Confucius (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Confucius (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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Confucius
First published Tue Mar 31, 2020; substantive revision Thu May 2, 2024
At different times in Chinese history, Confucius (trad. 551–479
BCE) has been portrayed as a teacher, advisor, editor, philosopher,
reformer, and prophet. The name Confucius, a Latinized combination of
the surname Kong 孔 with an honorific suffix
“Master” (
fuzi
夫子), has also come
to be used as a global metonym for different aspects of traditional
East Asian society. This association of Confucius with many of the
foundational concepts and cultural practices in East Asia, and his
casting as a progenitor of “Eastern” thought in Early
Modern Europe, make him arguably the most significant thinker in East
Asian history. Yet while early sources preserve biographical details
about Master Kong, dialogues and stories about him in early texts like
the
Analects
Lunyu
論語) reflect a
diversity of representations and concerns, strands of which were later
differentially selected and woven together by interpreters intent on
appropriating or condemning particular associated views and
traditions. This means that the philosophy of Confucius is
historically underdetermined, and it is possible to trace multiple
sets of coherent doctrines back to the early period, each grounded in
different sets of classical sources and schools of interpretation
linked to his name. After introducing key texts and interpreters,
then, this entry explores three principal interconnected areas of
concern: a psychology of ritual that describes how ideal social forms
regulate individuals, an ethics rooted in the cultivation of a set of
personal virtues, and a theory of society and politics based on
normative views of the family and the state.
Each of these areas has unique features that were developed by later
thinkers, some of whom have been identified as
“Confucians”, even though that term is not well-defined.
The Chinese term
Ru
(儒) predates Confucius, and
connoted specialists in ritual and music, and later experts in
Classical Studies.
Ru
is routinely translated into English as
“Confucian”. Yet “Confucian” is also sometimes
used in English to refer to the sage kings of antiquity who were
credited with key cultural innovations by the
Ru
, to
sacrificial practices at temples dedicated to Confucius and related
figures, and to traditional features of East Asian social organization
like the “bureaucracy” or “meritocracy”. For
this reason, the term Confucian will be avoided in this entry, which
will focus on the philosophical aspects of the thought of Confucius
(the Latinization used for “Master Kong” following the
English-language convention) primarily, but not exclusively, through
the lens of the
Analects
1. Confucius as Chinese Philosopher and Symbol of Traditional Culture
2. Sources for Confucius’s Life and Thought
3. Ritual Psychology and Social Values
4. Virtues and Character Formation
5. The Family and the State
Bibliography
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. Confucius as Chinese Philosopher and Symbol of Traditional Culture
Because of the wide range of texts and traditions identified with him,
choices about which version of Confucius is authoritative have changed
over time, reflecting particular political and social priorities. The
portrait of Confucius as philosopher is, in part, the product of a
series of modern cross-cultural interactions. In Imperial China,
Confucius was identified with interpretations of the classics and
moral guidelines for administrators, and therefore also with training
the scholar-officials that populated the bureaucracy. At the same
time, he was closely associated with the transmission of the ancient
sacrificial system, and he himself received ritual offerings in
temples found in all major cities. By the Han (202 BCE–220 CE),
Confucius was already an authoritative figure in a number of different
cultural domains, and the early commentaries show that reading texts
associated with him about history, ritual, and proper behavior was
important to rulers. The first commentaries to the
Analects
were written by tutors to the crown prince (e.g., Zhang Yu
張禹, d. 5 BCE), and select experts in the “Five
Classics” (
Wujing
五經) were given
scholastic positions in the government. The authority of Confucius was
such that during the late Han and the following period of disunity,
his imprimatur was used to validate commentaries to the classics,
encoded political prophecies, and esoteric doctrines.
By the Song period (960–1279), the post-Buddhist revival known
as “Neo-Confucianism” anchored readings of the dialogues
of Confucius to a dualism between “cosmic pattern”
li
理) and “
pneumas
” (
qi
氣), a distinctive moral cosmology that marked the tradition off
from those of Buddhism and Daoism. The Neo-Confucian interpretation of
the
Analects
by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200)
integrated the study of the
Analects
into a curriculum based
on the “Four Books” (
Sishu
四書) that
became widely influential in China, Korea, and Japan. The pre-modern
Confucius was closely associated with good government, moral
education, proper ritual performance, and the reciprocal obligations
that people in different roles owed each other in such contexts.
When Confucius became a character in the intellectual debates of
eighteenth century Europe, he became identified as China’s first
philosopher. Jesuit missionaries in China sent back accounts of
ancient China that portrayed Confucius as inspired by Natural Theology
to pursue the good, which they considered a marked contrast with the
“idolatries” of Buddhism and Daoism. Back in Europe,
intellectuals read missionary descriptions and translations of Chinese
literature, and writers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
(1646–1716) and Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc (1726–1798) praised
Confucius for his discovery of universal natural laws through reason.
Enlightenment writers celebrated the moral philosophy of Confucius for
its independence from the dogmatic influence of the Church. While at
times he was criticized as an atheist or an advocate of despotism,
many Europeans viewed Confucius as a moral philosopher whose approach
was in line with rationalism and humanism.
Today, many descriptions combine these several ways of positioning
Confucius, but the modern interpretation of his views has been
complicated by a tendency to look back on him as an emblem of the
“traditional culture” of China. In the eyes of some late
nineteenth and twentieth century reformers who sought to fortify China
against foreign influence, the moral teachings of Confucius had the
potential to play the same role that they perceived Christianity had
done in the modernization of Europe and America, or serve as the basis
of a more secular spiritual renewal that would transform the
population into citizens of a modern nation-state. In the twentieth
century, the pursuit of modernization also led to the rejection of
Confucius by some reformers in the May Fourth and New Culture
movements, as well as by many in the Communist Party, who identified
the traditional hierarchies implicit in his social and political
philosophy with the social and economic inequalities that they sought
to eliminate. In these modern debates, it is not just the status of
Confucius in traditional China that made him such a potent symbol. His
specific association with the curriculum of the system of education of
scholar-officials in the imperial government, and of traditional moral
values more generally, connected him to the aspects of tradition worth
preserving, or the things that held China back from modernization,
depending on one’s point of view.
As legacies of Confucius tied to traditional ritual roles and the
pre-modern social structure were criticized by modernizers, a view of
Confucius as a moral philosopher, already common in European readings,
gained ascendancy in East Asia. The American-educated historian Hu Shi
胡適 (1891–1962) wrote an early influential history
of Chinese philosophy, beginning with Laozi 老子 and
Confucius, explicitly on the model of existing histories of Western
philosophy. In it, Hu compared what he called the conservative aspect
of the philosophy of Confucius to Socrates and Plato. Since at least
that time, Confucius has been central to most histories of Chinese
philosophy.
2. Sources for Confucius’s Life and Thought
Biographical treatments of Confucius, beginning with the
“Hereditary House of Confucius” (
Kongzi shijia
孔子世家), a chapter of Sima Qian’s
司馬遷 (c.145–c.86 BCE)
Records of the
Grand Historian
Shiji
史記), were initially
based on information from compilations of independently circulating
dialogues and prose accounts. Tying particular elements of his
philosophy to the life experiences of Confucius is a risky and
potentially circular exercise, since many of the details of his
biography were first recorded in instructive anecdotes linked to the
expression of didactic messages. Nevertheless, since Sima Qian’s
time, the biography of Confucius has been intimately linked with the
interpretation of his philosophy, and so this section begins with a
brief treatment of traditional tropes about his family background,
official career, and teaching of 72 disciples, before turning to the
dialogue and prose accounts upon which early biographers like Sima
Qian drew.
Confucius was born in the domain of Zou, in modern Shandong Province,
south of the larger kingdom of Lu. A date of 551 BCE is given for his
birth in the
Gongyang Commentary
Gongyang zhuan
公羊傳) to the classic
Spring and Autumn
Annals
Chunqiu
春秋), which places him in
the period when the influence of the Zhou polity was declining, and
regional domains were becoming independent states. His father, who
came from Lu, was descended from a noble clan that included, in Sima
Qian’s telling, several people known for their modesty and
ritual mastery. His father died when Confucius was a small child,
leaving the family poor but with some social status, and as a young
man Confucius became known for expertise in the classical ritual and
ceremonial forms of the Zhou. In adulthood, Confucius travelled to Lu
and began a career as an official in the employ of aristocratic
families.
Different sources identify Confucius as having held a large number of
different offices in Lu. Entries in the
Zuo Commentary
Zuozhuan
左傳) to the
Spring and Autumn
Annals
for 509 and 500 BCE identify him as Director of
Corrections (
Sikou
司寇), and say he was charged
with assisting the ruler with the rituals surrounding a visiting
dignitary from the state of Qi, respectively. The
Mencius
Mengzi
孟子), a text centered on a figure
generally regarded as the most important early developer of the
thought of Confucius, Mencius (trad. 372–289 BCE), says
Confucius was Foodstuffs Scribe (
Weili
委吏) and
Scribe in the Field (
Chengtian
乘田), involved
with managing the accounting at the granary and keeping the books on
the pasturing of different animals
(11.14).
In the first biography, Sima Qian mentions these offices, but then
adds a second set of more powerful positions in Lu including Steward
Zai
宰) managing an estate in the district of Zhongdu,
Minister of Works (
Sikong
司空), and even acting
Chancellor (
Xiang
相). Following his departure from Lu,
different stories place Confucius in the kingdoms of Wei, Song, Chen,
Cai, and Chu. Sima Qian crafted these stories into a serial narrative
of rulers failing to appreciate the moral worth of Confucius, whose
high standards forced him to continue to travel in search of an
incorrupt ruler.
Late in life, Confucius left service and turned to teaching. In Sima
Qian’s time, the sheer number of independently circulating texts
centering on dialogues that Confucius had with his disciples led the
biographer to include a separate chapter on “The arranged
traditions of the disciples of Confucius” (
Zhong Ni dizi
liezhuan
仲尼弟子列傳). His
account identifies 77 direct disciples, whom Sima Qian says Confucius
trained in ritual practice and the
Classic of Odes
Shijing
詩經),
Classic of Documents
Shujing
書經, also called
Documents of the
Predecessors
or
Shangshu
尚書),
Records
of Ritual
Liji
禮記) and
Classic of
Music
Yuejing
樂經). Altogether, some 3000
students received some form of this training regimen. Sima
Qian’s editorial practice in systematizing dialogues was
inclusive, and the fact that he was able to collect so much
information some three centuries after the death of Confucius
testifies to the latter’s importance in the Han period. Looked
at in a different way, the prodigious numbers of direct disciples and
students of Confucius, and the inconsistent accounts of the offices in
which he served, may also be due to a proliferation of texts
associating the increasingly authoritative figure of Confucius with
divergent regional or interpretive traditions during those intervening
centuries.
The many sources of quotations and dialogues of Confucius, both
transmitted and recently excavated, provide a wealth of materials
about the philosophy of Confucius, but an incomplete sense of which
materials are authoritative. The last millennium has seen the
development of a conventional view that materials preserved in the
twenty chapters of the transmitted
Analects
most accurately
represent Confucius’s original teachings. This derives in part
from a second century CE account by Ban Gu 班固
(39–92 CE) of the composition of the
Analects
that
describes the work as having been compiled by first and second
generation disciples of Confucius and then transmitted privately for
centuries, making it arguably the oldest stratum of extant Confucius
sources. In the centuries since, some scholars have come up with
variations on this basic account, such as Liu Baonan’s
劉寳楠 (1791–1855) view in
Corrected
Meanings of the Analects
Lunyu zhengyi
論語正義) that each chapter was written by a
different disciple. Recently, several centuries of doubts about
internal inconsistencies in the text and a lack of references to the
title in early sources were marshaled by classicist Zhu Weizheng
朱維錚 in an influential 1986 article which argued
that the lack of attributed quotations from the
Analects
, and
of explicit references to it, prior to the second century BCE, meant
that its traditional status as the oldest stratum of the teachings of
Confucius was undeserved. Since then a number of historians, including
Michael J. Hunter, have systematically shown that writers started to
demonstrate an acute interest in the
Analects
only in the
late second and first centuries BCE, suggesting that other
Confucius-related records from those centuries should also be
considered as potentially authoritative sources. Some have suggested
this critical approach to sources is an attack on the historicity of
Confucius, but a more reasonable description is that it is an attack
on the authoritativeness of the
Analects
that broadens and
diversifies the sources that may be used to reconstruct the historical
Confucius.
Expanding the corpus of Confucius quotations and dialogues beyond the
Analects
, then, requires attention to three additional types
of sources. First, dialogues preserved in transmitted sources like the
Records of Ritual,
the
Elder Dai’s Records of
Ritual
DaDai Liji
大戴禮記),
and Han collections like the
Family Discussions of Confucius
Kongzi jiayu
孔子家語) contain a
large number of diverse teachings. Second, quotations attached to the
interpretation of passages in the classics preserved in works like the
Zuo Commentary
to the
Spring and Autumn Annals
, or
Han’s Intertextual Commentary on the Odes
Han Shi
waizhuan
韓詩外傳) are particularly rich
sources for readings of history and poetry. Finally, a number of
recently archaeologically recovered texts from the Han period and
before have also expanded the corpus.
Newly discovered sources include three recently excavated versions of
texts with parallel to the transmitted
Analects
. These are
the 1973 excavation at the Dingzhou site in Hebei Province dating to
55 BCE; the 1990’s excavation of a partial parallel version at
Jongbaekdong in Pyongyang, North Korea, dating to between 62 and 45
BCE; and most recently the 2011–2015 excavation of the tomb of
the Marquis of Haihun in Jiangxi Province dating to 59 BCE. The Haihun
excavation is particularly important because it is thought to contain
the two lost chapters of what Han period sources identify as a
22-chapter version of the
Analects
that circulated in the
state of Qi, the titles of which appear to be “Understanding the
Way” (
Zhi dao
智道) and “Questions
about Jade” (
Wen yu
問玉). While the Haihun
Analects
has yet to be published, the content of the lost
chapters overlaps with a handful of fragments dating to the late first
century BCE that were found at the Jianshui Jinguan site in Jinta
county in Gansu Province in 1973. All in all, these finds confirm the
sudden wide circulation of the
Analects
in the middle of the
first century BCE.
Previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations have also been
unearthed. The Dingzhou site also yielded texts given the titles
“Sayings of the Ru” (
Rujiazhe yan
儒家者言) and “Duke Ai asked about the
five kinds of righteousness” (
Aigong wen wuyi
哀公問五義). A significantly different
text also given the name “Sayings of the Ru” was found in
1977 in a Han tomb at Fuyang in Anhui Province. Several texts dating
to 168 BCE recording statements by Confucius about the
Classic of
Changes
Yijing
易經) were excavated from
the Mawangdui site in Hunan Province in 1973. Additionally, a number
of Warring States period dialogical texts centered on particular
disciples, and a text with interpretative comments by Confucius on the
Classic of Poetry
given the name “Confucius discusses
the
Odes
” (
Kongzi shilun
孔子詩論), were looted from tombs in the
1990s, sold on the black market, and made their way to the Shanghai
Museum. The 59 BCE tomb of the Marquis of Haihun also contains a
number of previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations on
ritual and filial piety, along with materials that overlap with
sections of transmitted texts including the
Analects
Records of Ritual
and the
Elder Dai’s Records of
Ritual
. Another unprovenanced manuscript, now curated by Anhui
University, “Zhong Ni said” (
Zhong Ni yue
仲尼曰) has around two dozen sayings, seven of which
overlap with the modern
Analects
. Most recently, initial
reports about a 2021 excavation at Wangjiazui 王家嘴
in Hubei province of an unknown number of sayings entitled
“Kongzi said,” (
Kongzi yue
孔子曰) indicate it only partially overlaps with the
Analects
. These new finds suggest that a larger number of
sayings attributed to Kongzi once circulated together, with certain
ones being selected out for inclusion in works like the
Records of
Ritual
and the
Analects
Some excavated texts, like the pre-Han period “Thicket of
Sayings” (
Yucong
語叢) apothegms excavated
at the Guodian site in Hubei Province in 1993, contain fragments of
the
Analects
in circulation without attribution to Confucius.
Transmitted materials also show some of the quotations attributed to
Confucius in the
Analects
in the mouths of other historical
figures. The fluidity and diversity of Confucius-related materials in
circulation prior to the fixing of the
Analects
text in the
second century BCE, suggest that the
Analects
itself, with
its keen interest in ritual, personal ethics, and politics, may well
have been in part a topical selection from a larger and more diverse
set of available Confucius-related materials. In other words, there
were already multiple topical foci prior to any horizon by which we
can definitively deem any single focus to be authoritative. It is for
this reason that the essential core of the teachings of Confucius is
historically underdetermined, and the correct identification of the
core teachings is still avidly debated. The following sections treat
three key aspects of the philosophy of Confucius, each different but
all interrelated, found throughout many of these diverse sets of
sources: a theory of how ritual and musical performance functioned to
promote unselfishness and train emotions, advice on how to inculcate a
set of personal virtues to prepare people to behave morally in
different domains of their lives, and a social and political
philosophy that abstracted classical ideals of proper conduct in
family and official contexts to apply to more general contexts.
3. Ritual Psychology and Social Values
The
Records of Ritual
, the
Analects
, and numerous
Han collections portray Confucius as being deeply concerned with the
proper performance of ritual and music. In such works, the description
of the attitudes and affect of the performer became the foundation of
a ritual psychology in which proper performance was key to reforming
desires and beginning to develop moral dispositions. Confucius sought
to preserve the Zhou ritual system, and theorized about how ritual and
music inculcated social roles, limited desires and transformed
character.
Many biographies begin their description of his life with a story of
Confucius at an early age performing rituals, reflecting accounts and
statements that demonstrate his prodigious mastery of ritual and
music. The archaeological record shows that one legacy of the Zhou
period into which Confucius was born was a system of sumptuary
regulations that encoded social status. Another of these legacies was
ancestral sacrifice, a means to demonstrate people’s reverence
for their ancestors while also providing a way to ask the spirits to
assist them or to guarantee them protection from harm. The
Analects
describes the ritual mastery of Confucius in
receiving guests at a noble’s home (10.3), and in carrying out
sacrifices (10.8, 15.1). He plays the stone chimes (14.39),
distinguishes between proper and improper music (15.11, 17.18), and
extols and explains the
Classic of Odes
to his disciples
(1.15, 2.2, 8.3, 16.13, 17.9). This mastery of classical ritual and
musical forms is an important reason Confucius said he “followed
Zhou” (3.14). While he might alter a detail of a ritual out of
frugality (9.3), Confucius insists on adherence to the letter of the
rites, as when his disciple Zi Gong 子貢 sought to
substitute another animal for a sheep in a seasonal sacrifice, saying
“though you care about the sheep, I care about the ritual”
(3.17). It was in large part this adherence to Zhou period cultural
forms, or to what Confucius reconstructed them to be, that has led
many in the modern period to label him a traditionalist.
Where Confucius clearly innovated was in his rationale for performing
the rites and music. Historian Yan Buke 閻步克 has
argued that the early Confucian (
Ru
) tradition began from the
office of the “Music master” (
Yueshi
樂師) described in the
Ritual of Zhou
Zhou
Li
周禮). Yan’s view is that since these
officials were responsible for teaching the rites, music, and the
Classic of Odes
, it was their combined expertise that
developed into the particular vocation that shaped the outlook of
Confucius. Early discussions of ritual in the Zhou classics often
explained ritual in terms of a
do ut des
view of making
offerings to receive benefits. By contrast, early discussions between
Confucius and his disciples described benefits of ritual performance
that went beyond the propitiation of spirits, rewards from the
ancestors, or the maintenance of the social or cosmic order. Instead
of emphasizing goods that were external to the performer, these works
stressed the value of the associated interior psychological states of
the practitioner. In
Analects
3.26, Confucius condemns the
performance of ritual without reverence (
jing
敬). He
also condemns views of ritual that focus only on the offerings, or
views of music that focus only on the instruments (17.11). Passages
from the
Records of Ritual
explain that Confucius would
rather have an excess of reverence than an excess of ritual
(“
Tangong, shang
” 檀弓上), and
that reverence is the most important aspect of mourning rites
(“
Zaji, xia
” 雜記下). This
emphasis on the importance of an attitude of reverence became the
salient distinction between performing ritual in a rote manner, and
performing it in the proper affective state. Another passage from the
Records of Ritual
says the difference between how an ideal
gentleman and a lesser person cares for a parent is that the gentleman
is reverent when he does it (“
Fangji
坊記, cf.
Analects
2.7). In contexts concerning
both ritual and filial piety (
xiao
孝), the affective
state behind the action is arguably more important than the
action’s consequences. As Philip J. Ivanhoe has written, ritual
and music are not just an indicator of values in the sense that these
examples show, but also an inculcator of them.
In this ritual psychology, the performance of ritual and music
restricts desires because it alters the performer’s affective
states, and place limits on appetitive desires. The
Records of
Ritual
illustrates desirable affective states, describing how the
Zhou founder King Wen 文 was moved to joy when making offerings
to his deceased parents, but then to grief once the ritual ended
(“
Jiyi
” 祭義). A collection
associated with the third century BCE philosopher Xunzi
荀子 contains a Confucius quotation that associates
different parts of a ruler’s day with particular emotions.
Entering the ancestral temple to make offerings and maintain a
connection to those who are no longer living leads the ruler to
reflect on sorrow, while wearing a cap to hear legal cases leads him
to reflect on worry (“
Aigong
” 哀公).
These are examples of the way that ritual fosters the development of
particular emotional responses, part of a sophisticated understanding
of affective states and the ways that performance channels them in
particular directions. More generally, the social conventions implicit
in ritual hierarchies restrict people’s latitude to pursue their
desires, as the master explains in the
Records of Ritual:
The way of the gentleman may be compared to an embankment dam,
bolstering those areas where ordinary people are deficient
(“
Fangji
”).
Blocking the overflow of desires by adhering to these social norms
preserves psychological space to reflect and reform one’s
reactions.
Descriptions of the early community depict Confucius creating a
subculture in which ritual provided an alternate source of value,
effectively training his disciples to opt out of conventional modes of
exchange. In the
Analects
, when Confucius says he would
instruct any person who presented him with “a bundle of dried
meat” (7.7), he is highlighting how his standards of value
derive from the sacrificial system, eschewing currency or luxury
items. Gifts valuable in ordinary situations might be worth little by
such standards: “Even if a friend gave him a gift of a carriage
and horses, if it was not dried meat, he did not bow” (10.15).
The Han period biographical materials in
Records of the
Historian
describe how a high official of the state of Lu did not
come to court for three days after the state of Qi made him a gift of
female entertainers. When, additionally, the high official failed to
properly offer gifts of sacrificial meats, Confucius departed Lu for
the state of Wei (47, cf.
Analects
18.4). Confucius
repeatedly rejected conventional values of wealth and position,
choosing instead to rely on ritual standards of value. In some ways,
these stories are similar to ones in the late Warring States and Han
period compilation
Master Zhuang
Zhuangzi
莊子) that explore the way that things that are
conventionally belittled for their lack of utility are useful by an
unconventional standard. However, here the standard that gives such
objects currency is ritual importance rather than longevity, divorcing
Confucius from conventional materialistic or hedonistic pursuits. This
is a second way that ritual allows one to direct more effort into
character formation.
Once, when speaking of cultivating benevolence, Confucius explained
how ritual value was connected to the ideal way of the gentleman,
which should always take precedence over the pursuit of conventional
values:
Wealth and high social status are what others covet. If I cannot
prosper by following the way, I will not dwell in them. Poverty and
low social status are what others shun. If I cannot prosper by
following the way, I will not avoid them. (4.5)
The argument that ritual performance has internal benefits underlies
the ritual psychology laid out by Confucius, one that explains how
performing ritual and music controls desires and sets the stage for
further moral development.
4. Virtues and Character Formation
Many of the short passages from the
Analects
, and the
“Thicket of Sayings” passages excavated at Guodian,
describe the development of set of ideal behaviors associated with the
moral ideal of the “way” (
dao
道) of the
“gentleman” (
junzi
君子). Based on
the analogy between the way of Confucius and character ethics systems
deriving from Aristotle, these patterns of behavior are today often
described using the Latinate term “virtue”. In the second
passage in the
Analects
, the disciple You Ruo
有若 says a person who behaves with filial piety to
parents and siblings (
xiao
and
di
弟), and who
avoids going against superiors, will rarely disorder society. It
relates this correlation to a more general picture of how patterns of
good behavior effectively open up the possibility of following the way
of the gentleman: “The gentleman works at the roots. Once the
roots are established, the way comes to life” (1.2). The way of
the gentleman is a distillation of the exemplary behaviors of the
selfless culture heroes of the past, and is available to all who are
willing to “work at the roots”. In this way, the virtues
that Confucius taught were not original to him, but represented his
adaptations of existing cultural ideals, to which he continually
returned in order to clarify their proper expressions in different
situations. Five behaviors of the gentleman most central to the
Analects
are benevolence (
ren
仁),
righteousness (
yi
義), ritual propriety (
li
禮), wisdom (
zhi
智), and trustworthiness
xin
信).
The virtue of benevolence entails interacting with others guided by a
sense of what is good from their perspectives. Sometimes the
Analects
defines benevolence generally as “caring for
others” (12.22), but in certain contexts it is associated with
more specific behaviors. Examples of contextual definitions of
benevolence include treating people on the street as important guests
and common people as if they were attendants at a sacrifice (12.2),
being reticent in speaking (12.3) and rejecting the use of clever
speech (1.3), and being respectful where one dwells, reverent where
one works, and loyal where one deals with others (13.19). It is the
broadest of the virtues, yet a gentleman would rather die than
compromise it (15.9). Benevolence entails a kind of unselfishness, or,
as David Hall and Roger Ames suggest, it involves forming moral
judgments from a combined perspective of self and others.
Later writers developed accounts of the sources of benevolent
behavior, most famously in the context of the discussion of human
nature (
xing
性) in the centuries after Confucius.
Mencius (fourth century BCE) argued that benevolence grows out of the
cultivation of an affective disposition to compassion (
ceyin
惻隱) in the face of another’s distress. The
anonymous author of the late Warring States period excavated text
“Five Kinds of Action” (
Wu xing
五行)
describes it as building from the affection one feels for close family
members, through successive stages to finally develop into a more
universal, fully-fledged virtue. In the
Analects
, however,
one comment on human nature emphasizes the importance of nurture:
“By nature people are close, by habituation they are miles
apart” (17.2), a sentiment that suggests the importance of
training one’s dispositions through ritual and the classics in a
manner closer to the program of Xunzi (third century BCE). The
Analects
, however, discusses the incubation of benevolent
behavior in family and ritual contexts. You Ruo winds up his
discussion of the roots of the way of the gentleman with the
rhetorical question: “Is not behaving with filial piety to
one’s parents and siblings the root of benevolence?”
(1.2). Confucius tells his disciple Yan Yuan 顏淵 that
benevolence is a matter of “overcoming oneself and returning to
ritual propriety” (12.1). These connections between benevolence
and other virtues underscore the way in which benevolent behavior does
not entail creating novel social forms or relationships, but is
grounded in traditional familial and ritual networks.
The second virtue, righteousness, is often described in the
Analects
relative to situations involving public
responsibility. In contexts where standards of fairness and integrity
are valuable, such as acting as the steward of an estate as some of
the disciples of Confucius did, righteousness is what keeps a person
uncorrupted. Confucius wrote that a gentleman “thinks of
righteousness when faced with gain” (16.10, 19.10), or
“when faced with profit” (14.12). Confucius says that one
should ignore the wealth and rank one might attain by acting against
righteousness, even if it means eating coarse rice, drinking water,
and sleeping using one’s bent arm as a pillow (7.16). Later
writers like Xunzi celebrated Confucius for his righteousness in
office, which he stressed was all the more impressive because
Confucius was extremely poor (“
Wangba
王霸). This behavior is particularly relevant in official
interactions with ordinary people, such as when “employing
common people” (5.16), and if a social superior has mastered it,
“the common people will all comply” (13.4). Like
benevolence, righteousness also entails unselfishness, but instead of
coming out of consideration for the needs of others, it is rooted in
steadfastness in the face of temptation.
The perspective needed to act in a righteous way is sometimes related
to an attitude to personal profit that recalls the previous
section’s discussion of how Confucius taught his disciples to
recalibrate their sense of value based on their immersion in the
sacrificial system. More specifically, evaluating things based on
their ritual significance can put one at odds with conventional
hierarchies of value. This is defined as the root of righteous
behavior in a story from the late Warring States period text
Master Fei of Han
Han Feizi
韓非子). The tale relates how at court, Confucius
was given a plate with a peach and a pile of millet grains with which
to scrub the fruit clean. After the attendants laughed at Confucius
for proceeding to eat the millet first, Confucius explained to them
that in sacrifices to the Former Kings, millet itself is the most
valued offering. Therefore, cleaning a ritually base peach with
millet:
would be obstructing righteousness, and so I dared not put [the peach]
above what fills the vessels in the ancestral shrine.
(“
Waichu shuo, zuo shang
外儲說左上)
While such stories may have been told to mock his fastidiousness, for
Confucius the essence of righteousness was internalizing a system of
value that he would breach for neither convenience nor profit.
At times, the phrase “benevolence and righteousness” is
used metonymically for all the virtues, but in some later texts, a
benevolent impulse to compassion and a righteous steadfastness are
seen as potentially contradictory. In the
Analects
portrayals of Confucius do not recognize a tension between benevolence
and righteousness, perhaps because each is usually described as
salient in a different set of contexts. In ritual contexts like courts
or shrines, one ideally acts like one might act out of familial
affection in a personal context, the paradigm that is key to
benevolence. In the performance of official duties, one ideally acts
out of the responsibilities felt to inferiors and superiors, with a
resistance to temptation by corrupt gain that is key to righteousness.
The
Records of Ritual
distinguishes between the domains of
these two virtues:
In regulating one’s household, kindness overrules righteousness.
Outside of one’s house, righteousness cuts off kindness. What
one undertakes in serving one’s father, one also does in serving
one’s lord, because one’s reverence for both is the same.
Treating nobility in a noble way and the honorable in an honorable
way, is the height of righteousness. (“
Sangfu
sizhi
” 喪服四制)
While it is not the case that righteousness is benevolence by other
means, this passage underlines how in different contexts, different
virtues may push people toward participation in particular shared
cultural practices constitutive of the good life.
While the virtues of benevolence and righteousness might impel a
gentleman to adhere to ritual norms in particular situations or areas
of life, a third virtue of “ritual propriety” expresses a
sensitivity to one’s social place, and willingness to play all
of one’s multiple ritual roles. The term
li
translated
here as “ritual propriety” has a particularly wide range
of connotations, and additionally connotes both the conventions of
ritual and etiquette. In the
Analects,
Confucius is depicted
both teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believed
they were conducted in antiquity. Detailed restrictions such as
“the gentleman avoids wearing garments with red-black
trim” (10.6), which the poet Ezra Pound disparaged as
“verses re: length of the night-gown and the predilection for
ginger” (Pound 1951: 191), were by no means trivial to
Confucius. His imperative, “Do not look or listen, speak or
move, unless it is in accordance with the rites” (12.1), in
answer to a question about benevolence, illustrates how the symbolic
conventions of the ritual system played a role in the cultivation of
the virtues. We have seen how ritual shapes values by restricting
desires, thereby allowing reflection and the cultivation of moral
dispositions. Yet without the proper affective state, a person is not
properly performing ritual. In the
Analects
, Confucius says
he cannot tolerate “ritual without reverence, or mourning
without grief,” (3.26). When asked about the root of ritual
propriety, he says that in funerals, the mourners’ distress is
more important than the formalities (3.4). Knowing the details of
ritual protocols is important, but is not a substitute for sincere
affect in performing them. Together, they are necessary conditions for
the gentleman’s training, and are also essential to
understanding the social context in which Confucius taught his
disciples.
The mastery that “ritual propriety” signaled was part of a
curriculum associated with the training of rulers and officials, and
proper ritual performance at court could also serve as a kind of
political legitimation. Confucius summarized the different prongs of
the education in ritual and music involved in the training of his
followers:
Raise yourself up with the
Classic of Odes
. Establish
yourself with ritual. Complete yourself with music. (8.8)
On one occasion, Boyu 伯魚, the son of Confucius,
explained that when he asked his father to teach him, his father told
him to study the
Classic of Odes
in order to have a means to
speak with others, and to study ritual to establish himself (16.13).
That Confucius insists that his son master classical literature and
practices underscores the values of these cultural products as a means
of transmitting the way from one generation to the next. He tells his
disciples that the study of the
Classic of Odes
prepares them
for different aspects of life, providing them with a capacity to:
at home serve one’s father, away from it serve one’s lord,
as well as increase one’s knowledge of the names of birds,
animals, plants and trees. (17.9)
This valuation of knowledge of both the cultural and natural worlds is
one reason why the figure of Confucius has traditionally been
identified with schooling, and why today his birthday is celebrated as
“Teacher’s Day” in some parts of Asia. In the
ancient world, this kind of education also qualified Confucius and his
disciples for employment on estates and at courts.
The fourth virtue, wisdom, is related to appraising people and
situations. In the
Analects,
wisdom allows a gentleman to
discern crooked and straight behavior in others (12.22), and
discriminate between those who may be reformed and those who may not
(15.8). In the former dialogue, Confucius explains the virtue of
wisdom as “knowing others”. The “Thicket of
Sayings” excavated at Guodian indicates that this knowledge is
the basis for properly “selecting” others, defining wisdom
as the virtue that is the basis for selection. But it is also about
appraising situations correctly, as suggested by the master’s
rhetorical question: “How can a person be considered wise if
that person does not dwell in benevolence?” (4.1). One
well-known passage often cited to imply Confucius is agnostic about
the world of the spirits is more literally about how wisdom allows an
outsider to present himself in a way appropriate to the people on
whose behalf he is working:
When working for what is right for the common people, to show
reverence for the ghosts and spirits while maintaining one’s
distance may be deemed wisdom. (6.22)
The context for this sort of appraisal is usually official service,
and wisdom is often attributed to valued ministers or advisors to sage
rulers.
In certain dialogues, wisdom also connotes a moral discernment that
allows the gentleman to be confident of the appropriateness of good
actions. In the
Analects
, Confucius tells his disciple Zi Lu
子路 that wisdom recognizes knowing a thing as knowing it,
and ignorance of a thing as ignorance of it (2.17). In soliloquies
about several virtues, Confucius describes a wise person as never
confused (9.28, 14.28). While comparative philosophers have noted that
Chinese thought has nothing clearly analogous to the role of the will
in pre-modern European philosophy, the moral discernment that is part
of wisdom does provide actors with confidence that the moral actions
they have taken are correct.
The virtue of trustworthiness qualifies a gentleman to give advice to
a ruler, and a ruler or official to manage others. In the
Analects
, Confucius explains it succinctly: “if one is
trustworthy, others will give one responsibilities” (17.6, cf.
20.1). While trustworthiness may be rooted in the proper expression of
friendship between those of the same status (1.4, 5.26), it is also
valuable in interactions with those of different status. The disciple
Zi Xia 子夏 explains its effect on superiors and
subordinates: when advising a ruler, without trustworthiness, the
ruler will think a gentleman is engaged in slander, and when
administering a state, without trustworthiness, people will think a
gentleman is exploiting them (19.10). The implication is that a
sincerely public-minded official would be ineffective without the
trust that this quality inspires. In a dialogue with a ruler from
chapter four of
Han’s Intertextual Commentary the Odes
Confucius explains that in employing someone, trustworthiness is
superior to strength, ability to flatter, or eloquence. Being able to
rely on someone is so important to Confucius that, when asked about
good government, he explained that trustworthiness was superior to
either food or weapons, concluding: “If the people do not find
the ruler trustworthy, the state will not stand” (12.7).
By the Han period, benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety,
wisdom and trustworthiness began to be considered as a complete set of
human virtues, corresponding with other quintets of phenomena used to
describe the natural world. Some texts described a level of moral
perfection, as with the sages of antiquity, as unifying all these
virtues. Prior to this, it is unclear whether the possession of a
particular virtue entailed having all the others, although benevolence
was sometimes used as a more general term for a combination of one or
more of the other virtues (e.g.,
Analects
17.6). At other
times, Confucius presented individual virtues as expressions of
goodness in particular domains of life. Early Confucius dialogues are
embedded in concrete situations, and so resist attempts to distill
them into more abstract principles of morality. As a result,
descriptions of the virtues are embedded in anecdotes about the
exemplary individuals whose character traits the dialogues encourage
their audience to develop. Confucius taught that the measure of a good
action was whether it was an expression of the actor’s virtue,
something his lessons share with those of philosophies like
Aristotle’s that are generally described as “virtue
ethics”. A modern evaluation of the teachings of Confucius as a
“virtue ethics” is articulated in Bryan W. Van
Norden’s
Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese
Philosophy
, which pays particular attention to analogies between
the way of Confucius and Aristotle’s “good life”.
The nature of the available source materials about Confucius, however,
means that the diverse texts from early China lack the systematization
of a work like Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics
The five virtues described above are not the only ones of which
Confucius spoke. He discussed loyalty (
zhong
忠), which
at one point is described as the minister’s behavior toward a
ritually proper ruler (3.19). He said that courage (
yong
勇) is what compels one to act once one has seen where
righteousness lies (2.24). Another term sometimes translated as
“virtue” (
de
德), is usually used to
describe the authority of a ruler that grows out of goodness or favor
to others, and is a key term in many of the social and political works
discussed in the following section. Yet going through a list of all
the virtues in the early sources is not sufficient to describe the
entirety of the moral universe associated with Confucius.
The presence of themes in the
Analects
like the ruler’s
exceptional influence as a moral exemplar, the importance of judging
people by their deeds rather than their words (1.3, 2.10, 5.10), or
even the protection of the culture of Zhou by higher powers (9.5), all
highlight the unsystematic nature of the text and underscore that
teaching others how to cultivate the virtues is a key aspect, but only
a part, of the ethical ideal of Confucius. Yet there is also a
conundrum inherent in any attempt to derive abstract moral rules from
the mostly dialogical form of the
Analects
, that is, the
problem of whether the situational context and conversation partner is
integral to evaluating the statements of Confucius. A historically
notable example of an attempt to find a generalized moral rule in the
Analects
is the reading of a pair of passages that use a
formulation similar to that of the “Golden Rule” of the
Christian Bible (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31) to describe benevolence:
“Do not impose upon others those things that you yourself do not
desire” (12.2, cf. 5.12, 15.24). Read as axiomatic moral
imperatives, these passages differ from the kind of exemplar-based and
situational conversations about morality usually found in the
Analects
. For this reason, some scholars, including E. Bruce
Brooks, believe these passages to be interpolations. While they are
not wholly inconsistent with the way that benevolence is described in
early texts, their interpretation as abstract principles has been
influenced by their perceived similarity to the Biblical examples. In
the
Records of Ritual
, a slightly different formulation of a
rule about self and others is presented as not universal in its scope,
but rather as descriptive of how the exemplary ruler influences the
people. In common with other early texts, the
Analects
describes how the moral transformation of society relies on the
positive example of the ruler, comparing the influence of the
gentleman on the people to the way the wind blows on the grass,
forcing it to bend (12.19). In a similar vein, after discussing how
the personal qualities of rulers of the past determined whether or not
their subjects could morally transform, the
Records of Ritual
expresses its principle of reflexivity:
That is why the gentleman only seeks things in others that he or she
personally possesses. [The gentleman] only condemns things in others
that he or she personally lacks. (“
Daxue
大學)
This is a point about the efficacy of moral suasion, saying that a
ruler cannot expect to reform society solely by command since it is
only the ruler’s personal example that can transform others. For
this reason, the ruler should not compel behaviors from his subjects
to which he or she would not personally assent, something rather
different from the “Golden Rule”. Historically, however,
views that Confucius was inspired by the same Natural Theology as
Christians, or that philosophers are naturally concerned with the
generalization of moral imperatives, have argued in favor of a closer
identification with the “Golden Rule,” a fact that
illustrates the interpretative conundrum arising from the formal
aspects of the
Analects
5. The Family and the State
Early Zhou political philosophy as represented in the
Classic of
Odes
and the
Classic of Documents
centered on moral
justification for political authority based on the doctrine of the
“Mandate of Heaven” (
tianming
天命).
This view was that the sage’s virtue (
de
) attracted the
attention of the anthropomorphized cosmic power usually translated as
“Heaven” (
tian
天), which supported the
sage’s rise to political authority. These canonical texts argued
that political success or failure is a function of moral quality,
evidenced by actions such as proper ritual performance, on the part of
the ruler. Confucius drew on these classics and adapted the classical
view of moral authority in important ways, connecting it to a
normative picture of society. Positing a parallel between the nature
of reciprocal responsibilities of individuals in different roles in
two domains of social organization, in the
Analects
Confucius
linked filial piety in the family to loyalty in the political realm:
It is rare for a person who is filially pious to his parents and older
siblings to be inclined to rebel against his superiors… Filial
piety to parents and elder siblings may be considered the root of a
person. (1.2)
This section examines Confucius’s social and political
philosophy, beginning with the central role of his analysis of the
traditional norm of filial piety.
Just as Confucius analyzed the psychology of ritual performance and
related it to individual moral development, his discussion of filial
piety was another example of the development and adaptation of a
particular classical cultural pattern to a wider philosophical context
and set of concerns. Originally limited to descriptions of sacrifice
to ancestors in the context of hereditary kinship groups, a more
extended meaning of “filial piety” was used to describe
the sage king Shun’s 舜 (trad. r. 2256–2205 BCE)
treatment of his living father in the
Classic of Documents
Despite humble origins, Shun’s filial piety was recognized as a
quality that signaled he would be a suitable successor for the sage
king Yao 堯 (trad. r. 2357–2256 BCE). Confucius in the
Analects
praised the ancient sage kings at great length, and
the sage king Yu 禹 for his filial piety in the context of
sacrifice (8.21). However, he used the term filial piety to mean both
sacrificial mastery and behaving appropriately to one’s parents.
In a conversation with one of his disciples he explains that filial
piety meant “not contesting”, and that it entailed:
while one’s parents were alive, serving them in a ritually
proper way, and after one’s parents died, burying them and
sacrificing to them in a ritually proper way. (2.5)
In rationalizing the moral content of legacies of the past like the
three-year mourning period after the death of a parent, Confucius
reasoned that for three years a filially pious child should not alter
a parent’s way (4.20, cf. 19.18), and explains the origin of
length of the three-year mourning period to be the length of time that
the parents had given their infant child support (17.21). This
adaptation of filial piety to connote the proper way for a gentleman
to behave both inside and outside the home was a generalization of a
pattern of behavior that had once been specific to the family.
Intellectual historian Chen Lai 陈来 has identified two
sets of ideal traits that became hybridized in the late Warring States
period. The first set of qualities describes the virtue of the ruler
coming out of politically-oriented descriptions of figures like King
Wen of Zhou, including uprightness (
zhi
直) and
fortitude (
gang
剛). The second set of qualities is
based on bonds specific to kinship groups, including filial piety and
kindness (
ci
慈). As kinship groups were subordinated
to larger political units, texts began to exhibit hybrid lists of
ideal qualities that drew from both sets. Consequently, Confucius had
to effectively integrate clan priorities and state priorities, a
conciliation illustrated in
Han’s Intertextual Commentary
the Odes
by his insistence that filial piety is not simply
deference to elders. When his disciple Zengzi 曾子
submitted to a severe beating from his father’s staff in
punishment for an offense, Confucius chastises Zengzi, saying that
even the sage king Shun would not have submitted to a beating so
severe. He goes on to explain that a child has a dual set of duties,
to both a father and ruler, the former filial piety and the other
loyalty. Therefore, protecting one’s body is a duty to the ruler
and a counterweight to a duty to submit to one’s parent (8). In
the
Classic of Filial Piety
Xiaojing
孝經), similar reasoning is applied to a redefinition of
filial piety that rejects behaviors like such extreme submission
because protecting one’s body is a duty to one’s parents.
This sort of qualification suggests that as filial piety moved further
outside its original family context, it had to be qualified to be
integrated into a view that valorized multiple character traits.
Since filial piety was based on a fundamental relationship defined
within the family, one’s family role and state role could
conflict. A
Classic of Documents
text spells out the possible
conflict between loyalty to a ruler and filial piety toward a father
(“
Cai Zhong zhi ming
蔡仲之命), a trade-off similar to a story in
the
Analects
about a man named Zhi Gong 直躬
(Upright Gong) who testified that his father stole a sheep. Although
Confucius acknowledged that theft injures social order, he judged
Upright Gong to have failed to be truly “upright” in a
sense that balances the imperative to testify with special
consideration for members of his kinship group:
In my circle, being upright differs from this. A father would conceal
such a thing on behalf of his son, and a son would conceal it on
behalf of his father. Uprightness is found in this. (13.18)
In this way, too, Confucius was adapting filial piety to a wider
manifold of moral behaviors, honing his answer to the question of how
a child balances responsibility to family and loyalty to the state.
While these two traits may conflict with one and other, Sociologist
Robert Bellah, in his study of Tokugawa and modern Japan, noted how
the structural similarity between loyalty and filial piety led to
their both being promoted by the state as interlinked ideals that
located each person in dual networks of responsibility. Confucius was
making this claim when he connected filial piety to the propensity to
be loyal to superiors (1.2). Statements like “filial piety is
the root of virtuous action” from the
Classic of Filial
Piety
connect loyalty and the kind of action that signals the
personal virtue that justifies political authority, as in the
historical precedent of the sage king Shun.
Of the classical sources from which Confucius drew, two were
particularly influential in discussions of political legitimation. The
Classic of Odes
consists of 305 Zhou period regulated lyrics
(hence the several translations “songs”,
“odes”, or “poems”) and became numbered as one
of the Five Classics (
Wujing
) in the Han dynasty. Critical to
a number of these lyrics is the celebration of King Wen of
Zhou’s overthrow of the Shang, which is an example of a virtuous
person seizing the “Mandate of Heaven”:
This King Wen of ours, his prudent heart was well-ordered. He shone in
serving the High God, and thus enjoyed much good fortune. Unswerving
in his virtue, he came to hold the domains all around.
(“
Daming
” 大明)
The Zhou political theory expressed in this passage is based on the
idea of a limited moral universe that may not reward a virtuous person
in isolation, but in which the High God (
Shangdi
上帝,
Di
帝) or Heaven will intercede to
replace a bad ruler with a person of exceptional virtue. The
Classic of Documents
is a collection that includes orations
attributed to the sage rulers of the past and their ministers, and its
arguments often concern moral authority with a focus on the methods
and character of exemplary rulers of the past. The chapter
“Announcement of Kang” (“
Kanggao
康誥) is addressed to one of the sons of King Wen, and
provides him with a guide for behaving as sage ruler as well as with
methods that had been empirically proven successful by those rulers.
When it comes to the mandate inherited from King Wen, the chapter
insists that the mandate is not unchanging, and so as ruler the son
must always be mindful of it when deciding how to act. Further, it is
not always possible to understand Heaven, but the “feelings of
the people are visible”, and so the ruler must care for his
subjects. The Zhou political view that Confucius inherited was based
on supernatural intercession to place a person with personal virtue in
charge of the state, but over time the emphasis shifted to the way
that the effects of good government could be viewed as proof of a
continuing moral justification for that placement.
Confucius himself arguably served as a historical counterexample to
the classical “Mandate of Heaven” theory, calling into
question the direct nature of the support given by Heaven to the
person with virtue. The Han period
Records of the Historian
biography of Confucius described him as possessing all the personal
qualities needed to govern well, but wandering from state to state
because those qualities had not been recognized. When his favorite
disciple died, the
Analects
records Confucius saying that
“Heaven has forsaken me!” (11.9). Wang Chong’s
王充 (27–c.97 CE)
Balanced Discussions
Lunheng
論衡) uses the phrase “uncrowned
king” (
suwang
素王) to describe the tragic
situation: “Confucius did not rule as king, but his work as
uncrowned king may be seen in the
Spring and Autumn
Annals
” (80). The view that through his writings Confucius
could prepare the world for the government of a future sage king
became a central part of Confucius lore that has colored the reception
of his writings since, especially in works related to the
Spring
and Autumn Annals
and its
Gongyang Commentary
. The
biography of Confucius reinforced the tragic cosmological picture that
personal virtue did not always guarantee success. Even when
Heaven’s support is cited in the
Analects
, it is not a
matter of direct intercession, but expressed through personal virtue
or cultural patterns: “Heaven gave birth to the virtue in me, so
what can Huan Tui 桓魋 do to me?” (7.23, cf. 9.5).
As Robert Eno has pointed out, the concept of Heaven also came to be
increasingly naturalized in passages like “what need does Heaven
have to speak?” (17.19). Changing views of the scope of
Heaven’s activity and the ways human beings may have knowledge
of that activity fostered a change in the role of Heaven in political
theory.
Most often, in dialogues with the rulers of his time, references to
Heaven were occasions for Confucius to encourage rulers to remain
attentive to their personal moral development and treat their subjects
fairly. In integrating the classical legacy of the “Mandate of
Heaven” that applied specifically to the ruler or “Son of
Heaven” (
tianzi
天子), with moral teachings
that were directed to a wider audience, the nature of Heaven’s
intercession came to be understood differently. In the
Analects
and writings like those attributed to Mencius,
descriptions of virtue were often adapted to contexts such as the
conduct of lesser officials and the navigation of everyday life.
Kwong-Loi Shun notes that in such contexts, the influence of Heaven
remained as an explanation of both what happened outside of human
control, like political success or lifespan, and of the source of the
ethical ideal. In the
Analects
, the gentleman’s awe of
Heaven is combined with an awe of the words of the sages (16.8), and
when Confucius explains the Zhou theory of the “mandate of
Heaven” in the
Elder Dai’s Records of Ritual,
he
does so in order to explain how the signs of a well-ordered society
demonstrate that the ruler’s “virtue matches Heaven”
(“
Shaojian
” 少閒). Heaven is still
ubiquitous in the responses of Confucius to questions from rulers, but
the focus of the responses was not on Heaven’s direct
intercession but rather the ruler’s demonstration of his
personal moral qualities.
In this way, personal qualities of modesty, filial piety or respect
for the elders were seen as proof of fitness to serve in an official
capacity. Qualification to rule was demonstrated by proper behavior in
the social roles defined by the “five relationships”
wulun
五倫), a formulation seen in the writings
of Mencius that became a key feature of the interpretation of works
associated with Confucius in the Han dynasty. The Western Han emperors
were members of the Liu clan, and works like the
Guliang
Commentary
Guliang zhuan
穀梁傳) to
the
Spring and Autumn Annals
emphasized normative family
behavior grounded in the five relationships, which were (here, adapted
to include mothers and sisters): ruler and subject, parent and child,
husband and wife, siblings, and friends. Writing with particular
reference to the
Classic of Filial Piety
, Henry Rosemont and
Roger Ames argue that prescribed social roles are a defining
characteristic of the “Confucian tradition”, and that such
roles were normative guides to appropriate conduct. They contrast this
with the “virtue ethics” approach they say requires
rational calculation to determine moral conduct, while filial piety is
simply a matter of meeting one’s family obligations. Just as the
five virtues were placed at the center of later theories of moral
development, once social roles became systematized in this way,
selected situational teachings of Confucius consistent with them could
become the basis of more abstract, systematic moral theories. Yet this
could not have happened without the adaptation of the abstract
classical political theory of “Heaven’s mandate”, a
doctrine that originally supported the ruling clan, to argue that
Heaven’s influence was expressed through particular concrete
expressions of individual virtue. As a result of this adaptation in
writings associated with Confucius, the ruler’s conduct of
imperial rituals, performance of filial piety, or other demonstrations
of personal virtue provided proof of moral fitness that legitimated
his political authority. As with the rituals and the virtues, filial
piety and the mandate of Heaven were transformed as they were
integrated with the classics through the voices of Confucius and the
rulers and disciples of his era.
Earlier, the usage of “Confucius” as a metonym for Chinese
traditional culture was introduced as a feature of the modern period.
Yet the complexity of the philosophical views associated with
Confucius—encompassing ethical ideals developed out of a
sophisticated view of the effects of ritual and music on the
performer’s psychology, robust descriptions of the attitudes of
traditional exemplars across diverse life contexts, and the
abstraction of normative behaviors in the family and state—is
due in part to the fact that this metonymic usage was to some degree
already the case in the Han period. By that time, the teachings of
Confucius had gone through several centuries of gestation, and
dialogues and quotations fashioned at different points over that time
circulated and mixed. Put slightly differently, Confucius read the
traditional culture of the halcyon Zhou period in a particular way,
but this reading was continuously reflected and refracted through
different lenses during the Pre-Imperial period, prior to the results
being fixed in diverse early Imperial period sources like the
Analects
, the
Records of Ritual
, and the
Records
of the Historian.
What remains is the work of the hand of
Confucius, but also of his “school”, and even sometimes of
his opponents during the centuries that his philosophy underwent
elaboration and drift. This process of accretion and elaboration is
not uncommon for pre-modern writings, and the resulting breadth and
depth explains, at least in part, why the voice of Confucius retained
primacy in pre-modern Chinese philosophical conversations as well as
in many modern debates about the role of traditional East Asian
culture.
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