Neo Confucianism

10 Key excerpts on "Neo Confucianism"

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  Neo-Confucian Self-Cultivation

  • Barry C. Keenan, Henry Rosemont(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 1 Song Dynasty Neo-Confucianism The intellectual movement known as Neo-Confucianism, begun in the eleventh century, developed one of the most sophisticated formu-lations of self-cultivation in the history of humanistic education. After looking at its historical background, I will treat the three components that made its doctrines new: (1) the reshaping of what constituted the Confucian canon of texts; (2) the metaphysical assumption that there are underlying principles existing independently of the knower, in all things, affairs, and our innately good human nature; and (3) an elaborated program of self-cultivation. The remarkable Song dynasty synthesis of these three components defining how to live humanely changed organically within the institutions of imperial China until the fall of China’s last dynasty in 1911. Historical Background: Classical and Imperial Confucianism Confucius (551–479 BCE) witnessed the death throes of aristocracy in ancient China. His teachings called for an aristocracy of moral merit or talent to replace the anarchic feuding of small states that was begin-ning the Warring States Period (479–221). But instead the Qin (pro-nounced “chin”) state, which gave China its name in the West, gobbled up its competitors “as a silkworm consuming mulberry leaves.” The political philosophy of legalism that enabled the first emperor of Qin to force unification in 221 BCE explicitly rejected the system of aristo-cratic inheritance, but it was unlike Confucian doctrine in its reliance upon ruthless authority. While politically chaotic, the Warring States Period was so cultur-ally productive that it became informally called the Period of the One Hundred Schools of Thought. The political and social disruptions of the many contending states brought forward a number of thinkers, most of whom were wrestling with the confusion of a disintegrating

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  Limits to Autocracy

  From Sung Neo-Confucianism to a Doctrine of Political Rights

  • Alan T. Wood(Author)
  • 1995(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  8 Such a broad interpretation of neo-Confucianism goes be-yond the traditional Chinese definitions and beyond the defini-tion of some contemporary scholars. The problem of terms is an important one, treated in some detail by Hoyt Tillman. 9 Some scholars have used the English term Neo-Confucianism, which has no counterpart in classical Chinese, to refer only to the school of principle (li-hsüeh) or to the school of the Way (tao-hsüeh) associated with the Ch’eng-Chu school of philos-ophy. 10 Others have used the same term to apply to the entire movement reviving Confucianism in the Sung. Tillman himself prefers to use the term Sung learning to designate the broad range of “the Confucian renaissance during the Sung.” 11 In this work, I have employed a compromise term, an uncapitalized neo-Confucianism meant to designate the whole spectrum of the renewal of Confucian thought and action in the Sung. Like the legs of a tripod, metaphysics, aesthetics, and politics all play a part, it seems to me, in supporting the Confucian revival of the Sung. But, before dealing with these substantive aspects of neo-Confucianism itself, it is necessary to review the major political, economic, and social conditions of the Northern Sung that set the stage for this major rethinking of the Confucian tradition. Sung Government We have already noted that the Northern Sung emperors sought to preserve the unity of the state from internal rebellion by concentrating power in their own hands. This object was 30 Limits to Autocracy pursued in two major ways—by curtailing the authority of the military, both in the field and in the government bureaucracy, and by reducing the power of the grand councilors (tsai-hsiang) over the routine administration of Sung government.

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  Women and Confucianism in Chosǒn Korea

  New Perspectives

  • Youngmin Kim, Michael J. Pettid, Youngmin Kim, Michael J. Pettid(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • SUNY Press

    (Publisher)

  With the critical awareness that the term Confucianism in the study of women’s history has been rather loosely used, this chapter starts with a general inquiry: What is Confucianism? More specifically, what characterizes Confucian- ism in the late Chosŏn period? As was the case in most of the studies of the relationship between women and Confucianism in social history and 76 Youngmin Kim sociology, Confucianism often represents a simplistic model of a patriar- chal family system, which is thought to be applicable to the Confucian tradition as a whole. However, it should be noted that Confucianism in the late Chosŏn period represents a particular version of Confucianism among multiple versions, that is, Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism here refers to Neo-Confucianism in a narrow sense, namely, Daoxue (Learning of the way). Neo-Confucianism was a vast intellectual movement that was launched in Song China and that thereafter continued to exert great influence in East Asia. Neo-Confucianism represents first and foremost an emphasis on personal morality. Neo-Confucians believed that all human beings were unified by the same moral nature. Of course, they did know that we were different at an immediate level. However, they believed that all of us were ultimately the same. By the same token, everyone, not just some of us, could realize the unitary moral nature. In other words, everyone, not just some of us, could become morally perfect. Everyone could become a sage because everyone possessed this unitary moral nature. Neo-Confucians believe that the fundamental way to order the world is the realization of a moral nature over the authority of legal institutions and literary activities. Thus, when I call these two woman Neo-Confucian philosophers, it means that they pursued moral sagehood as the goal of their life and engaged themselves in inner self-cultivation to realize moral perfection while understanding the theory behind their self-cultivation.

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  New Life for Old Ideas

  Chinese Philosophy in the Contemporary World: A Festschrift in Honour of Donald J. Munro

  • Yanming An and Brian J. Bruya(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • The Chinese University of Hong Kong

    (Publisher)

  Neo-Confucianism As Philosophy 1 Stephen C. Angle 1. Introduction I was first introduced to something called “Neo-Confucianism” by Prof. Yu Ying-shih in his course on Traditional Chinese History at Yale University in the mid-1980s. I was fascinated by the complex metaphysical systems that Prof. Yu described, which—he suggested, and it appeared to me—bore some relation to the ideas of Plato and Aristotle that I was studying in other classes. Unlike the way I was engaging with Western thought in my philosophy classes, though, my approach to Chinese thought under Prof. Yu’s tutelage was primarily descriptive. Rather than challenging the ideas, we tracked the ways that ideas changed, largely as effects of broad social processes. Two important lessons that I learned from Prof. Yu were to appreciate the diversity and dynamism of the Confucian tradition, and to see that Chinese philosophical texts were not produced in a vacuum of pure speculation, but were produced by political and social actors with many, complex motives. 1 I presented an earlier version of this material to an audience at the Institute of Literature and Philosophy at Taiwan ’ s Academia Sinica, and am very grateful both to Prof. Lee Ming-huei for his invitation and comments, and to Prof. Fabien Heubel and the rest of the attendees for their questions and suggestions. My thanks also to Brian Bruya for his detailed and helpful comments on a subsequent draft. 44 Stephen C. Angle Prof. Yu’s lessons have stayed with me, but when it came time for me to think about graduate school, I chose philosophy rather than intellectual history. What would happen, I wondered, if instead of tracing the develop-ment of Chinese ideas we were to try to take the ideas seriously in their own right? I was excited by the results we obtained in this way in my courses in Western philosophy, and found in Prof. Donald Munro at the University of Michigan a mentor who sought to interrogate Chinese “philosophy” in just this way.

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  Confucianism in Context

  Classic Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, East Asia and Beyond

  • Wonsuk Chang, Leah Kalmanson, Wonsuk Chang, Leah Kalmanson(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • SUNY Press

    (Publisher)

  This may explain why Chosŏn could so readily transform itself into a Confucian society. Even in contemporary Korea the Confucian tradition remains intact, more so than in neighboring East Asian countries such as China and Japan. The history of Confucianism in Korea can be divided broadly into two periods: before and after the introduction of neo-Confucianism. Keeping this broad divide in mind, I will explain the history of Korean Confucianism in four sections: 1. The periods before the arrival of neo-Confucianism, comprising the ancient period of the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla (first to tenth centuries) and the medieval period of the Koryŏ dynasty (tenth to fourteenth centuries); 2. The introduction of neo-Confucianism in the first half of the Chosŏn dynasty (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries); 3. The further development of neo-Confucianism in the last half of the Chosŏn dynasty (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries); 4. The modern period of the Korean Empire and Japanese occupation (twentieth century to the present). As Confucian philosophy began to influence institutions and norms in the earlier periods, it spread to all spheres of life: academia, daily etiquette, society, and culture. While tracing these developments, I will focus on the distinctive issues of Confucian philosophy in Korea, thus highlighting the basic characteristics of a uniquely Korean Confucianism. Korean Indigenous Thought and Confucianism in Ancient and Medieval Korea Confucius formed a philosophical school, compiling cultures and texts in ancient China. Surely, the origins of Confucianism could be traced back much farther than Confucius himself. In ancient East Asia, the Han culture in central China flourished and interacted with peripheral “barbarian” cultures in eastern China. The Analects 9.14 records: “The Master wanted to go and live in the area of nine clans of the Eastern Yi barbarians.

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  Philosophic Classics: Asian Philosophy, Volume VI

  • Forrest Baird(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  * * * Neo-Confucianism has stimulated a large volume of quality research during the past half century, especially from Wm. Theodore de Bary and Wing-tsit Chan. That literature falls into four categories. 1. General studies of Neo-Confucianism, covering both the Sung (Chu Hsi) and Ming (Wang Yang-ming) periods: Carsun Chang, The Development of Neo-Confucian Thought, 2 vols. (New Haven, CT: College and University Press, 1963); Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, eds., Principle and Practicality: Essays in Neo-Confucian Practicality (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Wm. Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of Mind-and-Heart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Message of the Mind in Neo-Confucianism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); and Wm. Theodore de Bary, Learning for One’s Self: Essays on the Individual in Neo-Confucian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). 2. Studies of Chu Hsi in the setting of the Sung Dynasty: Wing-tsit Chan, ed., Chu Hsi and Neo-Confucianism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986); Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi: Life and Thought (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987); 523 N EO -C ONFUCIAN S YNTHESES Donald J. Monro, Images of Human Nature: A Sung Portrait (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hsi: New Studies (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989); and Daniel K. Gardner, Learning to be a Sage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 3. Studies of Wang Yang-ming in the setting of the Ming Dynasty: Carsun Chang, Wang Yang-ming: The Idealist Philosopher of the Sixteenth-Century (New York: St. John’s University Press, 1962); Wm.

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  The Ivory Tower and The Marble Citadel

  Essays on Political Philosophy in Our Modern Era of Interacting Cultures

  • Thomas A. Metzger(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • The Chinese University of Hong Kong

    (Publisher)

  The concept of this key moral decision was also used in modern times to criticize the traditional educational system. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, writing around 1897, said that in this system, students “began with the goal of becoming a sage and ended up with the mentality of a clerk” (Chang 1969: 51). Thus enlarging his moral goals and moral role to the utmost, the transformative Neo-Confucian was acutely conscious of the contrast between his elitist moral stance and what Hsün-tzu had tellingly called min-te (the morality of ordinary people), who merely “approve of respect for custom, regard wealth as precious, and think of their physical well-being as the highest value” (Liang 1969: 84). This transformative stance, therefore, was traditionally distinguished from the moral stance of those who had resigned themselves to more modest goals, not to mention the accommodative, familistic, and economistic stance of the peasant who pursued “wealth” and “status” in the name of filial piety and through “industriousness and frugality.” It can also be readily distinguished from the stance of popular millenarianism, which, as described by S. Naquin and D. L. Overmyer, involved praying for help from supernatural beings. The Neo-Confucian path to transformation brought ego into a dyadic relation with the cosmos and a quest for linkage realized not through prayer but by a mixture of individual will and intellectual effort. Finally, apart from the transformative-accommodative dichotomy and the question of the hero’s relation to the center of the polity, Confucians were aware of a range of positions between the 3. Selfhood and Authority in Neo-Confucian Political Culture 291 extremes of a “sense of predicament” and a “sense of impending solution.” Neo-Confucians after the eleventh century, as I have argued, had a sense of predicament, since, until the West came with its new ways, there was nothing on their intellectual horizon promising to solve the problems they had defined for themselves.

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  Religions of Korea in Practice

  • Robert E. Buswell, Robert E. Buswell Jr., Robert E. Buswell, Jr., Robert Buswell(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  Although Confucian criticisms of Buddhism start as far back as the Tang dynasty with the Chinese literatus Han Yu (768–824), it is in the works of the Song Neo-Confucian masters, most importantly the Cheng brothers (Cheng Hao [1032–85] and Cheng Yi [1033–1107]) and Zhu Xi (1130–1200), that the critique takes on its mature philosophical form. The target of the Song Neo-Confucian critique was particularly Chan (S˘ on) Buddhism, the school that had distinguished itself for its ostensive rejection of book learning and societal norms. During the two centuries after Zhu Xi, a roughly analogous confrontation be- tween the Neo-Confucians and Buddhists developed in Kory˘ o dynasty Korea, but with some important distinctions. One of the most critical differences between the two scenarios was the markedly greater degree to which the Korean Buddhist establishment was embedded into the state power structure as compared with the situation in Song China. Leaders of the Buddhist establishment owned large tracts of tax-free territory, traded in slaves and other commodities, and were in- fluential at all levels of government. There were too many monks who were or- dained for the wrong reasons, and corruption was rampant. Thus, the ideological fervor with which Neo-Confucianism arose in Korea had a special dimension, since the ire of the critics of Buddhism not only was fueled by the earlier philo- sophical arguments of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi but was exacerbated by the extent of the present corruption. There was a decadent, teetering government in place, inextricably wrapped up, in the view of these critics, with a dissolute reli- gious organization.

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  Confucianism and the Chinese Self

  Re-examining Max Weber's China

  • Jack Barbalet(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  In the Jesuit mind, however, Daoism was another heresy to be purged from the Chinese spiritual space. As we have seen, neo- Confucianism absorbed elements of Buddhism in confronting it. The Jesuits thus regarded neo-Confucianism as tainted, requiring its expulsion from the fold of ‘orthodox’ Confucianism, this latter ‘misunderstood and betrayed’ by the revisionist and synthesizing neo-Confucian scholars of the Song dynasty (Zhang 1998: 103). The notion of Confucian orthodoxy in this sense, of not merely an accepted and sanctioned but an uncontaminated system of belief, is thus a Jesuit construction in which competing traditions are viewed through a European Christian lens forged in the Counter-Reformation. The idea, though, of Confucianism as the orthodoxy of Chinese spiritual and ethical discourse, with Daoism and Buddhism relegated to heterodox ascription, was continued by nineteenth- and twentieth-century sinologists (Legge 1880; de Groot 1910) and advocated by Weber (1964: 173–225), who follows their example. Weber so closely adopts the missionary sinologists’ approach that he disregards or is unaware of neo-Confucianism. His insen- sitivities to developments in Confucian thought have given rise to criticism (Metzger 1977), mentioned earlier, although others, while acknowledg- ing the fact, see it as methodologically explicable (Schluchter 1989: 112). But the notion of orthodoxy itself in this context is a Western projection, with Weber (1964: 214–15) reading Chinese developments through the prism of European history. Imperial Chinese rulers were not concerned with the mental constructs of their subjects, with orthodoxy, but with the rightness of their practices, with orthopraxy (Watson 1993), as we shall see in the following chapter. The Confucian tradition of the literati was based on correct ritual, not faith, orthodox or otherwise. 3 CONFUCIANISM

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  East Asian Confucianisms

  Texts in Context

  • Chun-chieh Huang(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • V&R Unipress

    (Publisher)

  This phenomenon displayed evolving relations with politics and economic profit. In Korean society, only the descendants of important families were able to approach the axes of power; at the same time, since they enjoyed superior educational opportunities, they mo- nopolized the lists of those who passed the state examinations. This form of hierarchical society inclined high-level Korean scholar-officials to advocate an authoritarian top-down form of Confucian thought while at the same time firmly maintaining their own elite position. 5 In Korea, Confucianism occupied the position of a religion; during regime changes, the intelligentsia always sought to rid society of the corruption from its gentry and monks, and replace them with Confucian ethics and politics. Over several centuries, the Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-Confucianism took root in Korea; but while adapting to Korea’s unique intellectual and political environment, it developed in a manner unlike its counterparts in China and Japan. 6 Despite this major difference in the position of Zhu Xi’s thought in China, Japan and Korea, from the seventeenth-century on, and especially in the late eighteenth-century, a virulent, tumultuous intellectual tide critical of Zhu Xi’s thought arose and percolated in China and Japan. Although Zhu Xi continued to be upheld as a great master in Korea, critical discussions of his thought also began to appear there. This intellectual tide in opposition to Zhu Xi’s thought appears to have arisen with the new interpretive approaches to the Confucian classics, the Four Books in particular, which completely criticized, transcended, and dis- carded Zhu Xi’s interpretive tradition. The endeavors of eighteenth-century Chinese, Korean and Japanese Con- fucians to oppose Zhu Xi’s thought necessarily included a systematic re- interpretation of the Four Books.

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