What is Confucianism? In many respects, Confucianism defies a simple definition. Is it a system of values?
A way of life? A political theory? Or is it a religion?
After all, it shows up in comparative religion textbooks everywhere. Well, it's all of these things at the same time, and much more. Throughout much of Chinese history, Confucianism was the culture of the educated elite. In pre-modern China, a loosely organized set of texts associated with the intellectual tradition, often referred to as the Five Confucian Classics, was the core curriculum for the civil service exams. You needed to pass these exams to become a member of the state bureaucracy, which was often the key to climbing the ladder of social success and political power.
The rituals described in these classic texts were to be performed by members of the imperial household in the capital. They were believed to be crucial to the prosperity of the state and its people. However, this does not mean that Confucianism was limited to Chinese educated elites and imperial dynasties.
Ancestor veneration, a key aspect within Confucianism, was and continues to be a prevalent practice among all members of society. Moreover, Confucian values such as respect to one's elders have become such a fundamental part of social norms in East Asia that they are no longer associated with classic texts, but simply as a shared aspect of traditional culture. This is episode one in a multi-part series on Confucianism. In this video, we'll examine the many different faces of Confucian philosophy, ritual, and tradition.
We'll begin with the life of Confucius and the social context that prompted him to develop a doctrine that emphasized education, moral self-cultivation, and a hierarchical code of conduct. Then we'll follow the development of this doctrine as a political philosophy that we now call Confucianism. We will also investigate the emergence of Confucian ritual as the foundation of everyday life in ancient China, and finally we'll trace the spread of Confucian ideas and institutions into countries within China's cultural sphere of influence, including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
Before we begin, it's important to note that the Latinization Confucius was introduced to Europe by Jesuit missionaries who were sent to China by the Catholic Church to study the culture of the educated elite in order to better convert local populations to Christianity. But this was not really his name. The original Chinese is Kong Fu Tse, or Master Kong, which is often shortened to Kong Tse.
So the name Confucius derives from his Mandarin Chinese name, Kong Fu Tse. Confucius and his followers referred to themselves as Ru. which roughly translates to scholars.
For simplicity's sake, we'll refer to Confucius by his common Latinized name, and we'll refer to the Roux, who saw him as their intellectual ancestor, as Confucians. Okay, because historical context always matters, we need to back up a bit and examine Confucius'chaotic social and political environment, which shaped his thinking. Confucius was born in 551 BCE, right on the cusp of an era ominously known as the Warring States. period. This state of vicious civil war was preceded by a time of relatively long and stable rule under the Zhou dynasty.
Established hundreds of years before in the 11th century, they managed to gain the support of the local aristocracy and for hundreds of years they ruled over a time of prosperity. They established a feudal system of government that allowed the royal house in the capital to govern a huge geographical area. But this period of prosperity did not last long. From the 8th century BCE onward, and especially during the Warring States period, things fell apart, and the Zhou royal house remained rulers only on paper.
The actual power was divided among local warlords, who fought each other for territory and dominance. Over the next five centuries, the Zhou state was thrown into chaos. Moreover, advances in military technology, such as the invention of the crossbow, enabled the feudal lords to conscript relatively untrained commoners into their armies. resulting in more casualties and more disintegration of social and political structures. Infrastructure projects were neglected, farms were left unattended, and food was scarce.
So Confucius was born into chaotic times, but he was also born into scholarly times. Despite the worsening social chaos, this was also a time of great intellectual innovation. One of the greatest accomplishments of the Zhou Dynasty was the formation of a canonical set of texts known as the Classics.
These included the Book of Changes, a philosophical divination manual, the Book of Odes, an anthology of folk songs, mythological accounts, and religious hymns, the Book of Documents, a collection of political speeches and essays, the Three Compendia of Rites, a collection of liturgies and writings on ritual, and the Spring and Autumn Annals, a historical record of the feudal state of Lu, Confucius's native state. A new group of educated elites emerged who were experts in these classics, and the knowledge they contained did not escape the eyes of the local warlords, because each wanted a strategic edge over their competition in their quest to unify the warring states. One of the earliest intellectuals who sought to gain the patronage of an ambitious feudal lord was Confucius. So let's talk about the man himself.
As we discussed, Confucius was born in 551 into a world of political and social chaos, but also intellectual innovation. Very little is known about his life since most of the stories about him are legends refracted through the lens of his followers centuries later. What we do know is that he was born in the coastal state of Lu in modern-day Shandong province and he descended from an aristocratic clan with ties to the Zhou royal house. So he was perhaps born into some sort of low-level scholar bureaucrat class.
However, despite losing his father at a young age and growing up in poverty, his background enabled him to get a decent education and become a master of ancient Zhou ritual knowledge. In his later years, Confucius opened a small school of his own, but his political aspirations compelled him to travel to the courts of local rulers to offer sage advice. Most of what we know about his life comes from the Analects, or the Lunyu, a collection of dialogues between Confucius and his students.
The book was not written by Confucius himself, but by his disciples. It chronicles his attempts to find a ruler who would be receptive to his solution to the state of social and political chaos. In the Analects, we find the foundation for the doctrine of classical Confucianism, which focuses on three main themes, education, family, and ritual.
So let's take these one by one. First and foremost, Confucianism is a philosophy of education. While some of the traveling political advisors of that time believed that the only answer to chaos was enforcing a strict system of laws and punishments, Confucius wanted a long-term solution to the underlying problem of violence and competition. He argued that harsh punishments might be good for scaring people into compliance, but in order to establish a thriving harmonious society, we must invest in education and help individuals follow the path which he called moral self-cultivation, a lifelong process of learning how to be good members of society.
In the modern world, we think of education as something that happens in school, sitting in desks arranged in rows with the teacher at the front of the classroom. As a teacher himself, Confucius was well aware of the importance of group learning, but he also knew that self-cultivation was difficult and he needed to start it as soon as possible. Confucius believed that children are especially open to new ideas, and for this reason we need to start instructing them at home long before they begin their formal education. As we're told in the first chapter of the Analects, a person who respects their parents and their elders would hardly be inclined to defy their superiors.
A person who is not inclined to defy their superiors will never foment a rebellion. To respect parents and elders is the foundation of humaneness. Notice the concern for rebellion and instability, a hallmark of Confucius'own time of the warring states period. Confucius argued that early education is the key.
Learning how to be good children prepares people to become good adults, supportive parents, considerate members of the community, and upstanding citizens. The second theme is the family, which in Confucian thought implicated the government as well. When asked about government, Confucius replied that the most important thing is to let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, the father a father, the son a son.
Later commentators understood this to mean that the structure of society and the state themselves are based on the basic model of the family. The most important of all family relations, of course, is the one between parents and their children. Parents care for newborns from the very first moment. They take care of their physical and emotional needs. and help them navigate the world.
In return, children have the obligation to respect their parents and repay them for their love and support. By observing the behavior of family members, children can learn about the power dynamics that define society. This sense of deference towards one's elders is known as filial piety. And all throughout the Analects, it's considered to be among the most important of all moral virtues and later becomes the hallmark of East Asian Confucian culture.
In classical Confucian thought, there were five relationships, all based on hierarchical binaries. Father and son, elder brother and younger brother, husband and wife, older friend and younger friend, and finally, ruler and subject. Filial piety teaches us how to behave in different social situations.
For Confucian thought, society is basically an extension of the family unit, which is why we see it in the five relations. The ruler must treat their subjects like a caring father. Provide for their children. ...fighting for them, ensuring that they have the best conditions to prosper.
If they do their job properly, they'll learn the respect of their subjects, who will treat them with the same sense of reverence and piety that children have for their own parents. You can probably notice here that the ideal harmonious society is not based on equality, but on hierarchy. As Confucius himself claims, the person of noble character seeks harmony, not uniformity. Much like a family, not all members of society enjoy the same status. A wheelmaker, for example, does not enjoy the same power and influence of a high official.
Much like a younger member of the family, they need to accept the authority of their superiors. But this does not mean the wheelmaker is not important. Without wheels, the complex transportation network administered by the officials can't function. Food and other products can't be sent to their proper destination. And as a result, society as a whole might suffer.
Confucius saw society as an intricate engine containing many different cogs and wheels. While some parts might be more important than others, all are crucial for the smooth running of the whole machine. Accepting our designated rules is the key for a harmonious society. A society in which all enjoy the fruits of our labor and develop a sense of dignity and self-respect regardless of our status.
Throughout the Analects, Confucius underlines the importance of cultivating moral values, such as a sense of justice, trustworthiness, and loyalty. All of these virtues, however, take second place to what many scholars deem as the most important of all Confucian values, ren, often translated as benevolence or humaneness. Ren refers to our ability to empathize, to put ourselves in someone else's shoes and treat them the same way we want them to treat us. Never inflict on others, says Confucius, what you yourself do not desire.
Known as the Golden Rule, this sense of reciprocity lies at the heart of Confucian ethics. It involves a sense of almost religious devotion to constantly seeing the world through the eyes of others, trying to understand their position, and treating them as fellow human beings. Learning how to be humane and cooperate with others for the good of society is therefore one of the most important elements of our moral self-cultivation.
Book learning played a significant role in this process. Confucius believed that knowledge contained in the five classics was useful for teaching moral values such as benevolence, righteousness, trustworthiness, and loyalty. At the same time, he also realized the limitations of theoretical education. While parents must instruct their children and teach them how to differentiate between right and wrong, moral education also depends on exposure to proper patterns of behavior that can be internalized and become a second nature.
Which leads us to the third theme, ritual. In addition to his role as an educator and aspiring political advisor, Confucius was also a ritualist. He saw it as his life mission to preserve the ritual system of the Zhou Dynasty, called Li. Now, when we hear the word ritual today, we mostly think of religious ritual, like prayer or sacrifice.
While Confucian Li includes practices like these, the term is much broader and is best understood as social etiquette. a set of unwritten cultural practices that acts as both a social glue and a social lubricant underscoring all social activities. A good example are the rituals of greeting. When people in pre-modern China met, they exchanged bows. The depth of each person's bow was dependent on their relative social status within the group.
A subordinate employee did not only bow first, but their bow was also much deeper compared to their superior's bow. But when the boss returned home and greeted their parents, the boss was then the one to bow much deeper. Greeting rituals are just one example of a much bigger world of Confucian social rules. For example, mealtime etiquette.
Seating around the family table is done according to hierarchy and status. Older family members sit at the top of the table. They receive the best cuts of meat, and you can't start eating without their approval.
These rules are rarely specified, but perceived as a part of tradition. When children are exposed to proper ritual behavior from a young age, they model their own actions on it until it becomes second nature to them. According to Confucius, this is the key for a harmonious society, one which is founded on education, family values, and socialization through ritualization. In the next video in the series, we'll examine about the more religious aspects of Confucian ritual, but for now let's turn to the legacy of classical Confucianism and how it became a prominent political philosophy in China. before spreading to other East Asian regions.
The Warring States period ended in 221 BCE, and while there was a brief digression away from Confucian ideas under the short-lived Qin dynasty, Confucianism came back strong during the Han dynasty. The first Han rulers realized that running a big and culturally diverse empire requires a complex system of bureaucracy. For this, they relied on the services of the Roux, the educated elites who saw themselves as the disciples of Confucius, and the preservers of the classics he endorsed. During the reign of Emperor Wu, an imperial academy was established in the capital, with the goal of training prospective officials in the work of government. In order to pick the best and the brightest, he ordered the creation of a civil service exam that tested the students'knowledge of the classics.
It involved reciting passages from memory as well as writing essays and papers. poetry demonstrating mastery of these texts. The civil service exam became more popular during the Tang and Song dynasties, and it continued to be the main avenue for upward social mobility and the main route to achieve power for aspiring officials, all the way until the 20th century. It served to solidify the status of Confucianism as the culture of the educated elites.
While the curriculum for the imperial exams changed over the years, it always focused on Confucian texts, from the classics to the writings of Confucius, to his intellectual successors. Confucians became more than educators and ritualists. They became the symbol of literacy and civil culture.
Because of China's status as the strongest state in East Asia throughout most of the past 2000 years, its tributary states such as Korea and Japan eagerly adopted its culture. Chinese-style Confucianism was implemented in Korea as early as the 7th century CE. By 1363, all state officials in the Kingdom of Korea were required to study at the National Confucian Academy, located in the capital of Kaesong.
By the early modern period, Confucian values, especially filial piety and deference to one's elders, have become accepted at all levels of Korean society. Shortly after it spread to Korea, Confucianism was introduced to Japan. Together with Buddhist texts, Confucian writings were brought into the imperial court and soon started influencing the elites in the capital. But from the 16th century onward, the Tokugawa shoguns, the military rulers of Japan, established a nationwide network of Confucian academies that were open to all members of society. From that point, Confucian values such as harmony and duty became commonplace in Japan as well.
Okay, you may have noticed that throughout this episode we've discussed Confucianism as a political philosophy and a system of social behavior, but this is religion for breakfast. We talk about religion on this channel, and Confucianism shows up all the time in comparative religion textbooks. But Confucius himself seemed to focus on this-worldly concerns, not other-worldly concerns. In his Analects, when asked how to serve the spirits and the gods, Confucius replied, not yet being able to serve other people, how would you be able to serve the spirits?
So where is the religion? In the next episode in the series, we'll examine the religious aspects of Confucianism. attempting to answer the question, is Confucianism a religion? This is the first episode in a multi-part series on Confucianism, and it's brought to you by our amazing patrons on Patreon. A few months ago while I was publishing the Shinto series, I asked the Patreon community to vote on what the next World Religion series should be, and Confucianism beat Buddhism by a few votes.
I'm gearing up for the next World Religion series, so if you'd like to participate in future polls, head on over to patreon.com religionforbreakfast So I just want to say a special thank you to all of our patrons on Patreon. You really make this channel possible. Thanks, everyone.