Confucianism

Historical Context

In comparison to Western political tradition, the defining characteristic of Confucianism as a distinctive political and cultural tradition lies in its enormous ethicopolitical emphasis on the family (jia) and filial piety (xiao). One telling example is, when asked why he was not engaged in governing, Confucius replied, “It is all in filial conduct! Just being filial to your parents and befriending your brothers is carrying out the work of government.” This Confucian assumption of familial as political or what can be called Confucian familism, however, cannot be fully made sense of without considering China's pre-Confucian Zhou civilization (c. 1100–249 BCE), which was predicated on kin feudalism (fengjian) and the Clan Law (zongfa), the civilization (wen) that Confucius aspired to creatively revivify.

Apart from the legendary Yao-Shun periods and the Xia dynasty (c. 2205-c.1600 BCE), which is currently under archeological investigation, pre-Confucian ancient China had two, relatively unified, dynasties of Shang (c. 1600-c. 1100 BCE) and Zhou (c. 1100–249 BCE). The two dynasties, however, developed their own unique civilizations: The Shang civilization, worshiping the supreme ancestor-god Shang-di (Lord-on-High), was essentially a bellicose shamanistic theocracy where the shaman warrior-king ruled the people by means of augury and oracle; whereas the Zhou civilization was much more rational and humanistic, the Zhou people worshiping a universal deity called Tian (Heaven), which prevented the Shang practice of human sacrifice. While conquering the Shang dynasty, a well-centralized dynasty according to recent archeological findings, the Zhou rulers developed a kin-based feudalism (fengjian) by distributing the newly acquired lands first to the Zhou clan members and then to the non-Zhou clans by making them Zhou's extended family members, which is in marked contrast to the medieval West's contract-based feudalism. The Clan Law was both a political and ethicoreligious mechanism that regulated this kin-based moral-political entity. Governing the empire by means of the ritualism of the Clan Law rather than sheer force, and thus calling their statecraft a rule by virtue (dezhi), the Zhou rulers justified their ruling in terms of the Mandate of Heaven (tian-ming).

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