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Confucius (孔子) lived in the sixth century bce.
At its core, Confucius believed, the universe comprised two realms: the human realm and the realm of heaven and earth (the natural realm).
Thus in Confucius’s cosmological outlook, there is no God—that is, there is no monotheistic creator deity, nor any being or entity responsible for the creation of the universe or for its ongoing operation. The cosmos operates on its own, automatically, as it were, and so it has since the beginning of time. It is not that a spirit world populated by nature deities and ancestors does not exist for Confucius and his contemporaries; various spirits could assist human beings in controlling rivers and fields, villages and cities, and families and lineages. But there is no ultimate, omnipotent spirit
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The cosmos, Confucius thus assumed, operated of its own, effortlessly achieving a balanced (and moral) harmony among its parts. It was the human realm that needed active regulation. Politics and morality had by his time fallen into a wretched state.
(1) what makes for a good man; and (2) what makes for good government.
The prominent role played by the individual in creating the good sociopolitical order explains why Confucian teachings, throughout the ages, give such profound attention to the process of self-cultivation. Each and every human being is urged to engage in a process of moral refinement, as each and every human being has the capability to exercise a beneficial moral force over others.
Confucius argues that learning should be open to all. There are to be no social or economic barriers: “In instruction there are to be no distinctions of status” (15.39). Of his own teaching he remarks: “Never have I refused instruction to one who of his own accord comes to me, though it be with as little as a bundle of dried meat.” It is the Master’s conviction that any person possessed of a genuine eagerness to learn, regardless of status, can hope to improve morally, even to attain “superior man” status.
In the famous “autobiographical” passage in the Analects, he states: At fifteen, I set my mind-and-heart on learning. At thirty, I stood on my own. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew heaven’s decree. At sixty, my ears were in accord. At seventy, I followed the desires of my mind-and-heart without overstepping right. (2.4) Though autobiographical, the remark is clearly intended to serve as a sequential template for all students of the Confucian school.
True goodness is not a quality that can be cultivated in seclusion, cut off from other human beings. True goodness exists only as it is manifested in relation to others and in the treatment of others.
It remains for us—as it did for his followers—to tease out of the Analects a deeper appreciation of this essential moral quality. A few passages in the text are especially revealing: “Zigong asked, ‘Is there one word that can be practiced for the whole of one’s life?’ The Master said, ‘That would be ‘empathy’ perhaps: what you do not wish yourself do not do unto others’” (15.24). True goodness lies in the direction of empathetic behavior. In dealing with others, we are obliged to treat them as we ourselves would wish to be treated. We need to put ourselves in their place, to plumb our own
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True goodness for Confucius is inter-relational, a virtue given realization only in a person’s interactions with other human beings.
Once, when asked what constitutes true goodness, the Master replied simply: “If contrary to ritual, do not look; if contrary to ritual, do not listen; if contrary to ritual, do not speak; if contrary to ritual, do not act” (12.1).
For Confucius, ritual is closely linked to music. The capacity of music to inspire moral behavior had been realized long before by the ancients. As the Book of Rites states, “In music the sages found pleasure and saw that it could be used to make the hearts of the people good. Because of the deep influence that it exerts on a man, and the change that it produces in manners and customs, the ancient kings appointed it as one of the subjects of instruction.” Confucius thus assumes that his followers should study music—or, more precisely, certain types of music he finds morally uplifting—as an
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Moral cultivation of the individual thus begins in the family. This is where a person is introduced to filial piety, fraternal respect, and deference for elders; this is where a person is instructed in the nomenclature of ritual etiquette. The lessons learned here apply readily in the world out there. A good son will naturally be obedient to the ruler; a good younger brother will naturally be respectful to elders; a good daughter and wife will naturally be submissive to men.
Of the virtues to be learned in the family, filial piety is the most fundamental. The essence of filial piety is obedience to parental authority: to respect their wishes and to care for their well-being. The Book of Rites summarizes the responsibilities associated with this cardinal virtue: A filial son, in nourishing his aging parents, seeks to make their hearts glad and not to go against their will;
The family, in the Confucian vision, is of central importance in sustaining the Chinese sociopolitical order, for it is here, in the family, that the child becomes conditioned to the dominant assumptions and values of Chinese society.
Thus in the Confucian tradition, a ruler without virtue poses a serious threat to the entire moral-social order.
A good ruler, Confucius tells Ji Kangzi, simply desires the good himself. He must model the morality he would like his subjects to cultivate. Conversely, when disorderly behavior prevails in a state, the ruler must look within and consider his own culpability:
a central tenet of Confucian teachings: the best government is the one that relies on law least.
The ideal of rule by virtue is by no means new with Confucius. It is a major theme wending its way through many of the early Zhou documents preserved in the Book of History. These documents tell of a Shang dynasty that began virtuously with wise and benevolent rulers. Over time, however, the character of the rulers changed, and men given to great lewdness, debauchery, and wickedness came to occupy the throne.
In the end, it is the ruler’s relationship with, and treatment of, his people that decides the fate of the Mandate, not heaven. The Mandate of Heaven thus stands in rather sharp contrast to the European doctrine of the “divine right of kings,” where rulers are granted the right to rule directly from God and are accountable for their actions to God alone. Not subject to the will of the people, their authority is absolute.
Confucius, too, had suggested that only when their basic material needs have been satisfied will the people be susceptible to moral instruction.
Xunzi’s understanding of heaven
When stars fall or trees make strange sounds, all people in the country are terrified and go about asking, “Why has this happened?” For no special reason, I reply. It is simply that, with the changes of heaven and earth and the mutations of the yin and yang, such things once in a while occur. You may wonder at them, but you must not fear them. (sec. 17, “A Discussion of Heaven”)
Xunzi’s writings are insistent in their rebuke of those who believe that heaven is an entity responsive to their entreaties: “You pray for rain and it rains. Why? For no particular reason, I say. It is just as though you had not prayed for rain and it rained anyway.” And, he reminds them, “heaven does not suspend the winter because men dislike the cold” (sec. 17, “A Discussion of Heaven”). His insistence indicates how pervasive he regards the “superstitious” practices and beliefs of the day to be.
It is because there is no ethically connected or concerned heaven that human beings must look to the sages and the rituals they created for moral guidance. Heaven offers no moral endowment, no moral assistance. Indeed, in Xunzi’s view, what made the sages of the past—Yao, Shun, and Yu—deserving of reverence and praise is that they alone grasped that man requires a set of ritual principles and teachings to give him moral direction.
When all goes well for man, when all goes well for society, it is entirely man’s doing. Man must come to realize that his lot is not a matter of heaven’s will or fate, as many would believe: Are order and disorder due to heaven? I reply, the sun and the moon, the stars and the constellations, revolved in the same way in the time of Yu as in the time of Jie. Yu achieved order; Jie brought disorder. Hence order and disorder are not due to heaven. (sec. 17, “A Discussion of Heaven”)
To conclude: Mencius and Xunzi, the founders of the two major branches of early Confucianism, agree: (1) that man is morally perfectible; and (2) that to achieve moral perfection man must undertake a self-cultivation process. But for Mencius, the source of man’s moral potential is internal, found in man’s nature itself; for Xunzi, it is to be found externally, in the culture, especially in the body of ritual created by the sages of antiquity.
Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi would set the philosophical course for the Confucian tradition for more than the next one thousand years. But in the eleventh century there emerged a coterie of Confucian thinkers who began to rethink the teachings of their classical predecessors. Their “school” of Confucianism, known as daoxue (道學) or “Learning of the Way,” and often referred to as Neo-Confucianism, would quickly come to dominate Chinese intellectual and political life.
In reflecting on the canon of texts in the Confucian tradition, Zhu Xi finds in the first chapter of the Great Learning (Daxue, 大學) what he regards as the basis of a Neo-Confucian program of self-cultivation for followers of the Confucian Way: Those of antiquity … wishing to cultivate themselves, first set their minds in the right; wishing to set their minds in the right, they first made their intentions true; wishing to make their intentions true, they first extended knowledge to the utmost; the extension of knowledge lies in the investigation of things.
In a chapter of commentary that Zhu writes on this passage in the Great Learning, he formulated what would become the orthodox interpretation of “the extension of knowledge lies in the investigation of things”: What is meant by “the extension of knowledge lies in the investigation of things” is this: if we wish to extend our knowledge to the utmost, we must probe thoroughly the principle in those things that we encounter.
Through his goodness and exemplary ritual practice he would teach them proper behavior and a respect for hierarchical order, and thereby establish harmony throughout the realm. And just as a father was expected to make decisions on behalf of his family, so too was the ruler expected to make decisions on behalf of his people. The ideal government for Confucius was government for the people, but not of or by the people.
If the ruler were indeed benevolent, this system would work quite well. But, in fact, the sort of ruler idealized by Confucius would hardly have been typical.
The fundamental problem in imperial Chinese history was this: when Confucian ideology proved ineffective in guiding and constraining the imperial will, there was little recourse. There were no constitutional or legal limits on the power or conduct of the emperor and no institutions or offices with legitimate authority to check imperial behavior when it veered far from Confucian ideals. As a consequence, rulers could—and at times did—abuse their power or neglect their responsibilities with impunity.
“There are three ways to be unfilial, and the worst is to have no heir” (Mencius 4A.26).
In a culture where an indigenous belief in a creator deity did not exist—and where a foreign belief in one did not become widespread—it was the biological line alone that accounted for one’s existence and deserved the gratitude and praise of the individual.
There were gods and spirits of the natural world, presiding over rivers, mountains, winds, seasons, and the like. And there were gods and spirits who provided assistance and comfort to practitioners of Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religious sects. But the belief in ancestral spirits—and the ceremonial respect shown them—was dominant in Chinese society, widely shared by almost all people (including those who considered themselves Daoists and Buddhists), irrespective of social or economic status.
Confucius said, “Women and petty men (xiaoren) are especially hard to handle” (17.23). Although many interpreters over the centuries have tried to soften the thrust of this remark, there is no getting away from its general disparagement of women. Indeed, nowhere in the Analects or other canonical texts is there the suggestion that the Confucian program for self-cultivation and moral perfection was applicable to women.
Their responsibilities were to be limited to the “inner quarters,” to matters within the household.
Some women were able—much to the distress of Confucian commentators—to exert influence, and even to dominate, in the political realm. Still more to the point, within the family, the basic unit of Chinese society, women were granted legitimate access to authority, as mothers, teachers, and household managers.
