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At the heart of Chinese Culture thought stand the five great classics, the traditional, time-honored works that define and originate Chinese culture and history. Chinese history, as the Chinese narrate it, blazes into existence with the great, partly divine heroes who teach the early Chinese all the arts of civilization: writing, law, architecture, art, and so on. These blatantly mythical figures are followed by three great sage kings, Yao, Shun, and Yü; the.
latter stands as the foundation of the first ruling dynasty in China, the Hsia. During the various cycles of dynastic change, from the Hsia to the Shang to the Chou, the Five Classics, or the Confucian Classics (even though they are not written by Confucius), were written down, or supposedly written down. These Five Classics constituted the program of learning for anyone in the upper classes, the ruling classes, or the educated classes. The Classics not only recorded early Chinese history infallibly, they also completely contained all the ethics and wisdom of China. |
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The second Classic is The Chinese Culture of History ; or Shu ching , which is a set of documents (speeches, laws, etc.) from the Hsia to the Chou dynasties. In China, this book is regarded as a relatively infallible collection of documents; in the West, the book is considered mainly a collection from the middle or late Chou period and so relatively unreliable as a source for the earlier dynasties. Confucius, according to tradition, had a hand in this book as well, assembling, editing, and commenting on the documents. The Chinese Culture of History has served throughout Chinese history as a repository of political wisdom, as the source book of exemplary models of government.
The Classic traditionally ascribed the third position is the Shih ching , the Book of Odes ; this book is a collection of three hundred poems from the Chou dynasty. Confucius, again, is traditionally regarded as the editor and compiler of the book.
Fourth comes the Ritual , which is actually several books on philosophy, rituals, and even table manners. The most important of these books is the Li chi , or The Chinese Culture of Rites , which catalogs the many rituals that make up ancient Chinese life.
Finally comes the Ch'un ch'iu for Chinese Culture , or The Spring and Autumn Annals , a history of a single Chinese province from about 700 to 500 B.C. Confucius, again, lived in this province and supposedly assembled these annals himself.
What were the salient features of early Chinese thought? (Chinese Culture) First, the Chinese believed that heaven, t'ien , governed the world in its entirety, including human affairs; in fact, heaven was especially and scrupulously attentive to all things human, especially government. As a result of this interest, heaven frequently intervened in governmental affairs: when a dynasty grew corrupt, heaven intervened and overthrew that dynasty and replaced it with a new one. This concept was called the "mandate of heaven," t'ien ming ; rulers were put in place by heaven and could continue to rule as long as they did so with justice and wisdom. When they ceased to rule in the best interests of their subjects, the mandate of heaven required that they be overthrown by someone else. Finally, the ancient Chinese believed that their ancestors continued to live among them and so needed to be consulted, prayed to, appeased, and placated.
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Confucius laid down a pattern of thinking followed by more people for more generations than any other human being on the face of the earth. No matter what religion, no matter what form of government, the Chinese (and most other East Asian civilizations) and their way of thinking can in some way be shown to have Confucian elements about them. But Confucius was no religious leader nor did he claim any special divine status (nor was any divine status claimed for him). He was, in fact, a relatively ordinary person; his family was from the lesser aristocracy that had fallen on extremely hard times when he was born in 551 B.C. in the province of Lu. He was born into the family of K'ung and was given the name Ch'iu; in later life he was called "Master Kung": K'ung Fu-tzu, from which the Latin form, Confucius, is derived. He began a startlingly successful early political career as a young man, rising quickly in the administrative ranks, but fell out of favor fast. Although his intense personal goal was to restore peace and orderliness to the province, he found himself dismissed from government early on. He never returned to public life. Instead he turned to teaching, hoping that he could change the world by changing its leaders at a young age. We have many accounts of his teaching and all his students praise his natural talent for brilliant teaching. These students recorded these teachings and this is what comes down to us as the Analects. The Confucian method characterizes just about all Chinese learning down to the present day; its fundamental tenet is the unwavering belief in the perfectibility of human beings through learning.(Chinese Culture)
We begin our short discussion of Taoism with the following warning: as all the Taoist writers tell us, it is in the nature of the Tao that it cannot be spoken of. Talking about Taoism in a clear and rational way is, in fact, not to talk about Taoism(Chinese Culture).That aside, Taoism is, along with Confucianism, the most important strain of Chinese thought through the ages. It is almost entirely different from Confucianism, but not contradictory. It ranges over entirely different concerns, so that it is common for individuals, philosophers, Chinese novels or films, etc., to be both Confucianist and Taoist. The Taoist has no concern for affairs of the state, for mundane or quotidian matters of administration, or for elaborate ritual; rather Taoism encourages avoiding public duty in order to search for a vision of the transcendental world of the spirit.
One cannot discuss Confucianism without at least mentioning the man the Chinese call "The Second Sage," Meng Tzu, or, in Latinized form, Mencius (372-289 B.C.) Mencius, like Confucius and Mo Tzu before him, concerned himself entirely with political theory and political practice; he spent his life bouncing from one feudal court to another trying to find some ruler who would follow his teachings. Like Confucius and Mo Tzu before him, he was largely unsuccessful in his endeavor. In fact, China had degenerated precipitously in Mencius's time:(Chinese Culture) individual states were preying on and conquering others and the rulers of the time had no patience for what they considered prattling about the ancients and their ways. Also, rival schools, especially the Moist schools (see "Mo Tzu" below), were putting up a good fight as far as bending the ears of rulers are concerned.
Mo Tzu (470-391 B.C.) is a curious figure among the early giants of Chinese thought. Unlike most of the other names he is associated with (Confucius, Lao Tzu, Mencius, Chuang Tzu, etc.), Mo Tzu, born Mo Ti, seems to have been of low birth, possibly the son of a slave. (Chinese Culture)He was a thoroughgoing eccentric, as famous for his dress and manners as his thought. His direct legacy, Moism, died out fairly quickly; in spite of this, his thought is enormously influential for all Chinese thought to follow. He despised Confucians with a passion, regarding them as uptight, egotistical, pretentious, upper class, and characterized by a mindless devotion to empty rituals. Despite this animosity, Mo Tzu shared with Confucius an overwhelming concern with government; his life was literally spent moving from feudal court to feudal court trying to talk some ruler or other into living by his philosophical teachings.
In the Sung dynasty (960-1279), Confucianism became a powerful force of thought in what is generally called the Sung Confucian Revival. In the centuries preceding, Buddhism was the dominant force in China; the intellectual centers of China were the Buddhist temples. But in the Sung, the center of intellectual activity again devolved on the scholar. The most important of these new scholars was Hu Yüan (993-1059) who almost single-handedly is responsible for the revival of Confucianism at this time. Like Confucius and his followers, Hu Yüan is primarily concerned with ethics rather than abstract religious or metaphysical speculation; his overwhelming concern lies in the concerns of government and the ethics of day to day living. As a result of this Confucian revival, the government itself undertook massive reforms according to Confucian principles; part of this reform was the extension of the examination system for choosing government officials (see Chinese
Culture).