RESPONSE
 
Case Study 2
By Karen Chow
 
 I chose this article about Confucianism as my resource for my second case study
for several reasons. I understand that this article is not a recent one but I
believe it can relate a lot to what the class have just learned in the first
unit. Another thing is I grew up in Hong Kong and has come in contact with a lot
of philosophies included in Confucianism. Due to my cultural background, I may
be able to provide some interesting observations and insights.
 
 This article discusses the impact of Confucianism on the society and way of
life in China. It emphasizes on the two sides of Confucianism, one conforming
and one reforming. One side of Confucianism was the affirmation of accepted
values and norms of behavior in primary social institutions and basic human
relationships. The other side is Confucius not only stressed social rituals
(li), but also humaneness (ren [jen]). The writer suggested that the inner pole
prescribed a lofty ideal for the state: the ruler was to be a father to his
people and look after their basic needs. Confucianism is often perceived as a
set of philosophical ideals rather than a religion.
 
 I agree with the idea that Confucianism seemed more like a system of social
philosophy rather than a religion to the general public. It is to most people. I
encountered a lot of different examples everyday. Growing up in a Chinese family
in Hong Kong, Elders (especially my grandpa) liked to lecture me with quotes
from the Confucius beliefs, saying, ¡§Those who work hard would be rewarded and
playing is not good for you¡¨. However my grandpa is not a Confucian follower
and has never practiced any religion before. The reason he is using these quotes
is by hearing other people using it and probably learning it when his grandpa
had the same lecture with him. Honestly I never knew that Confucianism is
actually a religion until I learned it from the first unit in this course.
 
When I was studying Grade 7 in Hong Kong, there is a subject called Chinese
Literature which is about ancient Chinese writings. It is similar to the
Shakespeare unit we have every year in English except that they don¡¦t include
drama. I remember reading poems or prose written by Confucius and I was
struggling through it. Those works written by Confucius are regarded as a major
part of the Chinese Literature rather than religious beliefs and values. This
signifies that Confucianism is considerably absorbed into the Chinese culture
and history that most people living in China are not even aware of its existence
and application to their everyday life.
 
   In the article, the writer expressed her opinion on Confucianism spreading
reformist ideas, opposed to its declaration of the conservative set of defined
role and obligations. I absolutely agree with the writer¡¦s point of view. As
ideally as it would sound and result in a perfect world, history proves to be
the opposite. Back in time when the emperor still has absolute power over China,
during the Tong and Song Dynasty, a system of selecting territorial, provincial
and even federal officials was established. Exams are held every four years to
test scholars¡¦ intellectual abilities. The material that is covered in those
tests and exams are mostly based on the Confucian beliefs and works by
Confucius. Only those that come in first, second or third place can pursue their
goal as a person in power in the government. I believe that it is another way
for the emperor to keep order in the society and to remain in power.
 
Confucianism emphasized on the belief of a social relationship spectrum which is
¡§Emperor, Governors, Fathers and Sons.¡¨ One should always submit to the
emperor, despite the fact that they might be betraying their fathers. To rebel
against the emperor is much worse than to rebel against one¡¦s father. The
emperor is commonly believed to be the son of God or the son of the dragon,
which is a holy animal in the Chinese tradition and ritual. The emperors believe
that by setting Confucianism as the predominant religion in China, they would
remain in power. They greatly promote the Confucian philosophies and make sure
the majority believe and respect these set of ideals. One example would be
defining Confucian beliefs to be the major material in exams for selection of
officals as described in the previous paragraph. Another example would be Qian
Long¡¦s, one of the emperors of the Qing dynasty, order of making the Four
Classics and Five Books, which is a collection of Confucius¡¦s works. In
addition, the amount of significant revolutions started by the citizens is
limited throughout the history of China. It was only when the situation allows
them no alternatives that they chose this path to survive. Otherwise, most
people tried to be content and dared not to start a rebellion.
 
 To conclude, Confucianism contributes in the socially and politically
developments of China. Many consider it as a system of social philosophies while
in fact it should be acknowledged as a religion. The influence of a religion on
a country¡¦s political structure can be remarkable as confirmed with the impact
of Confucianism on Chinese history.
 
http://www.askasia.org/frclasrm/readings/r000004.htm
 
 
ARTICLE
 
Confucianism
Article written by Judith A. Berling for the Asia Society's Focus on Asian
Studies, Vol. II, No. 1 Asian Religions, pp. 5-7, Fall 1982. Copyright AskAsia,
1996.
Confucianism is often characterized as a system of social and ethical philosophy
rather than a religion. In fact, Confucianism built on an ancient religious
foundation to establish the social values, institutions, and transcendent ideals
of traditional Chinese society. It was what sociologist Robert Bellah called a
"civil religion,"1 the sense of religious identity and common moral
understanding at the foundation of a society's central institutions. It is also
what a Chinese sociologist called a "diffused religion";3 its institutions were
not a separate church, but those of society, family, school, and state; its
priests were not separate liturgical specialists, but parents, teachers, and
officials. Confucianism was part of the Chinese social fabric and way of life;
to Confucians, everyday life was the arena of religion.
 
The founder of Confucianism, Master Kong (K'ung, Confucius, 551-479 B.C.) did
not intend to found a new religion, but to interpret and revive the unnamed
religion of the Zhou (Chou) dynasty, under which many people thought the ancient
system of religious rule was bankrupt; why couldn't the gods prevent the social
upheavals? The burning issue of the day was: If it is not the ancestral and
nature spirits, what then is the basis of a stable, unified, and enduring social
order? The dominant view of the day, espoused by Realists and Legalists, was
that strict law and statecraft were the bases of sound policy. Confucius,
however, believed that the basis lay in Zhou religion, in its rituals (li). He
interpreted these not as sacrifices asking for the blessings of the gods, but as
ceremonies performed by human agents and embodying the civilized and cultured
patterns of behavior developed through generations of human wisdom. They
embodied, for him, the ethical core of Chinese society. Moreover, Confucius
applied the term "ritual" to actions beyond the formal sacrifices and religious
ceremonies to include social rituals: courtesies and accepted standards of
behavior -- what we today call social mores. He saw these time-honored and
traditional rituals as the basis of human civilization, and he felt that only a
civilized society could have a stable, unified, and enduring social order.
 
Thus one side of Confucianism was the affirmation of accepted values and norms
of behavior in primary social institutions and basic human relationships. All
human relationships involved a set of defined roles and mutual obligations; each
participant should understand and conform to his/her proper role. Starting from
individual and family, people acting rightly could reform and perfect the
society. The blueprint of this process was described in "The Great Learning, " a
section of the Classic of Rituals:
 
 
Only when things are investigated is knowledge extended; only when knowledge is
extended are thoughts sincere; only when thoughts are sincere are minds
rectified; only when minds are rectified are the characters of persons
cultivated; only when character is cultivated are our families regulated; only
when families are regulated are states well governed; only when states are well
governed is there peace in the world.3
Confucius' ethical vision ran against the grain of the legalistic mind set of
his day. Only under the Han Emperor Wu (r. 140-87 B.C.) did Confucianism become
accepted as state ideology and orthodoxy. From that time on the imperial state
promoted Confucian values to maintain law, order, and the status quo. In late
traditional China, emperors sought to establish village lectures on Confucian
moral precepts and to give civic awards to filial sons and chaste wives. The
imperial family and other notables sponsored the publication of morality books
that encouraged the practice of Confucian values: respect for parents, loyalty
to government, and keeping to one's place in society -- farmers should remain
farmers, and practice the ethics of farming. This side of Confucianism was
conservative, and served to bolster established institutions and long-standing
social divisions.
 
There was, however, another side to Confucianism. Confucius not only stressed
social rituals (li), but also humaneness (ren [jen]). Ren, sometimes translated
love or kindness, is not any one virtue, but the source of all virtues. The
Chinese character literally represents the relationship between "two persons,"
or co-humanity -- the potential to live together humanely rather than scrapping
like birds or beasts. Ren keeps ritual forms from becoming hollow; a ritual
performed with ren has not only form, but ethical content; it nurtures the inner
character of the person, furthers his/her ethical maturation. Thus if the
"outer" side of Confucianism was conformity and acceptance of social roles, the
"inner" side was cultivation of conscience and character. Cultivation involved
broad education and reflection on one's actions. It was a lifetime commitment to
character building carving and polishing the stone of one's character until it
was a lustrous gem. Master Kong described his own lifetime:
 
 
At fifteen, I set my heart on learning. At thirty, I was firmly established. At
forty, I had no more doubts. At fifty, I knew the will of heaven. At sixty, I
was ready to listen to it. At seventy, I could follow my heart's desire without
transgressing what was right. Analects, 2:4
The inner pole of Confucianism was reformist, idealistic, and spiritual. It
generated a high ideal for family interaction: members were to treat each other
with love, respect, and consideration for the needs of all. It prescribed a
lofty ideal for the state: the ruler was to be a father to his people and look
after their basic needs. It required officials to criticize their rulers and
refuse to serve the corrupt. This inner and idealist wing spawned a Confucian
reformation known in the West as Neo-Confucianism. The movement produced
reformers, philanthropists, dedicated teachers and officials, and social
philosophers from the eleventh through the nineteenth centuries.
 
The idealist wing of Confucianism had a religious character. Its ideals were
transcendent, not in the sense that they were otherworldly (the Confucians were
not interested in a far-off heavenly realm), but in the sense of the
transcendent ideal -- perfection. On the one hand, Confucian values are so
closely linked with everyday life that they sometimes seem trivial. Everyday
life is so familiar that we do not take its moral content seriously. We are each
a friend to someone, or a parent, or certainly the child of a parent. On the
other hand, Confucians remind us that the familiar ideals of friendship,
parenthood, and filiality are far from trivial; in real life we only rarely
attain these ideals. We all too often just go through the motions, too
preoccupied to give our full attention to the relationship. If we consistently
and wholeheartedly realized our potential to be the very best friend, parent,
son, or daughter humanly possible, we would establish a level of caring, of
moral excellence, that would approach the utopian. This is Confucian
transcendence: to take the actions of everyday life seriously as the arena of
moral and spiritual fulfillment.4
 
The outer and inner aspects of Confucianism -- its conforming and reforming
sides -- were in tension throughout Chinese history. Moreover, the tensions
between social and political realities and the high-minded moral ideals of the
Confucians were an ongoing source of concern for the leaders of this tradition.
The dangers of moral sterility and hypocrisy were always present. Confucianism,
they knew well, served both as a conservative state orthodoxy and a stimulus for
reform. Great Confucians, like religious leaders everywhere, sought periodically
to revive and renew the moral, intellectual, and spiritual vigor of the
tradition.. Until the 1890s, serious-minded Chinese saw Confucianism, despite
its failures to realize its ideal society, as the source of hope for China and
the core of what it meant to be Chinese.
 
Although since the revolution, the public ideology of the People's Republic has
abandoned Confucian teachings, one can say that there is a continuity of form:
like Confucianism before it, Maoism teaches a commitment to transforming the
world by applying the lessons of a utopian ideology to the actions and
institutions of everyday life. This is not to claim that Mao was a "closet
Confucian," but to emphasize that the Confucian way was virtually synonymous
with the Chinese way. Both Confucianism and Maoism are uniquely Chinese.
 
Notes
 
 
See The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in a Time of Trial, New York:
Seabury Press, 1975.
 
C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1961, pp. 20-21.
 
Excerpted and adapted from de Bary, Sources, I: 115-16.
 
For a somewhat fuller philosophical (but readable) discussion, see Herbert
Fingarette, Confucius -- The Secular as Sacred, New York: Harper and Row, 1972,
chapter one.
 
For Further Reference
Kitagawa, Joseph. Religions of the East, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968.
Excellent chapter on Chinese religions and the family system.
 
Mote, Frederick. Intellectual Foundations of China, New York: Knopf, 1971.
Short, and excellent on social and historical context of Zhou period.
 
Tu Wei-ming. "Perceptions of Adulthood in Confucianism," Daedalus 105(1976):
109-124. Adult reading, but an excellent interpretation of Confucianism in the
light of Western interests in maturity.
 
Teaching Resources
 
Filmstrip: "Confucius and the Peaceful Empire," Asian Man: China, Encyclopedia
Britannica Education Corporation.
 
Filmstrip: "Confucianism and Taoism," World's Great Religions Series, Part III
(Time-Life, 1964)
 
Instructional Units developed by secondary teachers during Indiana Religion
Studies Project Institute. Available from Indiana Religion Studies Project,
Indiana University, Department of Religious Studies, Sycamore 230, Bloomington,
Indiana, 47405.
 
High School:
"The Development of Traditional Chinese Culture: 2000 B.C.-600 A.D.," by Ann
Hoffman.
 
"Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom: Development of Traditional China," by William J.
Kiddle, Jr.
 
Middle School:
"An Introduction to Religions of the Far East: Confucianism, Shintoism, Taoism,
Hinduism, and Buddhism," by Elaine Diamond.
 
Note: The reader may note some alternate spellings for the same terms. These
result from the use of different orthographies; e.g., Sakyamuni/Shakyamuni; also
from the use of the same term in different languages: e.g., Amidha Buddha, an
Indian name, becomes Amida Buddha in Japan.
 
Note: This article and the one on Taoism were written during the Indiana
Religion Studies Project Institute for Teaching about Religion in the Secondary
Social Studies Curriculum. The drafts were critiqued by the social studies
teachers who attended with an eye to supplementing and correcting the
information in textbooks and other materials used by teachers. The two articles
should read as a pair; they complement each other in much the same way these two
religions complemented each other throughout Chinese history.
 
Ed. note: The extent to which both Confucianism and Maoism continue to influence
contemporary China is a subject of scholarly interpretation. For different views
on this question, see Meisner, Maurice, Mao's China: A History of the People's
Republic, Free Press 1977, and Harding, Harry, Organizing China: The problem of
Bureaucracy, 1949-1976, Stanford University Press, 1981.