Confucianism

Confucius (551–479 BCE) is the sage who formulated the teachings (jiao in Chinese) that shaped Chinese culture and community. He is known in China as “Kung the Master.” Appalled by the social disorder of his time, Confucius set out to construct a social teaching—a deliberate tradition—that would bring stability and harmony to society. He was not successful in his own lifetime, but within a century of his death his teachings had come to permeate Chinese life and culture.

At the heart of his teachings were the Five Great (or Five Constant) Relationships: the relationships between parent and child, husband and wife, elder sibling and junior sibling, elder friend and junior friend, and ruler and subject. In these relationships there is a propriety (li) that should be observed. The parent is to love the child, the child to revere the parent. The elder sibling should be gentle, the younger respectful. Husbands should be good, and wives should listen to them. Elder friends are to be considerate and younger friends deferential. The ruler should be benevolent and subjects loyal. If propriety was observed in these relationships, then, Confucius argued, there would be peace and harmony in the family and in the society. It was the family that was central to Confucius' vision of social harmony and community. Some have even referred to Confucianism as familialism.

For Confucians, the whole community included the dead, the living, and the yet unborn. The well-known Chinese practice of venerating ancestors was foundational for the Confucian social ethic. It linked those who had gone before to the living generation, centered in the family. Thus maintaining proper relationships among the living, all of whom were situated in families, was the way to create a harmonious society for the yet unborn. Even the relationship of the ruler and the subject was understood as a type of filial piety.

Education was also central to the Confucian vision. The Confucian ideal was the scholar. Scholars were learned; they cultivated the practices that let the fullness of their humanity unfold. Scholarship, music, and poetry were the arts of the sage.

Confucianism, developed by Confucius's successors, came to dominate Chinese culture and was adopted by other East Asian peoples. It remained central to the Chinese cultural mindset into the twentieth century, when it came under attack, especially during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). There is evidence of a resurgence of Confucian thought within the People's Republic of China beginning in the late 1990s. Contemporary Confucian scholars, such as Tu Wei-Ming of Harvard University, have exhibited the continuing vitality of Confucian thought.