Confucianism focused on education as a means of attaining worth and status and was adopted as an official philosophical school under the Han Emperor Wu Ti in the second century BC. The Chinese system of non-hereditary mandarins — high-ranking officials appointed through a rigid imperial examination system — was inspired by Confucian teachings.
By the first century AD, Confucius had become an object of veneration across China. Confucianism spread to Vietnam with Chinese occupation. A third school was Mohism, named after its founder Mo Zi —c. It rejected Confucian and Daoist calls to return to the past. Mohists believed in loving all people equally and helping the common people.
They thought people should live simply. A ruler should promote the economy and avoid offensive wars. They viewed music, tradition, and luxuries as wasteful or frivolous. A final school was Legalism. The Legalists believed all the other schools were impractical. The way to get order was to create a code of strict laws, make the code public, and reward those who obeyed the laws and harshly punish those who broke them.
The founder of Confucianism was a man named Kong Qi. He later was known as Kong Fuzi, or Master Kong. In the West, he is called Confucius. He was born in B. Confucius lived a simple life, spending most of his time as a teacher. Only a few facts are known about his life. But because he is considered one of the greatest Chinese thinkers, many stories have arisen about him.
His family was poor, and his father died when he was 3. His mother taught him, and he studied hard. By 15, he decided to spend his life learning. He read and studied classic Chinese works. When he started teaching, Confucius quickly attracted a band of loyal students. He said he taught anyone who came to him "from the very poorest upward.
He is called the "First Teacher" in China. Before Confucius, rich people had hired tutors to teach their children. Confucius did not think learning should just be for the rich. He believed every man in China should learn. When he was about 50, he was appointed to work in the government of Lu.
He wanted to apply his ideas to make society better. He was soon made the minister of justice, but Confucius saw that those above him did not like his ideas. So he left. He spent the next 12 years traveling around China looking for a ruler who would listen to his ideas. He never found one.
His students, however, continued to follow him. When he was 67, he returned to Lu and continued teaching and studying five Chinese books, known as the Five Classics.
They are:. Book of Changes Yi Jing. This poetic text describes two opposite, but complementary forces of life— yin and yang. This ancient book was frequently used to divine the future or guide actions. Both Confucian and Daoist thinkers adopted it as part of their philosophy. Book of History Shu Jing contains official documents dating far back in Chinese history. Book of Poetry Shi Jing. Confucius said: "In the Book of Poetry there are poems. Written in spare prose, it follows important events in the government.
Confucius also studied a sixth classic, the Book of Music Yue Jing. Confucius considered music essential to life. But this work has not survived. Controversy surrounds each of the other texts: Who wrote it? When was it written? Who wrote the commentaries on the text? Confucius claimed he merely "transmitted" the teachings of the classics. But his interpretations of the classics created a new school of thought in China. Other schools of thought created their own works. Confucius died in B. In English, this book is usually called the Analects.
It has hundreds of short passages. Most of what we know about Confucius comes from this source. Confucius highly valued the past. Those pupils recorded his words in The Analects, a collection of ethical concepts. As stated in The Analects, Confucius believed that social harmony would naturally follow from the proper ordering of individuals in relation to one another, with the family unit as the basic building block of society.
He therefore stressed the cultivation of personal qualities such as benevolence, reciprocity, and filial piety as essential to the formation of well-educated, conscientious individuals who would benefit society through public service.
Confucius was largely ignored in his own day. When he died in B. The Analects would go on to guide governments and individuals for millennia, informing and influencing Chinese history and civilization in the process. During his lifetime, Confucius was not particularly appreciated in his native city of Qufu, in eastern China.
Time has remedied that oversight. The devotion of subsequent Chinese rulers and people over the centuries has helped preserve his now hallowed ground. The Temple of Confucius was built shortly after the sage died in B. Peasant farmers were the core of Chinese agricultural society. Their lives were brutally hard. No matter how hard they work, they can be ruined by floods or droughts, or cruel and arbitrary officials By Han times, peasants had plows with iron tips and were aided by oxen and donkeys.
But taxes were grinding, and farmers also had to perform mandatory government labor. Their shrinking farms were divided among multiple heirs. Banditry and rebellion began to take hold, and peasant uprisings were a threat into the 20th century.
At seventy, I could follow my heart's desire without transgressing what was right. Analects, The inner pole of Confucianism was reformist, idealistic, and spiritual.
It generated a high ideal for family interaction: members were to treat each other with love, respect, and consideration for the needs of all. It prescribed a lofty ideal for the state: the ruler was to be a father to his people and look after their basic needs. It required officials to criticize their rulers and refuse to serve the corrupt.
This inner and idealist wing spawned a Confucian reformation known in the West as Neo-Confucianism. The movement produced reformers, philanthropists, dedicated teachers and officials, and social philosophers from the eleventh through the nineteenth centuries. The idealist wing of Confucianism had a religious character. Its ideals were transcendent, not in the sense that they were other worldly the Confucians were not interested in a far-off heavenly realm , but in the sense of the transcendent ideal—perfection.
On the one hand, Confucian values are so closely linked with everyday life that they sometimes seem trivial. Everyday life is so familiar that we do not take its moral content seriously. We are each a friend to someone, or aparent, or certainly the child of a parent. On the other hand, Confucians remind us that the familiar ideals of friendship, parenthood, and filiality are far from trivial; in real life we only rarely attain these ideals. We all too often just go through the motions, too preoccupied to give our full attention to the relationship.
If we consistently and wholeheartedly realized our potential to be the very best friend, parent, son, or daughter humanly possible, we would establish a level of caring, of moral excellence,that would approach the utopian. This is Confucian transcendence: to take the actions of everyday life seriously as the arena of moral and spiritual fulfillment. The outer and inner aspects of Confucianism—its conforming and reforming sides—were in tension throughout Chinese history.
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