Reynolds 1 Kahlil Reynolds Dr.

Tolsen History of Civilization September 9, 2011

Confucius and the Followers

Confucius was one of the first men of ideas, a Chinese thinker, and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period. According to tradition, Confucius was born in 551 B.C., in the Spring and Autumn Period, at the beginning of the Hundred Schools of Thought philosophical movement. Confucius was born in or near the city of Qufu, in the Chinese State of Lu (now part of Shandong Province). Early accounts say that he was born into a poor but noble family that had fallen on hard times. Confucius was from a warrior family. His father Shulianghe had military exploits in two battles and owned a fiefdom. The Records of the Grand Historian, compiled some four centuries later, states that Confucius was born as a result of a yehe, or "illicit union". His father died when Confucius was three years old, and he was brought up in poverty by his mother. His social ascendancy linked him to the growing class of sh, a class whose status lay between that of the old nobility and the common people that comprised men who sought social positions on the basis of talents and skills, rather than heredity. As a child, Confucius was said to have enjoyed putting ritual vases on the sacrifice table. He married a young girl named Qi Guan at 19 and she gave birth to their first child, Kong Li, when he was 20. Confucius is reported to have worked as a shepherd, cowherd, clerk, and a book-keeper. His mother died when Confucius was 23, and he entered three years of mourning. Confucius is said to have risen to the position of Justice Minister in Lu at the age of 53. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, the neighboring state of Qi was worried that Lu was becoming too powerful. Qi decided to sabotage Lu's reforms by sending 100 good horses and 80 beautiful dancing girls to the Duke of Lu. The Duke indulged himself in pleasure and did not attend to official duties for three days. Confucius was deeply disappointed and resolved to leave Lu and seek better opportunities, yet to leave at once would expose the misbehavior of the Duke and therefore bring public humiliation to the ruler Confucius was serving, so Confucius waited for the Duke to make a lesser mistake. Soon after, the Duke neglected to send to Confucius a portion of the sacrificial meat that was his due according to custom, and Confucius seized this pretext to leave both his post and the state of Lu. According to tradition, after Confucius's resignation, he began a long journey (or set of journeys around the small kingdoms of northeast and central China, including the states of Wei, Song, Chen and Cai. At the courts of these states, he expounded his political beliefs but did not see them implemented. After leaving Lu, he set out with out with a small band of students and wandered through neighboring states in search of a ruler who would take his advice.

Reynolds 2 Confuciuss ideas are known to us primarily through the sayings recorded by his disciples in the Analects. In the Analects, Confucius presents himself as a "transmitter who invented nothing". He puts the greatest emphasis on the importance of study, and it is the Chinese character for study that opens the text. In this respect, he is seen by Chinese people as the Greatest Master. Far from trying to build a systematic theory of life and society or establish a formalism of rites, he wanted his disciples to think deeply for themselves and relentlessly study the outside world, mostly through the old scriptures and by relating the moral problems of the present to past political events (like the Annals) or past expressions of feelings by common people and reflective members of the elite, preserved in the poems of the Book of Odes. The thrust of this thought was ethical rather than theoretical or metaphysical. He talked repeatedly of an ideal age in the early Zhou Dynasty when everyone was devoted to fulfilling his or her role; superiors looked after those dependent on them; inferiors devoted themselves to the service of their superiors; parents and children, husband and wives, all wholeheartedly embraced what was expected of them. One of the deepest teachings of Confucius may have been the superiority of personal exemplification over explicit rules of behavior. His moral teachings emphasized selfcultivation, emulation of moral exemplars, and the attainment of skilled judgment rather than knowledge of rules, Confucius's ethics may be considered a type of virtue ethics. His teachings rarely rely on reasoned argument, and ethical ideals and methods are conveyed more indirectly, through allusions, innuendo, and even tautology. This is why his teachings need to be examined and put into proper context in order to be understood. A good example is found in this famous anecdote: When the stables were burnt down, on returning from court, Confucius said, 'Was anyone hurt?' He did not ask about the horses. The Confucian theory of ethics as exemplified in L is based on three important conceptual aspects of life: ceremonies associated with sacrifice to ancestors and deities of various types, social and political institutions, and the etiquette of daily behavior. It was believed by some that l originated from the heavens, but Confucius stressed the development of l through the actions of sage leaders in human history. His discussions of l seem to redefine the term to refer to all actions committed by a person to build the ideal society, rather than those simply conforming to canonical standards of ceremony. In the early Confucian tradition, l was doing the proper thing at the proper time, balancing between maintaining existing norms to perpetuate an ethical social fabric, and violating them in order to accomplish ethical good. Training in the l of past sages cultivates in people virtues that include ethical judgment about when l must be adapted in light of situational contexts. In early Confucianism, the concept of li is closely related to Y, which is based upon the idea of reciprocity. Y can be translated as righteousness, though it may simply mean what is ethically best to do in a certain context. The term contrasts with action done out of self-interest. While pursuing one's own self-interest is not necessarily bad, one would be a better, more

Reynolds 3 righteous person if one's life was based upon following a path designed to enhance the greater good. Thus an outcome of y is doing the right thing for the right reason. Just as action according to L should be adapted to conform to the aspiration of adhering to y, so y is linked to the core value of rn. Rn is the virtue of perfectly fulfilling one's responsibilities toward others, most often translated as "benevolence" or "humaneness"; translator Arthur Waley calls it "Goodness" with a capital G, and other translations that have been put forth include "authoritativeness" and "selflessness." Confucius's moral system was based upon empathy and understanding others, rather than divinely ordained rules. To develop one's spontaneous responses of rn so that these could guide action intuitively was even better than living by the rules of y. To cultivate one's attentiveness to rn one used another Confucian version of the Golden Rule: "What one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognises as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others." (Confucius and Confucianism, Richard Wilhelm) Virtue, in this Confucian view, is based upon harmony with other people, produced through this type of ethical practice by a growing identification of the interests of self and other. Confucius's teachings were later turned into an elaborate set of rules and practices by his numerous disciples and followers, who organized his teachings into the Analects. Confucius' disciples and his only grandson, Zisi, continued his philosophical school after his death. These efforts spread Confucian ideals to students who then became officials in many of the royal courts in China, thereby giving Confucianism the first wide-scale test of its dogma. Two of Confucius's most famous later followers emphasized radically different aspects of his teachings. In the centuries after his death, Mencius and Xun Zi both composed important teachings elaborating in different ways on the fundamental ideas associated with Confucius. Mencius (4th century BC) articulated the innate goodness in human beings as a source of the ethical intuitions that guide people towards rn, y, and l , while Xun Zi (3rd century BC) underscored the realistic and materialistic aspects of Confucian thought, stressing that morality was inculcated in society through tradition and in individuals through training. In time, their writings, together with the Analects and other core texts came to constitute the philosophical corpus of Confucianism. This realignment in Confucian thought was parallel to the development of Legalism, which saw filial piety as self-interest and not a useful tool for a ruler to create an effective state. A disagreement between these two political philosophies came to a head in 223 BC when the Qin state conquered all of China. Li Ssu, Prime Minister of the Qin Dynasty convinced Qin Shi Huang to abandon the Confucians' recommendation of awarding fiefs akin to the Zhou Dynasty before them which he saw as counter to the Legalist idea of centralizing the state around the ruler. When the Confucian advisers pressed their point, Li Ssu had many Confucian scholars killed and their books burnedconsidered a huge blow to the philosophy and Chinese scholarship.

Reynolds 4 Under the succeeding Han Dynasty and Tang Dynasty, Confucian ideas gained even more widespread prominence. Under Wudi, the works of Confucius were made the official imperial philosophy and required reading for civil service examinations in 140 BC which was continued nearly unbroken until the end of the 19th Century. As Moism lost support by the time of the Han, the main philosophical contenders were Legalism, which Confucian thought somewhat absorbed, the teachings of Lao-tzu, whose focus on more mystic ideas kept it from direct conflict with Confucianism, and the new Buddhist religion, which gained acceptance during the Southern and Northern Dynasties era. Both Confucian ideas and Confucian-trained officials were relied upon in the Ming Dynasty and even the Yuan Dynasty, although Kublai Khan distrusted handing over provincial control. During the Song Dynasty, the scholar Zhu Xi (AD 1130-1200) added ideas from Daoism and Buddhism into Confucianism. In his life, Zhu Xi was largely ignored, but not long after his death his ideas became the new orthodox view of what Confucian texts actually meant. Modern historians view Zhu Xi as having created something rather different, and call his way of thinking Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism held sway in China, Korea, and Vietnam until the 19th century. The works of Confucius were translated into European languages through the agency of Jesuit scholars stationed in China. Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and father Prospero Intorcetta published the life and works of Confucius into Latin in 1687. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the Deists and other philosophical groups of the Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into Western civilization. In the modern era Confucian movements, such as New Confucianism, still exist but during the Cultural Revolution, Confucianism was frequently attacked by leading figures in the Communist Party of China. This was partially a continuation of the condemnations of Confucianism by intellectuals and activists in the early 20th Century as a cause of the ethnocentric close-mindedness and refusal of the Qing Dynasty to modernize that led to the tragedies that befell China in the 19th Century. Confucius's works are studied by scholars in many other Asian countries, particularly those in the Sinosphere, such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Many of those countries still hold the traditional memorial ceremony every year. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes Confucius was a Divine Prophet of God, as was Lao-Tzu and other eminent Chinese personages. In conclusion, Confucius was one of the first men of ideas, a Chinese thinker, and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period. According to the Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals, Confucius returned home when he was 68, spending his last years teaching disciples and transmitting the old wisdom via a set of texts called the Five Classics. Burdened by the loss of both his son and his favorite disciples, he died at the age of 72 or 73.