Confucianism has been and still is a vast, interconnected system of philosophies, ideas, rituals, practices, and habits of the heart that informs the lives of countless people in East Asia and now the whole inhabited world. Although known in the West mostly as a philosophic movement, Confucianism is better understood as a compelling assemblage of interlocking forms of life for generations of men and women in East Asia that encompassed all the possible domains of human concern. Confucianism, at various times and places, was a primordial religious sensibility and praxis; a philosophic exploration of the cosmos; an ethical system; an educational program; a complex of family and community rituals; dedication to government service; aesthetic criticism; a philosophy of history; the debates of economic reformers; the intellectual background for poets and painters; and much more. For instance, we owe to Confucians in East Asia the most extensive written historical record for any human civilization from its beginning down to today. We also owe Confucians medical prescriptions, vast hydraulic works, bonsai and wonderful gardens.

In China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, Confucians historically created worldviews, ways of life, and deeply shared cultural orientations and sensibilities that are still alive today. Confucians paid attention to art, morality, religion, family life, science, philosophy, government, and the economy. In short, Confucians were profoundly concerned with all aspects of human life. Moreover, Confucians played a distinguished role in creating innovative reflections and achievements in all dimensions and endeavors of human life. The collected modalities form the tapestry of civilization. The Confucians have always had a complex, holistic and organized view of human life, nature, character, thought, and conduct. It is also a fascinating question to explore how Confucians understood their "culture," or Dao/Way as they called it, over long centuries and vast spaces.

We have created an iconic (and fictional) Confucian husband and wife, Dr. and Mrs. Li, living in the famous, cultivated, and beautiful city of Suzhou (situated in central China just south of the great Yangtze river) in 1685. The Lis are what is called an "ideal type" or prototype, a generalized portrait of what the lives of a late imperial Confucian couple might have been. We have chosen this method in order to make the point that Confucianism is so much more than the history of ideas. It was and is a complicated pattern of human life, which affected men and women differently. Furthermore, how they understood Confucianism depended on their social position: elite couples like the Lis could be self-consciously Confucian whereas a poor peasant family in the southeast of China might only have the faintest understanding of the teaching of the Confucian tradition. However, as we shall see, Confucianism touched the lives of all the peoples in East Asia. Of course, it formed the lives of such a prototypical couple as Dr. and Mrs. Li more closely and more richly in 1685 than anyone else in Chinese society. It is because of the richness and influence of such elite Confucian culture at the end of its grand imperial career that we have dared to resort to such a narrative strategy.

By choosing 1685, we will be viewing Confucian society in one of its more accomplished moments. The ruler was the great Kangxi emperor (1662–1723), who, although a Manchu noble from beyond the ethnic world of traditional China, was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant men ever to hold the throne. He was fascinated by the world around him and, from what we can tell, was dedicated to the just and harmonious rule of an expanding empire. Whatever his ultimate personal commitments, Kangxi was clearly interested and educated in the broad sweep of traditional Confucian culture. He also illustrates the fact that Confucianism was already a multicultural and international movement. The Confucian tradition itself was undergoing the effects of the development of the last great traditional Confucian philosophic movement, the justly famous school of Evidential Research. Though the Evidential Research scholars were critical of the philosophy of their Han, Song, Yuan, and Ming forefathers, they carried the scholarly aspects of Confucianism to new heights.

"Confucianism" is a Western term but everyone recognizes Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.) as the founder of the movement that takes his name. This would have struck Master Kong, to use his Chinese title and name, as suspect. Master Kong believed fervently that his role was to restore the way of the ancient sages rather than to propound some novel set of doctrines. However, as is so often the case with great religious and cultural reformers, the more they seek to renew the past, the more they generate a new culture out of the old. This is precisely what Master Kong achieved.

Master Kong had a grave problem. By his time, the Zhou dynasty was in obvious decline. Although the Warring States period would not begin until after his death, Master Kong’s question was, how to revive the Zhou? His answer was simple: we need to study the history of the great Zhou founders in order to recover and restore the Chinese world.

Returning to the era of Dr. and Mrs. Li, by 1685 China (and other countries in East Asia) had been thoroughly steeped in Confucian culture for centuries. For instance, in 1313 the Mongol court declared one form of Confucian thought, namely the synthesis of Zhu Xi (1130–1200), the basis for the imperial examinations. The local, provincial, and national examination system was based on the Confucian classics and became more and more powerful in the later Ming and Qing dynasties. But this was not the only story. Along with formal education for the imperial examinations came many other Confucian influences in art, poetry, family life, and local social organization.

Late imperial China was a "Confucian" culture in the sense that intellectual concerns, moral axioms, education, family rituals, and political ideology all bore the marks of Confucian reflection and action. Confucianism permeated all levels of Chinese life. Even the classes that did not have access to formal Confucian education and social status firmly believed that if a family were to climb the ladder of success, Confucian education and culture were the only sure ways to move up the social scale. Of course, there were dissenters among Daoists and Buddhists, though even the learned clergy among these two alternative traditions also knew the Confucian classics as well as they did their own scriptures. The majority of the Chinese people were touched in almost every aspect of their lives by Confucian activities.

Was this vast Confucian influence on Chinese culture a good thing? This question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Most Confucians thought so; but sometimes the best and most critical Confucians harbored their own doubts. Had Confucianism lost its ethical edge? Had it become too rigid? Had it become too closely linked to an authoritarian state apparatus? Many modern Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Western critical scholars have blamed the late Confucian social system and imperial system for fossilizing East Asian culture in the name of the First Sage. The Confucian world became backward looking and fossilized. But was this really the case? This is another question with no simple answer. From the perspective of the 1920s, the veritable low point of modern Chinese history, the criticism of Confucianism seemed eminently justified. Like a ship’s captain, the wreck of the Sinitic culture and the loss of respect for that cultural world happened on the Confucian watch. Something new was desperately needed to save China and the rest of East Asia.

Now, however, Confucianism shows signs of internal renewal and the remarkable contemporary economic success of East Asia is being linked to enduring Confucian values of love of education, respect for family, hard work, and the desire for a social order built on consensus and harmony rather than individual competition. What is Confucian and what is not in Chinese culture is another hard question to answer when so many things were defined as "Confucian." Nonetheless, it is accurate to say that Confucianism is one major aspect of a shared Chinese cultural sensibility. The Confucian Way lives on in complicated modalities in the people of East Asia and in the wider Asian Diaspora. Only time will tell what will happen to this great living cultural artifact.

Because of limitations of format and space, we cannot extend our discussion to the role of Confucianism in all the diverse countries of East Asia. This is a pity. Although in the West Confucianism is considered a prime marker of Chinese culture, Confucianism is an international religious and philosophic movement. It spread from China into Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. But Confucianism was more than just a borrowed morsel of Chinese cultural life, it became an active part in the lives of the Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese people over the centuries. Moreover, it was creatively developed in unique ways in each new cultural situation.

Each East Asian country adapted Confucianism as part of the Chinese cultural package. The case of Korea is particularly fascinating. As the Korean state emerged, Confucianism became more and more important in Korean culture. By the end of the fourteenth century, the long-lived Choson dynasty (1396–1910) declared Confucianism to be the orthodox philosophy (and religion) of Korea. In the centuries that followed, Korean scholars appropriated and refined the Neo-Confucian tradition. It is not an exaggeration to say that the best philosophic work of the sixteenth century in East Asia was done in Korea. No one advanced the specifics of Zhu Xi’s synthesis more than the Koreans. Moreover, the Koreans even drastically transformed their family structure, including marriage ritual, to conform to orthodox Confucian models. The Koreans could say without fear of contradiction that by the eighteenth century they were the most Confucian country in East Asia.

Confucianism spread to Japan after it was introduced in Korea. In the early part of Japanese history, Confucianism was taught in Buddhist monasteries as part of the general education fit for the aristocracy. Since the Tang period (618–907) in China, the Japanese were highly impressed with all aspects of Chinese culture, although it was Buddhism that was more important spiritually and culturally. But with the rise of the Tokugawa (1600–1868) shoguns, Confucianism played an increasingly important role in Japanese culture. The shoguns made use of Confucian statecraft and Japanese intellectuals became as fascinated by the philosophical and historical intricacies of Confucian thought as were their Chinese and Korean cousins. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as in Korea, Japanese scholars were expanding the range of Confucian thought in new directions. At the end of the Tokugawa period, for instance, many of the young reformers who carried out the great Meiji (1868) reforms, were inspired by an activist vision of Confucian social morality. Even today Confucianism contributes to the unique mix of modern Japanese culture.

We know much less about the role of Confucianism in Vietnam save for the fact that the kings and scholars of Vietnam also imported Confucian texts as part of their general appreciation of Chinese elite culture. Confucianism, perhaps less so than in either Korea or Japan, also plays a role in the modern life of Vietnam.

Both Korea and Japan are fascinating modern societies. They are industrial powers, as modern as any countries in the world. They are now also robust democratic societies, the roles of women are changing rapidly in both societies, yet Confucian culture continues to play a role in the lives of their people. One point illustrates the continuing role of Confucian thought. Traditionally, descent was through the male line in a Chinese family for ritual purposes. However, with smaller and smaller families, sometimes with a single daughter, the Chinese have kept the style from former times in terms of family shrines, but now will cheerfully place a daughter where a son would have gone traditionally. Times change but Confucian sensitivities continue to play a remarkably persistent and complex role in the life of East Asia.

We will return to the history of Confucian thought in the chapter on Dr. Li’s lecture to the academy on the theme of Confucian history and in the chapter on Confucian teachings. However, the two presentations will be different. The chapter on Confucian teachings is what is called an etic history and the second, Dr. Li’s lecture, is called an emic account. The terms "etic" and "emic" are taken from anthropology; the former refers to an external telling of the tale, the latter to an internal one. We have tried to write Dr. Li’s lecture in an emic style, in the way a late Qing literatus Confucian would have told the story. But emic accounts assume that their audience already knows a great deal about the story. Dr. Li is lecturing serious young men who have been studying Chinese thought for around twenty years before they arrive at the academy. Conversely, an etic narration sees other things that might be overlooked because they are so commonplace to an emic scholar. There is value in both, and a balance of etic and emic narrations of the story will help a new audience better understand the contours of the Confucian Way.

It is vital to understand that Confucianism is a living religion and a way of cultural formation: its religious dimension is accompanied by philosophy, ritual theory, historical studies, poetic craft, the arts of calligraphy and painting, and political ideology as well. All of these form what we call the Confucian Way. The Confucian Way is a total way of life within the East Asian world. This is one of the reasons that many modern East Asian people pause when they are asked about their "religion." They understand this question to mean, are they a "member" of a specific religious tradition in the manner of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Because Confucianism is organized and understood differently from the great religious traditions of the West and Middle East, many East Asians will pause and say that they have no religion because Confucianism has never been defined as religion with initiation or membership (i.e., you are not initiated into Confucianism in the ways common to the religions of the West). But ask a second question (suggested insightfully by Jordan Paper), to whom do you owe sacrifice? The answer will be completely different. The question of family ritual and sacrifice, as we shall see, cuts to the heart of the religious dimension of the Confucian Way.

Confucianism has always been linked to a classical education, and education in traditional China was the mark of elite culture. Confucianism, therefore, has always been seen as the domain of China’s cultural, economic, and political elites. This is true again to a certain extent. However, because of its leading social role in Chinese society, Confucianism was more and more attractive to all levels of the expanding Chinese cultural world. One of our arguments is that this was a complex problem, and Confucianism’s success was merited by its intrinsic impetus. One of the lessons of Chinese history is that no one, not even a supremely powerful emperor such as the great first founder of the unified imperial state, Qin Shi Huangdi, could impose an ideology upon the population if those people do not accept it in their mind-hearts. More and more through the long history of China Confucian thought and practice suffused all levels and domains of Chinese life, and later, the lives of the people of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam as well.

Confucianism rests, as do all the various paths or religions of China, on the cultural foundations of the sinitic world. Confucianism is one major expression of the genius of Chinese cultural sensibilities. Modern scholarship suggests that the Confucian impact on Chinese culture can be divided into three different modalities. Confucianism was first a particular popular form of pan-Chinese thought and practice; in fact, Confucianism represented itself as the epitome of classical Chinese culture. We call this popular Confucianism. The second form consists of the uses made by the various dynasties of China of Confucians in order to rule China and to create an ideology that relied on Confucian themes for its justification. This is imperial, political, or ideological Confucianism. The third can be labeled reform Confucianism. This is the Confucianism of reforming intellectuals who took their Confucian thought very seriously as a way to renew or reform the Chinese cultural world. All three forms of Confucianism interacted with each other, and oftentimes it is hard to distinguish one form from another.

Merely to describe the intellectual history of Confucianism, a worthy enterprise from the Confucian point of view, misses much about the lives of ordinary and extraordinary Confucians over the centuries. No single academic disciplinary approach covers all that needs to be presented in order to introduce the Confucian world to people living beyond its home in East Asia. We need a mixture of art history, ethics, religious theory, philosophy, science, political science, and economics just to begin the project.

Dr. and Mrs. Li are in early middle age; he is in the early 40s and she is in her early 30s. Dr. Li is an official of the Qing dynasty serving as a local magistrate in the beautiful garden city of Suzhou. Mrs. Li is his first wife and mother of four children, two boys and two girls. She is also an accomplished poet in various forms of classical Chinese genres. Our fictional couple is what the great German sociologist Max Weber would have called an "ideal type." Another way to see this social construction of reality is to call the Lis a prototype following contemporary metaphor theory. Metaphor and prototype theory says that we have favorite cultural and linguistic models, such as the robin being the perfect image of a bird for English speakers.

The Lis are a composite family we have invented so as to introduce the diverse aspects of Confucian life. In order to provide such a portrait, it is important to include Confucian women, as well as men. As we shall see, Mrs. Li plays a very important role not only in her family but also in the larger cultural world of late imperial China. Educated Confucian women took on the crucial task of first teacher for their children; they also took part in the major festivals and rituals that defined the passage of time during the year and the entire life cycle.

This very short description already tells us a great deal about Dr. and Mrs. Li. For instance, we know that they are part of China’s ruling elite, often called the literati class. Furthermore, we know that Dr. Li is part of an elite within an elite. Because of his administrative rank and age, we surmise, correctly, that he has passed all three of the grueling local, provincial, and national examinations that are the prerequisite of entry into the imperial civil service. Mrs. Li’s exquisitely crafted classical poetry demonstrates that she is a daughter of an elite family as well; a family of scholars and officials as the Chinese would say.

Dr. and Mrs. Li take their roles as educators very seriously. Dr. Li is not only an imperial civil servant; he is a guardian of what Confucians call "this culture of ours." His responsibility is to serve in the larger world of politics, education, economics, law, and even military affairs. He serves his emperor but also bears the weight of a tradition that demands his critical evaluation of the dynasty that he serves. Dr. Li is not a mere careerist seeking a salary. Mrs. Li’s world is defined as the inner chambers of her home; she runs the family just as Dr. Li serves in the civil service. She bears the responsibility for the functioning of the elaborate compound of a Qing official. Moreover, she is profoundly aware of her duties as an educated woman to introduce her children to their first steps on the path to Confucian self-cultivation.

Living in Suzhou during this period also places the Lis in the midst of one of the most beautiful cities in the heart of early Qing culture. There is a Chinese saying that goes, "Heaven above, Suzhou and Hangzhou below." It is at the center of the Chinese intellectual world; it is also a city some have called the Venice of the East. Critics might counter that we are painting a much too positive view of Confucian life. That comment does have merit, but we will point out problems with the tradition as well. Mrs. Li, for instance, suffers from bound feet as do her young daughters, as well as a lack of general access to the world beyond her home.

We have chosen to present the tradition at its best. Intercultural comparisons often follow an apple and orange approach; the best and most noble ideals of one culture are compared and contrasted to the worst practices of another culture. We are seeking to present a picture of Confucian lives and culture at its best so that they can be compared to the ideals of other cultures. Of course, no culture lives up to its ideals. Dr. and Mrs. Li know this all too well.

Confucianism was a whole way of life. It was an ideology; it was rituals and social customs; it was an education curriculum; it did have spiritual dimensions; it did have strong philosophic opinions. Confucianism was both good and bad. The best Confucians commended the good and struggled to reform the bad done in its name. It is a commonplace in the study of religion to observe that religion brings forth the best and the worst of human behavior. Nothing is more savage than people going forth convinced that God or the Dao is on their side. But then, nothing restrains such atavistic self-conceits more than the teachings of religion about respect for other persons and love of neighbors. Confucianism is just like any other religion or comprehensive worldview in this regard.

Confucians considered themselves the epitome of all the other forms of Chinese cultural expression. Although Confucians, as a ruling elite, were remarkably tolerant of the other traditions, this did not mean that they were unaware of the profound differences between and among them. The most basic point that Confucians defended against the other philosophic and religious perspectives was a strong realistic sense of the concrete nature of the world. Confucians were and are realists. They defended their "culture" as a "real" or "solid" tradition. By this they meant, philosophically, that the world of objects and events is real and independent of the mentality and wishes of human beings. Even the great mystics of the tradition, such as Wang Yangming (1472–1529), had a robust respect for the world. The Confucians contrasted their world-view with the Daoist claims about vacuity and the Buddhist preaching about emptiness. Moreover, as an elite tradition, the literati Confucians heaped scorn or condescension upon the folk religion of the common people. Although Confucians would rarely try to suppress folk beliefs (unless they became politically dangerous in their eyes), they tried to educate the common people into taking a more "realistic" Confucian view of reality.

The social claim the Confucians defended is that their tradition was based on the primordial learnings of family life. The ultimate warrant for the Confucian claim to "real" teachings rested on the social framework of the Confucian teachings that cultivated and educated the person from the cradle to the grave. Confucians considered themselves masters of the mundane world. And they would ask, what other world do we have? Their not so subtle point is that we do not have any other world. Whatever wonderful things the alchemy of the Daoists can offer, whatever bliss Buddhist meditation promises, we still have to raise our children and bury our parents. The rest is art.

On the other hand, it was hard for Daoists and Buddhists to dislike the Confucians with any intensity. The Confucians tried hard to be good and decent people so that about the best (or worst) that could be done to them was to be made fun of for being boring pedants. The Daoist master Zhuangzi (c. fourth century b.c.e.) had a genius for amusement at the expense of the Confucians, and often made Confucius sound like a Daoist. The Confucians tried to reform themselves and the world and usually ended up failing at both. Yet there was something noble about the attempt. As the Confucians said, someone had to mind the store of the world. We could not all be hermits and mad poets singing and drinking wine in the mountains in the fall. Someone had to make the wine, ship the wine, tax the wine, make sure that the wine was healthy for general consumption, and so forth. All this is mundane, but still, the Confucians pointed out that someone had to do it. Moreover, the Confucians were not so sure that there was no nobility in the mundane, or that the secular is not sacred.

Why was Confucianism so successful? Greece and Rome are only memories for the West although they live on in classical literature and works of art and architecture. The Middle Ages are dimly remembered. But China endures as a coherent culture from the Shang Dynasty to a modern and reforming industrial commercial giant. Confucianism played a major role in this story. Our argument will be that its success was due in part to the genius of the tradition. Was it always good? No. Was it always evil? Hardly. It was, as we shall see, a grand experiment built upon a unique and compelling vision of what it means to be human.

The classical period for the development of the tradition began with Confucius, though he would not have thought of himself as the founder of a new movement. Like many of the other great progenitors of a major spiritual path (Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, and the Buddha come to mind), Confucius thought of himself as reviving what was already the truth. From Confucius’ perspective he was teaching about the wisdom of the former sages and worthies. In particular, Confucius focused his attention on the founding figures of the Zhou dynasty, namely King Wen, King Wu, and the Duke of Zhou. They were Confucius’ historical models of what true culture should be about.

Confucius (Kongzi or Master Kong) believed that there was a long history of true teachings before his time as preserved in the records of the sage kings. He chose the early Zhou kings because he thought that their teachings were based on sound historical warrants. In addition, the Zhou founders, as sages and worthies themselves, had been able to build on the work of the teachings and models of the even earlier sage kings and worthies. The Zhou, therefore, amounted to a splendid summary of what culture ought to be. The moral actions and character of the early Zhou rulers were exemplars for anyone who aspired to virtue. In this regard, Confucius could honestly say that he was a transmitter of ancient culture and not some purveyor of modern vagaries.

Confucius’ aim was to teach about the wisdom of the former sages, with the goal of reforming society. This reformation has a definite tone to it. Among all of Confucius’ great axioms, the virtue of ren or humaneness stands out. Although ren was an old aristocratic virtue, Confucius gave it new life and a set of extended meanings. Before the Teachers of the Ages, ren meant something like noblesse oblige as the quality of care that a great noble owed to those in his charge. Confucius, self-consciously or not, expanded what had been a virtue based on aristocratic rank to the virtue of virtues in the Confucian world. Kongzi also made the radical suggestion that anyone could cultivate this virtue. Humaneness no longer depended on the accident of birth but rather on the commitment to cultivating a humane life.

Along with empathy and a strong sense of reciprocity, Confucius made humaneness operational for commoners as well as the sons of the Zhou aristocracy. Some of his students were aristocrats, but others, including his favorite student Yan Hui, were commoners. This was one of the most dramatic things that Master Kong and the Confucians ever did. They extended education, at least in theory, to anyone who wanted to learn. When the Master was asked if he was a sage or worthy, he stated clearly that he was not a sage or worthy, nor had he ever met any living sages or worthies. What could Confucius claim for himself if not the possession of his beloved list of revived classical virtues? He claimed only that he had never discovered anyone who loved learning more than he did. He did not assert that he knew more or even was a better student; Confucius only believed that he sincerely loved to learn, and what he loved to learn was the path of virtue. As he said, if you could hear the Dao/Way in the morning, you could die content on the very same evening. He meant that if you were able to embrace and embody the Dao as the way of the sages and worthies, what else could you want from life?

Whether Confucius was a conservative or radical social reformer is another question that we will never be able to answer, but he did inspire the ru or ritual specialists of his day to carry on the educational task he began. After his death his disciples continued teaching; but soon different schools emerged, each emphasizing different aspects of Confucius’ teachings. In some cases, the reactions were so violent that the new teachers distanced themselves from the ru tradition completely.

The second of the great masters is Mengzi/Mencius (fl. fourth century b.c.e.) – and he is often known as the Second Sage. His was a more complicated intellectual landscape. Along with the growing Confucian tradition, there were many other schools vying for attention in the marketplace of ideas. The wars that would eventfully lead to the unification of China were increasing in ferocity. Larger and more powerful states were now conquering the smaller ones. The rulers of the time were looking for effective advice on the part of philosophers about how to govern well and survive in difficult times. In fact, the issue of how to live in a time of political chaos was also a question that many philosophers were asking on behalf of individuals as well as the local governments. Many solutions were being offered.

Mencius strove to defend the Confucian Way against the other options of his time. The forces ranged against Mencius varied greatly. On the one extreme were the schools later called Legalists, who sought power, not virtue. They argued that only by understanding the uses of political power, a highly organized bureaucracy, and an autocratic legal system could the state flourish. Virtue was a waste of time; people really responded to pain and pleasure, which ought to be controlled by the state in terms of positive and negative laws. At the other end of the spectrum were the Daoists who said that the answer to the problem was simple – non-action or dropping out of the race for power altogether. The Daoists strove to live a life beyond the range of Confucian social concerns. In the middle were thinkers like Yang Zhu, who rejected politics and posited a way of life devoted to survival. And of course, there was Mozi and his followers who sought social reform by teaching a utilitarian and pacifist vision for a peaceful society.

Mencius said all these people were wrong. They missed the point by not understanding the way of the sages and worthies. Only the teachings of the Confucian school were balanced enough between and among all the options to provide a sure philosophic and political program for reform. Like the other philosophers of his day, Mencius made his living by giving advice to rulers. In giving this advice, he built upon the early teachings of Confucius and expanded the message in sophisticated ways. For instance, Mencius was keen to show how the state could be reformed based on his analysis of human nature and its proper cultivation. He explained that all people have what he called the seeds of virtue. What they needed to do was to nurture these seeds by cultivating their mind-heart. The ruler was no exception. If the ruler could cultivate the Confucian virtues, then he would draw others to him by example and by a refined ethical form of statecraft.

The arguments continued after Mencius’ death and became even more complicated. Just before the final unification by the Qin first emperor, another great Confucian arose to expound and defend the way of the sages. This was Xunzi (fl. fourth to third centuries b.c.e.). He became a controversial figure because of his famous argument with Mencius about human nature. Mencius had stated that human nature was ultimately good. Xunzi disagreed and held that human nature was evil or deformed. If this were the case, why was Xunzi even considered a Confucian? Xunzi believed that we could change the evil into good through a rigorous form of self-cultivation. This is where Xunzi’s real debate with Mencius was played out. Xunzi believed that Mencius relied too much on the mind-heart being able to reform itself. Xunzi devised a complicated alternative form of education based on the Confucian understanding of ritual. He made the point that we could reform ourselves, but this needed a form of education based on the classical teachings of the sages and worthies.

Xunzi was also famous for writing articulate and sophisticated philosophic essays. He was able to defend Confucianism because he was a master of philosophic argumentation. He would patiently outline his case and show where the other schools were wrong. Xunzi insisted that the other philosophers failed because they were one-sided. According to Xunzi, the great Daoist Zhuangzi knew wonderfully the mystic ways of the cosmic Dao but not the ordinary functioning of daily life. The Legalist mastered the rule of law but failed to comprehend the role of ritual or civility as an essential aspect of social order. Although Xunzi created controversy for saying that Mencius was wrong about human nature, he was admired for the cogency of his Confucian philosophic vision and the clarity of his thought.

The second of the great periods of Confucian thought was the Han dynasty. Han Confucians had a doubly difficult task. In the first place, how could they compete with the great trio of Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi? For the most part they did not, and developed other strategies for their work. Second, they arrived on the scene after the great intellectual disasters caused by Qin policy and the civil wars that raged before the Han rulers successfully reunited China. The Qin dynasty was very draconian about what books and schools it would allow. It banned, among others, the teachings of the Confucians and tried to destroy their precious books. Many works were completely lost.

When the Han dynasty reunited the country in the early second century b.c.e., they eventually decided to make Confucianism the official philosophy of the state. There were a number of reasons for this success. The Confucians restated the point that Xunzi had maintained, namely that they offered the most balanced form of social theory to be found. The Legalists were completely discredited, and the Han Confucians were subtle enough to incorporate elements from other schools in order to provide a comprehensive vision of the family, state, and world. The great Dong Zhongshu (second century b.c.e.) did this by grafting cosmological and philosophic theories onto the robust Confucian sense of social and personal ethics. Dong and the other Han Confucians created the synthetic style of Confucian thought that would dominate the Chinese world up to the end of the imperial era.

The next thing the Han Confucians did was to rescue as many lost and fragmented texts as possible. Although they were not completely successful in restoring all the lost texts, they did a magnificent job at editing the pre-Han texts from the Warring States period. All the texts that we now read, save for those discovered by recent archaeology, passed through the loving hands of the Han editors. Chinese culture owes a huge debt to their labors. Along with restoring the texts as best they could, the Han Confucians also continued the role of commentator. In fact, they are most often famous for writing lengthy commentaries in various modes on the classical texts. They began the practice of writing philosophy via commentary on the ancient texts. In this respect they were a great deal like Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians who sought to explain their visions by means of commenting on the texts of their traditions. After the Han period, commentary became the most revered way for a scholar to add to Confucian cultural history.

Han is also celebrated for its great historians. Confucianism has always placed great emphasis on history because it contained the records of the sages and worthies. There were historical documents before the Han, but it was the Han historians who gave shape to a historical tradition that survives until today. The grandest of the grand historians were the father and son combination of Sima Tan and Sima Qian (writing between 140 and 100 b.c.e.). Together they completed the Records of the Grand Historian, a comprehensive survey of Chinese history from its mythical beginnings to the Han dynasty. In the later part of the Han, the brother and sister team of Ban Gu and Ban Zhao wrote a history of the early Han dynasty. The Bans provided the model for the dynastic histories that continue to be written today. Along with the Han Confucian philosophers, the Han historians shaped how we understand the classical period of Chinese history.

By the end of the Han all the elements, at least in prototype, were in place for the development of the Confucian Way. The resources of the three great classical masters provided inspiration for future generations. Smaller texts such as the Classic of Filial Piety, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Great Learning supplemented the insights of Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi. Overarching all of these profoundly humanist and religious texts was the Classic of Changes functioning as a repository of the most profound teachings of the most ancient sages and worthies.

One of the main convictions of the Han Confucians was the essential unity of the cosmos. As they put it, there was a resonance and unity between and among heaven, earth, and humanity. Yet there was nothing final or finished about this unified cosmic vision. Confucians have always been fond of quoting the Classic of Changes to the effect that the Way of the cosmos is ceaseless production, generative creativity. In later versions, this vision of the endless fecundity of the cosmos developed into a realistic pluralism. Even when later Confucians seemed to defend a monistic view of the world, their cosmology depended on the reality of the various things, objects, and events of the world as real and not as illusory.

Rotating the lens on the elements of Han cosmology, a different order for the Confucian Way was generated out of the "things close at hand" as Confucians were apt to say. We start with the formation of the self, the cultivation of the moral seeds of virtue by intelligence, civility, compassion, empathy, and faithfulness to our true humanity. We begin with the person, but the person is never an isolated, unconnected individual. Rather, the person begins her or his nurture within a family context. It is the family that forms us from the cradle to the grave. Although Confucians placed great emphasis on the family and its potential virtues, they were well aware that not all families were wonderful or perfect places for the cultivation of virtuous persons. There are wonderful stories in the classics about great sages who had terrible parents. There are even stories of these same sages using mild deception on a father because they believed that they were serving an ideal image of a parent rather than the sorry example fate had dealt them in the flesh.

One of the most suggestive ways to characterize this Confucian theory of moral cultivation is to call it a form of concerned consciousness. From the Confucian point of view, all human life is directed by various forms of preconscious, unconscious, and conscious intentionality. There is a vector factor in all humanity leading to flourishing or floundering. We all have a choice, and we are universally concerned about the outcomes of our thoughts, intentions, and actions. We are not always successful; we are not always virtuous; but we are always concerned. Of course, this is a vast claim. A counterargument could be and was made that some people were not concerned about cultivating virtue in themselves – or in anyone else for that matter.

The Confucians reasoned that it was within the person and the family that we began our common quest for human integrity. However, they were not satisfied with stopping with the family. Although the family loomed large for Confucian thought, there was another imperative to move beyond the family circle and to extend the virtues found there into the wider ambit of the world at large. A cultivated person needed to live civilly with her or his neighbors and beyond the confines of the immediate community, into the world of the state and governance. Last, but not least, Confucians must learn to extend this concern for virtue to the farthest reaches of nature and the cosmos.

One of Mencius’ most famous stories made the point perfectly. Mencius told the sad tale of Ox Mountain to show how nature mirrors human self-cultivation. Ox Mountain had once been a beautiful place, full of trees and wildlife. But after all the trees had been stripped from its sides, Ox Mountain became an ugly, useless lump, a desolate place not fit for animal or human habitation. Mencius drew the analogy with human nature. Was a deformed human nature the natural outcome of life? Yes and no. If human nature were cultivated correctly, then the natural outcome was a human life of humane flourishing and civil harmony. However, if destructive choices were made, then a person could fashion a life as ugly as Ox Mountain had become. Later, Xunzi, who argued with Mencius about many things, extended the argument by stating that our environments play a crucial role in the cultivation of virtue. Left to our own devices, Xunzi opined, human beings would too often turn themselves into personal versions of the desecrated Ox Mountain. That is why we need good teachings and teachers in order to provide a civil order capable of nurturing human flourishing.

According to the Confucian teachings, human beings must take responsibility for the whole created order. Of course, human beings are subject to the natural fluctuations of heaven and earth just as are all the other creatures, but we are responsible for what we make of our persons and our communities. The Song dynasty Confucians argued that a true person should be the first to worry about the trials and tribulations of the world and the last to enjoy its pleasures. Pleasure was not denied, but pleasure must be balanced against the need for a constant, intelligent concern for self and others. The end is a world at harmony.

The task was to assist the mind-heart, the center of the human person, to broaden and deepen its connection with heaven, the family, and the world. This is an arduous task, and that is why Confucians taught that the true Way of humanity and humaneness was long and the burden of true human culture was heavy. Further, once one task was accomplished, another loomed up. The reason for this was the fact that the world never stood still; reality was constantly changing, growing, dying, transforming itself and the human beings living within its ceaselessly creative processes. The trick of self-cultivation was to balance all these concerns so that the result was harmony and peace.

Self-cultivation was necessary to deepen the humane person, to imbue the mind-heart with the basic human virtues as expounded by the great sages and worthies. But merely enlarging the moral sensitivity of the person was not enough. It must be matched by a broadened concern for the family, society, the state, the international community, nature, and the cosmos itself. The ultimate task was and is to expand and develop the person’s mind-heart into a life of humane concern and consciousness of the welfare of all humanity, and beyond humanity, to the entire world. It was a great task, yet it was also a joyful one when contemplated in all its glory. Had not Confucius said that to hear the Way in the morning and then die in the evening was fine because to embody the Way even for a moment was a grand and wonderful achievement?

By the second century c.e. the great Han dynasty was in terminal decay. With its fall, the first two eras of the Confucian Way were over. In many respects, the fall of the Han was like the fall of the Roman empire. Both marked the end of classical civilization. When the empire was finally reunited effectively in the seventh century, the world had changed forever. With the fall of the Han came the revival of Daoism and the arrival of Buddhism in China. The story of Chinese philosophy and religion from the third to the seventh centuries is the history of the incorporation of Buddhism into all aspects of Chinese life.

It is impossible to tell the complete story of how Buddhism impacted Confucian thought. Buddhism was, until the arrival of the Western powers in the nineteenth century, the first foreign high culture that the Chinese world had ever encountered. The Chinese were entranced by the beauty and profundity of the Buddhist dharma or teachings. By the time of the founding of the great Tang empire in 618, Buddhism had permeated every aspect of Chinese life, save for political theory, which remained solidly in Confucian hands. In fact, some scholars maintain that the period from the fall of the Han (c. 220) to the middle of the Tang (c. 740s) is actually a separate, medieval period for Confucianism. There is merit to this view. But another way to describe this period is to see it as something of a continuation of the age of commentary begun with the Han; the point here is that nothing terribly new or exciting was added to the Confucian repertoire during this long hiatus till the revival that began in the ninth century.

Confucianism never disappeared as a matter of intellectual concern nor lost its grip on vital sectors of the Chinese world during the peaceful Buddhist conquest of Chinese civilization. For instance, Confucian scholars continued their great work of commenting on their beloved classics. Confucians also continued to shape family ritual and the veneration of the ancestors as well as to staff the various civil services of the numerous successor states to the fallen Han empire. However, the most brilliant philosophic and religious minds were working on Buddhist problems and Buddhist teachings. These teachings would have a great deal of influence on later Confucian thought.

The third era arrives with the revival, in the Song dynasty (960–1279), of Confucianism, known in modern ecumenical scholarship as Neo-Confucianism. Traditionally, and someone like Dr. Li would follow the Song theorists in this regard, the beginning of the revival was dated to the Northern Song in the 1020s and afterward. However, when we look dispassionately at the historical record, it is clear that the philosophic revival began in the early part of the ninth century. By the Northern Song period, the renewal was underway with great strength and creativity. In Confucian eyes, this is another resurgent period of Confucian thought, second only to the founding works of the Zhou dynasty, and certainly more important than the work of the Han and Tang Confucians. Zhu Xi, looking back from the twelfth century at the genius of these Northern Song masters (c. 1020–1107), declared this to be a veritable rediscovery of the Confucian Way.

Zhu Xi’s insight was that the Confucian Way in its full richness had been essentially lost or had gone underground ever since the time of Mencius. Of course, Zhu Xi recognized the great Han and Tang thinkers as Confucians, but with a difference. After Mencius, no one had access to the fullness of the Confucian vision. This changed dramatically, according to Zhu, with the work of his favorite four Northern Song masters. While we do not need to follow Zhu in all the twists and turns of his own philosophy of history, his point is still a good one. Things did change dramatically after the Northern Song. What most modern scholars now accept is a mid-Tang trickle followed by a Northern Song flood. Moreover, this spate of Confucian thinking was not confined to Zhu Xi’s four Northern Song masters: it was the joint achievement of many different Confucian thinkers, from prime ministers to recluse scholars. The result was the grand new world of Neo-Confucian thought. Because someone like Dr. Li would have to know the history of Song thought thoroughly and would teach this history to his students, we will not go into very much detail concerning the evolutionary twists and turns of Confucian thought from the Song to the Qing. This history will be covered in Chapter 4 (Transmitting the Dao). From the perspective of Neo-Confucian thinkers, what began in the Northern Song, came to fruition with Zhu Xi, was challenged by Wang Yangming in the Ming, and recast in the Qing, was a single chain of intellectual history.

The Qing period represents a summation of traditional Confucian thought – either the fourth major period or a continuation of the Neo-Confucian age. All the major schools inherited from the Song and Ming had adherents in this period. There was a tremendous amount of work done on the history of Confucian thought. New editions of the great philosophers were published; moreover, there was a critical reaction to Song and Ming philosophy. The most vibrant Confucians of the Qing era wondered whether or not the Song and Ming had been too much influenced by strains of Buddhist thought. These Evidential Research scholars argued that Confucians must return to a more careful philological and historical study of Chinese history. In fact, one of the glories of the Qing period was the crafted work in philology, textual criticism, and history writing and theory. In the Qing, both Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming were challenged by new trends in the world of scholarship.

The fifth period begins in the 1840s with the arrival in force of the modern Western powers on the borders of China. At the time this would not have been perceived as anything beyond a minor barbarian irritation. However, history would prove that it was more than a minor skin blemish on the body of China. Coupled with the decline of the Qing dynasty, the relentless attacks of the Western powers caused the dramatic fall of imperial Confucian China. For a while it looked as if Confucianism were dead. If the fall of the Qing and the dismantling of Confucian status and privilege were not enough, surely the communist victory in 1949 spelled the death knell of the Chinese Confucian world. And if the communist victory in 1949 was insufficient, Mao’s cultural revolution in the 1960s would finish off any lingering remains of Confucian sensibilities.

Nonetheless, the reports of the death of Confucianism have proved premature. Actually, from the 1920s on there was a group of Confucian scholars bent on reforming the tradition. They were not oblivious to the social and intellectual problems of the empire that was China and were often some of the strongest critics of a very moribund late imperial Confucianism. These Confucian reformers argued that there was a core or essence of the tradition that was worth saving. These scholars in China and the Chinese diaspora became known as the New Confucians. The New Confucians have now produced three full generations of thoughtful reformers of the tradition. In China today there are national and international Confucian associations. All this would have seemed impossible during the rampages of the cultural revolution. Even the New Confucians are not sure what to make of their tradition. Tu Weiming, the best known of the diaspora New Confucians, calls it the Third Wave of Confucianism. Tu believes that the first wave was the classical period and the second wave was the great revival in the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing periods. We are now witnessing the third wave. What makes this an exciting period for Confucian thought is the contact with the vitality of Western cultural forms. The only time this happened before was with the arrival of Buddhism, which led to an immense enrichment of the Confucian Way. The contact with Western philosophy and religion will surely have a great impact on Confucianism, and vice versa.

As we have pointed out before, Confucianism is already an international movement. The vicissitudes of Confucianism in the modern world have been different in each country in East Asia. In Korea, as in China, Confucianism was disestablished with the fall of the traditional Korean state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Korea also suffered the indignity of becoming a colony of Japan in 1910 and did not regain its freedom till 1945. In Japan, the case is again different because Confucianism was never as entrenched as it was in China or Korea. Although the Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868) used Confucianism as part of its state ideology, it was never the sole official orthodoxy as it was in Korea and China. Vietnam also appropriated Confucianism, but appears to have responded more like Japan than China or Korea. Vietnam also suffered from becoming a French colony in the nineteenth century. In the cases of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, Confucianism continues to play a role as a form of cultural DNA in the lives of these diverse people.

Confucianism has gone from being a state ideology to a nadir and then on to a significant renewal, all in one century. The religious and spiritual dimension of Confucianism continues to infuse the life of East Asian people and is now moving beyond the Pacific Rim to the Americas and Europe. It is truly an exciting time to contemplate the cultural capital that the Confucian tradition can contribute to the new century and millennium.