Confucianism

Confucianism is often characterized as a system of social and ethical philosophy rather

than a religion. In fact, Confucianism built on an ancient religious foundation to establish
the social values, institutions, and transcendent ideals of traditional Chinese society. It
was what sociologist Robert Bellah called a "civil religion," (1) the sense of religious
identity and common moral understanding at the foundation of a society's central
institutions. It is also what a Chinese sociologist called a "diffused religion"; (3) its
institutions were not a separate church, but those of society, family, school, and state;
its priests were not separate liturgical specialists, but parents, teachers, and officials.
Confucianism was part of the Chinese social fabric and way of life; to Confucians,
everyday life was the arena of religion.

The founder of Confucianism, Master Kong (Confucius, 551-479 B.C.E.) did not intend
to found a new religion, but to interpret and revive the unnamed religion of the Zhou
dynasty, under which many people thought the ancient system of religious rule was
bankrupt; why couldn't the gods prevent the social upheavals? The burning issue of the
day was: If it is not the ancestral and nature spirits, what then is the basis of a stable,
unified, and enduring social order? The dominant view of the day, espoused by Realists
and Legalists, was that strict law and statecraft were the bases of sound policy.
Confucius, however, believed that the basis lay in Zhou religion, in its rituals (li). He
interpreted these not as sacrifices asking for the blessings of the gods, but as
ceremonies performed by human agents and embodying the civilized and cultured
patterns of behavior developed through generations of human wisdom. They embodied,
for him, the ethical core of Chinese society. Moreover, Confucius applied the term
"ritual" to actions beyond the formal sacrifices and religious ceremonies to include social
rituals: courtesies and accepted standards of behavior-- what we today call social
mores. He saw these time-honored and traditional rituals as the basis of human
civilization, and he felt that only a civilized society could have a stable, unified, and
enduring social order.

Thus one side of Confucianism was the affirmation of accepted values and norms of
behavior in primary social institutions and basic human relationships. All human
relationships involved a set of defined roles and mutual obligations; each participant
should understand and conform to his/her proper role. Starting from individual and
family, people acting rightly could reform and perfect the society. The blueprint of this
process was described in "The Great Learning," a section of the Classic of Rituals:

Only when things are investigated is knowledge extended; only when knowledge is
extended are thoughts sincere; only when thoughts are sincere are minds rectified; only
when minds are rectified are the characters of persons cultivated; only when character
is cultivated are our families regulated; only when families are regulated are states well
governed; only when states are well governed is there peace in the world.(3)

Confucius' ethical vision ran against the grain of the legalistic mind set of his day. Only
under the Han Emperor Wu (r. 140-87 B.C.E.) did Confucianism become accepted as
state ideology and orthodoxy. From that time on the imperial state promoted Confucian
values to maintain law, order, and the status quo. In late traditional China, emperors
sought to establish village lectures on Confucian moral precepts and to give civic
awards to filial sons and chaste wives. The imperial family and other notables
sponsored the publication of morality books that encouraged the practice of Confucian
values: respect for parents,loyalty to government, and keeping to one's place in
society—farmers should remain farmers, and practice the ethics of farming. This side of
Confucianism was conservative, and served to bolster established institutions and long-
standing social divisions.

There was, however, another side to Confucianism. Confucius not only stressed social
rituals (li), but also humaneness (ren). Ren, sometimes translated love or kindness, is
not any one virtue, but the source of all virtues. The Chinese character literally
represents the relationship between "two persons," or co-humanity—the potential to live
together humanely rather than scrapping like birds or beasts. Ren keeps ritual forms
from becoming hollow; a ritual performed with ren has not only form, but ethical content;
it nurtures the inner character of the person, furthers his/her ethical maturation. Thus if
the "outer"side of Confucianism was conformity and acceptance of social roles, the
"inner" side was cultivation of conscience and character. Cultivation involved broad
education and reflection on one's actions. It was a lifetime commitment to character
building carving and polishing the stone of one's character until it was a lustrous gem.
Master Kong described his own lifetime:

At fifteen, I set my heart on learning. At thirty, I was firmly established. At forty, I had no
more doubts. At fifty, I knew the will of heaven. At sixty, I was ready to listen to it. At
seventy, I could follow my heart's desire without transgressing what was right. Analects,
2:4

The inner pole of Confucianism was reformist, idealistic, and spiritual. It generated a
high ideal for family interaction: members were to treat each other with love, respect,
and consideration for the needs of all. It prescribed a lofty ideal for the state: the ruler
was to be a father to his people and look after their basic needs. It required officials to
criticize their rulers and refuse to serve the corrupt. This inner and idealist wing
spawned a Confucian reformation known in the West as Neo-Confucianism. The
movement produced reformers, philanthropists, dedicated teachers and officials, and
social philosophers from the eleventh through the nineteenth centuries.

The idealist wing of Confucianism had a religious character. Its ideals were
transcendent, not in the sense that they were other worldly (the Confucians were not
interested in a far-off heavenly realm), but in the sense of the transcendent ideal—
perfection. On the one hand, Confucian values are so closely linked with everyday life
that they sometimes seem trivial. Everyday life is so familiar that we do not take its
moral content seriously. We are each a friend to someone, or aparent, or certainly the
child of a parent. On the other hand, Confucians remind us that the familiar ideals of
friendship, parenthood, and filiality are far from trivial; in real life we only rarely attain
these ideals. We all too often just go through the motions, too preoccupied to give our
full attention to the relationship. If we consistently and wholeheartedly realized our
potential to be the very best friend, parent, son, or daughter humanly possible, we
would establish a level of caring, of moral excellence,that would approach the utopian.
This is Confucian transcendence: to take the actions of everyday life seriously as the
arena of moral and spiritual fulfillment.

The outer and inner aspects of Confucianism—its conforming and reforming sides—
were in tension throughout Chinese history. Moreover, the tensions between social and
political realities and the high-minded moral ideals of the Confucians were an ongoing
source of concern for the leaders of this tradition. The dangers of moral sterility and
hypocrisy were always present. Confucianism, they knew well, served both as a
conservative state orthodoxy and a stimulus for reform. Great Confucians, like religious
leaders everywhere, sought periodically to revive and renew the moral, intellectual, and
spiritual vigor of the tradition. Until the 1890s, serious-minded Chinese saw
Confucianism, despite its failures to realize its ideal society, as the source of hope for
China and the core of what it meant to be Chinese.

Although since the revolution, the public ideology of the People's Republic has
abandoned Confucian teachings, one can say that there is a continuity of form: like
Confucianism before it, Maoism teaches a commitment to transforming the world by
applying the lessons of autopian ideology to the actions and institutions of everyday life.
This is not to claim that Mao was a "closet Confucian," but to emphasize that the
Confucian way was virtually synonymous with the Chinese way.

CORE VALUES OF CONFUCIANISM

Confucian teaching rests on three essential values: Filial piety, humaneness, and ritual. The
Confucian value system may be likened in some ways to a tripod, which is one of the great
vessels of the Shang and Zhou Period and a motif that reoccurs in later Chinese arts. You could
say of the three legs of the tripod, one is filial devotion, or filial piety. A second is humaneness.
A third is ritual or ritual consciousness. Filial Piety Respect for one's parents, filial piety, is
considered the most fundamental of the Confucian values, the root of all others. Almost
everyone is familiar with the idea that filial piety is a prime virtue in Confucianism. It's a prime
virtue in the sense that, from the Confucian point of view, it's the starting point of virtue.
Humaneness is the ultimate goal, is the larger vision, but it starts with filial piety. Excerpt from
the Analects: Few of those who are filial sons and respectful brothers will show disrespect to
superiors, and there has never been a man who is respectful to superiors and yet creates
disorder. A superior man is devoted to the fundamental. When the root is firmly established,
the moral law will grow. Filial piety and brotherly respect are the root of humanity.1 1. A Source
Book in Chinese Philosophy, Wing-tsit Chan, ed., (Princeton University Press, 1963) Analects I:2
Filial piety derives from that most fundamental human bond: parent and child. The parent-child
relationship is appropriately the first of the five Confucian relationships. Although the child is
the junior member in the relationship, the notion of reciprocity is still key to understanding filial
piety. The Chinese word for this is xiao The top portion of the character for xiao, shows an old
man and underneath, a young man supporting the old man. There is this sense of the support
by the young of the older generation and the respect of the young for the older generation, but
it's also reciprocal. Just as parents have looked after children in their infancy and nurtured
them, so the young are supposed to look after parents when they have reached old age and to
revere them and to sacrifice to them after their death as well. Ancestor Worship Filial piety and
ancestor worship are interconnected as parts of a single concept. This becomes clear when one
considers that the word for filial piety is the same as the word for mourning, the child who acts
with piety towards its parent is equated with the child who mourns its parents through the
proper rituals. A key manifestation of filial piety was ancestor worship. Ancestor worship in
China was obviously related to the basic Confucian idea that children are obligated to respect
their parents in life and to remember them after they have died. There were two major loci of
ancestor worship, as far as most people were concerned. One locus was in the home where
people worshiped ancestral tablets. And the tablet behind me is an example of an ancestral
tablet that would be kept in the home. So this is the tablet of people named Liu whose remote
ancestors came from this place called Peng Cheng, which is in Northern China. Below this the
column says that this is the tablet or spirit tablet of the generations of ancestors of the Liu. And
this tablet in fact starts with the ninth generation and goes all the way down and you have the
generations on either side going from top to bottom. As I said, the large number of individuals
in this tablet implies quite accurately that there are an awful lot of living descendants who
relate to this particular tablet and who worship the ancestors in it. Another important focus of
ancestor worship was the graves. So that once or twice a year, minimally, people throughout
China would go to the graves of their ancestors, both especially recent ancestors, but also
sometimes more distant ancestors, to tidy up the graves and worship them. Humaneness
Another key value in Confucian thinking--the second leg of the tripod--is humaneness, the care
and concern for other human beings. Excerpt from the Analects: Confucius said: "...The humane
man, desiring to be established himself, seeks to establish others; desiring himself to succeed,
he helps others to succeed. To judge others by what one knows of oneself is the method of
achieving humanity..." 1 1. Sources of Chinese Tradition, Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1960), Analects VI:28 A second, very important concept in the
Analects of Confucius and again, in later Confucian thought is that of ren. Sometimes that term
ren is translated as goodness, benevolence. I prefer to translate it as humaneness or humanity
because the character is made up of two parts. On the left is the element that means a person
or a human being. On the right the element that represents a number two. So, ren has a sense
of a person together with others. A human being together with other human beings, a human
being in society. Ritual Consciousness The last of the three central Confucian values is respect
for ritual--the proper way of doing things in the deepest sense. The third leg in this tripod is
that of li, ritual consciousness or propriety. Li represents the forms in which human action are
supposed to go on. Excerpt from the Analects: Confucius said: "In rites at large, it is always
better to be too simple rather than too lavish. In funeral rites, it is more important to have the
real sentiment of sorrow than minute attention to observances." 1 1. Sources of Chinese
Tradition, Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), Analects
III:4 So, while in the course of evolution of the Confucian tradition, li rights are considered to
have become more, what in the West might be called more secular in character, not to be
concerned so much with the idea of trying to appease deceased ancestors as had been true in
the period prior to the time of Confucius. Still the notion of the ritual retains a very strong
religious association throughout time. So as that evolves in a more secular, humanistic context,
it still retains the sense that individuals have to defer to one another, have to show respect to
one another. They have to be prepared to make some sacrifice for one another. Confucius
himself emphasized again and again that ritual itself was important. That rituals, that through
ritual, people could learn proper relationships. So if we look at ancestor worship through the
lenses of ritual, what can we see? We can see, first of all, that through ancestor worship filial
piety is eternal. People can continue to be loyal and obedient to their parents even after their
parents have passed away. At the same time, and in line, indeed, with the ancient Confucian
theory, through ancestor worship, parents continue to teach their own children filial piety. In
the character li, the strong religious associations are very, very clear here. On the left side of
the character, li is the element indicating prognostication or pre-saging. On the right, you have
a ritual vessel. Rituals There are all kinds of rituals governing all aspects of life, the great
moments of life: Birth, capping (which is a coming of age ceremony for boys), marriage, death.
So, there are rituals also which apply to many other aspects of life as well, not just the great
moments of human life but many of the smaller and more ordinary interactions of human life.
At the pinnacle of the social order in imperial China was the emperor, the Son of Heaven, who
performed rituals designed to preserve the cosmic order. There was in fact a board of ritual, as
part of the imperial government. And the emperor himself was deeply involved in ritual
throughout the year. The emperor, for example, there would be the annual worship of heaven,
which was the most important day of the imperial ritual calendar. Now it was not only heaven
that was worshiped. It was also the emperors of previous dynasties that were worshiped, and it
was also the ancestors of the emperor that were worshiped. Insofar as the emperor was
worshiping his own ancestors, he was being a good Chinese Confucian. He was doing what
everyone else in China was doing. Insofar as the emperor worshiped the earlier emperors of
earlier dynasties, he was proclaiming the continuity of the imperial institution, above and
beyond the rise and collapse of particular dynasties. He was giving legitimacy to the imperial
institution itself. Insofar as the emperor worshiped heaven, he was expressing his privileged
position as the son of heaven. Reciprocity / The Five Relationships Excerpt from the Analects: Zi
Gong asked: "Is there any one word that can serve as a principle for the conduct of life?"
Confucius said: "Perhaps the word 'reciprocity': Do not do to others what you would not want
others to do to you."1 1. Sources of Chinese Tradition, Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1960), Analects XV:23 The importance of reciprocity, and the mutual
responsibility of one person for another, is essential to understanding the five basic human
relations suggested by Confucius. Very prominent in the Confucian tradition is the idea of the
five relationships between, if you take it according to Mencius, parent and child, minister and
ruler, husband and wife, older and younger brother, friend and friend. The order of the five
relationships is taken from that given by Confucius' most famous follower, the philosopher
Mencius (active 372-289 B.C.E.) whose conversations were recorded in the book Mencius (see
The Classics). Those five relationships and the fact of human relatedness are of crucial
importance in the Confucian tradition. In the first four cases, you're talking about differentiated
statuses. Now, the point is not to necessarily confirm or reinforce the status difference but to
understand what it is that establishes a responsibility between those two pairs in the
relationship. Man as Social Being Confucius builds his theory of society and government on the
assumption that man is a social being always interacting with other human beings. Moral
obligations to other people, and the imperative of public service, follow from this assumption.
Confucius had been traveling with his friends and his students, and visiting one state after
another and trying to persuade one ruler after another, and being unsuccessful at it. And at one
point, they lost their way in their travels, and one of Confucius' disciples went to ask directions
from somebody who was cultivating in a nearby field. And when this farmer learned who the
disciple was and who Confucius was, he said, "Instead of following someone who flees from this
man and that, you should flee from this whole generation of men." Now, that sets up the
peasant, the farmer as somebody who's cultivating his own garden and isn't worrying about the
rest of mankind. The disciple goes back to Confucius and reports this. And Confucius says, "One
cannot herd with the beasts or flock with the birds. If I am not to be a man among men," or
literally, to go in the company of other men, "then what am I to be? If the Way prevailed in the
world, I wouldn't be trying to change things." He is not content with what he finds. His
conscience impels him to try to rectify what is wrong in the world. And it is a sense of the moral
conscience that he's got to be in the company of other men, whatever he is going to make of
himself. It has to be in relation to human society. In the Confucian tradition, human relatedness
is the primary given. Human beings exist in a social context. They learn from one another, they
interact with one another. And so practically speaking, the way that one comes to understand
what it means to be human, or to be humane, is through one's interactions with other people,
and through the allied virtue of reciprocity or empathy, so that you understand yourself by
what you understand of others, and you understand others and treat them by what you
understand of yourself. Education Implicit in the Confucian emphasis on ritual and self-
cultivation through ritual is the notion that life is a continuous process of learning and self-
improvement. Confucius stressed the importance of education for achieving personal and social
order. Excerpt from the Analects: When Confucius was traveling to Wei, Ran Yu drove him.
Confucius observed, "What a dense population!" Ran Yu said, "The people having grown so
numerous, what next should be done for them?" "Enrich them," was the reply. "And when one
has enriched them, what next should be done?" Confucius said, "Educate them." 1 1. Sources of
Chinese Tradition, Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960)
Analects, XIII:9 Government Confucius' overriding concern was with government. He believed
that when virtuous men lead by moral example, good government would follow naturally. Then
if we recognize that the issue at the start is what is the true vocation of the noble man or the
noble person, it's a question of how do you govern. What is the proper way of governing?
Excerpt from the Analects: Confucius said: "If a ruler himself is upright, all will go well without
orders. But if he himself is not upright, even though he gives orders they will not be obeyed." 1
1. Sources of Chinese Tradition, Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed. (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1960). XIII:6 He says, "To try to order the people through laws and regulations and
implicit punishments, if you do that, people will find a way to avoid, evade the law, and they
will have no sense of shame. If you lead them by virtue and the rites, then they will govern
themselves, discipline themselves, and they will have a sense of shame." That's a rather basic
statement of the Confucian appeal to a basic personal morality in all persons, all men, rather
than a reliance upon coercion, on force, on power.

What is Confucianism?
Many of us have heard the biblical phrase, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'
The Chinese philosophy of Confucianism puts it this way: 'Do not do to others what you would have
them not do to you.'
Unlike Christianity, Confucianism is technically not a religion. But it does share the Christian
approach of loving others. In fact, that is the foundation of the philosophy. Confucianism is based
entirely on kindness, mutual respect and an appreciation for character virtues. It is founded on the
belief that society can flourish only when people learn to interact positively with each other.
Founding and Overview
Confucianism was developed in China by Master Kong in 551-479 BC, who was given the
name Confucius by Jesuit missionaries who were visiting there. However, the fundamental
principles of Confucianism began before his birth, during the Zhou Dynasty.
At that time, the ideas of respect and the well-being of others were prevalent, but there was also an
emphasis on spiritual matters - specifically, the goodness of the divine and the mandate to rule given
to those in power. These ideas were meant to unite the people, create stability and prevent rebellion.
Confucius believed his philosophy was also a route toward a civil society. However, he shifted
attention away from ruling authorities, the divine or one's future after death, focusing instead on the
importance of daily life and human interactions. This new, refined version of the philosophy did not
completely take root until the next dynasty, the Han (140-87 BC). It is the Confucianism that many
people are familiar with today.
The foundation of Confucianism is an appreciation for one's character and the well-being of others.
Now we will discuss the main features that reflect this aim.

Confucianism, the way of life propagated by Confucius in the 6th–5th

century BCE and followed by the Chinese people for more than two millennia.
Although transformed over time, it is still the substance of learning, the source of
values, and the social code of the Chinese. Its influence has also extended to other
countries, particularly Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
 ConfuciusConfucius, statue in Shanghai, China.© philipus/Fotolia

Confucianism, a Western term that has no counterpart in Chinese, is a worldview, a

social ethic, a political ideology, a scholarly tradition, and a way of life. Sometimes
viewed as a philosophy and sometimes as a religion, Confucianism may be
understood as an all-encompassing way of thinking and living that entails ancestor
reverence and a profound human-centred religiousness. East Asians may profess
themselves to be Shintōists, Daoists, Buddhists, Muslims, or Christians, but, by
announcing their religious affiliations, seldom do they cease to be Confucians.
Although often grouped with the major historical religions, Confucianism differs from
them by not being an organized religion. Nonetheless, it spread to other East Asian
countries under the influence of Chinese literate culture and has exerted a profound
influence on spiritual and political life. Both the theory and practice of Confucianism
have indelibly marked the patterns of government, society, education, and family of
East Asia. Although it is an exaggeration to characterize traditional Chinese life and
culture as Confucian, Confucian ethical values have for well over 2,000 years served
as the source of inspiration as well as the court of appeal for human interaction
between individuals, communities, and nations in the Sinitic world.
The Thought Of Confucius

The story of Confucianism does not begin with Confucius. Nor was Confucius the
founder of Confucianism in the sense that the Buddha was the founder
of Buddhism and Jesus Christ the founder of Christianity. Rather, Confucius
considered himself a transmitter who consciously tried to reanimate the old in order to
attain the new. He proposed revitalizing the meaning of the past by advocating a
ritualized life. Confucius’s love of antiquity was motivated by his strong desire to
understand why certain life forms and institutions, such as reverence for ancestors,
human-centred religious practices, and mourning ceremonies, had survived for
centuries. His journey into the past was a search for roots, which he perceived as
grounded in humanity’s deepest needs for belonging and communicating. He
had faith in the cumulative power of culture. The fact that traditional ways had lost
vitality did not, for him, diminish their potential for regeneration in the future. In fact,
Confucius’s sense of history was so strong that he saw himself as a conservationist
responsible for the continuity of the cultural values and the social norms that had
worked so well for the idealized civilization of the Western Zhou dynasty.

ConfuciusConfucius, illustration in E.T.C. Werner's Myths and Legends of China, 1922.

The historical context

The scholarly tradition envisioned by Confucius can be traced to the sage-kings of

antiquity. Although the earliest dynasty confirmed by archaeology is the Shang
dynasty (18th–12th century BCE), the historical period that Confucius claimed as
relevant was much earlier. Confucius may have initiated a cultural process known in
the West as Confucianism, but he and those who followed him considered themselves
part of a tradition, later identified by Chinese historians as the rujia, “scholarly
tradition,” that had its origins two millennia previously, when the legendary
sages Yao and Shun created a civilized world through moral persuasion.
Confucius’s hero was Zhougong, or the duke of Zhou (fl. 11th century BCE), who was
said to have helped consolidate, expand, and refine the “feudal” ritual system. This
elaborate system of mutual dependence was based on blood ties, marriage alliances,
and old covenants as well as on newly negotiated contracts. The appeal to cultural
values and social norms for the maintenance of interstate as well as domestic order
was predicated on a shared political vision, namely, that authority lies in universal
kingship, heavily invested with ethical and religious power by the “mandate of
heaven” (tianming), and that social solidarity is achieved not by legal constraint but
by ritual observance. Its implementation enabled the Western Zhou dynasty to survive
in relative peace and prosperity for more than five centuries.
Inspired by the statesmanship of Zhougong, Confucius harboured a lifelong dream to
be in a position to emulate the duke by putting into practice the political ideas that he
had learned from the ancient sages and worthies. Although Confucius never realized
his political dream, his conception of politics as moral persuasion became more and
more influential.
The concept of “heaven” (tian), unique in Zhou cosmology, was compatible with that
of the Lord on High (Shangdi) in the Shang dynasty. Lord on High may have referred
to the ancestral progenitor of the Shang royal lineage, but heaven to the Zhou kings,
although also ancestral, was a more-generalized anthropomorphic god. The
Zhou belief in the mandate of heaven (the functional equivalent of the will of the Lord
on High) differed from the divine right of kings in that there was no guarantee that the
descendants of the Zhou royal house would be entrusted with kingship, for, as written
in the Shujing (“Classic of History”), “heaven sees as the people see [and] hears as the
people hear”; thus, the virtues of the kings were essential for the maintenance of their
power and authority. This emphasis on benevolent rulership, expressed in numerous
bronze inscriptions, was both a reaction to the collapse of the Shang dynasty and an
affirmation of a deep-rooted worldview.
Partly because of the vitality of the feudal ritual system and partly because of the
strength of the royal household itself, the Zhou kings were able to control their
kingdom for several centuries. In 771 BCE, however, they were forced to move their
capital eastward to present-day Luoyang to avoid barbarian attacks from Central Asia.
Real power thereafter passed into the hands of feudal lords. Since the surviving line of
the Zhou kings continued to be recognized in name, they still managed to exercise
some measure of symbolic control. By Confucius’s time, however, the feudal ritual
system had been so fundamentally undermined that the political crises also
precipitated a profound sense of moral decline: the centre of symbolic control could
no longer hold the kingdom, which had devolved from centuries of civil war into 14
feudal states.
Confucius’s response was to address himself to the issue of learning to be human. In
so doing he attempted to redefine and revitalize the institutions that for centuries had
been vital to political stability and social order: the family, the school, the
local community, the state, and the kingdom. Confucius did not accept the status quo,
which held that wealth and power spoke the loudest. He felt that virtue (de), both as a
personal quality and as a requirement for leadership, was essential for individual
dignity, communal solidarity, and political order.