Page 78 - Encyclopedia Of World History

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Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.
• Confucius (551–479 bce)

ways of heaven, earth, and man. Dong envisaged the verse, a task that had hitherto been the province of Bud-
ruler, advised by the scholar, as the link between those dhism and Daoism. Song thinkers like Zhou Dunyi
three realms. He incorporated ancient yin-yang thought (1017–1073), Shao Yong (1011–1077), Zhang Zai
(a system based on complementary opposites, as in (1021–1073), the brothers Cheng Yi (1033–1107) and
positive-negative or male-female) into the emerging Han Cheng Hao (1032–1085), Lu Jiuyuan (1139–1193),
intellectual universe, giving Confucianism properties of a and finally Zhu Xi (1130–1200) excited their age with
secular religion. The Chinese son of heaven (the intellectual vigor and perspicacity.Two schools emerged
emperor), as the first scholar of the land, from then on in Neo-Confucianism. One, the Cheng-Zhu named for
performed solemn Confucian rites of state. For the next Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, who did the most for it, saw a
two millennia, by virtue of such institutions as the civil- phenomenal world of disparate objects and appear-
service examination system, censorial admonition, and ances, which they labeled qi and a noumenal world of
imperial universities, the Chinese government fully ultimate organizing principles (li) behind the qi. The
deserved the adjective Confucian. other school (xin), led by Cheng Hao and Lu Jiuyuan,
China after the Han was divided, politically and geo- viewed the universe as a organism, whole in itself, with
graphically. The north supported Buddhism, and the the organizing principle of qi (matter-energy or mind; a
Confucian state could only survive in the south, and there different word from the previous qi) explaining micro-
only intermittently. China was reunited under the short- and macrolevels of human existence. The first school
lived Sui dynasty (581–618), which favored Buddhism. propounded a dualism that explained the seeming dis-
The Sui, which reunified China in the name of Confu- parities between phenomena and their ultimate princi-
cianism, exhibited strong Buddhist features in its ideo- ples; the latter dispenses with the dualism and offers the
logical outlook. For six hundred years, from the late Han mind, or matter-energy, as the means of uniting the
to the Tang dynasty, Buddhism and Daoism permeated knower and the known, thereby stressing human intu-
Chinese life. Intellectual, aesthetic, and religious impulses itive faculties. The two schools are known also as the li
were greatly stirred by these two outlooks, which com- (principle) and xin (mind) schools.
peted robustly with Confucianism. In those centuries, Song philosophical efforts gave Confucianism a meta-
these three persuasions together shaped the eventual physics and a way to explore one’s mind and psyche.
Chinese cultural outlook: Confucianism supporting a suc- Buddhist and Daoist influences ebbed, and Neo-
cessful public life, Buddhism supporting a religious life of Confucianism supported Chinese state and society for the
compassion, and Daoism satisfying a psyche freed for next seven hundred years. Metaphysics and metempsy-
imaginative excursions. But in the late ninth century, with chosis, however, were not the real goal of this Confucian
the success of the Tang state and government, attention revival, which aimed primarily at appropriating elements
was focused once again on Confucianism. of Buddhism and Daoism to buttress its emphasis on
human ethics. Using the new dualism, Neo-Confucianism
Neo-Confucianism could now point to individual human nature (qi) and
Beginning with such late Tang thinkers as Han Yu (d. ideal human nature (li), thus exhorting moral action
824) and Li Ao (d. 844), philosophical attention turned throughout Chinese society toward higher ideals. At all
to human nature. Centuries of Buddhist and Daoist levels of Chinese society, whether manifested in village
influences awakened within Confucianists an interest in rules or in the imperial civil-service examinations, and in
the languages of metaphysics and metempsychosis (the all intellectual endeavors, whether literary composition or
movement of the soul after death into a new body). A historical inquiry, there was now a Confucian norm to
series of thinkers appeared during the Song dynasty emulate.Thus, while Neo-Confucianism was dynamic in
(960–1279) to take up the task of explaining the uni- the making, it produced subsequent centuries of intellec-