Confucian Beliefs and Traditions

Confucianism can be characterized as a nontheistic and humanistic religion, with no rigid creed system and yet with rich systems of ritual. In Confucianism, what one believes is subordinate to what one practices. This distinctive aspect of the Confucian tradition has induced a context in which disparate ideas and beliefs could have coexisted, and yet a uniform system of ritual has been established through ritual manuals. Similarly, there has been a wide spectrum of ideas about death and the afterlife, but the Confucian tradition has established standardized death rites that involve the funeral and ancestral ritual. They have been considered as the most essential rituals in Confucian life, their primary rationale being the fulfillment of “filial piety,” one of the core Confucian values.

The Confucian Approach

The Analects, the most important and influential book among the Confucian corpus, includes a short dialogue between Confucius and one of his disciples about death and serving the spirits of the dead. When Confucius is asked about serving the spirits of the dead, he says that while we are not yet able to serve fellow human beings, how can we serve the spirits of the dead? In response to a question on death and the afterlife, Confucius remarks that while we do not yet know life, how can we know death and the afterlife? This dialogue shows not so much Confucius's agnostic attitude toward death and the spirits of the dead as his primary concern with human life in this world. Given the importance of the Analects within the Confucian tradition, it is not difficult to recognize the extent to which those statements have influenced later Confucian discourse on the issue of death and the afterlife. In fact, that short dialogue sums up the basic approach of the entire Confucian tradition toward the issue. One could even argue that it epitomizes the general characteristics of the whole Confucian tradition: That is, while not being indifferent to the issues of supernatural beings and life after death, Confucianism is more concerned with human society in this world. In the humanistic framework of Confucian thinking, therefore, the issue of whether there is an afterlife and whether the spirits of the dead continue to exist is secondary to more primary concerns such as the issue of self-cultivation and social participation.

This, however, is not to say that Confucianism has little discourse and practice in relation to death. On the contrary, from its earliest early period, the Confucian tradition produced a variety of ideas about death and the afterlife, ranging from belief in the continued existence of ancestral spirits, to an agnostic approach, and to disbelief in the afterlife. In general terms, the latter view became dominant in later Confucianism, which claims that human spirits disperse soon after death. Admittedly, the issue of death and the afterlife has not occupied the principal place in Confucian scholars' thinking, and the Confucian tradition has not produced unified systems of thought or belief in relation to death and the afterlife. The Confucian tradition, however, has developed a sophisticated system of death rites, perhaps the most sophisticated among major world religions, involving the funeral and ancestral rites.

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