is that it was stimulated into life by interaction with Daoist and Buddhist thinkers. While there is a genuine element of truth in this stimulus theory of the origins of Neo-Confucianism, it is also true that, once prompted by the best of Daoist and Buddhist thought, the Neo-Confucians constructed their philosophies out of materials indigenous to the historical development of the Confucian Way. For instance, I have chosen to call this historical background the Confucian Way ( rudao) because this was the concept used by the great Song masters. They argued that they were not inventing something new but were rather reviving "this culture of ours" as the true Dao of the sage kings of antiquity as transmitted by Master Kong and Master Meng. Yet the materials, the traits, concepts, themes and motifs the Song masters used in reconstructing the Confucian Way were drawn almost exclusively from the classical repertoire. These concepts, traits, themes and terms include:

1. Ren as the paramount virtue and marker for all the other virtues such as justice/yi, ritual action/li, wisdom or discernment/zi and faithfulness/xin; these five constant virtues provide the axiological sensibility to the whole Neo-Confucian enterprise; these are linked to filial piety/xiao as an expression of primordial familial relationships.

2. Li as ritual action; the social glue that holds society together and in fact helps to constitute the humane person.

3. Tian or heaven and tianming or the Mandate of Heaven; di or earth; whether we should use a capital "H" for tian is an important question for the Neo-Confucian philosophy of religion; Tian, di and ren or heaven, earth and human beings form an important cosmological triad for the Neo-Confucians.

4. Li as principle, pattern or order to the whole of the cosmos; a key Song philosophic term as a little used early Confucian concept.

5. Xin or the mind-heart; the living center of the human person; needs to be cultivated by proper ritual in order to realize true virtue.

6. Xing or human tendencies, dispositions or nature; this is the principle/li given to each emerging person by tian as the mandate for what the person ought to be.

7. Qi or vital force or material force that functions as the dynamic force or matrix out of which all object or events emerge and into which they all return when their career is completed.

8. Qing as emotion, desire and passion; intimately related to qi/vital force as the dynamic side of the cosmos.

9. Dao wenxue & zun dexing or serious study and reflection or honoring the moral tendencies or dispositions as designations of two different ways of cultivating the xin/mind-heart and as contrasting modes of moral epistemology.

10. gewu or the investigation of things was a key [and highly contested] epistemological methodology for the examination of the concrete objects and events of the world.

11. Cheng or sincerity, genuineness and the self-actualization of the moral virtues such that one achieves a morally harmonious life via various forms of xiushen or self-cultivation by means of such praxis as jing mindfulness or attentiveness; this praxis is the "how" of the moral self-cultivation of the five constant virtues.

12. Nei/wai as the inner and outer dimensions of any process; often also used for the "king without, sage within"; often also discussed in terms of the opposition of si/selfishness and pian/partiality or one-sidedness and gong of public spirit.

13. tiyong or substance and function and ganying or stimulus and response as typical analytic dyads used to describe the reactive movement, generations, productions and emergence of the objects and events of the cosmos.

14. liyi fenshu or the teaching that principle is one or unified while its manifestations are many or diverse; often seen as the characteristic holistic organic sensibility and yet realistic pluralism of Neo-Confucian thought.

15. daotong or the Transmission of the Way or Succession, or Genealogy of the Way; Zhu Xi's masterful account of the revival of the Confucian Way by a set of Northern Song philosophical masters.

16. siwen or "this culture of ours" as the expression of refined self-cultivation and the manifestation of principle from the family to the cosmos.

17. He or harmony and zhong or centrality as designations of the goals or outcomes of the successful cultivation of all the virtues necessary for humane flourishing.

18. zhishan or the highest good as the realization of harmony and centrality; the ideal would be to become a sheng or sage (theoretically possible but in practice extremely difficult) or a junzi, a worthy or noble person.

19. Taiji or the Supreme Polarity or Supreme Ultimate as the highest formal trait of the principle of the whole cosmos and for each particular thing; often discussed in terms of benti or the origin-substance or substance and source of all objects and events.

20. Dao or the perfect good of all that is, will or can be; the totality of the cosmos as the shengsheng buxi or generation without cessation; also usually implies a moral "more" to the myriad things of the cosmos.

5. Song and Ming Paradigms: daoxue or "Teaching of the Way"

Zhu Xi's (1130-1200) version of and description of the revival of Confucian thought formed the paradigm for the main philosophical developments that give rise to the Western notion of Neo-Confucianism and the variety of East Asian designations of the various Song movements such as daoxue. Other thinkers would adopt, modify, challenge, transform and sometimes abandon Zhu's philosophy and his narrative of the development of the tradition; nonetheless, it is Zhu's version of the Confucian Way that became the paradigm for all future Neo-Confucian discourse for either positive affirmation or negative evaluation. It is Master Zhu who also provides the philosophical interpretation of the rise of Neo-Confucianism that defines the historical accounts of the tradition from the Southern Song on. In short, Zhu's theory of the daotong or the transmission or succession (genealogy) of the Way not only provides the content for the tradition but also the historical context for its further analysis by partisans and critics in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.

Zhu Xi inherited the rich complexity of the revival of Confucian thought from a variety of Northern Song masters. In organizing this heritage into an enduring synthesis, Zhu was highly selective in his choices about who he placed in the daotong or the succession of the way or the true teachings drawn from the legendary sages; historical paladins such as the Kings Wen, Wu and the Duke of Zhou, and then Master Kong and Master Meng as the consummate philosophers of the classical age. It is always important to remember that the Song cultural achievement is much broader then Zhu's favored short list of Northern Song masters. Anyone interested in the history of Song Confucian thought will need to pay careful attention to thinkers as diverse as the Northern Song scholars and activists such as Fan Zhongyan (989-1052), Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072), Wang Anshi (1021-1086), Sima Guang (1019-1086), Su Shi (10-37-1101) and Southern Song colleagues and critics of Zhu such as Lu Xiangshan (1139-1193) and Chen Liang (1143-1194)-just to give a short list of major Song philosophers, scholars, politicians, historians, social critics and poets.

Zhu Xi's own list included Zhou Tunyi (1017-1073), Zhang Zai (1020-1077), Cheng Hao (1032-1085) and Cheng Yi (1033-1107) [and though not canonized by Zhu, any such list would be incomplete without recognition of Shao Yong (1011-1077)]. Each one of these thinkers, according to Zhu, contributed important material for the recovery of "this culture of ours" and to the formation of daoxue as the appropriate Confucian teaching of the Song cultural renaissance. Zhu's unique contribution to the process was to give philosophical order to the disparate contributions of the Northern Song masters.

a. Zhu Xi's Synthesis

What Zhu Xi did was to give a distinctive ordering to the kinds of terms listed above; he gave them a pattern that became the philosophical foundation of daoxue. For those who disagreed, such as Lu Xiangshan and the later Ming thinker Wang Yangming (1472-1529), Zhu provided the template of Song thought that must be modified, transformed or even rejected, but never ignored.

The most famous innovation Zhu provided, based on the original insights of the two Cheng brothers and Zhang Zai was to frame daoxue philosophy via the complicated cosmological interaction of principle/ li and vital force/ qi. To understand Zhu's argument, we must consider how the question of the relationship of principle and vital force presented itself to Zhu Xi as a philosophical problem in need of a solution. Zhu understood his analysis of principle and vital force to be the answer to the question of interpreting the relationship of the human mind-heart, human natural tendencies and the emotions. Trying to resolve how all of this fit together, Zhu borrowed a critical teaching of Zhang Zai to the effect that the mind-heart unifies the human tendencies and the emotions. Zhu then went on to claim that analytically understood this meant that the principle qua human tendencies or dispositions gave a particular order or pattern to the emerging person and that the dyad of principle and vital force coordinated and unified the actions of the mind-heart. In other words, Zhu discerned a tripartite patterning or principle of the emergence of the person, and by extension, all the other objects or events of the world in terms of form or principle, dynamics or vital force and their unification via the mind-heart: the mature schematic is form, dynamics and unification. Moreover, once this unification of the principle and vital force was achieved and perfected, the outcome, at least for the human person, was a state of harmony or balance.

Zhu's ingenious synthesis, to which he gave the name daoxue or teaching of the way, accomplished two different ends. First, its breadth of vision provided Confucians with a response to the great philosophical achievements of the Chinese Buddhist schools such as the Tiantai or Huayan. Second, and more important, it outlined a Confucian cosmological axiology based upon the classical Confucian texts of the pre-Han era as well as an explanation for and analysis of the coming to be of the actual objects or events of the world. Zhu achieved this feat by showing how all the various concepts of the inherited Confucian philosophical vocabulary could be construed in three different modalities based on the pattern of form, dynamics and unification.

For instance, the analysis of the human person was very important for Zhu Xi. Each person was an allotment of vital force generated by union of the parents. Along with this allotment of qi or vital force, each person inherited a set of natural tendencies or what has often been called human nature. The subtlest portion of the vital force becomes the mind-heart for each person. The mind-heart has both cognitive and affective abilities; when properly cultivated, the mind-heart, for instance, can recognize the various principles inherent in its own nature and the nature of other objects and events. And when subject to proper education and self-cultivation, the mind-heart can even learn to correctly discern the various is/ought contrasts found in the world in order to sustain human flourishing via ethical action. In short, the mind-heart, as the experiential unity of concern consciousness becomes the human agent for creative and humane reason. The most pressing human is/ought contrast is that between the nature of principle as the ethical tendencies of human nature and the dynamic flux of human emotions that are governed, without proper self-cultivation, by selfishness and one-sidedness. There is nothing evil in an Augustinian sense of the human emotions save for the fact that they are much too prone to excess without the guidance of principle.

When asked to give an analytic account of this portrait of the human person, Zhu Xi then noted that this was to be explained by recourse to the concepts of the particular principle for each object or event, vital force of each such object or event and the normative or "heavenly mandate" of each object or event, which Zhu Xi called the Supreme Ultimate or Polarity. The whole system was predicated on the daoxue conviction of the ultimate moral tendency of the Dao to regulate the creative structure of the ceaseless production of the objects and events of the world. The world was thus to be seen as endlessly creative and relentlessly realistic in the sense that this cosmic creativity of the Dao eventuated in the concrete objects and events of the world.

The experiential world of the human mind-heart and the analytic schema of the unification of principle and vital force could also be described by the use of classical Confucian selective or mediating concepts such as cheng or self-actualization of jen or ultimate humanization as the paramount human ethical norm. Cheng and jen provide the modes of self-actualization and the methods of self-cultivation of the various emotional dispositions that give moral direction to the person when the person is grasped by a proper recognition of the various is/ought contrasts that inevitably arise in the conduct of human life. Hence the concern-consciousness of the person is the basis of individual creativity and manifests the particular principle of the mandate of heaven in a specific time and place for each person. Cosmic creativity or the ceaseless production of the objects and events of the cosmos replicates itself in the life of the person, and when properly actualized or integrated, can cause the person to find the harmony and balance of a worthy or even a sage. Thus even Zhu Xi's explanation of the role of formal analysis, the arising of the existential manifestation of human nature and human emotion via the various mediating or selective concepts appropriate to the various levels of abstract or concrete determination itself takes on a carefully crafted triadic structure that manifests the proper discernment of the various dyadic conceptual pairs so evident in classical Confucian discourse. Both the tensions of the contrasting pairs such as nature and emotion are preserved and yet re-inscribed in the various allotments of the qi of each of the objects or events of the cosmos with a vision of their harmonious and balanced creative interaction. Zhu's world is truly one of liyi fenshu or principle is one [unitary], whereas the manifestations are many.

Zhu Xi was equally famous for this theory of the praxis of the self-cultivation of the ultimately moral axiology of his multi-level system of philosophical analysis. His preferred method was that of gewu or the investigation of things. Zhu Xi believed that all the objects and events of the world had their own distinctive principle and that it was important for the student to study and comprehend as many of these principles as possible. It was a method of intellectual cultivation of the mind-heart that included both introspection and respect for external empirical research. In many respects, gewu was an attempt toward finding an objective and inter-subjective method to overcome pian or the perennial human disinclination to be one-sided, partial or blinkered in any form of thought, action and passion. In Zhu's daoxue a great deal of emphasis was placed on reading and discerning the true meaning the Confucian classics, but there was also room in the praxis for a form of meditation known as quiet-sitting as well as empirical research into the concrete facts of the external world. The debates about the proper way to pursue self-cultivation and the examination of things proved to be one of the most highly debated sets of interrelated philosophical concerns throughout the Neo-Confucian world.

b. Song and Ming Rebuttals of daoxue

In terms of philosophical debate about the worthiness of daoxue, there was a great deal of disagreement about a variety of issues in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. The Qing scholars were the most radical in their critique and merit a separate section; however, there were immediate Song dynasty rejoinders to Zhu Xi who argued against part of the synthesis on philosophical grounds. The first major rebuttal came from Zhu's friend and critic Chen Liang (1143-1194), one of the great utilitarian philosophers of the Confucian tradition. What worried Chen about Zhu's daoxue was that it was too idealistic and hence not suited to the actual geopolitical demands of the Southern Song reality. While it is clear that Zhu was passionately involved in the politics of his day, Chen contended that the world was a more empirically complex place than Zhu's system implied. "I simply don't agree with [your] joining together principles and [complex] affairs [as neatly and artificially] as if they were barrel hoops" (Tillman 1994: 52).

The nub of the debate revolved around the proper understanding of the notion of "public" or gong, gongli, public benefit. Here Chen broke with Zhu and suggested that good laws were needed just as good Neo-Confucian philosophers trained in a metaphysical praxis such as daoxue. "The human mind-heart ( xin) is mostly self-regarding, but laws and regulations ( fa) can be used to make it public-minded ( gong)....Law and regulations comprise the collective or commonweal principle ( gongli)" (Tillman 1994:16).

Such arguments for pragmatic political theory and even an appeal to the beneficial outcomes of carefully constructed legal regimes were never well received in the Neo-Confucian period, even if they did point to some genuinely diverse views within the Song Confucian revivals.

The most influential critique of Zhu Xi's daoxue also came from another good friend, Lu Xiangshan (1139-1193). The crux of the philosophical disagreement resides in Lu's different interpretation of the role of the mind-heart in terms of the common Neo-Confucian task of finding the right method for evaluating the moral epistemology of interpreting the world correctly. In a dialogue with a student, Lu pinpointed his argument with Zhu:

Bomin asked: How is one to investigate things ( gewu)?

The Teacher (Lu Xiangshan) said: Investigate the principle of things.

Bomin said: The ten thousand things under Heaven are extremely multitudinous; how, then, can we investigate all of them exhaustively?

The teacher replied: The ten thousand things are already complete in us. It is only necessary to apprehend their principle (Huang 1977: 31).

There are two important things to notice about Lu's critical response to the question of the examination of things. First, in many ways Lu does not disagree with the basic cosmological outline provided by Zhu Xi. Second, the philosophic sensibility, however, becomes even more focused on the internal self-cultivation of the person. Many scholars have remarked upon the fact that we find a turn inward in so much Song and Ming philosophy, and none more so than in Lu's intense desire to find principle within the person. Of course, this is not to be understood as a purely subjective idealism. Rather, Lu would argue that only by finding principle in the mind-heart could the person then effectively comprehend the rest of the world. The point is not a solipsistic retreat into subjective and relativistic reveries of isolated individuality but rather a heightened ability to interpret and engage the world as it really is. The critical question is to find the proper place to start the investigation of things. If we start with the things of the world, we fall prey to the problems of self-delusion and partiality that infect the uncultivated person. But if we can find the correct place and method to investigate things and comprehend their principles, then we will understand the actual, concrete unity of principle.

c. Wang Yangming

Centuries later in the mid-Ming dynasty, Wang Yangming (1472-1529) sharpened what he took to be Lu's critique of Zhu Xi. Wang's philosophy was inextricably intertwined with of his eventful life. Wang also had the richest life of any of the major Neo-Confucian philosophers: he was a philosopher of major import, a poet, a statesman and an accomplished general. Wang began as a young student by attempting to follow Zhu's advice about how to gewu or investigate things. With a group of naïve young friends they went into a garden to sit in front of some bamboos in order to discern the true principle of bamboo. The band of young scholars obviously thought that this would be an easy task. One by one they fell away, unable to make any progress in their quest to understand bamboo principle. Wang was the last to give up and only did so after having exhausted himself in the futile effort. Wang recounts that he simply believed that he lacked the moral and intellectual insight to carry out the task at hand; at this time he did not question Zhu's master narrative about how to engage the world as a Confucian philosopher.

Later during a painful political exile in the far south of China, Wang Yangming had a flash of insight into the problem of finding the true location of principle. As Tu Weiming writes, "For the first time Yangming came to the realization that "My own nature is, of course, sufficient for me to attain sagehood. And I have been mistaken in searching for the li [principle] in external things and affairs [ shiwu]" (Tu 1976: 120). Wang clearly understood this enlightenment experience as a confirmation that Lu Xiangshan was correct when Lu had declared that principle was to be found complete within the mind-heart of the person. In much greater detail than Lu, Wang then set out to develop the philosophical implications of the primordial insight into the proper way to carry out Confucian moral epistemology and self-cultivation. And after having straightened out the epistemology, Wang then went on to explain how the Confucian worthy should act in the world. This strong emphasis on the cultivation of the mind-heart led to the categorization of Wang's teaching as a xinxue or teaching of the mind-heart as opposed to Zhu's lixue or teaching of principle, and, in fact, this is the way later scholars often labeled the teachings of Zhu and Wang.

The way Wang taught about the task of realizing what he called the innate goodness of human nature was his famous doctrine of the unity of knowledge and action. As Wang said, "Knowledge is the direction for action and action is the effort for knowledge" and "Knowledge is the beginning of action and action is the completion of knowledge" (Ching 1976: 68). The problem that Wang was addressing was the deep concern that Zhu's method for examining things in order to cultivate the essential goodness of the mind-heart was too fragmented and that such epistemological fragmentation would eventuate in moral failure and cognitive incompetence. Real praxis and theory could not be separated, and even if Wang acknowledged that Zhu was a sincere seeker after the Dao, Wang believed that Zhu's methods were hopelessly flawed and actually dangerous to the cultivation of the Confucian worthy.

d. The Role of Emotion

There was yet another philosophical realignment within Ming thought that is harder to identify with the specific teachings of any one master, namely the debate over the role of qing or emotion within the Neo-Confucian world of discourse [representative scholars would be Li Zhi (1527-1602) and Ho Xingyin (1517-1579)]. The nature of the emotions or human feelings was always a topic of reflection within the broad sweep of the historical development of Confucianism because of the persistent Confucian fascination with moral anthropology and ethics. Zhu Xi had a very important place for the emotions in his teachings of the way, though many later thinkers felt that Zhu was too negative about the function of the emotions. While it was perfectly clear that Zhu never taught that the emotions per se were evil or entirely negative, he did teach that the emotions needed to be properly and carefully cultivated in terms of the conformity of the emotional life to the life of principle. Zhu thematized this as the contrast between the daoxin or the Mind of Dao and the renxin or the Mind of Humanity (the mind of the psychophysical person). Moreover, it was also perfectly clear that Zhu taught that the truly ethical person needed to realize the Mind of Dao in order to actualize the human tendencies as mandated by heaven for each person. If not hostile to the emotions, Zhu was wary of them as the prime location for human self-centered and partial behavior.

By the late Ming dynasty many of the followers of Wang Yangming harshly questioned what they took to be the negative Song teachings about the emotional life. In fact, many of these thinkers made the bold claim that the emotions were just as important and valuable philosophical resources for authentic Confucian teachings as reflections on the themes of principle or vital force. In fact, they contended that it was a proper and positive interpretation of human emotions and even passions that distinguishes Confucianism from Daoism and Buddhism. Whether or not these thinkers were correct in their interpretations of Daoist and Buddhist thought need not detain us here. What is more important is that these thinkers developed a more positive interpretation of qing than had been the case in earlier Song and Ming thought. It might be argued that such a concern for the emotions was just another marker of the Neo-Confucian turn toward the subject, a flight to contemplation of an inner subjective world as opposed to the much more activist style of the Han and Tang scholarly traditions. However, this speculation about emotion, even romantic love, had the unintended effect of allowing educated Chinese women to enter into the debate. Debarred, as they noted, from active lives outside the literati family compounds, the women observed that although living circumscribed lives compared to their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, they did know something about the emotions-and that they had something positive to add to the debate.

Dorothy Ko's important study of the role of educated women tells the wonderful and poignant story of three young women, Chan Tong (ca. 1650-1665), Tan Ze (ca. 1655-1675) and Qian Yi (fl. 1694). All three were eventually the wives of Wu Ren, with Chan and Tan dying very early in life and leaving what would be called the Three Wives Commentary on the famous Ming drama The Peony Pavilion to be completed and published in 1694 by the third wife, Madame Qian. The three women demonstrated just as great scholarly exegetical and hermeneutic skills as their husband, and he always acknowledged their authorship and their collective and individual genius against those who thought women unable to achieve this level of cultural, artistic and philosophical sophistication. In short, the three women defended and explicated the theory about human emotions, also held by the radical Taizhou school followers of Wang Yangming, that even the entangled emotions of romantic love could become "a noble sentiment that gives meaning of human life" (Ko 1994:84). Although not widely accepted in late Ming and Qing society, these Confucian women defended the notion of companionate marriage based, in part, on a Confucian analysis of the emotional needs of women and men.

e. Evidential Research

After the conquest of all of China by the Manchu in 1644, there was a tremendous cultural backlash against the radical thinkers of the late Ming dynasty. Rather than seeking validation of the emotions and human passions, many Qing scholars took a completely different approach to rediscover the true teachings of the classical Confucian sages. The point of departure for all of these thinkers was to reject the philosophical foundations of both Song scholars such as Zhu Xi and Ming teachers such as Wang Yangming. The charge the radical Qing scholars made against both Zhu and Wang Yangming was that both lixue and xinxue were completely infused with so much extraneous Daoist and Buddhist accretions that the true Confucian vision was subverted into something strange to the teachings of the classical Confucian masters. Therefore, the task of the Qing scholars was to strip Neo-Confucianism of its Daoist and Buddhist subversive inclusions.

The method that the Qing scholars chose has been called hanxue or Han Teaching or kaozhengxue, Evidential Research Learning. The chief tactic was to argue that the best way to return to true Confucian teachings in the face of Song Neo-Confucian distortions was to return to the work of the earliest stratum of texts, namely the work of the famous Han exegetes. The theory was that these Han scholars were closer to the classical texts and were also without the taint of undue Daoist or Buddhist influence. The other way to describe the movement is to note that these scholars promoted a various rigorous historical-critical and philological approach to the philosophical texts based on what they called an evidential research program. The grand axiom or rubric of the kaozhengxue scholars was to find the truth in the facts. They abjured what they believed to be the overly metaphysical flights of fancy of the Song and Ming thinkers and went back to the careful study of philology and textual and social history in order to return to a true Confucian scholarly culture. The better philosophers of this group, with Ku Yanwu (1613-1682) and Dai Zhen (1724-1777) as the bookends of the tradition, recognized that such an appeal to research methodology as opposed to Song metaphysics was also a philosophical appeal in its own right. Yet all these Evidential Research scholars were united in trying to find the earliest core of true Confucian texts by a meticulous examination of the whole history of Confucian thought. Along with major contributions to Confucian classical studies, these Evidential Research philosophers also made major additions to the promotion of local historical studies and even advanced practical studies in agriculture and water management. They really did try to find the truth in the facts. Yet the world of the Qing Evidential Research scholars was as ruthlessly destroyed as the metaphysical speculations of Song-style philosophers with the arrival of the all-powerful Western imperial powers in the middle of the 19th century.

6. Korean and Japanese Contributions

It is extremely important to remember that Neo-Confucianism was an international and cross-cultural tradition in East Asia, with different manifestations in China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. For instance, a strong case can be made for the strong philosophical creativity of Korean Neo-Confucians in the 15th and 16th centuries and in Japan after the inception of Tokugawa rule in 1600. Two examples will have to suffice to demonstrate that in some eras the most stimulating and innovative Confucian philosophical work was being done in Korea and Japan. As mentioned above, little study has been devoted to the Vietnamese reception and appropriation of Neo-Confucian philosophy at that time, and thus it is still impossible to speak with as much confidence about it as we can about the creativity of the Korean and Japanese Neo-Confucian philosophers.

a. Yi T'oegye and Yi Yulgok

The Korean Neo-Confucians who practiced the official ideology of the Choson kingdom after its founding in 1392 were devoted followers of Zhu Xi's daoxue. But just because they were profound students of Master Zhu's Southern Song Neo-Confucian synthesis does not mean that they did not realize that there were still a number of outstanding philosophical issues that needed to be debated in terms of how Zhu Xi depicted the daoxue project as a coherent philosophical vision. The most famous case of this Korean perspicacity is found in the justly famous Four-Seven Debate, a profound dialogue among scholars about the role of emotions within Zhu's Neo-Confucian cosmology; the two most famous philosophers were Yi T'oegye (1501-1570) and Yi Yulgok (1536-1583).

The debate was framed as a technical discussion of two different lists of emotions (one list of four and another of seven different emotions, and hence the name for the Four-Seven Debate) inherited from the classical Confucian texts. But the most interesting underlying philosophical issues that emerged had to do with the analysis of the nature of and relationship between principle and vital force. In short, the Korean scholars realized that as elegant as it might be, there were problems with Zhu's account of the nature of principle. The problem was put this way in a famous metaphor: how could a dead rider (principle as a purely formal pattern) guide the living horse of vital force? In other words, the Korean scholars understood clearly that the whole sensibility of the daoxue project was suffused with an emphasis on cosmic process. Hence, if process was so essential to the working of Zhu's system, how could principle, as a critical philosophical trait, itself be without the living creativity of process? In the words of the Yijing or Book of Changes, if the very spirit of the Dao is shengsheng buxi or the generation [of the myriad things] without cessation, then how does this notion of genuine cosmological creativity inform the proper interpretation of principle as the key trait of the formal side of Zhu's master narrative?

Yi Yulgok, the younger of the two giants of Korean Neo-Confucianism, gave the most creative response to this question. Yulgok is often portrayed as a proponent of a qi-monism wherein Yulgok defends the primacy of process sensibilities in daoxue by augmenting the role of vital force at the expense of principle. While Yulgok does indeed have all kinds of illuminating insights into the role of vital force, he never abandons a deep concern for the role of principle. Yulgok forthrightly links the notion of principle creatively with the equally important concept of cheng or the self-actualization of the mind-heart. In making this strong linkage, Yulgok is able to defend the thesis that principle itself is a vital manifestation of the living creativity of the Dao as the ceaseless generation of the myriad things. It was a philosophical tour-de-force and is probably the most imaginative reinterpretation of Zhu's daoxue to be found in traditional East Asia.

b. Kaibara Ekken

In 17th century Tokugawa Japan Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714) provides an exemplar of the Japanese contribution to the refinement of Neo-Confucian discourse. Ekken, like so many other great Confucian scholars, was something of a renaissance figure. This social concern manifested itself in some very traditional ventures such as the publication of his famous Precepts for Daily Life in Japan, wherein he tried to give advice about how Confucian principles could be applied to the conduct of concrete daily life. Moreover, this passion for the concrete details of daily life also led to a fervent naturalist concern for the world of plants, animals, fish and even shellfish. Ekken not only wrote about these humble creatures but, like many early Western naturalists, provided illustrations of these plants and animals.

Ekken's concern for the dynamic processes of the quotidian world also led him to reread Zhu Xi's daoxue in a dramatic way. For instance, Ekken argued that the Supreme Ultimate/Polarity was not some kind of abstract pattern but actually the correct name for the primordial qi before it began to divide into the yin and yang forces. Ekken did not abandon Zhu's category of principle but rather read the cosmos via a stronger emphasis on the dynamic role of vital force. "The 'Way of the sage' is the principle of life and growth of heaven and earth; the original qi harmonizing the yin and yang in ceaseless fecundity" (Tucker 1989: 81). Ekken made a further deduction from his re-evaluation of the role of vital force, namely that there is no ontological or cosmological ground for holding to a distinction between the ideal nature, mandated by tian, and the physical nature or endowment of the particular creature or person. It is for this reason that Ekken is often held to be a champion of the primacy of a qi-monism, but this kind of reduction does not do justice to Ekken's subtle re-inscription of the various roles of concepts such as principle, vital force and the Supreme Ultimate/Polarity within daoxue. Just as with his Korean colleagues, Ekken's naturalistic vision of the Confucian Dao was such that he believed the nature of the Dao "flows through the seasons and never stops. It is the root of all transformations and it is the place from which all things emerge; it is the origin of all that is received from heaven" (Tucker 1989: 81).

The fate of Korean and Japanese Neo-Confucianism was subject to the same immense impact of the arrival of the Western imperial powers. As Korea and Japan struggled to find their ways in the modern world, Neo-Confucianism seemed a historical part of their traditional cultures and hardly something of great value for the transformations of culture in the contemporary world dominated by the Western powers. In this sense, the arrival of Western-inspired modernization marked the end of the Neo-Confucian epoch in East Asia.

7. The Legacy of Neo-Confucianism

The arrival of the imperial Western powers in East Asia during the nineteenth century caused an unprecedented challenge to the Confucian traditions of the region. Never before had the countries of East Asia faced a combination of military conquest, cultural attack and infiltration by a powerful new civilization. Opium, guns and ideas were pouring into Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with catastrophic results for the sphere of Confucian East Asia. The intellectual assault was as powerful - and perhaps even more significant in the long term - as the material impositions of colonial and semi-colonial regimes. No Asian tradition suffered more than the Confucian Way.

Yet even in the darkest hours after 1911, a significant renewal movement arose in East Asia in defense of the good to be recovered from traditions such as Confucianism. Along with the revivals of Daoism and Buddhism, there was a new movement in East Asia called in English 'New Confucianism' in order to distinguish it from the previous avatars of the Confucian Way. Although New Confucianism has its obvious roots in the great achievements of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing periods, it is also the child of intercultural dialogue with Western philosophical movements and ideas. While it is too soon to chart the course of New Confucianism, it is clear that some form of the Confucian Way will not only survive into the 21st century but will flourish anew in East Asia and farther abroad wherever the East Asian Diaspora carries people for whom the Confucian Way functions as part of their cultural background.

Hitherto, it is impossible to chart the changes wrought by either contemporary philosophers who are dedicated to the revival and reformation of the Confucian Way or by other scholars who are interested in Confucian discourse as merely one important traditional element for modern East Asian philosophers to utilize in terms of their own constructive work. It is clear, however, that Neo-Confucianism has now passed over into a completely new era, that of New Confucian ecumenical dialogue and conversation with philosophers from around the global city of a vastly expanded new republic of letters.

8. References and Further Reading

Barrett, T. H. Li Ao: Buddhist, Taoist, or Neo-Confucian? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Berthrong, John H. Transformations of the Confucian Way. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.

Berthrong, John H. and Berthrong, Evelyn Nagai. Confucianism: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2000.

Black, Alison Harley. Man and Nature in the Philosophical Thought of Wang Fu-chih. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989.

Bol, Peter K. "This Culture of Ours": Intellectual Transition in T'ang and Sung China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

Bresciani, Umberto. Reinventing Confucianism: The New Confucian Movement. Taipei, Taiwan: The Taipei Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies, 2001.

Chang, Carsun. The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought. 2 Vols. New York: Bookman Associates, 1957-1962.

Chen, Chun. Neo-Confucian Terms Explained: The Pei-hsi tzu-I by Ch'en Ch'un (1159-1223). Trans. and ed. Wing-tsit Chan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

Cheng, Chung-ying. New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991.

Cheng, Chung-ying and Nicholad Bunnin, eds. Contemporary Chinese Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.

Ching, Julia. To Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.

Ching, Julia. The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Chu, Hsi and Lü Tsu-ch'ien. Reflections on Things at Hand: The Neo-Confucian Anthology. Trans. Wing-tsit Chan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967.

Chung, Edward Y. J. The Korean Neo-Confucianism of Yi T'oegye and Yi Yulgok: A Reappraisal of the "Four-Seven Thesis" and Its Practical Implications for Self-Cultivation. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995.

Elman, Benjamin A. From Philosophy to Philosophy: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Fung, Yu-lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. 2 vols. Trans. Derk Bodde. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952-53.

Graham, A. C. Two Chinese Philosophers: The Metaphysics of the Brothers Ch'eng. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1992.

Hartman, Charles. Han Yü and the T'ang Search for Unity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Henderson, John B. The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.

Huang- Siu-chi. Lu Hsiang-shan: A Twelfth Century Chinese Idealist Philosophy. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1977.

Huang Tsung-hsi. The Records of Ming Scholars. Eds. Julia Ching with Chaoying Fang. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.

Ivanhoe, Philip J. Confucian Moral Self Cultivation. Second Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.

Jensen, Lionel M. Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

Kalton, Michael C., et al. The Four Seven Debate: An Annotated Translation of the Most Famous Controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian Thought. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994.

Kasoff, Ira E. The Thought of Chang Tsai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Kim, Yung Sik. The Natural Philosophy of Chu Hsi, 1130-1200. Philadelphia, PA: Memoirs of the American Philosophic Society, 2000.

Ko, Dorothy. Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Liu, James T. C. Reform in Sung China: Wang An-shih (1021-1086) and His New Policies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.

Liu, James T. C. Ou-yang Hsiu: An Eleventh-Century Neo-Confucianist. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967.

Liu, Shu-hsien. Understanding Confucian Philosophy: Classical and Sung-Ming. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998.

Liu, Shu-hsien. Essentials of Contemporary Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 2003.

Makeham, John, ed. New Confucianism: A Critical Examination. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Maruyama, Masao. Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan. Trans. Mikiso Hane. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Metzger, Thomas A. Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China's Evolving Political Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.

Munro, Donald J. Images of Human Nature: A Sung Portrait. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Neville, Robert C. Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000.

Nosco, Peter, ed. Confucianism and Tokugawa Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Ro, Young-chan. The Korean Neo-Confucianism of Yi Yulgok. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989.

Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. Ch'en Liang on Public Interest and the Law. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.

Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi's Ascendancy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992.

T'oegye, Yi. To Become a Sage: The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning by Yi T'oegye. Trans. Michael C. Kalton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Tu, Wei-ming. Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming's Youth (1472-1509). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Tu, Wei-ming and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds. Confucian Spirituality. 2 vols. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003-04.

Tucker, Mary Evelyn. Moral and Spiritual Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism: The Life and Thought of Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714). Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1989.

Yao, Xinzhong, ed. Encyclopedia of Confucianism. 2 vols. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.

Author Information

John H. Berthrong
Email: jhb@bu.edu
Boston University
U. S. A.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Neo-Confucianism" is the name commonly applied to the revival of the various strands of Confucian philosophy and political culture that began in the middle of the 9th century and reached new levels of intellectual and social creativity in the 11th century in the Northern Song Dynasty.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Confucianism is one of the most influential religious philosophies in the history of China, and it has existed for over 2,500 years. It is concerned with inner virtue, morality, and respect for the community and its values.