School
Confucianism
Confucianism is the Chinese ethical and political tradition founded on the teachings of Confucius, centred on humaneness, ritual and learning.
It began with Confucius (551–479 BCE) and was developed by Mencius, who held that human nature is good, and Xunzi, who held that it must be shaped by ritual and education. Dong Zhongshu helped make it the official teaching of the Han dynasty, Zhu Xi reworked it in the Song, and Dai Zhen criticised that reworking in the Qing. It spread to Korea and Japan through thinkers such as Yi Hwang (Toegye) and Ogyū Sorai. On this site it answers questions on how to live, character (3.2.3), moral psychology and government.
Thinkers of this school
- Confucius551 – 479 BCE
- Menciustrad. c. 372 – 289 BCE
- Xunzic. 310 – after 238 BCE
- Dai Zhen1724 – 1777
- Ogyū Sorai1666 – 1728
- Dong Zhongshu179 – 104 BCE
Guide: Schools of Philosophy: The Main -isms and the Questions They Answer
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Zhu Xi’s commentaries became the exam syllabus a century after he died. Did that betray his idea of learning?
Every year I teach the Four Books course to senior high students in Taipei, and every year I watch them memorise Zhu Xi's arrangement of the classics for a test. The history is a little painful. Zhu Xi grouped the Analects, the…
Started by Lin Pei-shan3 replies -
The rectification of names, from a translator’s desk: when words and things drift apart
In Analects 13.3 a disciple asks Confucius what he would do first if he were given charge of government. "Rectify names," he says. The disciple thinks this is impractical, and Confucius explains, in a famous chain: if names are not correct, speech…
Started by Vũ Quốc Bảo1 reply -
Mozi was wrong about music, but his question about it still stings
I play cello in a chamber ensemble in Seoul and teach children. I recently read the Mohist chapter "Against Music" and I can't stop arguing with it in my head. Mozi's argument, as I understand it: ordinary people have three great worries,…
Started by Moon Ha-eunReply first (no replies yet) -
Naturalisms before the word: the Cārvākas, Wang Chong and Xunzi’s Heaven
I want to test the distinction this site keeps drawing between kinds of naturalism (ontological, methodological, ethical, epistemological) against three older figures who are often lumped together as "early naturalists". The Cārvākas (Lokāyata). Almost all of their own texts are lost; we…
Started by Arvind PoojaryReply first (no replies yet) -
Langar, the Shabbat table and Confucius’s sauce: what does eating together do?
The langar, where I help out at our gurdwara in Surrey, goes back to Guru Nanak and was made central by the gurus who followed: a free kitchen where everyone, whatever their caste, faith or status, sits on the floor in the…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal6 replies -
One night at the delivery bed, tested against five traditions’ answers to what makes an act right
Three weeks ago a mother I was sitting with delivered a baby who was clearly unwell. The doctor had been called and was twenty minutes away. The mother, exhausted, held my hand and asked: “Is my baby all right?” I did not…
Started by Farhana Akter5 replies -
Neither filling nor drawing out: what the Analects and Xunzi think a learner is
My students in Taipei memorise the Analects for exams, which means they experience Confucian learning as the most extreme form of filling-up imaginable. I keep trying to show them that the texts themselves say something else. The Analects opens with learning and…
Started by Lin Pei-shan5 replies -
At my office “Confucian values” means obey the boss. Where did the reciprocity go?
I translate for a publishing house in Hanoi. When managers here want staff to stay late without complaint, they speak of Confucian values: respect for seniors, loyalty, harmony. We have a common saying about honouring teachers and respecting the Way. I grew…
Started by Vũ Quốc Bảo4 replies -
In the five Confucian relationships, friendship is the odd one out. Why is it there?
My students memorise Mencius's list of the five relationships for exams: affection between father and son, rightness between ruler and minister, distinction between husband and wife, proper order between elder and younger, and trust (xin) between friends. They memorise it and never…
Started by Lin Pei-shan5 replies -
Watsuji’s betweenness, Akan personhood and Confucian roles: is the relation more basic than the person?
When I retired after forty years designing bridges, I was surprised by how much of “me” went with the job. I did not lose a role; I seemed to lose a person. A friend at the temple handed me Watsuji's Ethics and…
Started by Aiko Tanabe5 replies -
Mencius’s child at the well, seen from a delivery room in Sylhet
I have worked on a maternity ward for nineteen years. Last month a friend lent me a translation of Mencius, and I stopped at the passage about the child at the well and read it three times. Mencius says that anyone who…
Started by Farhana Akter5 replies -
Dharma, li, sharia, natural law: four words English keeps flattening into “duty” or “law”
Last week an engineering student in the evening class on Indian philosophy that I help with asked a good question: “If dharma is not duty, what is it like? Is there anything in other cultures that works the same way?” I tried…
Started by Meera Kulkarni5 replies -
Is “what is the meaning of life?” a modern European question?
Every year I teach Camus to my terminale class in Dakar, and every year the same thing happens. The students read The Myth of Sisyphus, which begins by saying that the only truly serious philosophical problem is suicide, whether life is worth…
Started by Khady Sène6 replies -
Ji Kang argued that music holds neither sorrow nor joy, sixteen centuries before Hanslick
My taiji group practises to recordings of the guqin, and one morning someone asked whether the music was sad. I said what my father would have said: sound has no sorrow or joy. It turns out that is not just my father's…
Started by Liu Mingqiao4 replies -
Do the world’s ethical traditions really agree about how to live, or does it only look that way from far off?
There is a claim one often meets in comparative philosophy courses: traditions that disagree completely about metaphysics agree substantially about how to live. Aristotelian virtue, Confucian self-cultivation, Buddhist training and Islamic adab all say character is shaped by repeated action, habit makes…
Started by Kenneth Lam Chi-ho6 replies