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Future scholar officials taking the Taixue and Imperial examination

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Confucian symbol

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picture of confucius

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Who was Confucius? - Bryan W. Van Norden

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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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https://factsanddetails.com/china/cat2/4sub9/entry-5473.html

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SONG DYNASTY BUREAUCRACY

"The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in the previous dynasties. The northern Song dynasty emphasized "orderly and virtuous governance, achieved largely through efficient bureaucracy staffed by mandarins who passed the rigorous state examinations...the revival of Confucian teaching gave a particularly strong moral flavor to the dynasty."

Song rule featured a bureaucratic ruling class that derived its legitimacy from philosophical orthodoxy and an economy that involved an increasingly active free peasantry interacting with large urban commercial, manufacturing and administrative centers. As was true with the dynasties the Song Dynasty was essentially ruled by an elite bureaucracy chosen through competitive examinations on classic Confucian texts. Some 20,000 mandarins were responsible for governing an empire with more than 100 million people. Progress was hampered somewhat by strong central control. Fearing loss of authority, the bureaucracies reigned in the power of merchants with strict regulations.

Wolfram Eberhard wrote in "A History of China": "The Song emperor, like the rulers of the transition period, had gained the throne by his personal abilities as military leader; in fact, he had been made emperor by his soldiers as had happened to so many emperors in later Imperial Rome. For the next 300 years we observe a change in the position of the emperor. On the one hand, if he was active and intelligent enough, he exercised much more personal influence than the rulers of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, at the same time, the emperors were much closer to their ministers as before. We hear of ministers who patted the ruler on the shoulders when they retired from an audience; another one fell asleep on the emperor's knee and was not punished for this familiarity. The emperor was called "kuan-chia" (Administrator) and even called himself so. And in the early twelfth century an emperor stated "I do not regard the empire as my personal property; my job is to guide the people". Financially-minded as the Song dynasty was, the cost of the operation of the palace was calculated, so that the emperor had a budget: in 1068 the salaries of all officials in the capital amounted to 40,000 strings of money per month, the armies 100,000, and the emperor's ordinary monthly budget was 70,000 strings. For festivals, imperial birthdays, weddings and burials extra allowances were made. Thus, the Song rulers may be called "moderate absolutists" and not despots. [Source: "A History of China" by Wolfram Eberhard, 1951, University of California, Berkeley]

"One of the first acts of the new Song emperor, in 963, was a fundamental reorganization of the administration of the country. The old system of a civil administration and a military administration independent of it was brought to an end and the whole administration of the country placed in the hands of civil officials. The gentry welcomed this measure and gave it full support, because it enabled the influence of the gentry to grow and removed the fear of competition from the military, some of whom did not belong by birth to the gentry.

Good Websites and Sources on the Song Dynasty: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Primary Sources with DBQs, afe.easia.columbia.edu ; Wikipedia Wikipedia ; San.beck.org san.beck.org ; Tang Dynasty: Wikipedia ; Google Book: China's Golden Age: Everday Life in the Tang Dynasty by Charles Benn books.google.com/books; Chinese History: Chinese Text Project ctext.org ; 3) Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization depts.washington.edu ; Chaos Group of University of Maryland chaos.umd.edu/history/toc ; 2) WWW VL: History China vlib.iue.it/history/asia ; 3) Wikipedia article on the History of China Wikipedia Books: "Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty"by Charles Benn, Greenwood Press, 2002; "Cambridge History of China" Vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press); "The Culture and Civilization of China", a massive, multi-volume series, (Yale University Press); "Chronicle of the Chinese Emperor" by Ann Paludan.

RELATED ARTICLES IN THIS WEBSITE: TANG, SONG AND YUAN DYNASTIES factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY (A.D.960-1279) factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY (960-1279) ADVANCES factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY (960-1279) ECONOMICS AND AGRICULTURE factsanddetails.com; SU SHI (SU DONGPO)-THE QUINTESSENTIAL SCHOLAR-OFFICIAL-POET factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY LIFE factsanddetails.com; WANG ANSHI, HIS REFORMS AND HIS BATTLE WITH SIMA GUANG factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY LIFE factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY CULTURE: TEA-HOUSE THEATER, POETRY AND CHEAP BOOKS factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY ART, PAINTING AND CALLIGRAPHY SONG DYNASTY factsanddetails.com; LANDSCAPE, ANIMAL, RELIGIOUS AND FIGURE PAINTING factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY CERAMICS factsanddetails.com

Scholar-Officials During the Song Dynasty

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: "The Song period saw the full flowering of one of the most distinctive features of Chinese civilization - the scholar-official class certified through highly competitive civil service examinations. Most scholars came from the landholding class, but they acquired prestige from their learning and political clout by serving in office. In a society in which most people were illiterate, scholar-officials stood out by virtue of their reading and writing skills. Their Confucian education encouraged them to aspire for government service, but also to speak up when they thought others were pursuing the wrong course, making them courageous critics of power. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

"The officials of the Song dynasty approached the task of government with the inspiration of a reinvigorated Confucianism, which historians refer to as "Neo-Confucianism." As with any group of scholars and officials, different individuals had different understandings of just what concrete measures would best realize the moral ideals articulated in the Analects and Mencius. Such disagreements could be quite serious and could make or unmake careers. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Primary Sources with DBQs, afe.easia.columbia.edu ]

Success as a scholar-official was often defined in terms of knowledge on the Five Confucian Classics - 1) Classic of Poetry (Shijing); 2) Classic of History (Shujing); 3) Classic of Changes (Yijing); 4) Record of Rites (Liji); and 5) Chronicles of the Spring and Autumn Period (Chunqiu)- and The Four Books - 1) The Great Learning (Daxue); 2) The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong); 3) The Analects of Confucius (Lunyu); and 4) The Mencius (Mengzi).

Neo-Confucianism in the Song Period

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: " There was a vigorous revival of Confucianism in the Song period. Confucian teachings were central to the civil service examination system, the identity of the scholar-official class, the family system, and political discourse. Confucianism had naturally changed over the centuries since the time of Confucius (ca. 500 B.C.). Confucius's own teachings, recorded by his followers in "The Analects", were still a central element, as were the texts that came to be called the Confucian classics, which included early poetry, historical records, moral and ritual injunctions, and a divination manual. But the issues stressed by Confucian teachers changed as Confucianism became closely associated with the state from about 100 B.C. on, and as it had to face competition from Buddhism, from the second century CE onward. Confucian teachers responded to the challenge of Buddhist metaphysics by developing their own account of the natural and human world. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

"With roots in the late Tang dynasty, the Confucian revival flourished in the Northern and Southern Song periods and continued in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties that followed. The revived Confucianism of the Song period (often called Neo-Confucianism) emphasized self-cultivation as a path not only to self-fulfillment but to the formation of a virtuous and harmonious society and state.

"The revival of Confucianism in Song times was accomplished by teachers and scholar-officials who gave Confucian teachings new relevance. Scholar-officials of the Song such as Fan Zhongyan (989-1052) and Sima Guang (1019-1086) provided compelling examples of the man who put service to the state above his personal interest."

Song Dynasty Scholar-Official Examinations

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: "Since the Sui Dynasty (581-617), it had been possible to become a government official by passing a series of written examinations. It was only in the Song, however, that the examination system came to be considered the normal ladder to success. From the point of view of the early Song emperors, the purpose of the civil service examinations was to draw men with literary educations into the government to counter the dominance of military men. So long as the system identified men who would make good officials, it did not matter much if some talented people were missed. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

Dr. Robert Eno of Indiana University wrote: " By the time of the Song, the civil service examination system had become so central to the Chinese state that it was, in many was, the cultural focus of all who aspired to success. Even the growing merchant class, which was, by policy, banned from participating in the exams because their profession, based on self-serving "greed" for profit, was considered intrinsically immoral, looked for ways to have some of their sons shed the merchant class designation in order that the family could become members of the most prestigious class in society: the official class. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

According to Asia for Educators: "In Song times exam success came to carry such prestige that the number of men entering each competition grew steadily, from fewer than 30,000 early in the dynasty, to about 400,000 by the dynasty's end. Because the number of available posts did not change, a candidate's chances of passing plummeted, reaching as low as one in 333 in some prefectures. Men often took the examinations several times, and were on average a little over 30 when they succeeded. The great majority of those who devoted years to preparing for the exams, however, never became officials."

Song Dynasty Examination System

Dr. Eno wrote: "Although the intricacies of the examination system were endless, its basic structure was simple. Throughout the period from about 589 to 1905, the central imperial government held massive exams at the various capitals of China every three years. Those who performed best on these exams earned the right to receive government positions; the specific position was determined through a combination of exam scores, personal influence, and available openings. To select the thousands of young men (and men only) who could compete for these exams, lower level tests were administered annually at provincial and county levels. The aspiring young man could expect to spend several years moving upward through this pyramid of exams..that is, assuming that he was successful at the lower levels: most were not. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: ""From the point of view of those taking the examinations fairness was crucial. They wanted to be assured that everyone was given an equal chance and the examiners did not favor those they knew. To increase their confidence in the objectivity of the examiners, the Song government decided to replace candidates' names with numbers and had clerks recopy each exam so that the handwriting could not be recognized. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

According to Asia for Educators: "Scholars in and out of the government regularly debated what should be asked on the examinations, but everyone agreed that one element should be command of Confucian texts. Candidates were usually asked to discuss policy issues, but the examinations tested general education more than knowledge of government laws and regulations. Candidates even had to write poetry in specified forms. To prepare for the examinations, men would memorize the Confucian classics in order to be able to recognize even the most obscure passages.

Preparation for the Scholar-Official Examinations

Dr. Eno wrote: "Preparation for the tests began at an early age and could continue for many years; in some cases, men spent their entire lives attempting to pass the exams (which could be taken any number of times). Successful candidates were rewarded with great prestige. Their families could boast that they belonged to the sole recognized nation-wide elite, and were permitted to fly a special flag at the gates of their family compounds. They could expect that their successful son would bring to the family all the benefits that Confucian education, public service, and deeply entrenched customs of bribery could provide. Although the examinations were open to any adult male, regardless of birth, in practice families whose members had already achieved high rank through the examinations were at a tremendous advantage in preparing the next generation for success. It was such families who usually possessed the resources that allowed them to excuse their children from all economic contributions to the household in order that they might spend a dozen years or more devoting themselves solely to the study of examination texts. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

"There were a number of different types of examination tracks open to young men. The most important was the Confucian civil service examination, which gave men access to the highest level of government posts. These exams were based on a thorough mastery of the extensive corpus of Confucian classical texts, with their voluminous commentaries, of political essays composed by exemplary Confucians of the post-Classical era, and of the arts of poetry, calligraphy, and essay composition that marked one as a cultivated member of the Chinese intellectual elite. /+/

"The intensity of this educational process can be suggested by a quantitative measure concerning only the matter of Confucian classical texts. In addition to a very wide knowledge of the texts and their commentaries, exam candidates were expected to know a certain core group of these texts by heart. The texts that needed to be memorized included the following group, listed below with the total number of words, or Chinese characters, that they include:
The Analects.................................. 11,705
The Mencius.................................. 34,685
The Yijing..................................... 24,107
The Book of Documents................. 25,700
The Book of Songs........................ 39,234
The Book of Rites........................... 99,010
The Zuozhuan................................ 196,845

The total comes to well over 400,000 words, roughly the equivalent of memorizing a book of 1,000 pages word-perfect. And this was just for starters! A never ending stream of commentaries, histories, poetry and so forth would demand unceasing attention for all the years of a student's youth, and preparation for the highly artificial literary styles demanded by ossified examination formats ensured that when a student wasn't memorizing texts, he was trying to master poetic rhyme schemes or baroque essay formats that would please the critical eye of future examiners." /+/

Social Consequences of the Exam Curriculum

Dr. Eno wrote: " The imperative of rote learning that permeated the education of Chinese youths was symptomatic of the authoritarian character of the entire system of Confucian education. Although students read the "Analects" of Confucius and heard him state plainly there that he was not "one who studied much and memorized what he had studied," and saw that Confucius challenged the legitimacy of virtually every power holder of his day, the overall thrust of Confucianism, as presented to young boys, stressed the primacy of the Three Bonds: obedience to father, elders, and rulers. This was a primary lesson instilled in every child aspiring to become a member of the ruling class of China, and although a significant number of men were able to overcome this call to political docility in their maturity, the overall cast it leant to the bureaucratic government of China was a high tolerance for imperial autocracy and fear of innovation. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

"This tendency undermined one of the most progressive features of the examination system..the fact that the institution of government appointment through examination made access to wealth and power dependent upon intellectual merit rather than on the whim of the ruler or personal connections at court. The government system of China is often referred to as a "meritocracy," and this is one of China's most celebrated glories. However, the intellectual "merit" that earned young men promotion was not necessarily the type of creative or independent achievement that we would tend to deem appropriate for the highest levels of public responsibility. /+/

"The intensity of textual study that was required to rise from the lowest educational levels to candidacy for the examinations was so great that it formed an effective barrier to most children. In some cases, this was simply a matter of intellectual talent or an ability to settle down and study hour after hour, year after year (not a quality we associate with children). More often, it was simply a matter of economics. Only a small percentage of the households of China could afford to spare a son to full.time study for the entire period of his life at home. This fact worked against another of the most progressive features of the examination system..its openness. In theory, with only a few exceptions (such as the exclusion of merchant families from candidacy during certain periods), social mobility through competitive examination was available to the sons of all families, down to the lowliest peasants. While it is true that talented sons of impoverished families somehow scrimped their way through to expertise and high rank frequently enough to maintain the meaningfulness of the exam system's egalitarian promise, the great majority of successful candidates always came from privileged families in the wealthiest regions of China. /+/

Exams and the Confucian Esprit de Corps

Dr. Eno wrote: " One of the unique features of Chinese society that resulted from the exam system was the fact that members of the ruling bureaucracy from the sixth century on shared a common experience of great intensity that formed an important bond among them. While in many traditional societies, members of a single generation might share certain sorts of military training or experiences, or in smaller social groups might undergo some other type of rite of initiation, China was unique among traditional cultures in subjecting its large governing elite to an intellectual initiation such as the exam system. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

"Every three years, young men of promise would flock to the capital city, find lodging in that sophisticated and strange place, and encounter hundreds of other young men from all parts of the empire similarly displaced in the hope of lifelong advancement. During the period leading up to the exams, candidates, who were often on their own for the first time in their lives, would form intense friendships, friendships which might later form a network of government contacts. Many features of Chinese political history are best explained only after one has examined lists of triennial examination candidates and discovered which political actors were linked by comradeship dating to their exam days. Moreover, exam graduates also formed important relationships with their examiners, and men who performed outstandingly on the exams could expect that their examiners would become lifelong patrons who would serve as surrogate fathers within the Confucian bureaucracy. /+/

"The function of the exams as a socializing experience was enhanced by the exhausting nature of the metropolitan tests. The entire process stretched over eight days, and was permeated by elaborate ritual ceremonies. The examinees spent days at a time locked in tiny examination cells which stretched over several acres in prison-like rows, and were expected to write all day and all night, squinting under the light of their cubicle candles. /+/

"Given the stress of these terrible conditions, a rich body of folklore grew around the exams, reinforcing their impact upon society and the men who had to endure them. Candidates who entered their cells had heard how the ghosts of failed candidates haunted the testing grounds in the night, and it was not unknown for men's courage to break; sometimes a hapless candidate would be found hanging in his cell at dawn, his undistinguished exam paper left incomplete. /+/

Education and Governmental Responsibility

Dr. Eno wrote: " Perhaps the greatest irony of the civil service examination system in China is that in many respects, despite the praiseworthy principle of appointment by competitive examination, the system was defective because the exams tested students for the wrong skills. It was a fundamental tenet of the time that mastery of Confucian moral texts, of poetic forms, and of the rhetoric of canonical commentary uniquely equipped a man to govern others. To us, it seems self-evident that this is not true. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

"Successful graduates of the exam system faced certain immediate problems to which they were ill suited to respond. Graduates were often posted to low level positions in the provinces where they assumed duties at the level of the county magistrate. There, they were responsible for such duties as tax collection, water conservation, agricultural enhancement, legal administration, and management of their own county offices, called "yamen". Typically, they faced certain handicaps. First of all, their jurisdictions generally extended over populations of perhaps forty to fifty thousand people, and they were supplied with no assistance from the central government. Magistrates were responsible for hiring "yamen" staff from local people. Because there was a "rule of avoidance" that ensured that no official would ever be appointed to a post in his home district (to avoid problems of favoritism), a new officer from the capital would be entirely unfamiliar with the population from which he had to select his assistants. Frequently, when young men were posted far from their home counties, they were not even able to understand the local dialects of the people they governed! Moreover, the budget of a magistrate was a very limited one..his salary was small and he was provided with virtually no discretionary funds. /+/

"Basically, young men fresh from their Confucian studies were completely untrained in the skills that would allow them to succeed under such conditions unless they had received informal instruction from family members or acquaintances who had been immersed in government. It was quite common for such men to govern incompetently. Some resorted to brutal authoritarian measures, others exhausted themselves issuing moral proclamations urging their people to behave properly (not a very effective strategy). Most often, magistrates fell under the influence of powerful local families, who provided them with "officers" who were skilled in using coercion to extract taxes from peasants and confessions from "criminals." By relying on such local bullies, a magistrate could ensure that he could forward to the central government the revenues the emperor demanded and that he could submit records of court proceedings demonstrating his sagely ability to bring the guilty to justice and keep order in his district. Inevitably, such patterns of conduct also involved habits of bribery and other forms of corruption that were endemic in the Chinese political system (and remain so today). /+/

"Periodically, there were reform initiatives that proposed to make the contents of the exams more relevant to the practical skills necessary for government. But these movements were rarely successful. The men who occupied high office and served as the examiners of the next generation had invested their entire identities in the education of their youth..they were not likely to approve of any radical change in standards or content to the exams. In most cases, the most revolutionary changes merely involved the authorization of a more "modern" or pragmatically oriented set of commentaries to the Confucian classics than those that had been employed previously. While in some cases this might have allowed examiners to give added weight to answers that suggested some grasp of the intricacies of practical governance, this was not always the result. The fourteenth century certification of the commentaries of the great Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi's as orthodox resulted in the opposite result. Zhu Xi was a brilliant metaphysician..his theories of the cosmos and its relation to man's ethical tendencies represent a wonderful example of philosophical imagination - but when successful candidates sought to apply Zhu's cosmic theories of Heavenly Principle, material force, and the moral intuitions of the sage heart to the problems of tax collection, flood control, and militia organization, they sometimes found that he was a little sketchy on the details. /+/

Famous Song Dynasty Scholar-Officials

Song officials such as Fan Zhongyan (989-1052), Su Shi (1037-1101, also known by his pen name, Su Dongpo), and Wang Anshi (1021-1086) worked to apply Confucian principles to the practical tasks of governing. Su Shi had a long career as a government official in the Northern Song. Twice he was exiled for his sharp criticisms of imperial policy. Su is also one of the most noted poets of the Northern Song period. Fan Zhongyan was a prominent statesman, strategist, educator, and writer of the Northern Song Dynasty.

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: "Wang Anshi was a noted scholar and official. He distinguished himself during a long term of service as a country magistrate. In 1068, the young Shenzong Emperor (r. 1068.1085), then twenty years old, appointed Wang Anshi as Chief Councilor and charged him with carrying out a thorough-going reform of the empire's finances, administration, education, and military. The intention was to address a serious problem: declining tax revenue and mounting government expenses, including the huge and growing cost of maintaining a large standing army. Wang Anshi proposed a series of reforms, including the "Crop Loans Measure" discussed in the memorial below. The reforms were carried out. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Primary Sources with DBQs, afe.easia.columbia.edu ]

The Southern Song philosopher and scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200) was very influential in the Confucian revival of the time. Known for his synthesis of Neo-Confucian philosophy, he wrote commentaries to the Four Books of the Confucian tradition and emphasized the Four Books as a basis for Confucian learning and the civil service examinations. Sima Guang (1019-1086) was a historian and high-ranking official of the Northern Song best known compiling his monumental 294-chapter history of China, entitled Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance (Zizhi tongjian).

See Separate Article WANG ANSHI, HIS REFORMS AND HIS BATTLE WITH SIMA GUANG

Book: "A Compilation of Anecdotes of Sung Personalities," translated by Chu Djang and Jane C. Djang (St. John's University Press, 1989)]

Zhu Xi

Zhu Xi (1130-1200) was the most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher. His synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas into Neo-Confucianism became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late nineteenth century. As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi's philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the nineteenth century. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. [Source: Library of Congress]

Zhu Xi was born in Nanping, Fujian. He later resided in Kaoting, Jianyang in Fujian. His ancestors came from Wuyuan, Jiangxi. He had style names Yuanhui and Zhonghui; the sobriquets Huian, Huiweng, and Tun- weng. Later in his life he was also referred to as Master Ziyang, the Sick Man of Cangzhou and Master Kaoting. He is respectfully referred to by posterity as "Zhuzi". Zhu Xi was very influential in the Confucian revival of his time. He spent his entire career pursuing an ambition of establishing a new order in China and wrote commentaries to the Four Books of the Confucian tradition and emphasized the Four Books as a basis for Confucian learning and the civil service examinations. Zhu Xi was also active in the theory and practice of education and in the compiling of a practical manual of family ritual. Zhu Xi's synthesis was accepted as the orthodox interpretation of Confucianism in the later Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as in other East Asian countries.

During his lifetime Zhu Xi studied a great variety of fields; in addition to Confucianism, he had also written extensively on philosophy, ethics, history, political science, philology and philological theory. His youngest son, Zhu Zai, compiled his treatises and edited them to become the The Literary Collection of Zhu Xi., The Literary Collection of Zhu Xi comprises of 100 volumes and was compiled during the late of Ningzong Emperor and the early of Lizong Emperor.

Dr. Eno wrote: "Zhu Xi was a brilliant metaphysician..his theories of the cosmos and its relation to man's ethical tendencies represent a wonderful example of philosophical imagination - but when successful candidates sought to apply Zhu's cosmic theories of Heavenly Principle, material force, and the moral intuitions of the sage heart to the problems of tax collection, flood control, and militia organization, they sometimes found that he was a little sketchy on the details." [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

National Palace Museum, Taipei description of the calligraphy by Zhu Xi in the "Letter on Government Affairs" (album leaf, ink on paper, 33.3 x 47.8 centimeters): Zhu Xi was excited to hear that Emperor Xiaozong in his later years wanted to recruit Neo-Confucian scholars to reform the government, but unfortunately the emperor passed away not long after reforms had begun, bringing them to an abrupt end. \=/ This letter was written with great speed and force, being composed on Zhu Xi's way to the capital after leaving office as Administrator of Tanzhou (modern Changsha, Hunan) in the eighth month of 1194. The contents are directed to a subordinate in dealing with government matters in Tanzhou. The first passage mentions Zhu's sorrow at "national mourning," referring to the death of Xiaozong in the sixth month of that year. But with Emperor Ningzong assuming the throne in the seventh month, Zhu had the opportunity to teach at court, immediately bringing him great joy. [Source: National Palace Museum, Taipei \=/ ]

Four Books of Zhu Xi

According to the National Palace Museum, Taipei: " The Four Books, with a Collection of Comments and comprises of one volume of "Chapters from The Great Learning", ten volumes of "Compilations of The Analects of Confucius", seven volumes of "Compilations of Mencius", and one volume of "Chapters from Doctrine of the Mean". [Source: National Palace Museum, Taipei \=/ ]

"The Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean were originally chapters from The Classics of Rites, and were singled out and separately discussed only from Song Dynasty. The title The Four Books was given by Zhu Xi, who separated the classics from the biographies in The Great Learning, and also renumbered the chapters and supplemented missing sections from Doctrine of the Mean, referring to them as "Chapters". \=/

"The Analects of Confucius and Mencius were compilations of the various masters, and were therefore referred to as "Compilations". The original compilation placed the greatest emphasis on The Great Learning, followed by The Analects of Confucius, and then Mencius and Doctrine of the Mean, indicating the order of learning. The Four Books, with a Collection of Comments reflects Zhu Xi's scholarly style, carefully considering each and every sentence, referring to and combining accounts by other scholars, placing emphasis on elucidation of logic and annotating his own opinions. The main theme of Chapters from The Great Learning is an "inquiring mind", describing the learning process of "finding the righteous path in everything". \=/

"Zhu Xi had devoted his life to Compilations of the Four Books, and not only has a unique position and influence in the Neo-Confucianism, he had also included Mencius as one of the classics. Together with The Analects of Confucius, Erya: a Dictionary, The Book of Filial Piety and the "Nine Classics" from the Tang Dynasty, these now form the official "Thirteen Classics. The Four Books was a milestone in the history of Chinese literary classics." \=/

Three Perfections and Scholar-Official Painting

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: " The life of the educated man involved more than study for the civil service examinations and service in office. Many took to refined pursuits such as collecting antiques or old books and practicing the arts - especially poetry writing, calligraphy, and painting ("the three perfections"). For many individuals these interests overshadowed any philosophical, political, or economic concerns; others found in them occasional outlets for creative activity and aesthetic pleasure. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

In the Song period the engagement of the elite with the arts led to extraordinary achievement in calligraphy and painting, especially landscape painting. But even more people were involved as connoisseurs. A large share of the informal social life of upper-class men was centered on these refined pastimes, as they gathered to compose or criticize poetry, to view each other's treasures, or to patronize young talents.

Patricia Buckley Ebrey of the University of Washington wrote: "During the middle of the Northern Song scholars began to take up painting as one of the arts of the gentleman, viewing it as comparable to poetry and calligraphy as means for self expression. Brushwork in painting, by analogy to brushwork in calligraphy, was believed to express a person's moral character. [Source: Patricia Buckley Ebrey, University of Washington, depts.washington.edu/chinaciv /=]

"The scholars who took up painting generally preferred to use more individualistic and less refined styles of brushwork. These styles were relatively easier to master by those already familiar with the brush from calligraphy, and did not require the years of exacting training needed to succeed as a professional or court artist. /=\

"The eminent poet and statesman Su Shi (1037-1101) explicitly rejected the attempt to capture appearance as beneath the scholar. Paintings should be understated, not flashy. His painting of Rock and Old Tree, executed with a dry brush, exhibits rough qualities and does not aim at pleasure. The painting is more akin to an exercise aiming to improve and develop calligraphic skill than the sorts of paintings done by contemporary court painters. Emphasizing subjectivity, Su Shi said that painting and poetry share a single goal, that of effortless skill. /=\

"Scholar painters were not necessarily amateur painters, and many scholars painted in highly polished styles. This was particularly true in the case of paintings of people and animals, where scholar-painters developed the use of the thin line drawing but did not in any real sense avoid "form likeness" or strive for awkwardness, the way landscapists often did. One of the first literati to excel as a painter of people and animals was Li Konglin in the late Northern Song. A friend of Su Shi and other eminent men of the period, he also painted landscapes and collected both paintings and ancient bronzes and jades. Figures done with a thin line, rather than a modulated one, were considered plainer and more suitable for scholar painters." /=\

Fan Zhongyan: Prominent Scholar-Official-Poet

Fan Zhongyan (989-1052) was a prominent Chinese statesman, strategist, educator and writer of the Northern Song Dynasty. Wang Ping wrote on CCTV.com: "He believed that the shortage of talented people was the major problem of the country, so education should be developed vigorously to train such people. Wherever he went, he made painstaking efforts to run schools. He founded the well-known Suzhou Prefectural School. Thanks to his pioneering endeavours, a good many talented scholars came to the fore during the Song and the ensuing dynasties. [Source:Wang Ping, CCTV.com, April 6, 2004 ~]

"Fan Zhongyan was one of the outstanding writers of poetry and prose during the Song Dynasty. "On Yueyang Tower" was his representative work. The well-known essay was not an elaborate portrayal of the tower alone. It was a depiction of the vast scene of the surrounding Dongting Lake, then a description of the mentality of banished officials and poets, and finally an elevation to a higher plane of philosophy. "One should be the first to bear hardships and the last to enjoy comforts," is a well-known remark by made Fan Zhongyan that has often been repeated over the centuries. ~

"Fan Zhongyan was born in Wuxian County, Suzhou in present-day Jiangsu Province in 989. When he was a child, his father died and his mother married another man. He was poor, but he learned diligently. At the age of 26, he became a successful candidate in the highest imperial examination and began his long official career. He was always anxious about the rise and fall of the nation and the joys and sorrows of the people.~

"Xixi, Taizhou was a small town on the coast of Jiangsu. The land was fertile and products were plentiful. As the waves lashed the shore, the land turned saline and alkaline. The local people became destitute and homeless. When he served as the magistrate of Xinghua, Fan Zhongyan encouraged the local people to build a breakwater dozens of kilometres long. The people returned to their homeland and called the breakwater "Lord Fan Embankment". ~

"At the beginning of the 11th century, troops of Yuanhao, King of the Western Xia regime, incessantly harassed the northwest border of the Northern Song Dynasty, causing serious losses of the people's lives and property. The troops of the Song Dynasty suffered one defeat after another. Fan Zhongyan was appointed the deputy military commissioner of Shaanxi. He displayed outstanding military talent and followed a policy of national concord. A peace treaty was signed between the Western Xia regime and the Northern Song Dynasty. ~

"After the war, Fan Zhongyan was transferred to the capital and appointed a participant in determining governmental matters. In 1043, the third year of the reign of Qingli, Emperor Renzong granted an audience to his ministers, seeking their opinions on major policies. Fan Zhongyan proposed a reform in the administration of local officials and nine other reforms. Historically they were known as "Qingli New Policies". The New Policies failed in about a year because of opposition from conservative officials. Fan Zhongyan was forced to leave the imperial court, but he was still concerned about his country and people." ~

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ; Asia for Educators, Columbia University afe.easia.columbia.edu ; University of Washington's Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization, depts.washington.edu/chinaciv /=\; National Palace Museum, Taipei; Library of Congress; New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; China National Tourist Office (CNTO); Xinhua; China.org; China Daily; Japan News; Times of London; National Geographic; The New Yorker; Time; Newsweek; Reuters; Associated Press; Lonely Planet Guides; Compton's Encyclopedia; Smithsonian magazine; The Guardian; Yomiuri Shimbun; AFP; Wikipedia; BBC. Many sources are cited at the end of the facts for which they are used.

Last updated August 2021

SONG DYNASTY BUREAUCRACY

"The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in the previous dynasties. The northern Song dynasty emphasized "orderly and virtuous governance, achieved largely through efficient bureaucracy staffed by mandarins who passed the rigorous state examinations...the revival of Confucian teaching gave a particularly strong moral flavor to the dynasty."

Song rule featured a bureaucratic ruling class that derived its legitimacy from philosophical orthodoxy and an economy that involved an increasingly active free peasantry interacting with large urban commercial, manufacturing and administrative centers. As was true with the dynasties the Song Dynasty was essentially ruled by an elite bureaucracy chosen through competitive examinations on classic Confucian texts. Some 20,000 mandarins were responsible for governing an empire with more than 100 million people. Progress was hampered somewhat by strong central control. Fearing loss of authority, the bureaucracies reigned in the power of merchants with strict regulations.

Wolfram Eberhard wrote in "A History of China": "The Song emperor, like the rulers of the transition period, had gained the throne by his personal abilities as military leader; in fact, he had been made emperor by his soldiers as had happened to so many emperors in later Imperial Rome. For the next 300 years we observe a change in the position of the emperor. On the one hand, if he was active and intelligent enough, he exercised much more personal influence than the rulers of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, at the same time, the emperors were much closer to their ministers as before. We hear of ministers who patted the ruler on the shoulders when they retired from an audience; another one fell asleep on the emperor's knee and was not punished for this familiarity. The emperor was called "kuan-chia" (Administrator) and even called himself so. And in the early twelfth century an emperor stated "I do not regard the empire as my personal property; my job is to guide the people". Financially-minded as the Song dynasty was, the cost of the operation of the palace was calculated, so that the emperor had a budget: in 1068 the salaries of all officials in the capital amounted to 40,000 strings of money per month, the armies 100,000, and the emperor's ordinary monthly budget was 70,000 strings. For festivals, imperial birthdays, weddings and burials extra allowances were made. Thus, the Song rulers may be called "moderate absolutists" and not despots. [Source: "A History of China" by Wolfram Eberhard, 1951, University of California, Berkeley]

"One of the first acts of the new Song emperor, in 963, was a fundamental reorganization of the administration of the country. The old system of a civil administration and a military administration independent of it was brought to an end and the whole administration of the country placed in the hands of civil officials. The gentry welcomed this measure and gave it full support, because it enabled the influence of the gentry to grow and removed the fear of competition from the military, some of whom did not belong by birth to the gentry.

Good Websites and Sources on the Song Dynasty: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Primary Sources with DBQs, afe.easia.columbia.edu ; Wikipedia Wikipedia ; San.beck.org san.beck.org ; Tang Dynasty: Wikipedia ; Google Book: China's Golden Age: Everday Life in the Tang Dynasty by Charles Benn books.google.com/books; Chinese History: Chinese Text Project ctext.org ; 3) Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization depts.washington.edu ; Chaos Group of University of Maryland chaos.umd.edu/history/toc ; 2) WWW VL: History China vlib.iue.it/history/asia ; 3) Wikipedia article on the History of China Wikipedia Books: "Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty"by Charles Benn, Greenwood Press, 2002; "Cambridge History of China" Vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press); "The Culture and Civilization of China", a massive, multi-volume series, (Yale University Press); "Chronicle of the Chinese Emperor" by Ann Paludan.

RELATED ARTICLES IN THIS WEBSITE: TANG, SONG AND YUAN DYNASTIES factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY (A.D.960-1279) factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY (960-1279) ADVANCES factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY (960-1279) ECONOMICS AND AGRICULTURE factsanddetails.com; SU SHI (SU DONGPO)-THE QUINTESSENTIAL SCHOLAR-OFFICIAL-POET factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY LIFE factsanddetails.com; WANG ANSHI, HIS REFORMS AND HIS BATTLE WITH SIMA GUANG factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY LIFE factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY CULTURE: TEA-HOUSE THEATER, POETRY AND CHEAP BOOKS factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY ART, PAINTING AND CALLIGRAPHY SONG DYNASTY factsanddetails.com; LANDSCAPE, ANIMAL, RELIGIOUS AND FIGURE PAINTING factsanddetails.com; SONG DYNASTY CERAMICS factsanddetails.com

Scholar-Officials During the Song Dynasty

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: "The Song period saw the full flowering of one of the most distinctive features of Chinese civilization - the scholar-official class certified through highly competitive civil service examinations. Most scholars came from the landholding class, but they acquired prestige from their learning and political clout by serving in office. In a society in which most people were illiterate, scholar-officials stood out by virtue of their reading and writing skills. Their Confucian education encouraged them to aspire for government service, but also to speak up when they thought others were pursuing the wrong course, making them courageous critics of power. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

"The officials of the Song dynasty approached the task of government with the inspiration of a reinvigorated Confucianism, which historians refer to as "Neo-Confucianism." As with any group of scholars and officials, different individuals had different understandings of just what concrete measures would best realize the moral ideals articulated in the Analects and Mencius. Such disagreements could be quite serious and could make or unmake careers. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Primary Sources with DBQs, afe.easia.columbia.edu ]

Success as a scholar-official was often defined in terms of knowledge on the Five Confucian Classics - 1) Classic of Poetry (Shijing); 2) Classic of History (Shujing); 3) Classic of Changes (Yijing); 4) Record of Rites (Liji); and 5) Chronicles of the Spring and Autumn Period (Chunqiu)- and The Four Books - 1) The Great Learning (Daxue); 2) The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong); 3) The Analects of Confucius (Lunyu); and 4) The Mencius (Mengzi).

Neo-Confucianism in the Song Period

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: " There was a vigorous revival of Confucianism in the Song period. Confucian teachings were central to the civil service examination system, the identity of the scholar-official class, the family system, and political discourse. Confucianism had naturally changed over the centuries since the time of Confucius (ca. 500 B.C.). Confucius's own teachings, recorded by his followers in "The Analects", were still a central element, as were the texts that came to be called the Confucian classics, which included early poetry, historical records, moral and ritual injunctions, and a divination manual. But the issues stressed by Confucian teachers changed as Confucianism became closely associated with the state from about 100 B.C. on, and as it had to face competition from Buddhism, from the second century CE onward. Confucian teachers responded to the challenge of Buddhist metaphysics by developing their own account of the natural and human world. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

"With roots in the late Tang dynasty, the Confucian revival flourished in the Northern and Southern Song periods and continued in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties that followed. The revived Confucianism of the Song period (often called Neo-Confucianism) emphasized self-cultivation as a path not only to self-fulfillment but to the formation of a virtuous and harmonious society and state.

"The revival of Confucianism in Song times was accomplished by teachers and scholar-officials who gave Confucian teachings new relevance. Scholar-officials of the Song such as Fan Zhongyan (989-1052) and Sima Guang (1019-1086) provided compelling examples of the man who put service to the state above his personal interest."

Song Dynasty Scholar-Official Examinations

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: "Since the Sui Dynasty (581-617), it had been possible to become a government official by passing a series of written examinations. It was only in the Song, however, that the examination system came to be considered the normal ladder to success. From the point of view of the early Song emperors, the purpose of the civil service examinations was to draw men with literary educations into the government to counter the dominance of military men. So long as the system identified men who would make good officials, it did not matter much if some talented people were missed. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

Dr. Robert Eno of Indiana University wrote: " By the time of the Song, the civil service examination system had become so central to the Chinese state that it was, in many was, the cultural focus of all who aspired to success. Even the growing merchant class, which was, by policy, banned from participating in the exams because their profession, based on self-serving "greed" for profit, was considered intrinsically immoral, looked for ways to have some of their sons shed the merchant class designation in order that the family could become members of the most prestigious class in society: the official class. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

According to Asia for Educators: "In Song times exam success came to carry such prestige that the number of men entering each competition grew steadily, from fewer than 30,000 early in the dynasty, to about 400,000 by the dynasty's end. Because the number of available posts did not change, a candidate's chances of passing plummeted, reaching as low as one in 333 in some prefectures. Men often took the examinations several times, and were on average a little over 30 when they succeeded. The great majority of those who devoted years to preparing for the exams, however, never became officials."

Song Dynasty Examination System

Dr. Eno wrote: "Although the intricacies of the examination system were endless, its basic structure was simple. Throughout the period from about 589 to 1905, the central imperial government held massive exams at the various capitals of China every three years. Those who performed best on these exams earned the right to receive government positions; the specific position was determined through a combination of exam scores, personal influence, and available openings. To select the thousands of young men (and men only) who could compete for these exams, lower level tests were administered annually at provincial and county levels. The aspiring young man could expect to spend several years moving upward through this pyramid of exams..that is, assuming that he was successful at the lower levels: most were not. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: ""From the point of view of those taking the examinations fairness was crucial. They wanted to be assured that everyone was given an equal chance and the examiners did not favor those they knew. To increase their confidence in the objectivity of the examiners, the Song government decided to replace candidates' names with numbers and had clerks recopy each exam so that the handwriting could not be recognized. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

According to Asia for Educators: "Scholars in and out of the government regularly debated what should be asked on the examinations, but everyone agreed that one element should be command of Confucian texts. Candidates were usually asked to discuss policy issues, but the examinations tested general education more than knowledge of government laws and regulations. Candidates even had to write poetry in specified forms. To prepare for the examinations, men would memorize the Confucian classics in order to be able to recognize even the most obscure passages.

Preparation for the Scholar-Official Examinations

Dr. Eno wrote: "Preparation for the tests began at an early age and could continue for many years; in some cases, men spent their entire lives attempting to pass the exams (which could be taken any number of times). Successful candidates were rewarded with great prestige. Their families could boast that they belonged to the sole recognized nation-wide elite, and were permitted to fly a special flag at the gates of their family compounds. They could expect that their successful son would bring to the family all the benefits that Confucian education, public service, and deeply entrenched customs of bribery could provide. Although the examinations were open to any adult male, regardless of birth, in practice families whose members had already achieved high rank through the examinations were at a tremendous advantage in preparing the next generation for success. It was such families who usually possessed the resources that allowed them to excuse their children from all economic contributions to the household in order that they might spend a dozen years or more devoting themselves solely to the study of examination texts. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

"There were a number of different types of examination tracks open to young men. The most important was the Confucian civil service examination, which gave men access to the highest level of government posts. These exams were based on a thorough mastery of the extensive corpus of Confucian classical texts, with their voluminous commentaries, of political essays composed by exemplary Confucians of the post-Classical era, and of the arts of poetry, calligraphy, and essay composition that marked one as a cultivated member of the Chinese intellectual elite. /+/

"The intensity of this educational process can be suggested by a quantitative measure concerning only the matter of Confucian classical texts. In addition to a very wide knowledge of the texts and their commentaries, exam candidates were expected to know a certain core group of these texts by heart. The texts that needed to be memorized included the following group, listed below with the total number of words, or Chinese characters, that they include:
The Analects.................................. 11,705
The Mencius.................................. 34,685
The Yijing..................................... 24,107
The Book of Documents................. 25,700
The Book of Songs........................ 39,234
The Book of Rites........................... 99,010
The Zuozhuan................................ 196,845

The total comes to well over 400,000 words, roughly the equivalent of memorizing a book of 1,000 pages word-perfect. And this was just for starters! A never ending stream of commentaries, histories, poetry and so forth would demand unceasing attention for all the years of a student's youth, and preparation for the highly artificial literary styles demanded by ossified examination formats ensured that when a student wasn't memorizing texts, he was trying to master poetic rhyme schemes or baroque essay formats that would please the critical eye of future examiners." /+/

Social Consequences of the Exam Curriculum

Dr. Eno wrote: " The imperative of rote learning that permeated the education of Chinese youths was symptomatic of the authoritarian character of the entire system of Confucian education. Although students read the "Analects" of Confucius and heard him state plainly there that he was not "one who studied much and memorized what he had studied," and saw that Confucius challenged the legitimacy of virtually every power holder of his day, the overall thrust of Confucianism, as presented to young boys, stressed the primacy of the Three Bonds: obedience to father, elders, and rulers. This was a primary lesson instilled in every child aspiring to become a member of the ruling class of China, and although a significant number of men were able to overcome this call to political docility in their maturity, the overall cast it leant to the bureaucratic government of China was a high tolerance for imperial autocracy and fear of innovation. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

"This tendency undermined one of the most progressive features of the examination system..the fact that the institution of government appointment through examination made access to wealth and power dependent upon intellectual merit rather than on the whim of the ruler or personal connections at court. The government system of China is often referred to as a "meritocracy," and this is one of China's most celebrated glories. However, the intellectual "merit" that earned young men promotion was not necessarily the type of creative or independent achievement that we would tend to deem appropriate for the highest levels of public responsibility. /+/

"The intensity of textual study that was required to rise from the lowest educational levels to candidacy for the examinations was so great that it formed an effective barrier to most children. In some cases, this was simply a matter of intellectual talent or an ability to settle down and study hour after hour, year after year (not a quality we associate with children). More often, it was simply a matter of economics. Only a small percentage of the households of China could afford to spare a son to full.time study for the entire period of his life at home. This fact worked against another of the most progressive features of the examination system..its openness. In theory, with only a few exceptions (such as the exclusion of merchant families from candidacy during certain periods), social mobility through competitive examination was available to the sons of all families, down to the lowliest peasants. While it is true that talented sons of impoverished families somehow scrimped their way through to expertise and high rank frequently enough to maintain the meaningfulness of the exam system's egalitarian promise, the great majority of successful candidates always came from privileged families in the wealthiest regions of China. /+/

Exams and the Confucian Esprit de Corps

Dr. Eno wrote: " One of the unique features of Chinese society that resulted from the exam system was the fact that members of the ruling bureaucracy from the sixth century on shared a common experience of great intensity that formed an important bond among them. While in many traditional societies, members of a single generation might share certain sorts of military training or experiences, or in smaller social groups might undergo some other type of rite of initiation, China was unique among traditional cultures in subjecting its large governing elite to an intellectual initiation such as the exam system. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

"Every three years, young men of promise would flock to the capital city, find lodging in that sophisticated and strange place, and encounter hundreds of other young men from all parts of the empire similarly displaced in the hope of lifelong advancement. During the period leading up to the exams, candidates, who were often on their own for the first time in their lives, would form intense friendships, friendships which might later form a network of government contacts. Many features of Chinese political history are best explained only after one has examined lists of triennial examination candidates and discovered which political actors were linked by comradeship dating to their exam days. Moreover, exam graduates also formed important relationships with their examiners, and men who performed outstandingly on the exams could expect that their examiners would become lifelong patrons who would serve as surrogate fathers within the Confucian bureaucracy. /+/

"The function of the exams as a socializing experience was enhanced by the exhausting nature of the metropolitan tests. The entire process stretched over eight days, and was permeated by elaborate ritual ceremonies. The examinees spent days at a time locked in tiny examination cells which stretched over several acres in prison-like rows, and were expected to write all day and all night, squinting under the light of their cubicle candles. /+/

"Given the stress of these terrible conditions, a rich body of folklore grew around the exams, reinforcing their impact upon society and the men who had to endure them. Candidates who entered their cells had heard how the ghosts of failed candidates haunted the testing grounds in the night, and it was not unknown for men's courage to break; sometimes a hapless candidate would be found hanging in his cell at dawn, his undistinguished exam paper left incomplete. /+/

Education and Governmental Responsibility

Dr. Eno wrote: " Perhaps the greatest irony of the civil service examination system in China is that in many respects, despite the praiseworthy principle of appointment by competitive examination, the system was defective because the exams tested students for the wrong skills. It was a fundamental tenet of the time that mastery of Confucian moral texts, of poetic forms, and of the rhetoric of canonical commentary uniquely equipped a man to govern others. To us, it seems self-evident that this is not true. [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

"Successful graduates of the exam system faced certain immediate problems to which they were ill suited to respond. Graduates were often posted to low level positions in the provinces where they assumed duties at the level of the county magistrate. There, they were responsible for such duties as tax collection, water conservation, agricultural enhancement, legal administration, and management of their own county offices, called "yamen". Typically, they faced certain handicaps. First of all, their jurisdictions generally extended over populations of perhaps forty to fifty thousand people, and they were supplied with no assistance from the central government. Magistrates were responsible for hiring "yamen" staff from local people. Because there was a "rule of avoidance" that ensured that no official would ever be appointed to a post in his home district (to avoid problems of favoritism), a new officer from the capital would be entirely unfamiliar with the population from which he had to select his assistants. Frequently, when young men were posted far from their home counties, they were not even able to understand the local dialects of the people they governed! Moreover, the budget of a magistrate was a very limited one..his salary was small and he was provided with virtually no discretionary funds. /+/

"Basically, young men fresh from their Confucian studies were completely untrained in the skills that would allow them to succeed under such conditions unless they had received informal instruction from family members or acquaintances who had been immersed in government. It was quite common for such men to govern incompetently. Some resorted to brutal authoritarian measures, others exhausted themselves issuing moral proclamations urging their people to behave properly (not a very effective strategy). Most often, magistrates fell under the influence of powerful local families, who provided them with "officers" who were skilled in using coercion to extract taxes from peasants and confessions from "criminals." By relying on such local bullies, a magistrate could ensure that he could forward to the central government the revenues the emperor demanded and that he could submit records of court proceedings demonstrating his sagely ability to bring the guilty to justice and keep order in his district. Inevitably, such patterns of conduct also involved habits of bribery and other forms of corruption that were endemic in the Chinese political system (and remain so today). /+/

"Periodically, there were reform initiatives that proposed to make the contents of the exams more relevant to the practical skills necessary for government. But these movements were rarely successful. The men who occupied high office and served as the examiners of the next generation had invested their entire identities in the education of their youth..they were not likely to approve of any radical change in standards or content to the exams. In most cases, the most revolutionary changes merely involved the authorization of a more "modern" or pragmatically oriented set of commentaries to the Confucian classics than those that had been employed previously. While in some cases this might have allowed examiners to give added weight to answers that suggested some grasp of the intricacies of practical governance, this was not always the result. The fourteenth century certification of the commentaries of the great Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi's as orthodox resulted in the opposite result. Zhu Xi was a brilliant metaphysician..his theories of the cosmos and its relation to man's ethical tendencies represent a wonderful example of philosophical imagination - but when successful candidates sought to apply Zhu's cosmic theories of Heavenly Principle, material force, and the moral intuitions of the sage heart to the problems of tax collection, flood control, and militia organization, they sometimes found that he was a little sketchy on the details. /+/

Famous Song Dynasty Scholar-Officials

Song officials such as Fan Zhongyan (989-1052), Su Shi (1037-1101, also known by his pen name, Su Dongpo), and Wang Anshi (1021-1086) worked to apply Confucian principles to the practical tasks of governing. Su Shi had a long career as a government official in the Northern Song. Twice he was exiled for his sharp criticisms of imperial policy. Su is also one of the most noted poets of the Northern Song period. Fan Zhongyan was a prominent statesman, strategist, educator, and writer of the Northern Song Dynasty.

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: "Wang Anshi was a noted scholar and official. He distinguished himself during a long term of service as a country magistrate. In 1068, the young Shenzong Emperor (r. 1068.1085), then twenty years old, appointed Wang Anshi as Chief Councilor and charged him with carrying out a thorough-going reform of the empire's finances, administration, education, and military. The intention was to address a serious problem: declining tax revenue and mounting government expenses, including the huge and growing cost of maintaining a large standing army. Wang Anshi proposed a series of reforms, including the "Crop Loans Measure" discussed in the memorial below. The reforms were carried out. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Primary Sources with DBQs, afe.easia.columbia.edu ]

The Southern Song philosopher and scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200) was very influential in the Confucian revival of the time. Known for his synthesis of Neo-Confucian philosophy, he wrote commentaries to the Four Books of the Confucian tradition and emphasized the Four Books as a basis for Confucian learning and the civil service examinations. Sima Guang (1019-1086) was a historian and high-ranking official of the Northern Song best known compiling his monumental 294-chapter history of China, entitled Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance (Zizhi tongjian).

See Separate Article WANG ANSHI, HIS REFORMS AND HIS BATTLE WITH SIMA GUANG

Book: "A Compilation of Anecdotes of Sung Personalities," translated by Chu Djang and Jane C. Djang (St. John's University Press, 1989)]

Zhu Xi

Zhu Xi (1130-1200) was the most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher. His synthesis of Confucian thought and Buddhist, Taoist, and other ideas into Neo-Confucianism became the official imperial ideology from late Song times to the late nineteenth century. As incorporated into the examination system, Zhu Xi's philosophy evolved into a rigid official creed, which stressed the one-sided obligations of obedience and compliance of subject to ruler, child to father, wife to husband, and younger brother to elder brother. The effect was to inhibit the societal development of premodern China, resulting both in many generations of political, social, and spiritual stability and in a slowness of cultural and institutional change up to the nineteenth century. Neo-Confucian doctrines also came to play the dominant role in the intellectual life of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. [Source: Library of Congress]

Zhu Xi was born in Nanping, Fujian. He later resided in Kaoting, Jianyang in Fujian. His ancestors came from Wuyuan, Jiangxi. He had style names Yuanhui and Zhonghui; the sobriquets Huian, Huiweng, and Tun- weng. Later in his life he was also referred to as Master Ziyang, the Sick Man of Cangzhou and Master Kaoting. He is respectfully referred to by posterity as "Zhuzi". Zhu Xi was very influential in the Confucian revival of his time. He spent his entire career pursuing an ambition of establishing a new order in China and wrote commentaries to the Four Books of the Confucian tradition and emphasized the Four Books as a basis for Confucian learning and the civil service examinations. Zhu Xi was also active in the theory and practice of education and in the compiling of a practical manual of family ritual. Zhu Xi's synthesis was accepted as the orthodox interpretation of Confucianism in the later Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as in other East Asian countries.

During his lifetime Zhu Xi studied a great variety of fields; in addition to Confucianism, he had also written extensively on philosophy, ethics, history, political science, philology and philological theory. His youngest son, Zhu Zai, compiled his treatises and edited them to become the The Literary Collection of Zhu Xi., The Literary Collection of Zhu Xi comprises of 100 volumes and was compiled during the late of Ningzong Emperor and the early of Lizong Emperor.

Dr. Eno wrote: "Zhu Xi was a brilliant metaphysician..his theories of the cosmos and its relation to man's ethical tendencies represent a wonderful example of philosophical imagination - but when successful candidates sought to apply Zhu's cosmic theories of Heavenly Principle, material force, and the moral intuitions of the sage heart to the problems of tax collection, flood control, and militia organization, they sometimes found that he was a little sketchy on the details." [Source: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ]

National Palace Museum, Taipei description of the calligraphy by Zhu Xi in the "Letter on Government Affairs" (album leaf, ink on paper, 33.3 x 47.8 centimeters): Zhu Xi was excited to hear that Emperor Xiaozong in his later years wanted to recruit Neo-Confucian scholars to reform the government, but unfortunately the emperor passed away not long after reforms had begun, bringing them to an abrupt end. \=/ This letter was written with great speed and force, being composed on Zhu Xi's way to the capital after leaving office as Administrator of Tanzhou (modern Changsha, Hunan) in the eighth month of 1194. The contents are directed to a subordinate in dealing with government matters in Tanzhou. The first passage mentions Zhu's sorrow at "national mourning," referring to the death of Xiaozong in the sixth month of that year. But with Emperor Ningzong assuming the throne in the seventh month, Zhu had the opportunity to teach at court, immediately bringing him great joy. [Source: National Palace Museum, Taipei \=/ ]

Four Books of Zhu Xi

According to the National Palace Museum, Taipei: " The Four Books, with a Collection of Comments and comprises of one volume of "Chapters from The Great Learning", ten volumes of "Compilations of The Analects of Confucius", seven volumes of "Compilations of Mencius", and one volume of "Chapters from Doctrine of the Mean". [Source: National Palace Museum, Taipei \=/ ]

"The Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean were originally chapters from The Classics of Rites, and were singled out and separately discussed only from Song Dynasty. The title The Four Books was given by Zhu Xi, who separated the classics from the biographies in The Great Learning, and also renumbered the chapters and supplemented missing sections from Doctrine of the Mean, referring to them as "Chapters". \=/

"The Analects of Confucius and Mencius were compilations of the various masters, and were therefore referred to as "Compilations". The original compilation placed the greatest emphasis on The Great Learning, followed by The Analects of Confucius, and then Mencius and Doctrine of the Mean, indicating the order of learning. The Four Books, with a Collection of Comments reflects Zhu Xi's scholarly style, carefully considering each and every sentence, referring to and combining accounts by other scholars, placing emphasis on elucidation of logic and annotating his own opinions. The main theme of Chapters from The Great Learning is an "inquiring mind", describing the learning process of "finding the righteous path in everything". \=/

"Zhu Xi had devoted his life to Compilations of the Four Books, and not only has a unique position and influence in the Neo-Confucianism, he had also included Mencius as one of the classics. Together with The Analects of Confucius, Erya: a Dictionary, The Book of Filial Piety and the "Nine Classics" from the Tang Dynasty, these now form the official "Thirteen Classics. The Four Books was a milestone in the history of Chinese literary classics." \=/

Three Perfections and Scholar-Official Painting

According to Columbia University's Asia for Educators: " The life of the educated man involved more than study for the civil service examinations and service in office. Many took to refined pursuits such as collecting antiques or old books and practicing the arts - especially poetry writing, calligraphy, and painting ("the three perfections"). For many individuals these interests overshadowed any philosophical, political, or economic concerns; others found in them occasional outlets for creative activity and aesthetic pleasure. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song ]

In the Song period the engagement of the elite with the arts led to extraordinary achievement in calligraphy and painting, especially landscape painting. But even more people were involved as connoisseurs. A large share of the informal social life of upper-class men was centered on these refined pastimes, as they gathered to compose or criticize poetry, to view each other's treasures, or to patronize young talents.

Patricia Buckley Ebrey of the University of Washington wrote: "During the middle of the Northern Song scholars began to take up painting as one of the arts of the gentleman, viewing it as comparable to poetry and calligraphy as means for self expression. Brushwork in painting, by analogy to brushwork in calligraphy, was believed to express a person's moral character. [Source: Patricia Buckley Ebrey, University of Washington, depts.washington.edu/chinaciv /=]

"The scholars who took up painting generally preferred to use more individualistic and less refined styles of brushwork. These styles were relatively easier to master by those already familiar with the brush from calligraphy, and did not require the years of exacting training needed to succeed as a professional or court artist. /=\

"The eminent poet and statesman Su Shi (1037-1101) explicitly rejected the attempt to capture appearance as beneath the scholar. Paintings should be understated, not flashy. His painting of Rock and Old Tree, executed with a dry brush, exhibits rough qualities and does not aim at pleasure. The painting is more akin to an exercise aiming to improve and develop calligraphic skill than the sorts of paintings done by contemporary court painters. Emphasizing subjectivity, Su Shi said that painting and poetry share a single goal, that of effortless skill. /=\

"Scholar painters were not necessarily amateur painters, and many scholars painted in highly polished styles. This was particularly true in the case of paintings of people and animals, where scholar-painters developed the use of the thin line drawing but did not in any real sense avoid "form likeness" or strive for awkwardness, the way landscapists often did. One of the first literati to excel as a painter of people and animals was Li Konglin in the late Northern Song. A friend of Su Shi and other eminent men of the period, he also painted landscapes and collected both paintings and ancient bronzes and jades. Figures done with a thin line, rather than a modulated one, were considered plainer and more suitable for scholar painters." /=\

Fan Zhongyan: Prominent Scholar-Official-Poet

Fan Zhongyan (989-1052) was a prominent Chinese statesman, strategist, educator and writer of the Northern Song Dynasty. Wang Ping wrote on CCTV.com: "He believed that the shortage of talented people was the major problem of the country, so education should be developed vigorously to train such people. Wherever he went, he made painstaking efforts to run schools. He founded the well-known Suzhou Prefectural School. Thanks to his pioneering endeavours, a good many talented scholars came to the fore during the Song and the ensuing dynasties. [Source:Wang Ping, CCTV.com, April 6, 2004 ~]

"Fan Zhongyan was one of the outstanding writers of poetry and prose during the Song Dynasty. "On Yueyang Tower" was his representative work. The well-known essay was not an elaborate portrayal of the tower alone. It was a depiction of the vast scene of the surrounding Dongting Lake, then a description of the mentality of banished officials and poets, and finally an elevation to a higher plane of philosophy. "One should be the first to bear hardships and the last to enjoy comforts," is a well-known remark by made Fan Zhongyan that has often been repeated over the centuries. ~

"Fan Zhongyan was born in Wuxian County, Suzhou in present-day Jiangsu Province in 989. When he was a child, his father died and his mother married another man. He was poor, but he learned diligently. At the age of 26, he became a successful candidate in the highest imperial examination and began his long official career. He was always anxious about the rise and fall of the nation and the joys and sorrows of the people.~

"Xixi, Taizhou was a small town on the coast of Jiangsu. The land was fertile and products were plentiful. As the waves lashed the shore, the land turned saline and alkaline. The local people became destitute and homeless. When he served as the magistrate of Xinghua, Fan Zhongyan encouraged the local people to build a breakwater dozens of kilometres long. The people returned to their homeland and called the breakwater "Lord Fan Embankment". ~

"At the beginning of the 11th century, troops of Yuanhao, King of the Western Xia regime, incessantly harassed the northwest border of the Northern Song Dynasty, causing serious losses of the people's lives and property. The troops of the Song Dynasty suffered one defeat after another. Fan Zhongyan was appointed the deputy military commissioner of Shaanxi. He displayed outstanding military talent and followed a policy of national concord. A peace treaty was signed between the Western Xia regime and the Northern Song Dynasty. ~

"After the war, Fan Zhongyan was transferred to the capital and appointed a participant in determining governmental matters. In 1043, the third year of the reign of Qingli, Emperor Renzong granted an audience to his ministers, seeking their opinions on major policies. Fan Zhongyan proposed a reform in the administration of local officials and nine other reforms. Historically they were known as "Qingli New Policies". The New Policies failed in about a year because of opposition from conservative officials. Fan Zhongyan was forced to leave the imperial court, but he was still concerned about his country and people." ~

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Robert Eno, Indiana University /+/ ; Asia for Educators, Columbia University afe.easia.columbia.edu ; University of Washington's Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization, depts.washington.edu/chinaciv /=\; National Palace Museum, Taipei; Library of Congress; New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; China National Tourist Office (CNTO); Xinhua; China.org; China Daily; Japan News; Times of London; National Geographic; The New Yorker; Time; Newsweek; Reuters; Associated Press; Lonely Planet Guides; Compton's Encyclopedia; Smithsonian magazine; The Guardian; Yomiuri Shimbun; AFP; Wikipedia; BBC. Many sources are cited at the end of the facts for which they are used.

Last updated August 2021

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SONG DYNASTY GOVERNMENT, BUREAUCRACY, SCHOLAR-OFFICIALS AND EXAMS

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"The founders of the Song dynasty built an effective centralized bureaucracy staffed with civilian scholar-officials. Regional military governors and their supporters were replaced by centrally appointed officials. This system of civilian rule led to a greater concentration of power in the emperor and his palace bureaucracy than had been achieved in the previous dynasties.

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https://iep.utm.edu/neo-confucian-philosophy/

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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.

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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.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/confucius#:~:text=Confucius%20believed%20that%20all%20people,China%20for%20thousands%20of%20years.

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An ancient Chinese text recorded the height of Confucius as nine feet six inches tall. While that document may have exaggerated his physical size, there's no doubt that Confucius was a teacher and philosopher of tremendous stature. His ideals have become intrinsically entwined with the national identity of China and the civilization of East Asia.

The individual known in the West as Confucius was born Kongqiu in 551 B.C. near Qufu, in eastern China. His family may once have been aristocratic, but they apparently fell on hard times, because he took menial jobs as a young man.

Love of learning

Confucius showed a zeal for academics early on. "At 15, I set my heart on learning," he later told his disciples. He studied music, mathematics, the classics, history, and more. He was especially entranced by the early years of the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 B.C.), a peaceful period he perceived as a golden age to be emulated.

Confucius stressed the cultivation of personal qualities such as benevolence, reciprocity, and filial piety.

Confucius believed that education and reflection led to virtue, and that those who aspired to command others must cultivate discipline and moral authority in themselves. He strove to rise through the government ranks, but he tended to offend others with his forceful personality, using his position as a bully pulpit for preaching good governance. He eventually was appointed to the influential post of minister of crime in the state of Lu but fell from favor through his aggressive reform efforts.

He tried for years to reenter public service in order to improve it from within, but he found far greater success as a teacher instead. Confucius broke with tradition in his belief that all human beings could benefit from education. He espoused lifelong learning "for the sake of the self," meaning self- knowledge and self-improvement. He attracted a wide circle of followers, who knew him as Kongfuzi (Master Kong). Those pupils recorded his words in The Analects, a collection of ethical concepts.

As stated in The Analects, Confucius believed that social harmony would naturally follow from the proper ordering of individuals in relation to
one another, with the family unit as the basic building block of society. He therefore stressed the cultivation of personal qualities such as benevolence, reciprocity, and filial piety as essential to the formation of well-educated, conscientious individuals who would benefit society through public service.

Spreading his wisdom

Confucius was largely ignored in his own day. When he died in 479 B.C., he left behind perhaps 3,000 students, who devoted themselves to preserving and propagating their master's precepts. Confucius's teachings were enthusiastically adopted as Chinese state ideology by the Han dynasty in the second century B.C. The Analects would go on to guide governments and individuals for millennia, informing and influencing Chinese history and civilization in the process.

This text is an excerpt from the National Geographic special issue The Most Influential Figures of Ancient History.

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An ancient Chinese text recorded the height of Confucius as nine feet six inches tall. While that document may have exaggerated his physical size, there's no doubt that Confucius was a teacher and philosopher of tremendous stature. His ideals have become intrinsically entwined with the national identity of China and the civilization of East Asia.

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Confucius

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When was Confucius born?

What is Confucius known for?

Confucius, (born 551, Qufu, state of Lu [now in Shandong province, China]-died 479 bce, Lu), China's most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, whose ideas have profoundly influenced the civilizations of China and other East Asian countries.

Life of Confucius

Confucius was born near the end of an era known in Chinese history as the Spring and Autumn Period (770-481 BCE). His home was in Lu, a regional state of eastern China in what is now central and southwestern Shandong province. Like other regional states at the time, Lu was bound to the imperial court of the Zhou dynasty (1045-221 BCE) through history, culture, family ties (which stretched back to the dynasty's founding, when relatives of the Zhou rulers were enfeoffed as heads of the regional states), and moral obligations. According to some reports, Confucius's early ancestors were the Kongs from the state of Song-an aristocratic family that produced several eminent counselors for the Song rulers. By the mid-7th century BCE, however, the family had lost political standing and most of its wealth, and some of the Kongs-Confucius's great-grandfather being one-had relocated to the state of Lu.

The Kongs of Lu were common gentlemen ( shi) with none of the hereditary entitlements their ancestors had once enjoyed in Song. The common gentlemen of the late Zhou dynasty could boast of their employability in the army or in any administrative position-because they were educated in the six arts of ritual ( see below Teachings of Confucius), music, archery, charioteering, writing, and arithmetic-but in the social hierarchy of the time they were just a notch higher than the common folk. Confucius's father, Shu-liang He, had been a warrior and served as a district steward in Lu, but he was already an old man when Confucius was born. A previous marriage had given him nine daughters and a clubfooted son, and so it was with Confucius that he was finally granted a healthy heir. But Shu-liang He died soon after Confucius's birth, leaving his young widow to fend for herself.

Confucius was candid about his family background. He said that, because he was "poor and from a lowly station," he could not enter government service as easily as young men from prominent families and so had to become "skilled in many menial things" ( Analects [Lunyu], 9:6). He found employment first with the Jisun clan, a hereditary family whose principal members had for many decades served as chief counselors to the rulers of Lu. A series of modest positions with the Jisuns-as keeper of granaries and livestock and as district officer in the family's feudal domain-led to more important appointments in the Lu government, first as minister of works and then as minister of crime.

Records of the time suggest that, as minister of crime, Confucius was effective in handling problems of law and order but was even more impressive in diplomatic assignments. He always made sure that the ruler and his mission were well prepared for the unexpected and for situations that might put them in harm's way; he also knew how to advise them to bring a difficult negotiation to a successful conclusion. Yet he held his office for only a few years. His resignation was the result of a protracted struggle with the hereditary families-which, for generations, had been trying to wrestle power away from the legitimate rulers of Lu. Confucius found the actions of the families transgressive and their ritual indiscretions objectionable, and he was willing to fight by fair means or foul to have the power of the ruler restored. A major clash took place in 498 BCE. A plan to steer the families toward self-ruin backfired. The heads of the families suspected Confucius, and so he had no choice but to leave his position and his home.

The self-exile took Confucius on a long journey: first to Wei, the state just west of Lu, then southward to the state of Song, and finally to the states of Chen and Cai. The journey lasted 14 years, and Confucius spent much of that time looking for rulers who might be willing to accept his influence and be guided by his vision of virtuous government. Although his search was ultimately in vain, he never gave up, because he was eager for someone to "put me to use" ( Analects, 17:5). He said to those who found his ambitions suspect, "How can I be like a bitter gourd that hangs from the end of a string and can not be eaten?" ( Analects, 17:7).

Confucius was emboldened to think that he could set things right in the world, because he was born at a time when such aspirations were within the reach of men living in circumstances similar to his. By the mid-6th century BCE the Zhou dynasty was approaching its 500th year. The political framework that the dynastic founders had put in place-an enfeoffment system held together by family ties-was still standing, but the joints had been giving out since the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period, and so the structure, if not shored up, was in danger of collapse. The regional rulers, who were relatives of the Zhou king, should have been his strongest supporters, but they preferred to pursue their own ambitions. In the century before Confucius's birth, two or three of them simply acted on behalf of the king, and under their watch the empire managed to hold itself together and to keep enemies at bay. By Confucius's time, however, such leaders had disappeared. No one among the regional rulers was interested in the security of the empire or the idea of the greater good. Petty feuds for petty gains consumed most of their time, while lethargy took up the rest. The same could be said of the members of the aristocratic class, who had once aided their ruler in government. Now they were gaining the upper hand, and some were so brazen as to openly compete with their ruler for wealth and women. Their apathy and ineptitude, however, allowed the common gentlemen-men like Confucius, who had once been in their service-to step in and take charge of the administrative functions of the government.

The common gentlemen, at this point, still could not displace the aristocrats as the society's elite. Yet, if they worked hard enough and were smart, they could exert influence in most political contests. But the more discerning among them set their goals higher. They saw an opportunity to introduce a few new ideas about worth ( xian) and nobleness ( shang)-which, they felt, could challenge assumptions that had been used to justify the existing social hierarchy. They asked whether ability and strength of character should be the measures of a person's worth and whether men of noble rank should be stripped of their titles and privileges for incompetence and moral indiscretion. Those who posed such questions were not merely seeking to compete in the political world. They wanted to change unspoken rules so as to favour the virtuous and the competent. This, in part, explains what Confucius was trying to teach. He believed that the moral resolve of a few could have a beneficial effect on the fate of the many. But integrity alone, in his view, would not be enough. Good men had to be tested in politics: they should equip themselves with knowledge and skills, serve their rulers well, and prove their worth through their moral influence.

The man Confucius looked back to for inspiration and guidance was Zhougong (the Duke of Zhou)-a brother of the founder of the Zhou dynasty and the regent of the king's young son Chengwang. Despite the temporal distance between them, Confucius believed that he and the Duke of Zhou wanted the same thing for the dynasty: social harmony and political stability grounded in trust and mutual moral obligations, with minimal resort to legal rules. But the Duke of Zhou was royalty and Confucius was a professional bureaucrat, which meant that he had limited political authority. And even the authority he possessed was transient, depending on whether he had a government job. Without an official position, Confucius also would not be entitled (for example) to host a feast, to assist a ruler in a sacrifice, or to take part in any of the occasions that were the living components of the political order that the Duke of Zhou had envisioned and Confucius strongly endorsed. Thus, Confucius was distressed when he was unemployed-anxious about not being of use to the world and about not having material support. Men who knew him on his travels wondered whether his eagerness for a political position might have led him to overplay his hand and whether he had compromised his principles by allowing disreputable men and women to act as his intermediaries. His critics included the three or four of his disciples who accompanied him on his exile.

Confucius's disciples were considerably younger than him. He did not actively recruit them when he was a counselor in Lu. He did not found any school or academy. Young men from a wide range of backgrounds-sons of aristocrats, children of common gentlemen, merchants, farmers, artisans, and even criminals and sons of criminals-chose to attach themselves to him in order to learn from him skills that might get them started on a path toward an official career. In the process, they acquired a lot more: in particular, a gentleman's refinement and moral acuity, which in Confucius's mind were essential to a political profession. Confucius was the "master" ( zi) to these followers, who called themselves his "disciples" or "apprentices" ( tu). Among his earliest disciples, three stood out: Zigong, Zilu, and Yan Hui.

Zigong had been a merchant before becoming Confucius's disciple. He was articulate and shrewd and quick on his feet. Confucius observed in him a resolve to improve his lot and the promise of becoming a fine diplomat or a financial manager. He enjoyed Zigong's company because Zigong was someone with whom he could share his thoughts about the world and the people they knew and about poetry and ritual practices ( Analects, 11:3; 1:15; 11:19; 5:9).

Zilu, unlike Zigong, was rough and unhewn, a rustic man. Confucius knew that Zilu would do anything to protect him from harm: "wrestle a tiger with his bare hands" or "follow him on the open sea in a bamboo raft." Yet, Confucius felt, simply being brave and loyal was "hardly the way to be good," because, without the advantage of thought and a love for learning, people would not be able to know whether their judgment had been misguided or whether their actions might lead them and others onto a perilous road, if not a violent end ( Analects, 5:7; 7:11). Still, Confucius took Zilu in, for he was someone "who did not feel ashamed standing next to a man wearing fox or badger fur while himself dressed in a tattered gown padded with silk floss" and who was so reliable that "by speaking from just one side of a dispute" in a court of law he could "bring a legal dispute to a conclusion" ( Analects, 9:27; 12:12). Besides, Confucius did not deny instruction to anyone who wanted to learn and was unwilling to give up when trying to solve a difficult problem. In return, he expected nothing more than a bundle of dried meat as a gift ( Analects, 7:7).

Yet even that modest offer was probably beyond the means of another disciple, Yan Hui, who was from a poor family and who was content with "living in a shabby neighborhood on a bowlful of millet and a ladleful of water" ( Analects, 6:11). No hardship or privation could have distracted him from his love of learning and his desire to know the good. Yan Hui was Confucius's favourite, and, when he died before his time, Confucius was so bereft that other disciples wondered whether such a display of emotion was appropriate. To this their teacher responded, "If not for this man, for whom should I show so much sorrow?" ( Analects, 11:9; 11:10).

It was these three-Zigong, Zilu, and Yan Hui-who followed Confucius on his long journey into the unknown. In doing so, they left behind not only their homes and families but also career opportunities in Lu that could have been gainful.

Their first stop was the state of Wei. Zilu had relatives there who could have introduced Confucius to the state's ruler. There were others, too-powerful men in the ruler's service-who knew of Confucius's reputation and were willing to help him. But none of these connections landed Confucius a job. Part of the problem was Confucius himself: he was unwilling to pursue any avenues that might obligate him to those who could bring him trouble rather than aid. Also, the ruler of Wei was not interested in finding a capable man who could offer him counsel. Moreover, he had plenty of distractions-conflicts with neighbouring states and at home in Wei-to fill his time. Still, Confucius was patient, waiting four years before he was granted an audience. But the meeting was disappointing: it only confirmed what Confucius already knew about this man's character and judgment. Soon after their encounter, the ruler died, and Confucius saw no further reason to remain in Wei. Thus, he headed south with his disciples.

Before reaching the state of Chen, his next stop, two incidents along the road nearly took his life. In one, a military officer, Huan Tui, tried to ambush Confucius as he was passing through the state of Song. In another, he was surrounded by a mob in the town of Kuang, and for a time it looked as though he might be killed. These incidents were not spontaneous but were the machinations of Confucius's enemies. But who would have wanted him dead, and what could he have done to provoke such reactions? Historians in later eras speculated about the causes and resolutions of these crises. Although they never found an adequate explanation for Huan Tui's action, some suggested that the mob of Kuang mistook Confucius for someone else. In any event, the Analects, the most reliable source on Confucius's life, records only what Confucius said at those moments when he realized that death might be imminent. "Heaven has given me this power-this virtue. What can Huan Tui do to me!" was his response after he learned about Huan Tui's plan to ambush him ( Analects, 7:23). His utterance at the siege of Kuang conveyed even greater confidence that Heaven would stand by him. He said that with the founder of the Zhou dynasty dead, this man's cultural vestiges "are invested in me." And since "Heaven has not destroyed this culture" and does not intend to do so, it will look after the cultural heirs of the Zhou. Thus, Confucius declaimed, "What can the people of Kuang do to me?" ( Analects, 9:5).

Emboldened by his purpose, Confucius continued his journey to Chen, where he spent three uneventful years. Eventually, a major war between Chen and a neighbouring state led him to journey west toward the state of Chu, not knowing that another kind of trial was awaiting him. This time, "the provisions ran out," and "his followers became so weak that none of them could rise up on their feet" ( Analects 15:2). The brief account in this record prompted writers in later centuries to speculate about how Confucius might have behaved in this situation. Was he calm or vexed? How did he talk to his disciples? How did he help them come to terms with their predicament? And which disciple understood him best and offered him solace? None of these stories could claim veracity, but, taken together, they humanized the characters involved and filled, if only imaginatively, the gaps in the historical sources.

Confucius and his companions went only as far as a border town of Chu before they decided to turn back and retrace their steps, first to Chen and then to Wei. The journey took more than three years, and, after reaching Wei, Confucius stayed there for another two years. Meanwhile, two of his disciples, Zigong and Ran Qiu, decided to leave Confucius in Wei and accept employment in the government of Lu. At once Zigong proved his talent in diplomacy, and Ran Qiu did the same in warfare. It was probably these two men who approached the ruler and the chief counselor of Lu, asking them to make a generous offer to Confucius to entice him back. Their plan worked. The Zuozhuan ("Zuo Commentary"), an early source on the history of this period ( see below Classic works), notes that, in the 11th year of the reign of Duke Ai of Lu (484 BCE), a summons from the duke arrived along with a gift of a handsome sum. "Thereupon, Confucius returned home."

After his return, Confucius did not seek any position in the Lu government. He did not have to. The present ruler and his counselors regarded him as the "state's elder" ( guolao). They either approached him directly for advice or used his disciples as intermediaries. The number of his disciples multiplied. The success of Zigong and Ran Qiu must have enhanced his reputation as a person who could prepare young men for political careers. But those who were drawn to him for this reason often found themselves becoming interested in questions other than how to advance in the world ( Analects, 2:18). Some asked about the idea of virtue, about the moral requisites for serving in government, or about the meanings of phrases such as "keen perception" and "clouded judgment" ( Analects, 12:6; 12:10). Others wanted to know how to pursue knowledge and how to read abstruse texts for insights ( Analects, 3:8). Confucius tried to answer these questions as best as he could, but his responses could vary depending on the temperament of the interlocutor, leading to confusion among his students when they tried to compare notes ( Analects, 11:22). This way of instructing was wholly in tune with what Confucius believed to be the role of a teacher. A teacher could only "point out one corner of a square," he said; it was up to the students "to come back with the other three" ( Analects, 7:8). To teach, therefore, is "to impart light" ( hui): to provide guidance to students and to entice them forward, so that even when they are tired and dispirited, even when they want to give up, they cannot. In a similar vein, Confucius said of himself, "I am the sort of man who forgets to eat when trying to solve a problem, who is so joyful that I forget my worries and do not become aware of the onset of old age" ( Analects, 7:19).

When old age did arrive, Confucius discovered that the act of holding his conduct and judgment to the right measure no longer bore him down. "At 70," he said, "I followed what my heart desired without overstepping the line" ( Analects, 2:4). This, however, did not mean that Confucius was free of care. Historians and philosophers in later centuries typically portrayed a careworn Confucius in his final days. Yet he still rejoiced in life because life astonished him, and the will in all living things to carry on in spite of setbacks and afflictions inspired him. It was the pine and the cypress Confucius admired most, because "they are the last to lose their needles" ( Analects, 9:28). He died at the age of 73 on the 11th day of the fourth lunar month in the year 479 BCE.

Sources on Confucius

Sources on the life of Confucius are sparse. Official annals and other historical sources of the late Spring and Autumn Period rarely mention his name because he did not play a conspicuous role in the political world. In fact, he barely existed in that world, since most of his life was spent either in preparation for such a career or in exile. Yet the gaps in the historical records were eventually beneficial, because they prompted later scholars to look for any trace of evidence that might reveal something new about him. Unfortunately, such searches often led to imaginative conjectures about Confucius, as in the account by a writer of the 3rd century BCE in which Confucius described himself as a yellow chi (homeless dragon) swimming in the turbid water but drinking from the clear. Confucius, in this writer's mind, could have chosen to live like a true dragon and never leave his pristine pool, but he preferred to be a chi. Throughout early Chinese history, there were many such writers, and the source they turned to repeatedly for understanding and inspiration was the Analects.

The Analects is the work most closely associated with Confucius. It is a record of his life in fragments, collected into 20 sections. The sections contain descriptions of his character, deportment, and moments of his life in exile or at home in Lu; bits of conversations he had with his disciples and other people he knew; and remarks spoken in his voice but often in the absence of a context. Without the aid of commentaries, this work-which also lacks any apparent organization-can be misleading or discouraging for some readers. Yet, with patience and attentiveness, it is possible to glean from the gathered pieces flashes of Confucius's genius and the elements of his humanity. The Analects probably took shape within the first century after Confucius's death. A handful of younger disciples-who make their appearances rather forcefully at the beginning and the end of the work-could have initiated the project, but it took another 200-300 years of tinkering-with some passages being omitted and others appended or modified-before the text settled into its present form. Material evidence of the age of the standard text emerged from the ground in 1973, when archaeologists opened the tomb of the prince of Zhongshan ( Liu Xiu, also known as King Huai), a relative of the Han emperor Wudi. The tomb, dated to 55 BCE, was discovered in Hebei province about 100 miles south of Beijing. The Analects, written on bamboo strips, was included among the grave objects that accompanied the prince to his afterlife.

A second work that is central to the study of Confucius and his thought is the Zuo Zhuan ("Zuo Commentary"). Although it is a commentary on the Chunqiu, the official annals of the state of Lu covering the Spring and Autumn Period, it does more than provide background and narrative structure for the events listed chronologically in the annals. The Zuo writer probably had at his disposal a wide range of scribal records, the most important of which were speeches of rulers and counselors and of men and women who had played a role in the political fate of their families and their states during the late Zhou dynasty. The best of these speeches reflect the characters of the speakers and the cultural practices that guided their moral decision making. They also throw light on Confucius's intellectual ancestry and the roots of his moral thinking. Confucius never professed to be an original thinker. He said, "I transmit but do not innovate. I love antiquity and have faith in it" ( Analects, 7:1). The Zuo Zhuan offers a view of China in the 200 years before Confucius's birth, which was not the antiquity Confucius had in mind. But when one reads it together with the early classics on rites ( see below Teachings of Confucius), poetry, and history, it can take one to the knowledge that Confucius intended to transmit.

The third source is a long biography of Confucius written in the 1st century BCE. The author, Sima Qian, is China's most distinguished historian, and the biography remains the standard in Chinese historiography. Even though later scholars did not find all his stories believable and saw logistical problems in his account of Confucius's travels, they were willing to overlook such questions because of Sima Qian's rare talent for improving the records imaginatively and reconstructing the interior lives of his subjects. In his biography of Confucius, Sima Qian tried to work mostly with the Analects, grouping individual utterances together to make them cohere and expanding isolated episodes by adding more characters and action. The biography was not altogether elegant or persuasive, but it was the earliest attempt to thread together into a continuous narrative the fragments in the Analects and the stories about Confucius that had been circulating through the works of historians and philosophers in the 300 years since his death.

Teachings of Confucius

Confucius thought that the rites, or ritual (li)-encompassing and expressing proper human conduct in all spheres of life-could steady a man and anchor a government and that their practice should begin at home. "Give your parents no cause for worry other than your illness," he said. "When your parents are alive, do not travel to distant places, and if you have to travel, you must tell them exactly where you are going" ( Analects, 2:6, 4:19). But what if your parents are thinking of doing something wrong? "Be gentle when trying to dissuade them from wrongdoing," Confucius advised. "If you see that they are inclined not to heed your advice, remain reverent ( jing). Do not openly challenge them. Do not be resentful even when they wear you out and make you anxious" ( Analects, 4:18). Every human relationship is a balancing act, and the one between child and parents is the most demanding yet the most deserving of attention and patience, because it is rooted in love and the child's earliest memories of warmth and affection. Confucius did not want children to be acquiescent in situations that call for their judgment. At the same time, he discouraged confrontation even when the parents are culpable. He worried that parents might lose their sense of proportion and their child's affection for them, and so he urged the child to "remain reverent" even if the parents are not inclined to heed the child's advice. The rites, therefore, enable the child to avoid a clash without having to betray principles. But unless the child "acts according to the spirit of the rites, in being respectful, he will tire himself out; in being cautious, he will become timid" ( Analects, 8:2).

In the eyes of his contemporaries, Confucius was someone who embodied that spirit. They observed that "at court when he was speaking with the counselors of the lower rank, he was relaxed and affable. When speaking with counselors of the higher rank, he was frank but respectful. And in the ruler's presence, though he was filled with reverence and awe, he was perfectly composed" ( Analects,10:2).

The spirit of the rites is the ineffable, and, therefore, different from prescribed rules. It awaits the person with knowledge and awareness and skills in deportment to put it into motion, for every occasion is different. The circumstances change, and they change even as the occasion unfolds. Thus, when Confucius was inside the temple of the Duke of Zhou, "he asked questions about everything"; he knew the procedures of the sacrifice, yet he still approached the rites as if he were performing them for the first time. "Asking questions," he said, "is the correct practice of the rites" ( Analects, 3:15).

An education in the Odes, the earliest collection of Chinese poetry, complements an education in the rites. The Odes "can give the spirit exhortation, the mind keener eyes," Confucius said. "They can make us better adjusted in a group and more articulate when voicing a complaint" ( Analects, 17:9). He told his son, "Unless you learn the Odes, you won't be able to speak" ( Analects, 16:13). Just as the legendary sage emperor Shun (c. 23rd century BCE) told the director of music to teach the children poetry-to let the poems become their voice-so that "the straightforward shall yet be gentle, the magnanimous shall yet be dignified"-Confucius, too, hoped that the Odes would become his son's speech, because such utterances are always appropriate and so will "never swerve from the path" ( Analects, 2:2). For him, a love poem from the Odes, called Guanju ("Fishhawk"), best illustrates this point. The poem tells the reader that in yearning for the woman he desired, the wooer did not suffer unduly, and in courting his lady, he did not make a vulgar display of his feelings. The poem reads: "With harps we bring her company," and "with bells and drums do her delight." Of the tone and sentiment in this poem, Confucius said, "There is joy but no immodest thoughts, sorrow but no self-injury" ( Analects, 3:20).

The music Confucius loved best was the ancient music known as shao. When he first heard it, he said, "I never imagined that music could be this beautiful," and "for the next three months he did not notice the taste of meat" ( Analects, 7:14). The music of shao is associated with the story of how Shun ascended to power upon the decision of Emperor Yao (c. 24th century BCE), Shun's predecessor, to abdicate in favour of a man who grew up in the wilds but whose love for virtue was like the rush of a torrent. According to the Shujing, a compilation of documents related to China's early history, when the music was played in the court of Emperor Shun, not only men but gods and spirits, birds and beasts were drawn to it. Such was the power of music that embodied the tenor and vehicle of a moral government.

Whereas Confucius looked upon music as the culmination of culture-of notes "bright and distinct" gathering in fluency and harmony-the Confucian philosopher Mencius (c. 371-c. 289 BCE) took the idea in another direction, seeing it as a trope of Confucius's achievements ( Analects, 3:23). In the work most closely associated with him (the Mencius), Mencius said that only Confucius could advance or retreat, serve or not serve "according to circumstances" and in a timely fashion, and, like a symphony perfectly brought together, "from the ringing of bells at the beginning to the sound of the jade tubes at the end," there was an internal order ( Mencius, 5B:1). The order found in the music of shao or in the conduct of a person suggests the ultimate good, but it is not an abstract idea, for it effects an emotional pull-a gravitating toward the music or the person possessing it. It has a kind of magic because it reflects a rightness in sound or in human deliberation. And this rightness of expression or intent serves a higher ideal, which Confucius called humaneness (ren).

When his disciple Zigong asked him what is humaneness, Confucius replied, "Do not impose on others what you do not want [others to impose on you]" ( Analects, 15:24). A humane man is someone who is able "to make analogies from what is close at hand" ( Analects, 6:30). He uses this knowledge to imagine the humanity in others, and he relies on his learning of rites and music to hold him to the right measure. Confucius was often asked whether someone was humane, and in response he always gave a careful assessment of the person's strengths. He would say, for example, that the man "did his best" in fulfilling his public duty, "had administrative talents," or "wanted nothing to defile him"-but such virtue, he would add, did not imply that the man was humane ( Analects, 5:8; 5:19). In fact, Confucius claimed that he had never met anyone who was truly humane. This, however, did not mean that humaneness was beyond reach. "As soon as I desire humaneness, it is here," he said, and everyone he had come across had sufficient strength "to devote all his effort to the practice of humaneness" ( Analects, 7:30; 4:6). Humaneness "is beautiful ( mei)," and most people are drawn to it, yet, Confucius observed, few will choose to pursue it ( Analects, 4:1; 4:6). That resistance suggests a rich and more complex notion of human nature, without which morality could not come into play. And, as his disciple Zengzi (505-436 BCE) said, only the strong and resolute are game for the quest, because "the road is long" and "ends only with death." ( Analects, 8:7).

Confucius gave his teachings on humaneness a political dimension, though they seemed to be intended for the self. He observed that Emperor Shun was able to order the world simply by perfecting his own humanity and by cultivating a respectful demeanour. "If you set an example by correcting your mistakes, who dares not to correct his mistakes?" he asked the counselor Jikangzi. "Just desire the good and the people will be good. The character of those at the top is like that of the wind. The character of those below is like that of grass. When wind blows over the grass, the grass is sure to bend" ( Analects, 12:17; 12:19). But when asked what should come first when administrating a state, he said "trust" ( xin). If a ruler's words and actions do not inspire trust, Confucius asserts, his government will certainly perish, even though he might ensure enough food to feed the people and adequate arms to defend them ( Analects, 12:7). Confucius thought that the classic enfeoffment system of the early Zhou dynasty came very close to an ideal government because it was grounded in the trust between the Zhou emperor in the west and the relatives he sent east with vested authority to create new colonies for the young empire. Such a government, reinforced with the civilizing powers of rites and music, does not need complex laws and edicts to keep the people in check. Confucius said, "Guide the people with ordinances and statutes and keep them in line with [threats of] punishment, they will try to stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. If you guide them with exemplary virtue and keep them in line with the practice of the rites, they will have sense of shame and will know to reform themselves" ( Analects, 2:3).

Few people knew how to reform themselves in Confucius's time, and there was nearly no one among their rulers for them to look up to. But Confucius still had faith in professional advisers like himself, who, in the tradition of the great counselors of the past, were able to make rulers great with their hard work, discernment, and deft ways of moral suasion.

Later development of Confucian doctrines

The next 250 years of Chinese history, known as the Warring States Period, was even more fraught with tension and uncertainty than the one Confucius had known. A ruler's success at this later time was measured by the size and number of his conquests, achieved through military operations and political maneuvers. The means to power also became more violent and sophisticated. Accordingly, followers of Confucius either held on to certain aspects of his teachings with a tighter grip or realized the need to adapt what he had said to the political reality of their times. Mencius was a member of the first group and Xunzi (c. 300-c. 230 BCE) of the second. Xunzi, who followed Mencius by about a century, severely criticized his predecessor. In his major work, now called the Xunzi, he accused Mencius of misleading "the dim-witted scholars of the vulgar age," letting them believe that Mencius's own "aberrant" and "esoteric" doctrines are the "true words" of Confucius ( Xunzi, Chapter 6, "Contra Twelve Philosophers"). Later Confucians, who made much of the differences between the two philosophers, pointed to their theories of human nature as the source of their disagreement. But the fixation on that subject tended to obscure their more important differences regarding such topics as education and self-knowledge, feelings and intellect, law and adjudication, and the moral risks of a political profession.

Both Mencius and Xunzi took up the subject of moral judgment-the most difficult of human responsibilities in Confucius's view-and explored it with greater precision and urgency than Confucius had done. On the question of which of the human faculties should play the deciding role, Mencius opted for the heart while Xunzi favoured the mind. Mencius believed that "every person has a heart that is sensitive to the sufferings of others"; therefore, he said, the sight of a young child about to fall into a well would horrify anyone who might be a witness and afflict that person with pain ( Mencius, 2A:6). The horror-and the pain-is an unthinking response from the heart, which Mencius presented as proof that all humans are born with good impulses. People who lack the feeling of commiseration have only themselves to blame; they must have let go of their inborn nature, Mencius observed, and left their hearts morally barren ( Mencius, 6A:8).

Mencius's theory of human nature is bold. He claimed that he had gotten it from Confucius, though one learns from the Analects that Confucius did not like to talk about human nature ( Analects, 5:13). However, given what Confucius said about learning-"Being human and yet lacking in humaneness-what can such a man do with the rites?" or "with music?"-he must have had some notion of human nature, which was likely to have been positive ( Analects, 3:3). Mencius, for his part, wanted to go much further by using his theory of human nature as the basis of an entire moral philosophy. Thus, he speculated on ways of extending the heart's potential and on how the larger world would be affected if that potential were fulfilled. Using a legendary figure to illustrate the key points of his teaching, Mencius related how the emperor Shun was able to emerge from the darkest of family histories (insensate father, cruel stepmother, and scheming half brother) to become a perfected self. Indeed, according to Mencius, at no time-not even when his family was plotting against his life-was Shun ever resentful or disrespectful toward his parents ( Mencius, 5A:1, 2, 3). It was a moving, but not altogether credible, tale of strength gained through self-examination.

Confucius would have recognized Mencius's story as an expression of what he had taught about filiality, but he would not have gone as far as Mencius did in making Shun the supreme model of filiality and in suggesting that such virtue was all a ruler would need "to give ease to his people" ( Mencius, 5A.5). In fact, Confucius said that even Shun, a supremely cultivated ruler, found such a task "difficult to do" ( Analects, 6.30).

Although Mencius's political thought might today seem somewhat simplistic, he had a respectable following among the young; he also made a good living as a political counselor, and his service was often in demand. The rulers of his time did not mind listening to his remonstrances because, despite his reproving voice, he always included a positive message about their moral potential. He would tell them that no matter what sorts of transgressions they may have committed in the past, they could always recover their potential to do good if they applied themselves. Mencius was optimistic about the human condition and was willing to forego history and gloss over inconsistencies in his teachings in order to pursue his vision ( Mencius, 7B:3).

Xunzi, on the other hand, was always seeking clarity-clarity of thought and words and a clear-eyed view of reality. He did not set out to challenge Mencius and did not mean to be polemical when he said that human nature is repellent. He simply wanted to give a discomforting and more truthful account of what human beings are like in order to get them moving more quickly on the road to reform. To that end, he wrote about desires-how to manage them before they become obsessively out of control ( Xunzi, Chapter 21, "Dispelling Obsessions"); about power-how to use it effectively and properly when one has it; and about the difference between brute force and the authority of a true king ( Xunzi, Chapter 11, "Kings and Lord-Protectors"). Xunzi traveled widely abroad and was active in political circles, working with several heads of state and witnessing their horrific deeds and misconduct. In fact, the most violent chapter in the history of the late Warring States Period occurred in Xunzi's ancestral state of Zhao in the year 260 BCE, when Xunzi happened to be there. Thousands of Zhao soldiers were buried alive on this occasion by the army of the Qin dynasty after they had surrendered. Perhaps because of what he had seen and experienced, Xunzi liked to use startling images and shocking analogies in his writing to shake the men of his time from their mental lassitude and moral idleness. To one such man, a prime minister of the state of Qi who aspired to follow the great kings of the past but had not yet taken the first step, Xunzi said, "For you [to harbour such ambitions] is analogous to lying down flat on one's face and trying to lick the sky or trying to rescue a man who had hanged himself by pulling at his feet" ( Xunzi, Chapter 16, "On Strengthening the State").

Along with his warnings, Xunzi offered guidance and examples from more distant history, using the Duke of Zhou and his father, Wenwang, among others, as models of conduct and character. Of the Duke of Zhou, Xunzi said that he was born into power and knew how to utilize it, and, even when his actions might have seemed irregular, people trusted him as they trusted the four seasons-such was the integrity of this man ( Xunzi, Chapter 8: "Teachings of the Ru").

Confucius also admired the Duke of Zhou for his political vision and for having seen the young dynasty through a perilous time. And he believed that having the trust of the people was the first item of business for a ruler, because without it the government could not stand on firm ground. In these ways, Confucius was Xunzi's precursor. Confucius also stressed the importance of maintaining some emotional distance from matters that require judgment, but Xunzi placed more emphasis on the mind's potential. He went as far as to say that a balanced and discerning mind could offer a more precise measure of right and wrong and that the perspicuity of the mind, not the stirring of the heart, should be a person's moral compass. This was the essential difference between Xunzi and Mencius.

Many later Confucians sided with Mencius, and rulers tended to accept his teachings, as they did during Mencius's lifetime, because his voice was less taxing on their conscience (rulers also knew that they could bend his words to suit their ways). Mencian ideas were spread further in the 11th and 12th centuries CE by Confucians of the Song dynasty (960-1279). Thinkers such as Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and Zhu Xi (1130-1200), in their attempt to create a new Confucian philosophy to meet the challenges of Buddhist metaphysics and meditative practices, finding preliminary support in Mencius's concepts of human nature and self-cultivation, subscribed to Mencius's understanding of Confucius. The Mencius also gained prominence in their academies. Successors of Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi in the subsequent Yuan dynasty (1206-1368) would go further by including the Mencius in government examinations, thus making his relationship with the state even tighter.

Xunzi, in the meantime, was pushed aside. Confucians in the Song and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties rejected him because his writings on human nature threatened to undermine their belief that the achievement of self-knowledge is the fulfillment of humanity's inborn promise. Although there was more interest in Xunzi in the subsequent Qing dynasty (1644-1911/12), when scholars thought highly of his intellectual range and his writings on learning and politics, Xunzi did not supplant Mencius in the order of their affections. However, since the recent discovery of bamboo-strip texts dating from the Warring States Period ( see below Contemporary scholarship on Confucian thought), Xunzi has gained more attention from scholars. Indeed, several of these excavated texts seem to resonate with Xunzi's writings in both style and substance. That this should be so suggests that Confucius probably had a larger variety of heirs in early China than scholars have imagined, many more than the Song Confucians would have liked to believe. Confucius himself would have been pleased with this revelation. He would have preferred a richer and messier history of his legacy over any single line of transmission.

Contemporary scholarship on Confucian thought

In 1993, after the discovery of the bamboo-strip Analects, two other groups of manuscripts, on moral cultivation and political thought, were discovered in Hebei province, which led to a revival of scholarship on Confucian thought. The manuscripts, also written on bamboo strips, were dated to c. 300 BCE or earlier, during the Warring States Period, before China was unified. One batch of texts was dug up by archaeologists, and the other was taken by robbers from an unknown grave, smuggled to Hong Kong, and then sold to the Shanghai Museum through an arrangement orchestrated by antique dealers.

Confucius appeared, often with an interlocutor, in eight of the published texts from the Shanghai Museum collection. Since most of the texts are incomplete-with missing or damaged strips-it is difficult to establish just how much they add to scholars' knowledge and idea of Confucius. Even so, the material evidence firmly places him in Warring States history. Either in conversation with a disciple or with a counselor about the drought in Lu or the cause of social unrest, this was a Confucius animated by speech and still trying to think through the most confounding problems of the human condition.

Early materials associated with Confucius continued to surface in the early 21st century. In 2011, an excavation of a Han dynasty tomb in the northern outskirts of the city of Nanchang, in Jiangxi province, uncovered a bamboo text of the Analects, a covered mirror with painted images of Confucius and two of his disciples, all identified by their names and short citations from the Analects, and Sima Qian's biography of Confucius. The tomb belonged to Liu He, a grandson of the Han ruler Wudi. Liu He was made an emperor in 74 BCE at the age of 18 but was dethroned within 27 days-a victim of the political struggle going on at the time-and sent back to his ancestral home as a commoner. The ruler who succeeded him rehabilitated Liu He, granting him a title, Marquis Haihun, and a large fief just a few years before Liu He's death in 59 BCE at the age of 33. Many piles of pottery and precious stones, gold cakes and gold utensils, and bronze instruments and jade ornaments accompanied Marquis Haihun to his grave, but so also did the image and words of Confucius, which suggests that even in death this young nobleman chose to stay close to what had become his moral compass in life.
Annping Chin

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Confucius | Biography, Teachings, & Facts

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Confucius, China's most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, whose ideas have profoundly influenced the civilization of East Asia. Confucius's life and teachings were an expression of self-cultivation, of the ability of human effort to shape its own destiny.

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how did confucianism influence chinese society and government - Lisbdnet.com

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Government and society in China were grounded in the Confucian philosophy, which held that there was a basic order in the universe and a natural harmony

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The one philosophy with the greatest influence on cultures in East Asia
How often have you traveled to a foreign country and found yourself baffled by all the new, and seemingly alien, customs and traditions? Well, this article aims to uncover some of those mysteries and shed light on Asian culture. Different ideologies, philosophies and religions have shaped the cultures in Asian countries for thousands of years. In China, Japan and Korea, one of the most notable influences is Confucianism. It is an ethical and philosophical system founded by a Chinese philosopher in the 6th-5th century BCE.
A philosophy of virtues

Confucius was a great teacher, philosopher and politician. Photo by ErikaWittlieb / CC BY

Whether Confucianism actually is a religion or not is debatable, since it does not have any priests or churches. Nevertheless, it has continued to affect the lives of Asian people to this day. The system gives advice on how societies should be run, how people should live their lives and how relationships should be maintained. It stresses hierarchy, social harmony, group orientation and respect for elders - all aspects of Chinese, Japanese and Korean culture that are still very much alive.

The teachings of Confucianism consist of several principles or virtues, and some of the most notable ones are ren, li, zhong, and xiao. Ren deals with humaneness and kindness to others, li, rites, focuses on politeness and understanding everybody's correct place in the social hierarchy, zhong deals with loyalty to one's superiors and xiao, filial piety, promotes respect towards your elders, both the living and the dead. Together these virtues govern people's everyday lives.

Keep the harmony and don't rock the boat

The influence of Confucianism is even reflected in the contemporary way of teaching. Photo by Jacob Plumb / CC BY

In Asian cultures, people tend to respect hierarchy and status much more than Western people, who are generally more individualistic and not so strict about social order. In Confucianism, you are supposed to behave according to your rank and keep the society harmonious, and not according to how you feel and how you would personally want to do.

The good of the whole society comes before an individual person. Embarrassing yourself or others is also avoided because it would break the harmony. It explains why Asian people have sometimes difficulties saying "no" directly to your face. You are supposed to read between the lines if the other person is unwilling to agree with you and save them from the embarrassment of saying no.

In China, school days even in the elementary school can be up to 9 hours long. Photo by Salinger / CC BY

The way Confucianism is influencing the cultures of China, Japan and Korea can be seen in education too. The philosophy places great emphasis on schooling, and during the old times good education was the only way to move up in the society. The exams were notoriously difficult and consisted mostly of memorizing Confucian writings and classic works of literature. As a result, great value is put on education even today and the education system is highly competitive. So don't be shocked if before the exam week, you encounter Asian students living and sleeping in the library around the clock.

Age is not just a number

Respect towards elders is very important in Confucianism. Photo by 3dman_eu / CC BY

Knowing who your elders are and how to treat them is very important to Asian people, since you should act respectfully towards people who are older or above you in the hierarchy. In Confucianism, respect towards elders was originally between father and son, but it has been extended to describe other relationships too, such as the relationship between a ruler and a subject, a husband and a wife, elder and younger brother, and between friends.

Your new Asian friends might be keen to know your age which determines whether you are an older or younger "sister" or "brother" to them. Among younger people, though, these hierarchies might not be too obvious, but older people still follow them more rigidly.
Find out more about studying abroad in Asia Asia Exchange is a Finnish company providing study abroad opportunities in This article was written by Nella. Asia Pacific for students from all around the world. Want to get travel tips and new blog posts straight to your inbox? S ubscribe to our monthly newsletter! If you have any questions about studying abroad, feel free to contact us! We'll get back to you as soo n as possible.
Next time when the actions of a Chinese, Japanese or Korean person leaves you scratching your head, remember the teachings of Confucius, and the behavior might not seem so strange anymore.

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Confucianism - Shaping Asian Cultures for over 2,000 Years

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How often have you traveled to a foreign country and found yourself baffled by all the new, and seemingly alien, customs and traditions? Well, this article aims to uncover some of those mysteries and shed light on Asian culture. Different ideologies, philosophies and religions have shaped the cultures in Asian countries for thousands of years.

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An educated member of the government

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Service as a government official

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Several unelected government officials