7. Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism

Lecture Plan

1. The origin and evolution of Confucianism.

2. Confucian literature.

3. The cult of Confucius. Social ideals. The cult of ancestors and the norms of «xiao». Rites. The law of «ren». The sanctification of the emperor's power.

4. Cosmogonic and cosmological conceptions.

5. The Confucian system of education and upbringing.

6. Neo-Confucianism.

1. The origin and evolution of Confucianism

Confucianism (Chinese: ru [jia/jiao] – «[the teaching] of the school of scholar-intellectuals») – is the most ancient philosophical system and one of the three major ethico-religious teachings (alongside Daoism and Buddhism) of the Far East; it arose in China at the turn of the 6th–5th centuries BCE. The original name of Confucianism (ru) contains no reference to the name of its founder – Confucius – which corresponds to his own original stance – «to transmit rather than to create, to believe in antiquity and to love it». His qualitatively new eth-

of which – dating back to the end of the 2nd – first half of the 1st millennium BCE – are the canons Shujing and Shijing. This original orientation made the normativeness, resting on historical precedent

of Confucianism as a whole. The keepers of ancient wisdom in Confucius's time (the Zhou era, 11th–3rd centuries BCE) were scholar-intellectuals set aside from the levers of power, who specialized in «cultural» (wen) activity, i.e. the preservation and reproduction of written monuments and proto-scientific studies, chiefly astronomical-astrological ones (the semantics of «culture» – wen – embraces both writing and astronomical-meteorological phenomena). They were concentrated in the region of the state of Lu, Confucius's homeland (present-day Shandong province), and were possibly descendants of the ruling or priestly elite of the state of Shang-Yin, conquered in the 12th–11th centuries BCE by the Zhou tribal union, which stood at a less advanced level of cultural development. It seems that their social decline was reflected in the etymological meaning of the term «ru» – «weak». Confucius considered this

social weakness incompatible with their cultural-intellectual strength and put forward an ideal of state organization in which, given a sacrally exalted but practically almost inactive ruler, real power belongs to the ru, who combine in themselves the qualities of philosophers, men of letters, scholars, and officials. From its very birth Confucian-

kinship categories; «the state is one family», the sovereign is the Son of Heaven and at the same time «the father and mother of the people». The state was identified with society, and social ties with interpersonal ones, whose basis was seen in the family structure. The latter, in turn, was derived from the relations between father and son. From the standpoint of Confucianism, the father was regarded as «Heaven» to the same extent that Heaven was a father. Therefore «filial piety» (xiao1), in the canonical treatise specially devoted to it, the Xiaojing, was elevated to the rank of «the root of grace/virtue (de)».

Developing as a kind of socio-ethical anthropology, Confucianism concentrated its attention on man, on the problems of his innate

in the further course of things largely conditioned Confucianism's acquisition of the social functions of a religion. At the same time, Confucius considered the entire range of sacred and ontologico-cosmological problems relating to the sphere of Heaven (tian) from the standpoint of their significance for man and society. He made the focus of his teaching an analysis of the interaction between the «inner» impulses of human nature, ideally encompassed by the concept of «humaneness» (ren), and the «outer» socializing factors, ideally encompassed by the concept of ethico-ritual «propriety» (li). The normative type of person, according to Confucius, is the «noble man» (junzi), who has apprehended the heavenly «mandate» (ming) and is «humane», combining in himself ideal spiritual-moral qualities with the right to a high social status.

Confucius also made observance of the ethico-ritual norm li the supreme gnoseo-praxiological principle: «One should neither look, nor listen, nor speak that which is not in accordance with li»; «By broadening [one's] knowledge of culture (wen) and reining it in by means of li, one can avoid transgressions». Both Confucius's ethics and his gnoseo-praxiology rest on the general idea of universal balance and mutual correspondence, which in the first case issues in the «golden rule» of morality (shu – «reciprocity»), and in the second in the requirement of correspondence between the nominal and the real, between word and deed (zheng ming – «the rectification of names»). The meaning of human existence, according to Confucius, is the establishment throughout All-under-Heaven of the supreme and universal form of socio-ethical order – the «Way» (dao), whose most important manifestations are «humaneness», «due righteousness» (yi), «reciprocity», «wisdom» (zhi), «courage» (yong), «[respectful] caution» (jing), «filial piety» (xiao), «brotherly love» (di, ti), personal dignity, loyalty (zhong), «benevolence», and others. The concrete embodiment of dao in each individual being and phenomenon is «grace/virtue» (de). The hierarchically ordered harmony of all individual de forms the universal dao.

After the death of Confucius his numerous disciples and followers formed various schools, of which, according to the testimony of Han Fei, there were already no fewer than eight by the 3rd century BCE. They developed both the explicit socio-ethical (Daxue, Xiaojing, the commentary to the Chunqiu) and the implicit ontologico-cosmological (Zhongyong, Xicizhuan) conceptions of Confucius. Two integral and mutually opposed interpretations of Confucianism – later recognized, respectively, as orthodox and heterodox – were put forward in the 4th–3rd centuries BCE by Mencius and Xunzi. The former advanced the thesis of the original «goodness» of human nature (xing1), to which «humaneness», «due righteousness», «propriety» and «wisdom» belong just as the four limbs belong to man. According to the latter, human nature is originally evil, i.e. from birth it strives for gain and carnal pleasures, and therefore these good qualities must be instilled in it from without through constant instruction. In ac-

and gnoseo-praxiological side of human existence. This divergence also showed itself in their views on society: Mencius formulated a theory of «humane government» (ren zheng), based on the priority of the people over both the spirits and the ruler, including the subjects' right to overthrow a wicked sovereign; Xunzi compared the ruler to the root and the people to the leaves,

and held that the task of the ideal sovereign was to «win over» his people, thereby drawing close to Legalism.

In the 2nd century BCE, in the Han era, Confucius was recognized as the «uncrowned king», or the «true sovereign» (su wang), and his teaching acquired the status of the official ideology and, having defeated its main rival in the sphere of socio-political theory – Legalism – nevertheless integrated a number of its cardinal ideas, in particular accepting a compromise combination of ethico-

ritual norms (li2) and administrative-legal statutes (fa). Confucianism acquired the traits of an all-embracing system thanks to the efforts of the «Confucius of the Han era» – Dong Zhongshu, who, drawing on the corresponding conceptions of Daoism and the Yin-Yang school, worked out in detail the ontologico-cosmological doctrine of Confucianism and endowed it with certain religious functions (the teaching about the «spirit» and the «will of Heaven»), necessary for the official ideology of a centralized empire. On the whole, during the Han era (end of the 3rd century BCE – beginning of the 3rd century CE) «Han Confucianism» was created, whose principal achievement was the systematization of the ideas born in the «golden

commentarial processing of Confucian and Confucianized classics. A reaction to the penetration of Buddhism into China in the first centuries of our era, and the associated revival of Daoism, was the Daoist-Confucian synthesis in the «study of the mysterious (arcane)» (xuanxue). The gradual growth of both the ideological and the social influence of Buddhism and Daoism gave rise to a desire to restore the prestige of Confucianism. The heralds of this movement, which resulted in the creation of Neo-Confucianism, were Wang Tong (end of the 6th – beginning of the 7th century), Han Yu, and Li Ao (8th–9th centuries).

Neo-Confucianism, which arose in the 11th century, set itself two main

and Daoism. The first to solve these tasks in an extremely compact form was Zhou Dunyi (11th century), whose ideas received a fully elaborated interpretation a century later in the work of Zhu Xi. His teaching, at first considered heterodox and even subjected to prohibition, was officially recognized in the 14th century and became the basis for the understanding of the Confucian classics within the state examination system until the beginning of the 20th century. The Zhu Xi interpretation of Confucianism dominated the countries bordering China – Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The main rival to Zhu Xi's school during the reign of the Ming dynasty (14th–17th centuries) was the Lu [Jiuyuan] – Wang [Yangming] school, which dominated ideologically in China in the 16th–17th centuries and likewise spread to neighboring countries. In the struggle between these schools, the original Confucian opposition between externalism (Xunzi – Zhu Xi, who only formally canonized Mencius) and internalism (Mencius – Wang Yangming) was revived at a new theoretical level, taking shape within Neo-Confucianism as opposing orientations toward object or subject, the external world or man's inner nature, as the source for apprehending the «principles» (li1) of all that exists, including moral norms.

In the 17th–19th centuries both leading teachings – those of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming – came under

and headed by Dai Zhen. It concentrated on the empirical investigation of nature and the scientific-critical study of the Confucian classics, taking as its model the textology of Han Confucianism, for which reason it received the name «Han learning» (Han xue).

Since the end of the 19th century the development of Confucianism in China has, in one way or another, been connected with attempts to assimilate Western ideas and with a return, from the abstract problems of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism and Qing-era Han textology, to the concrete ethico-social themes of original Confucianism. In

level, combining Neo-Confucian and partly Buddhist categories with knowledge of European and Indian philosophy, which allows scholars to speak of the emergence at this time of a new, historically fourth (after the original, the Han, and the Neo-Confucian) form of Confucianism – post-Confucianism, or more precisely post-Neo-Confucianism, based, like the two previous forms, on the assimilation of foreign and even alien-cultural ideas. Contemporary Confucians, or post-Neo-Confucians (Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, Du Weiming, and others), see in the ethical universalism of Confucianism – which treats every stratum of being in a moral aspect and gave rise to the «moral metaphysics» of Neo-Confucianism – an ideal combination of philosophical and religious thought. In China, Confucianism was the official ideology until 1912 and dominated spiritually until 1949; today this position is preserved in Taiwan and Singapore. After the ideological rout of the 1960s (the campaign to «criticize Lin Biao and Confucius»), it is now successfully being revived in the PRC as the bearer of a national idea awaiting demand.

2. Confucian literature

Confucian literature consists of the canonical books, the Wujing. The Wujing [Five Classics] is the general name for the following five Confucian canonical books: the Yijing (the Book of Changes, setting forth a special system of divination, later supplemented by commentaries in the form of the so-called «Ten Wings», which provide the cosmogonic system of the ancient Chinese); the Shijing (the Book of Odes and Songs); the Shujing (the Book of Documents – an epic work setting forth, in rhythmic prose, legends about the formation of the Chinese people and its ancient history); the Liji («Records of the Perfect Order of Things, Government, and Rites» – regulating social relations, religious rites, and so forth, and containing information about the ideal, from the Confucian point of view, system of government of the ancient kings, about the ancient calendar, and so on); the Chunqiu – the annals of the principality of Lu, written, according to tradition, by Confucius himself, though the latest entries in these annals deal with events that occurred after his death. The Chunqiu gives us not so much an account of the events themselves as an extremely laconic assessment of them from the standpoint of Confucian political morality. The Wujing is the most ancient Chinese literary monument and contains very valuable information on the ancient history of the Chinese people. However, this information cannot be fully trusted. The scholars who reconstructed the ancient books (composed mainly in the 6th–5th centuries BCE) under the Han dynasty sought to adapt them to the political order of their own era, and therefore resorted either to surrounding the ancient text with an appropriate commentary, or to interpolations and even outright falsification of the text. The Wujing has come down to us in such an unreliable Han-era redaction that it still requires a great deal of philological work to separate the ancient text from later accretions.

Confucius himself, like Pythagoras and Socrates, left no written exposition of his teaching, but the friends and followers of the sage recorded his sayings in the book «Lunyu» – the «Analects». It consists chiefly of individual aphorisms gathered without any particular system, which begin with the words: «The Master said...» Sometimes it reports facts from Confucius's biography; sometimes one finds lively episodes showing the Teacher in relaxed conversation with friends. And although tradition attributes to Confucius the compilation of almost all of China's sacred writings, the «Lunyu» remains almost the only reliable testimony about the sage and his teaching.

3. The cult of Confucius. Social ideals. The cult of ancestors and the norms of «xiao». Rites. The law of «ren». The sanctification of the emperor's power

«Confucius» – the Latinized form of the Chinese Kong Fuzi – «Master Kong», Kongzi, Kong Qiu, Kong Zhongni (552/551–479 BCE). The first Chinese philosopher whose personality is historically verifiable, the founder of Confucianism. He was born in Zou in the state of Lu (present-day Qufu in Shandong province). He came from a noble but impoverished family, genealogically descended from the Yin dynasty, overthrown in the 11th century BCE.

Even in his youth Confucius became the first professional teacher in Chinese history and the organizer of a community of scholar-intellectuals (he had more than three thousand disciples). His pedagogical doctrine was built on the egalitarian-democratic principle of equal opportunity – «teaching without regard to social origin» of the pupil – and presupposed a minimal fee – «a bundle of dried meat». At the age of 50, having «come to know the heavenly mandate», Confucius tried to make a career as a statesman in order to put his socio-political theory into practice. In 496 he attained the post of first counselor in Lu, but soon was forced to leave his homeland and, traveling for thirteen years with his closest disciples through the other states of China, unsuccessfully tried to instill his ideas in their rulers.

He spent his last years in Lu, engaged in developing his teaching, in instruction, and in textological work on the canonical works of antiquity. Confucius saw his own historical mission in preserving and transmitting to posterity the ancient culture (wen); therefore he did not engage in original composition, but edited and commented on the written heritage of the past, whose foundation consisted of historico-didactic and literary works, above all the Shujing and Shijing. This original orientation determined such fundamental features of Confu-

perfectly wise» (sheng) rulers of the semi-real, semi-mythical «antiquity» (gu), which allowed him to treat «culturedness» (wen) and correct social order as two sides of a single coin – different manifestations of a single human «Way» (dao). Whether it triumphs or fails to be realized throughout All-under-Heaven, this «Way» is upheld by scholar-intellectuals (ideally – officials), whose designation – «ru» – became the term for Confucians.

Under the Han dynasty, in the 2nd century BCE, such an approach to culture was highly esteemed by the state authorities; Confucianism obtained the status of official ideology, and Confucius received a title equating him with the «perfectly wise» rulers of antiquity («su wang» – «the uncrowned king» or «the true sovereign»).

A cult of veneration of Confucius also formed, in which he came to be honored as the first teacher of humanity. In 174 the emperor Gaozu personally visited Confucius's grave in his native Qufu (Shandong province) and offered a bull in sacrifice there. Fifty years later a temple was erected in Confucius's honor. In 267 an imperial edict decreed that a sheep, a pig, and a bull were to be sacrificed four times a year in the capital and in Confucius's homeland. In 555 it was decreed that a temple in honor of Confucius be built in every city that housed the residence of a representative of authority. Confucius's direct descendants received a hereditary princely title, and the eldest of the line was obliged to devote himself to tending the grave and temple. At the beginning of the 20th century Confucius's clan numbered 20,000 to 30,000 members; it exists to this day.

Confucius's views found authentic expression in the collection of maxims, dialogues, historical accounts, and everyday scenes compiled in the 5th–4th centuries BCE and taking its current form around the turn of our era – the «Lunyu (Analects)» – containing sayings on various subjects by Confucius himself, his disciples, and their disciples. Confucius is also credited with authorship of the philosophical commentaries included in the Zhou[yi], and of the first annals, the «Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn)». Confucius refrained from pronouncements about the supernatural, holding that the supreme world-governing force was the divinely naturalistic, «silent» Heaven (tian). The «mandate» (ming) sent down by Heaven can and must be apprehended by man, who only in that case is able to become a «noble man» (junzi), i.e. a normative personality combining ideal spiritual-moral qualities with the right to a high social status. The antagonist of the «noble man» is the «small (petty) man» (xiaoren), guided by «profit» (li) rather than «due righteousness» (yi), of low standing and tied to a particular occupation. In terms of cardinal personal qualities, i.e. «grace/virtue» (de), the free («instrumentless» – bu qi) «noble man» prevails over the narrow-minded («instrumental») «small man», as the wind prevails over grass. At the center of Confucius's teaching is man, conceived within a single socio-ethical plane, to which existential problems are also reduced («not yet knowing what life is, how can one know what death is?»), as are religious ones («not yet able to serve the living, how can one serve the spirits?»), and epistemological ones (knowledge is «knowledge of men»). Confucius apparently regarded human «nature» (xing) as ethically neutral («by nature men are close to one another, but by habit they are far apart»), so that for the formation of personality it was necessary to achieve

of which is the triumph of «humaneness» (ren) throughout All-under-Heaven. «Propriety» – the «outer», ritualized ethico-social norm – and «humaneness» – the «inner» moral-psychological disposition toward «love of people» – form the dual axis of Confucianism, around which its fundamental categories are concentrated – «grace/virtue», «due righteousness», «filial piety» (xiao), «loyalty» (zhong), and others.

Confucius's ethics is subordinated to the principles of the «mean» (zhongyong – «the golden mean») and «reciprocity» (shu – «the golden rule of morality»). The idea of equivalent mutual correspondence embedded in the latter gave rise to the socio-epistemological conception of the «rectification of names» (zheng ming), which advances the requirement, necessary for political-administrative government, of adequacy between the nominal and the real – «word and deed» (ming – shi).

On the whole, Confucius's socio-political doctrine rests on the priority of moral values and norms – ethico-ritual propriety (li) and ceremonial music (yue) – over any other means of regulating social life: administrative-legal, utilitarian-economic, or naturalistic, which were put forward by the philosophical schools that criticized Confucianism – respectively Legalism (fajia), Mohism (mojia), and Daoism.

Confucianism's ideological and social victory over all the competing

the «uncrowned king» and holy sage («the mysterious perfectly wise one» – xuan sheng), which was preserved for him in China until the beginning of the 20th century. The negativism toward Confucius as the chief symbol of conservatism and traditionalism, which developed after the fall of the empire in 1911, reached its apogee in the campaign to «criticize Lin Biao and Confucius», which unfolded in the PRC in the 1960s. In the 1980s, however, this tendency reversed itself, and attention to Confucius as the originator of the national idea began to grow. In 1985 a research institute of Confucius (Kongzi yanjiusuo) was created in the PRC. Since 1986 the China Confucius Foundation (Zhongguo Kongzi jijinhui), established in 1984, has published the quarterly journal «Confucius Studies» («Kongzi yanjiu», Jinan).

The cult of ancestors is the principal cult of the Confucian religion, one of the most ancient in China. Confucius carried it to its logical conclusion: one should venerate not so much one's real and direct ancestors, for example one's parents, as the first sages, the founders of All-under-Heaven, the progenitors of all humanity. However, one should first examine the most ancient cult of ancestors in China itself, which became the foundation for Confucianism. It is presented here following the book by S.A. Tokarev, «Religion in the History of the Peoples of the World».

«Every family had its own family temple or chapel, where the rites of the family cult were performed at set times. Every clan – shi – had its own clan temple of ancestors (miao, or zong miao, the modern name being citang), dedicated to the founders of that clan. Every larger clan group – xing (surname) – in turn had a temple dedicated to the common progenitor of the surname. Sacrifices and prayers in these temples were performed either by the head of the family or by the elders of the clans. In ancient times small temple-houses were set up near the graves of the deceased, and sacrifices were offered there, but already under the Han dynasty the erection of ancestral temples was subject to strict rules depending on a person's social standing. Commoners could not build separate miao at all and had to offer sacrifices to their ancestors right in their own homes. Officials could build one miao each, dignitaries – three, princes – five, and the emperor could have seven miao.

According to tradition, originally a doll or statue representing the deceased was placed in the temple. From the Han era onward the doll came to be made from a long strip of white silk fabric, rolled up and tied in the middle in the likeness of a human figure: it was called the hun-bo. Later the image of the ancestor was replaced by a tablet – zhu – in the form of a black wooden board with an inscription in red characters. These tablets, which came into universal use from the Song era (960–1260) onward, are usually kept in the miao. In order to settle the soul of the deceased into the tablet, complex rites and invocations are resorted to. Immediately after the funeral a special scribe writes an inscription on the tablet, all the members of the family kneel, and an invocation is read: «On such-and-such a year, month, and day, the orphaned son of so-and-so dares to address his parent so-and-so with the following words: your body has been committed to burial, but may your spirit return to the household temple; the tablet for the spirit has already been prepared; may your venerable soul leave its old dwelling (the body), may it follow into the new one (the miao), and may it abide there without departing». After a series of further rites, spread out over several years, the zhu, together with the soul of the deceased, is finally settled in the temple.

The zhu tablets are kept in special little cabinets on a long table by the north wall of the temple, facing the entrance, and during rites and sacrifices they are taken out from there, placed on the table, and offerings – food and drink – are arranged before them. These rites are performed at a set time of year or on the occasion of some family or clan event: weddings, the death of a family member, the birth of a child, the departure of the head of the family, and so on.

According to the religious beliefs of the Chinese, a person's foremost duty

– is filial piety (xiao) and the veneration of ancestors.

Xiao, as Confucius held, is the basis of humaneness. Every person is obliged to be a filial son, and especially so the literate, educated, humane person who strives toward the ideal of the junzi. The meaning of xiao, as the Liji interprets it, is to serve one's parents according to the rules of li, to bury them according to the rules of li, and to offer them sacrifices according to the rules of li. According to these rules, expounded in detail and at length in the Liji, a filial son must devotedly care for his parents his whole life, wait upon and please them, be ready to do anything for the sake of their health and well-being, and honor them under any circumstances. Even if the father is not virtuous, even if he is a villain, a thief, or a murderer, the filial son is obliged only to admonish his parent humbly, to beg him meekly to return to the path of virtue. In medieval China it was considered normal, and even encouraged by law, that a son dared not testify against his father. This too goes back to Confucius, who once declared in a polemic that uprightness and honesty do not lie in betraying one's father, but in covering for him, even if he «stole a sheep».

The cult of filial piety, over the course of time, achieved universal recognition in China and became a norm of life, and the outstanding examples of xiao, gathered in the collection «24 Examples of Xiao», became objects of admiration and imitation. Here are several examples of xiao from this collection: a poor man who sold his son to feed his starving mother finds in his garden a vessel of gold with the inscription «for your xiao»; an eight-year-old boy on summer nights does not drive the mosquitoes away from himself – let them sting him rather than disturb his parents; a filial son in a year of famine cut a piece of flesh from his own body to make broth for his weakened father; the virtuous Han emperor Wendi, during his mother's three-year illness, did not leave her bedside, personally prepared her food, and tasted every medicine intended for her. These and many other similar tales were meant to cultivate in the filial son, from childhood, a readiness for self-sacrifice in the name of the cult of ancestors.

The highly moral junzi, constructed by the philosopher as a model, a standard for imitation, was supposed to possess two virtues that were, in his view, the most important: humaneness and a sense of duty. The concept of humaneness (ren) was interpreted by Confucius extremely broadly and included a multitude of qualities: modesty, justice, restraint, dignity, selflessness, love of people, and so on. Ren is a lofty, almost unattainable ideal, a totality of perfections possessed only by the ancients; among his contemporaries, including himself, Confucius considered only his beloved disciple Yan Hui, who died young, to be humane. However, for the true junzi humaneness alone was not sufficient. He also had to possess another important quality – a sense of duty (yi), dictated by an inner conviction that one ought to act in precisely this way and no other. Duty is a moral obligation which a humane person, by virtue of his own virtues, imposes on himself. A sense of duty, as a rule, is conditioned by knowledge and by higher principles, not by calculation. «The noble man thinks of duty; the petty man is concerned with profit», taught Confucius. The concept of «yi» therefore included the striving for knowledge, the obligation to learn, and to grasp the wisdom of the ancients. Confucius also developed a number of other concepts, including sincerity and truthfulness (zheng), and propriety and the observance of ceremonies and rites (li).

Adherence to all these principles was the duty of the noble junzi, who, in the collection of Confucius's sayings, the Lunyu, is defined as a person who is honest and sincere, straightforward and fearless, all-seeing and understanding, careful in speech, cautious in deeds. In doubt he should seek counsel; in anger he should consider the consequences of his actions; in a profitable undertaking he should be concerned with honesty; in youth he should avoid lust, in maturity – quarrels, in old age – miserliness. The true junzi is indifferent to food, wealth, life's comforts, and material gain. He devotes his whole self to the service of lofty ideals, to the service of people, and to the search for truth. Having learned the truth in the morning, he «can die content in the evening».

Thus, Confucius's «noble man» is a speculative social ideal, an edifying complex of virtues. However, with the passage of time, and in connection with the growth of Confucius's authority and that of his teaching, this abstract-utopian ideal increasingly became an obligatory standard for imitation, to approach which was a matter of honor and social prestige for everyone, and especially for those representatives of the upper class of scholar-officials, professional bureaucrat-administrators, who from the Han era (3rd century BCE – 3rd century CE) onward came to govern the Chinese Confucian empire. By that time much had changed in the ideal created by Confucius.

Confucius quite sincerely sought to create the ideal of a knight of virtue, fighting for high morality against the injustice that reigned all around. But, as often happens, when his teaching was turned into official dogma, it was not the essence but the outward form that came to the fore, expressed chiefly in the demonstration of devotion to antiquity, respect for elders, and affected modesty and virtue. Confucius's numerous followers

and admirers, whose blind devotion to his every word likewise did much to help turn his teaching into ossified dogma, came to see in the ideal of the junzi not so much an expression of inner integrity and nobility as an outward display of propriety. In medieval China certain norms and stereotypes of behavior for every person, depending on his place in the social-official hierarchy, gradually took shape and were canonized. They found their most vivid reflection in what is usually called «Chinese ceremonies».

At any moment of life, on any occasion, in happiness and in grief, at birth

and death, on entering school or taking up a post – always and in everything there existed strictly fixed rules of behavior obligatory for all. In the Han era a detailed code of these rules of outward courtesy and ceremonial was compiled – the treatise Liji, a compendium of Confucian norms which retained binding force for more than two thousand years. All the rules recorded in this book of rites had to be known and applied in practice, and with all the greater care the higher a person's position in society. Thus Confucius's teaching on the junzi, modernized and adapted to the needs of a centralized empire with its powerful bureaucratic apparatus, became one of the foundations on which the gigantic edifice of the Chinese state rested.

Confucius, proceeding from the social ideal he had constructed, formulated the foundations of the social order he would wish to see prevail throughout All-under-Heaven: «Let the father be a father, the son a son, the sovereign a sovereign, the official an official», that is, let everyone in this world of chaos and confusion take their proper place, let everyone know their rights and obligations and do what is expected of them. A society ordered in this way should consist of two basic categories, the upper and the lower – those who think and govern, and those who labor and obey. Such a social order was regarded by Confucius and by the second founder of Confucianism, Mencius (372–289 BCE), as by all their followers, as eternal and unchanging, descending from the sages of legendary antiquity. The criterion for dividing society into upper and lower was to be, not nobility of birth and still less wealth, which Confucius and Mencius openly despised, but knowledge and virtue alone – or more precisely, the degree of a person's closeness to the ideal of the junzi.

Formally this criterion opened the path upward to anyone, and Confucius himself took pride in the fact that he imparted his knowledge to whoever brought «a bundle of dried meat», i.e. a fee for instruction. In fact, however, matters were far more complicated: the class of officials was separated from the common people by a barrier hard to overcome – the «wall of characters», that is, literacy, which determined a person's social standing and property qualification throughout the whole of Chinese history. Already in the Liji it was specially stipulated that li (i.e. ceremonial, rites) had nothing to do with the common people, and that harsh corporal punishments were not applied to the literate. True, fortunate individuals from the lower classes who mastered literacy could make a career and end up at the top. But in principle this changed nothing: once he had received an education and a Confucian upbringing, anyone became a support of the very order whose immutability the teaching itself proclaimed.

Confucius and Mencius proclaimed the interests of the people as the ultimate and supreme goal of government. Confucius severely condemned his former disciple Qiu, who had become a minister, for excessive exactions from the peasants («He is no disciple of mine!»). Mencius taught that of the three most important elements of the state, the people stand in first place, the deities in second, and the sovereign only in third. Yet these same apostles of Confucianism were deeply convinced that the people themselves could not understand or grasp their own interests, and that they could not do without the constant paternal tutelage of educated Confucian administrators: «The people should be made to follow the proper Way, but there is no need to explain why» (Lunyu, chap. VIII, § 9).

One of the important foundations of the social order, according to Confucius, was strict obedience to one's elders. Any elder – be it a father, an official, or finally the sovereign – is an unquestionable authority for the younger, the subordinate, the subject. Blind obedience to his will, word, and wish is an elementary norm for those younger and subordinate, both within the state as a whole and within a clan, corporation, or family. It is no accident that Confucius reminded people that the state is a large family, and the family a small state. This comparison underscored not only the paternalism within society, but also that pattern of family life which actually existed and persisted in old China down to recent times: the foundation of the family – unquestioning obedience of the younger to the elder, of children to their parents.

4. Cosmogonic and cosmological conceptions

Cosmology and cosmogony are teachings about the origin and existence of the universe, our world. Such an understanding represents a body of fundamental views on the origin and nature of life. These views determine all of people's actions and pronouncements. As the organizational and theoretical complexity of Chinese religions increased, these views were clearly formulated and codified. Although particular formulations may appear rather dissimilar because they emphasize one or another aspect of the theory, they nevertheless express the foundations of the Chinese worldview. A good example is two famous quotations from the 11th-century Confucian philosophers Zhang Zai (1020–1077) and Zhou Dunyi (1017–1073):

«Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even so small a creature as I finds a cozy place between them.

Therefore that which fills the universe I call my body, and that which directs the universe I regard as my nature.

All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.

The great ruler (the emperor) is the eldest son of my parents (Heaven and Earth), and the great ministers are his servants. Respect the old – that is how one should treat one's elders. Sincerely love orphans and the weak – that is how one should treat the young. The wise man identifies his character with the character of Heaven and Earth, while the worthy man is the most outstanding of men. Even the weary, the infirm, the crippled and the sick, those without brothers or children, wives or husbands – all of them are my brothers, suffering and finding no relief» (Zhang Zai, «Western Inscription»).

«The Limit of Non-Being and the Great Ultimate (Taiji). The Great Ultimate, through movement, produces Yang. When its activity reaches its highest point, it comes to rest. Through repose the Great Ultimate produces Yin. When repose reaches its highest point, activity begins anew. Thus movement and repose alternate with each other, giving rise to the distinction between yin and yang and thereby establishing these two principles.

From the transformations of yang and its union with yin arise the five elements: water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. When these five material forces (qi) are distributed in harmonious order, the four seasons proceed in their proper sequence.

The five elements form a single system of yin and yang, and yin and yang form the Great Ultimate. The Great Ultimate is, in essence, the Limitless. The five elements arise, each possessing its own particular nature.

When the reality of the Limit of Non-Being and the essence of yin, yang, and the five elements enter into mysterious union, integration begins. Qian (Heaven) is the male principle, and Kun (Earth) is the female principle. The interaction

of these two material forces produces and transforms the myriad things. The myriad things arise and multiply, giving rise to endless transformations. Only man receives (the five elements) in their highest purity, and is therefore the most intelligent. His physical body appears, and his spirit develops the ability to be conscious; the Five Moral Principles of his nature (humaneness, or ren, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and fidelity) are awakened by the external world, respond to it, and manifest themselves in action; good and evil are distinguished, and human affairs are accomplished» (Zhou Dunyi, «Explanation of the Diagram of the Great Ultimate»).

The quotations given above indicate that the world arose as a result of natural processes, and that everything known to us is part of the universe and, consequently, connected with all its other parts. This applies both to human beings and to the gods; we are all united into a single system, outside of which nothing exists. In the first passage the cosmos is compared to an enormous social system presided over by Father-Heaven and Mother-Earth; in the second passage the universe is presented as the result of a balanced interaction of physical and metaphysical forces. But these passages are merely two examples of a characteristic Chinese worldview, which has found expression in a multitude of concrete forms from antiquity to the present day. China is to some degree acquainted with myths of the creation of the world, but in them the basic physical constituents of the universe are already present at the very outset – the gods and culture heroes merely order them, giving them the forms known to us. We encounter a similar view of the world in many other cultures as well, for example among the North American Hopi or Sioux Indians; it differs greatly from the traditional teaching of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These religions know only one God, existing beyond the limits of the world that he chose to create; it is God who is holy, not the world itself. The Chinese approach, by contrast, attaches greater religious significance to life in this world and does not emphasize the existence of a higher spiritual reality toward whose apprehension the individual should strive. Of course, high religious symbols are known in China as well, such as Tian and the Daoist astral deities; on the other hand, in Christianity Jesus Christ serves as a symbol of God's involvement in the world, and yet the underlying difference between the two worldviews is evident. In both cases, the tradition-forming factor is a fundamental conception of reality. Thus, the distinctive feature of the Chinese worldview is the perception of the world as a living system.

5. The Confucian system of education and upbringing

Beginning with the Han era, Confucians not only held the reins of government over the state and society in their own hands, but also took care that Confucian norms and value orientations should become universally recognized, becoming a symbol of «the truly Chinese». In practice this meant that every Chinese, by birth and upbringing, had first and foremost to be a

Confucian. This did not mean that everyone was familiar with the full sum of Confucian truths. It meant something else: from the first steps of life, every Chinese, in daily life, in dealing with people, in performing the most important family and social ceremonies and rites, acted as sanctioned by Confucian tradition. And even if, over time, he assimilated something else and became, say, a Daoist, a Buddhist, or even a Christian – still, if not in belief then in behavior, customs, manner of thought and speech, and in much else, often unconsciously, he remained a Confucian.

Upbringing began in the family, from early childhood, with instilling the cult of ancestors and the norms of xiao, and strict observance of ceremonial within the family and especially in public, in society. In simple peasant families Confucian education often stopped at this point; in more prosperous families children were taught to read and write and to know the written canons and classical Confucian works. It should be noted here that many passages from the Shujing and Shijing, sayings from the Lunyu, and, still more, the precepts and norms of the Liji, were transmitted orally. Everyone knew them, literate and illiterate alike, from childhood. Rendered comprehensible by Confucian scholars, they turned into aphorisms, at times into truisms, and became the property of the masses, who readily accepted this written norm, consonant with ancient tradition, investing it with the significance of a Great Law.

Accordingly, the authority and social status of the literate rose sharply. In the country there arose an unprecedented cult of literacy, of the written character, a cult of Confucian-educated moralist pedants, of scholar-officials able to read, understand, and interpret the wisdom set down in the sacred books. The stratum of literate intellectuals, who concentrated in their own hands a monopoly on knowledge, education, and administration, occupied in China the place that in other societies was occupied by the nobility, the clergy, and the bureaucracy combined.

The entire system of education in medieval China was oriented toward training experts in Confucianism. A good knowledge of the ancient texts, the ability to freely deploy the sayings of the sages, and, as the crowning achievement, the ability to write essays that, in a free style, expounded and commented on the wisdom of the ancients – such was the curriculum in Chinese schools, both state and private. For millennia this is what was considered scholarship in China, while all disciplines outside the humanities, and natural science in particular, were not considered worthy of serious attention: after all, the study of all other disciplines, including mathematics, at best gave a person certain knowledge, but never granted him privileges. The study of the sacred Confucian science, by contrast, opened for anyone a path upward, offering the possibility of making a career and achieving honors, power, and wealth.

To give one's son an education and set him «on the road to success» was the dream of every family in China, but achieving it was no easy matter. One had to learn several thousand characters, and with their help be able to make sense of complex ancient texts written in a written language that was far from easy to understand. This took long years of arduous labor, and not everyone succeeded in acquiring literacy. It should be noted, however, that to benefit and educate a poor but capable relative was considered a matter of honor for the whole clan, and promised it considerable benefits in case of success, which usually stimulated such charity. As a result, the most fortunate, capable, and diligent students, possessing sufficient strength, persistence, skill, and patience, could master the entire body of knowledge required for the competitive examinations.

The rulers of the various states were interested in advancing suitable candidates to official posts, of which there are mentions in the sources. Coming to power in the Han era (3rd century BCE – 3rd century CE), the Confucians turned the competitive examinations into the main, and later effectively the only, path by which one could enter the ranks of the ruling elite, properly prepared to govern the country in the spirit of traditional Confucian principles. Beginning with the Tang (7th–10th centuries), the examination system took shape – with numerous variations – roughly as follows.

School graduates prepared for the examination for the lowest degree, xiucai, along with candidates who had studied the canons on their own, gathered every year in the district center, where, under the watchful supervision of high-ranking officials, the examination was held. In a specially equipped room, alone and under strict control, each examinee, over the course of two or three days, had to write, from memory, without books or aids, a short poem, a composition on some event of antiquity, and also a treatise on an abstract topic. The competition was usually severe and the quota strict: only 2–3 percent, or more rarely 5 percent, of the examinees received the degree, thereby winning the coveted and highly valued right to sit for the second degree, juren. Here the requirements were even stricter, though the range of questions remained the same.

Those who successfully passed through these trials could sit for the highest degree, jinshi, held in the capital once every two or three years. Its proceedings were monitored by the highest dignitaries and by the emperor himself. It was from among those who obtained this third degree that personnel were drawn to fill key posts in the bureaucratic administration. The path to high office, honor, glory, and wealth opened before them almost automatically. Those who had only the two lower degrees did not receive these rights, but they too enjoyed high prestige, were candidates for secondary posts, exercised considerable political influence within their district, and had access to various sources of credit, especially from merchants, who were always flattered by acquaintance, kinship, or even mere connections with high-ranking persons. Even holders of the lowest degree alone, of whom there were many in the country, felt the attention and respect of their neighbors and relatives, their readiness to defer to their opinion, and to benefit from their advice and the assistance of the local authorities.

All degree holders (and, in part, the enormous mass of candidates for degrees as well) constituted, in old Confucian China, a special estate, the shenshi. The shenshi estate always played the role of the dominant privileged class in China, although it was never a class in the strict sense of the word.

Anyone who entered the ranks of the shenshi, and all the more so anyone who obtained at least one academic degree, acquired social and quite tangible material privileges; the shenshi were therefore wealthy people, chiefly landowners (in China money was almost always invested in the acquisition of land). However, wealth by itself did not guarantee membership in the estate, although it was easier for the son of a wealthy man to obtain an education and find himself among the shenshi. Furthermore, a practice characteristic of wealthy families –

an abundance of sons and the absence of the principle of primogeniture, as a result of which even the most substantial property, by the third generation, was reckoned only in hundredths of its original value and became practically insignificant – led to the shenshi stratum always being mobile. Some, more fortunate and persistent, joined its ranks; others, who had inherited only a small portion of their father's or grandfather's property and had not themselves succeeded in study or in passing the competitive examinations, found themselves outside it. Neither Confucianism as the dominant ideology, nor the empire's political administrative system, suffered in the least from this. On the contrary, the regular, natural renewal of the shenshi stratum by persistent, capable, and ambitious new members ensured that the key positions in the Chinese empire were usually held by genuinely accomplished Confucian scholars, for whom the inviolability of the existing order was a guarantee of their own personal success and prosperity.

6. Neo-Confucianism

Neo-Confucianism is a term of Western origin, denoting one of the main currents of Far Eastern philosophy, a renewed

and transformed Confucianism, which arose in systematized form

in China in the 11th century and

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