Introduction

For two thousand years, on and off, Chinese culture has been dominated by a set of ideas associated with the name of Confucius. They’ve been especially influential amongst the governing elites although they’ve also had to compete with other ideas there. At many times ‘Confucianism,’ as it’s called in the West, has had the role of a state ideology that everyone was supposed to believe in. In order to enter or to advance in the Imperial bureaucracy, for example, it was necessary to pass exams in which one had to display a mastery of the Confucian Classics of literature and the ideas in them.

In the West we’re familiar with the name, but we don’t usually know very much about the actual teachings of Confucianism. We tend to think of it as being some sort of unsophisticated philosophical ancestor worship, with a tendency to political backwardness and an insistence upon rigid ritual and extremely formal manners. About the only Confucian concept that most could name would be the ideal of ‘Filial Piety’ by which we understand the absolute submission of the son to the father.

You won’t be surprised to hear that this is an unfair picture, although it does have certain points of contact with the truth. What you’re going to get now is an introduction to Confucianism that will be enough to give you a feel for it, and a feel for the the sorts of things that are important for it, and what it aims to achieve, so that you can start to read more about it with some understanding.

Confucius in his Time

Let’s start by putting the man Confucius[1] in the context of his time. This was around about the year 500BC (He was actually born in 551BC and died in 479BC. At that time China was supposedly under the control of the Zhōu dynasty, and had been for about 500 years, but this control was failing. The Zhōu kingship was rapidly weakening and the country was being divided up amongst small states. All the relationships that were supposed to exist between the nobles and between the nobles and the king were shattered and there were no longer any universally accepted rules of behaviour – except of course the ‘law of the jungle’ and ‘might makes right.’

The Project of Confucius

Confucius set himself the task of renewing the moral basis of Chinese society, by being a teacher to others who might then go on to become advisors and apply his ideas. (He was actually the first private teacher we know of in China .) And what were these ideas? Well, Confucius largely agreed with the common opinion that things were done better in the past, and he proposed that the past should be taken as an example for our behaviours today. Confucius thought that if people would all just go back to behaving in the way that they behaved in the days of the strength of the Zhōu dynasty then things would be very much better. We shall see, however, that he did not think that mere imitation of ancient behaviours was enough: there had to be also a recovery of the ideology or the beliefs or the world view that actually justified those behaviours in the first place. It wouldn’t be enough to say, for example ‘In previous times in this situation it was the custom to do X.’ It’s obvious that if that was all he had to say, then either he would also have had to provide a set of customary actions suitable for every possible eventuality, or his system would have had nothing to say in any situation that had not been seen before. Neither would have been acceptable, so Confucius needed to extract from the examples that he did have of ancient customs what it was that motivated those actions; what world view underlay them. This worldview, this approach to things in general he called the true Dào or Way (道) It was Confucius’s main task to make that proper world view popular again and to show people how to achieve the true Dào.[1]

Confucius had a very modest view of himself. He always claimed to be “a transmitter, and not an originator.”[2] It was his task, he said, only to interpret and teach the wisdom of the past, and not to propose his own ideas. But this is too modest. Confucius did in fact invent an ethical system, because there’s really no evidence that anything like the Dào that he taught was the way of the early Zhōu. Unfortunately, there has been disagreement over the years about the exact nature of his ethical system, and this would be partly because Confucius himself did not write down his thoughts for us. His teachings are recorded in the ‘Analects’ (論語, Lún Yǔ,) which is a collection of short dialogues of Confucius with his pupils or others, or quotations from the master, written down by his pupils in the years after his death. There are no sustained arguments in this book, so extracting from it what Confucius actually meant and how he came to the interpretations that he did is a matter of interpretation on our own part.[3]

The Five Classics

So where did Confucius get his examples of the Way of ancient times? He got them from texts that had survived from the early Zhōu dynasty times – or even before. There are five books or collections of books that Confucians took to be fundamental for any study of the old ways of life. They are known as the Five Classics.[1] These were the following:

1.                    Classic of Changes     (易經, Yi Jīng)

Originally a guide to using sticks as oracles. Something like a tarot card or tea leaf reading manual.

2.                    Classic of Poetry         (詩經, Shī Jīng)

A collection of poems and songs of different sorts. Some religious, some folk songs, some hymns, and so on.

3.                    Classic of History        (書經, Shū Jīng)

Documents from the Hsia (mythical,) Shang, and Early Zhōu period.

4.                    Book of Rites                                (禮記 Lǐ Jì)

A guide to ceremonies, rituals, and etiquette.

5.                    Spring and Autumn     (春秋 Chūn Qiū)

A history of the state of Lu from 722 to 479. The historical period gets its name from this book’s title.

The Confucian Virtues

The Dào that Confucius identified from these books was not a set of moral rules. His ethical system, like most of the ethical systems of the ancient world was what we now call a ‘Virtue Ethics.’ A Virtue Ethics is not directly concerned with how one should act; rather, it is concerned with the type of person that you should be. Your actions follow from the kind of person you are – your character and dispositions and the kinds of things that you value. And Confucius’s claim was that if you were the right kind of person, with the right sort of character and valuing the right things to the right degree, then your actions – the things that you did in expressing that character – would lead to good results. And by good results what Confucius meant was that society would be stable and would function in the proper way, and people – including yourself in most cases – would be better off.

So what sort of character did Confucius think that we needed to develop?

Rén (仁)

At the core of Confucius’s ideal character is the idea of rén, which is variously translated as ‘humanheartedness’, ‘benevolence’, ‘compassion’, or ‘love’. It is the idea that we should feel an attachment to other people. Rén was so important for Confucius that it can sometimes be understood as including all the virtues that he thought were necessary. He will sometimes talk of a ‘man of rén’ when he means a perfectly virtuous man.

One of the most important characteristics of this idea of attachment as Confucius understood it is that it is not uniform. Between any two people there is an appropriate kind of attachment and an inappropriate kind The attachment that ought to be felt between wo persons depends upon the social relationships that exists between them. So, the attachment between a father and a son should be different from that between an elder and a younger sister, say, or between a ruler and one of his subjects. This might seem to open up endless prospects of discrimination, but in fact Confucians identify the following five relationships[1] (五倫, wǔlún) as models for all the relationships that can exist between people.

1. Sovereign and subject

2. Parent and child

3. Husband and wife

4. Elder and younger sibling

5. Friends

Now, other things being equal, the way that you act towards people is shaped by the way that you feel towards them; and of course, the way that you should act towards people is shaped by the way that you should feel towards them. But in this regard rén only tells us the motivation for an action, and it gives us very little guidance as to what actions are appropriate for expressing the humanhearted attachment that one feels in any particular situation. For more specific guidance, Confucius appeals to the notion of lǐ.

Lǐ (礼)

Originally lǐ meant sacrifice, but it also meant rites, rituals, conventions, and a range of other related ideas. We can think of lǐ as defining the conventions of behaviour in society. Behaviour according to those guidelines would show the virtue of propriety, another meaning for lǐ. From the Five Classics Confucians could identify the sort of behaviour that was expected in a situation. For example, according to the texts it was the custom for a child to mourn the death of a parent for three years. Thus a person who had lost their parent, and felt the loss with appropriate force because of the proper rén which they have cultivated, knew how to express this loss in the proper way. They would not be led to try to invent expressions of their own which would not be understood by others and could potentially disrupt society. Accordingly, we may think of lǐ as the outward form of rén.

On the other hand, they describe only the outward form; and for Confucius that was less important than the essence of the action. Lǐ – as conventions – were guidelines, not rules, and could be modified if circumstances made their strict application inappropriate. What was important was the motivation for following the conventions: there was no particular merit in blind application of the forms of ceremony. When questioned about the essence of lǐ, Confucius said

An important question! In matters of ceremony, if one must err on one side or the other it is better to be too economical rather than vulgarly ostentatious. In funerals and ceremonies of mourning, it is better that the mourners feel real grief than that they be meticulously correct in every ceremonial detail.[2]

Propriety was attachment to a set of forms of behaviour regulating relationships between all the people. The pattern of the rites/customs/conventions had been set in ancient times by the sages, and they had been created by them in such a way that rén expressed through them resulted in the harmonious functioning of society. The very fact of their being followed meant that society was operating in a harmonious way; and this being the case the people would be content.

But this depended upon the conventions being applied correctly. And for Confucius that meant that things had to be known by their right name. A king, for example, was defined by his function, and rén for him was determined by his relationships to others, and the lǐ for the king is appropriate for the person who plays that social role. The king fits into the whole web of rites and conventions in a very specific way, such that they establish harmony amongst all the parts of society that also participate in the lǐ. If someone who is called a ‘king’ is not related in that way, if he doesn’t fulfill all the right conditions to be a king, then the lǐ that are proper for the king are not the proper lǐ for this person. In that case the application of kingly lǐ will not lead to harmony, but to discord. It would be as if a wrong size wheel had been put into a delicate watch mechanism.

For this reason Confucius emphasised that the first task of a ruler shold be to make sure that all things were called by their correct names. This he called the Rectification of Names (正名, zhèngmíng)

Tsze-lu said, “The ruler of Wei has been waiting for you, in order with you to administer the government. What will you consider the first thing to be done?”
The Master replied, “What is necessary is to rectify names.
…

·         If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.

·         If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

·         When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish.

·         When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded.

·         When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.”[3]

Zhōng (忠)

Confucius sometimes emphasised two simple properties as being the essence of his idea of rén. At one time

The Master said, Shên! My way has one (thread) that runs right through it. Master Tsêng said, Yes. When the Master had gone out , the disciples asked, saying What did he mean? Master Tsêng said, Our Master’s way is simply this: conscientiousness (zhōng,) consideration (shù.)[4]

The idea of zhōng or conscientiousness is merely the idea that we must always make our best effort in whatever we undertake, which is a fairly uncomplicated notion. But what gives this statement real force is the claim that we have to do our best to show proper ‘shù.’

Shù (恕)

Now shù (consideration, altruism,) seems itself to have has two aspects. There is first the negative aspect – what some have called the ‘Silver Rule’ – which tells us what not to do.

Chung-kung asked about benevolence. The Master said, … ‘Do not impose upon others what you do not wish for yourself’[5]

And at another time

Adept Kung asked: “Is there any one word that could guide a person throughout life?”
The Master replied: “How about ‘shù’: never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself?”[6]

But there is also a positive aspect.  Confucius said that

As for Goodness – you yourself desire rank and standing. Then help others to get rank and standing. You want to turn your own merits to account; then help others to turn theirs to account – in fact the ability to take one’s own feelings as a guide – that is the sort of thing that lies in the direction of Goodness[7]

You’ll notice that these two aspects of  shù, and thus of rén, are essentially relative to oneself. If you know what you would like other people to do for you, then you know what to do for them; and if you know what you wouldn’t like them to do to you, then you know what not to do to them. This is why Confucius says

                Is benevolence really far away? No sooner do I desire it than it is here?[8]

The fact that appeal to these aspects of rén was so easy led later Confucians to call it the method of measuring by the carpenter’s square. By its use one could immediately determine whether one’s actions met the conditions of properly expressing rén, just as the measuring square could immediately determine whether a piece of carpentry was properly squared.[9]

The Gentleman’s Education

Human Nature

The Confucian belief that a man could be trained in the virtues was at the centre of a controversy about human nature that Chinese philosophy returns to constantly. The question arises as to whether human nature is basically good or basically bad. If it is basically good then all that is required for a man to have the chance to become a gentleman is to put him into an environment where the virtues are not thwarted and they will grow; but if it is basically bad then the proper environment must be one in which the bad elements are forcibly replaced by good elements. Two great figures of Confucianism took radically opposite points of view on the matter.

On the one hand, Mencius (孟子, Mèngzĭ) believed that we were basically good, in that there were character elements natural to man that had the potential to develop into virtues. And he thought that a simple thought experiment could show that that was the case.

‘My reason for saying that no man is devoid of a heart[1] [xīn, 心] sensitive to the suffering of others is this. Suppose a man were, all of a sudden, to see a young child on the verge of falling into a well. He would certainly be moved to compassion, … From this it can be seen that whoever is devoid of the heart of compassion is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of shame is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of courtesy and modesty is not human, and whoever is devoid of the heart of right and wrong is not human. The heart of compassion is the germ [duan, 端]  of benevolence [rén]; the heart of shame, of dutifulness [yì]; the heart of courtesy and modesty, of observance of the rites [lǐ]; the heart of right and wrong, of wisdom[2] [zhì, 智]. Man has these four germs just as he has four limbs. For a man possessing these four germs to deny his own potentialities is for him to cripple himself.[3]

On the other hand Xúnzǐ (荀子) held that man was naturally bad. He thought it was obvious that if man was naturally good, then there would be no need for governments, rituals, and social norms.

If human nature were good, we could dispense with the sage kings and desist from the practice of ritual and rightness. Since human nature is evil, we must elevate the sages and esteem ritual and rightness. Therefore the straightening board was created because of warped wood, and the plumb line came into being because of things that are not straight. Rulers are established and ritual and rightness are illuminated because nature is evil. From this perspective it is clear that human nature is evil and that goodness is the result of conscious activity. 

This dispute was eventually resolved in favour of Mencius by Zhu Xi (朱熹) (1130-1200 AD,) so that the orthodox Confucian position since Sung dynasty times has been that the nature of Man is fundamentally Good.

The Nature of Government

The Proper Task of a Gentleman is Government

Given that Man is Good, it is in the power of a gentleman, acting as a government official, to help society in two ways: to lead by example, using his Moral Force (dé) to set those about him onto the right path; and, by following the ancient conventions (lǐ) in his official role, to create the conditions in society that allow others to properly follow the dào. Thus, for a Confucian, the preferred end of a gentleman is to take a position as a government official. That is his responsibility and that is how he can best contribute to the creation of harmony in a society. (You will recall that this was Confucius’s own ambition, although he was never able to achieve his goals in that area.) Confucius does have a proviso, however. He thinks that a gentleman should not become an official if the state is not run according to the dào. If there is no order in the state then the gentleman must not risk having to bend his principles to be effective in his office.

How a Ruler should Rule

It was particularly recommended that the ruler should be able to assert Moral Power. In fact it sometimes seems that the most important role of the ruler is to simply be the ruler, so that the proper relationships would build up around him.

If your desire is for good, the people will be good. The moral character of the ruler is the wind; the moral character of those beneath him is the grass. When the wind blows, the grass bends.[1]

This being the case, a ruler who is ruling properly is hardly required to do anything at all – at least not in the way of setting up domestic interventionist policies, instituting new punishments and taxes and so on. All this is unnecessary because the people naturally behave well under his rule and society functions well as a result. This is how it was in the days of the sage kings.

He who governs by means of his virtue is, to use an analogy, like the pole-star: it remains in its place while all the lesser stars do homage to it[2]

It’s for that reason that Confucius recommended that the first task of a ruler’s minister would be the rectification of names – as we saw before. The example of the ruler in performing the appropriate rites and rituals and following the prescribed conventions will not only cause the proper relationships to be observed, but the proper motivations and characters and virtues will be created in the people – just as when the gentleman trained himself in the lǐ.

The Master said, "If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good."[3]

What a Ruler should Aim at

The welfare of the people (民, min) is the fundamental purpose of the government. Their moral education, such as it is, is important and will contribute to their welfare, but it is their material welfare that is the paramount outcome to be desired from government. In fact Confucius had a pretty low opinion of the ability of the people to understand the dào sufficiently to follow it.

                The common people can be made to follow the path but not to understand it.[4]

Consequently, their following of the dào would have to be motivated by natural respect and trust in their social superiors – and that would only be gained by the success of the government in providing for their material well-being. 

Tzu-Kung asked about the government. The Master said, ‘Give them enough food, give them enough arms, and the common people will have trust in you.[5]

Although even here Confucius goes on to say that if one can have only one of the three (food, arms, or trust) one should choose trust, since without trust in the rulers there can be only anarchy in the state. Everything flows from trust.

A Ruler can be Overthrown

One of the most interesting aspects of the Mencian version of Confucianism was a development of the idea that a king could be a king only so long as he behaved as a king. If he failed to behave as a king – i.e. failed to follow the rules and rites and to have the appropriate ren as indicated by the sages of old – then he could not be called a king. The ‘rectification of names’ would name him as the criminal that he was, which would allow his oppressed subjects – who are accordingly not his subjects to rid themselves of this burden. Thus King Hsuan of Ch’i asked of Mencius:

"Is it permissible for a vassal to murder his lord?"

Mencius replied, "One who robs rén you call a ‘robber;’ one who wrecks yì you call a ‘wrecker;’ and one who robs and wrecks you call an ‘outlaw.’ I have heard that [Wu] punished the outlaw Zhou - I have not heard that he murdered his lord.[6]

This fits neatly into a standard idea of the time – and of all later times – that a ruler was entitled to rule only so long as he possessed the ‘mandate of Heaven’ (天命, Tiānmìng)

Conclusion

As you can see from this, Confucianism looks like a coherent moral system. But you can also see that it’s very different from the kinds of moral systems that we’re familiar with in the modern West, which are much more concerned with the types of actions that are to be allowed or forbidden and much less concerned with the type of people we should be. As I mentioned, however, we aren’t completely unfamiliar with Virtue systems: Aristotle, who worked at about the same time as Confucius, developed the most well known Western Virtue ethics. Where the Western and the Eastern systems differ most is in the justification for the virtues that are supposed to belong to the morally ideal person. In the West, it is taken for granted that our individual happiness is the goal that we should seek, and it is argued that the person with the Classic virtues of courage and prudence and so on is most likely to achieve a good life for themselves. In the East it is assumed that the proper goal is social harmony, and the virtues that are recommended are supposed to be those most likely to give that result. This difference is often taken to mark a fundamental difference between the two civilizations.