Page 81 - Encyclopedia Of World History

congress of vienna 431

Study the past if you would define the
future. • Confucius (551–479 bce)

In all of this Confucius appears to have been a con- basis for personal self-cultivation and social harmony in
servative or even reactionary thinker who wanted to go the world’s most enduring political structure and cultural
back to an idealized past in which members of an edu- formation—not a bad legacy for a frustrated politician
cated elite had both status and power. But a call to revive turned teacher.
the past can be a charge to the present. In some ways,
Ralph Croizier
Confucius was a remarkable innovator.
First, there was his emphasis on morality and concern See also Confucianism
for the welfare of the common people, a theme further
developed by his most famous posthumous disciple,
Mencius (or Mengzi, c. 372–c. 289 BCE). Politically, this Further Reading
was expressed in the famous “mandate of Heaven,” which Creel, H. G. (1949). Confucius: The man and the myth. New York:
Harper Brothers.
made the ruler of “all under Heaven”—that is, of a polit- Fingarette, H. (1972). Confucius: The secular as sacred. New York:
ically unified Chinese culture area—responsible to a Harper & Row.
Hall, D. L., & Ames, R. (1987). Thinking through Confucius. Albany:
nonanthropomorphic supreme deity or cosmic principle
State University of New York Press.
(Heaven) for maintaining social harmony though non- Jensen, L. (1997). Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese traditions and
selfish virtuous rule. Failure to do so could terminate a universal civilization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Lau, D. C. (Trans.). (1992). Confucius:The analects.
ruling house through the people’s exercise of the so-called Ni, P. (2002). On Confucius. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson
“right of rebellion,” further explicated two centuries later Learning.
Wei-ming, T. (1985). Confucian thought: Selfhood as creative transfor-
by Mencius.
mation. Albany: State University of New York Press.
This was Confucius’s first check on tyrannical rule.The
second, and ultimately more important, was his empha-
sis on cultivating knowledge and morality through edu-
cation. Confucius fundamentally undermined the hered-
itary principle in a stratified society by taking poor as well Congo
as rich students. We can assume that his more impover-
ished students were the children of good families fallen See Kongo
on hard economic times rather than common peasants,
but in the long run this practice of offering a literate,
moral education to train people for political leadership
laid the social foundation for the political order of impe- Congress of
rial China. The ultimate product of such an education
was the junzi, originally a term for hereditary noblemen, Vienna
but for Confucius a term that signified an educated, cul-
tivated, and morally centered “noble man.” he Congress of Vienna was a series of meetings
Confucius’s teachings, carried on and developed as the Tinvolving most of the European heads of state held
Ru school in the centuries after his death, were made the in Vienna, the capital of the Austrian empire, between
official doctrine of the imperial state during the Han September 1814 and 9 June 1815. The purpose of the
dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), partly as a backlash against Congress was to redraw the map of Europe after years of
the harsh absolutism of the short-lived Qin dynasty chaos resulting from the Napoleonic and French revolu-
(221–206 BCE). Though much changed in subsequent tionary wars (1792–1814). Its proceedings were ini-
periods, Confucius’s moral emphasis would form the tially dominated by the four powers of the victorious