China & East Asia · c. 500 BCE – today
Confucianism
People become fully humane through learning, ritual and family relationships, and good government rests on the ruler’s virtue rather than on force.
How can people live well together and be governed well?
In the Spring and Autumn period the Zhou order was falling apart: lords warred with one another and the old rites had become empty show. Confucius, a minor official and teacher from the state of Lu, looked back to the early Zhou as a model and tried to restore order by cultivating persons rather than by tightening laws.
Social order depends on people’s inner dispositions, and dispositions are formed by practice: the roles we play in the family and the rites we perform. So cultivate humaneness (ren) and ritual propriety (li) from the family outward; a ruler who is virtuous will win people over as the wind bends the grass, and punishment becomes a last resort.
- Humaneness (ren) is the highest virtue.
- Ritual shapes character as well as expressing it.
- Govern by virtue and example, not by punishment.
From the Han dynasty onward it became the official learning of imperial China, and it shaped education, family life and the state across Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
Thinkers
551–479 BCE (traditional)ConfuciusTeacher from Lu who sought to revive the Zhou wayc. 372–289 BCEMenciusConfucian who argued that human nature is goodc. 310–235 BCEXunziConfucian realist who held human nature to be badc. 179–104 BCEDong ZhongshuHan scholar who helped make Confucianism the state learningKey texts
What it led to
Opposed byDaoismThe Daodejing treats Confucian virtues as symptoms of decline: “when the great Dao is abandoned, there are humaneness and righteousness.”Opposed by
MohismMozi attacked the Confucians’ graded, family-first love, their lavish funerals and music, and their fatalism.Opposed by
LegalismHan Feizi kept his teacher Xunzi’s view that human nature is selfish but rejected rule by virtue in favour of rule by law.Borrowed by
Xuanxue (“Profound Learning”)Xuanxue thinkers still ranked Confucius as the true sage, one who embodied non-being instead of talking about it as Laozi did.Carried on by
Neo-Confucianism (Cheng–Zhu school)The Song masters returned to Mencius and the Great Learning, grouping them with the Analects and the Doctrine of the Mean as the Four Books.Carried on by
School of Mind (Lu–Wang school)Wang Yangming’s “innate good knowing” (liangzhi) is a term taken from Mencius.
Its answers to the big questions
EthicsHow should one live?Cultivate ren, humaneness, through ritual, learning and the duties of family and office.PoliticsWhat makes power legitimate?Rule by virtue and example. A ruler who oppresses the people has lost Heaven’s mandate.Logic & languageCan words grasp the truth?Rectify names: when words match roles and realities, order follows.On the record
Dong Zhongshu is listed as the author of the Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals (“attributed”, c. 110 BCE).
The attribution has been doubted since the Song dynasty, Zhu Xi among the sceptics. The 82-chapter work is undated and is now usually treated as a collection of loosely related Han-dynasty chapters; some parts may reflect Dong’s teaching, others are later. The year is only a placeholder for “Western Han”.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals”