The necessary condition to achieve happiness is through peace. To obtain peace, Confucius discovered human relations consisting of the five relationships which are based on love and duties. War has to be abolished; and the Great Unity of the world should be developed. The tradition which developed following his work and teachings came to bear his name.
He did not express any desire to create a way of life but his influence was so great that it could not be ignored of forgotten. The tradition which developed is usually considered as a religion in as much as it does exhibit the characteristics of a religion, although there are many raised in the West who have doubts about calling Confucianism a "religion" because t does not have a deity or deities that feature prominently in the tradition.
On the other hand it does convey clearly what matters most and and it does hold the focus on humanity and basic human virtues as being of "ultimate concern" and thus has an idea or concept of an Absolute which serves as bedrock belief for an entire way of life. Confucianism , major system of thought in China, developed from the teachings of Confucius and his disciples, and concerned with the principles of good conduct, practical wisdom, and proper social relationships.
Confucianism has influenced the Chinese attitude toward life, set the patterns of living and standards of social value, and provided the background for Chinese political theories and institutions.
It has spread from China to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam and has aroused interest among Western scholars. Although Confucianism became the official ideology of the Chinese state, it has never existed as an established religion with a church and priesthood. Chinese scholars honored Confucius as a great teacher and sage but did not worship him as a personal god.
Nor did Confucius himself ever claim divinity. Unlike Christian churches, the temples built to Confucius were not places in which organized community groups gathered to worship, but public edifices designed for annual ceremonies, especially on the philosopher's birthday.
Several attempts to deify Confucius and to proselyte Confucianism failed because of the essentially secular nature of the philosophy.
The principles of Confucianism are contained in the nine ancient Chinese works handed down by Confucius and his followers, who lived in an age of great philosophic activity.
These writings can be divided into two groups: the Five Classics and the Four Books. The I Ching is a manual of divination probably compiled before the 11th century BC; its supplementary philosophical portion, contained in a series of appendixes, may have been written later by Confucius and his disciples. The Shu Ching is a collection of ancient historical documents, and the Shih Ching, an anthology of ancient poems. The Li Chi deals with the principles of conduct, including those for public and private ceremonies; it was destroyed in the 3rd century BC, but presumably much of its material was preserved in a later compilation, the Record of Rites.
The Ch'un Ch'iu, the only work reputedly compiled by Confucius himself, is a chronicle of major historical events in feudal China from the 8th century BC to Confucius's death early in the 5th century BC. The keynote of Confucian ethics is jen, variously translated as "love," "goodness," "humanity," and "human-heartedness.
In human relations, construed as those between one person and another, jen is manifested in chung, or faithfulness to oneself and others, and shu, or altruism, best expressed in the Confucian golden rule, "Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself. Politically, Confucius advocated a paternalistic government in which the sovereign is benevolent and honorable and the subjects are respectful and obedient.
The ruler should cultivate moral perfection in order to set a good example to the people. In education Confucius upheld the theory, remarkable for the feudal period in which he lived, that "in education, there is no class distinction. Mencius continued the ethical teachings of Confucius by stressing the innate goodness of human nature. He believed, however, that original human goodness can become depraved through one's own destructive effort or through contact with an evil environment.
The problem of moral cultivation is therefore to preserve or at least to restore the goodness that is one's birthright. Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy and religion that instructs believers on how to exist in harmony with the universe.
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Skip to content. Image Confucian Philosopher Mencius Confucianism is an ancient Chinese belief system, which focuses on the importance of personal ethics and morality. Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom.
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Related Resources. Ancient Civilization: China. View Collection. Imperial China's Dynasties. View leveled Article. Chinese Religions and Philosophies. Thus one side of Confucianism was the affirmation of accepted values and norms of behavior in primary social institutions and basic human relationships.
Starting from individual and family, people acting rightly could reform and perfect the society. The blueprint of this process was described in "The Great Learning," a section of the Classic of Rituals:.
Only when things are investigated is knowledge extended; only when knowledge is extended are thoughts sincere; only when thoughts are sincere are minds rectified; only when minds are rectified are the characters of persons cultivated; only when character is cultivated are our families regulated; only when families are regulated are states well governed; only when states are well governed is there peace in the world.
Confucius' ethical vision ran against the grain of the legalistic mind set of his day. Only under the Han Emperor Wu r. From that time on the imperial state promoted Confucian values to maintain law, order, and the status quo.
In late traditional China, emperors sought to establish village lectures on Confucian moral precepts and to give civic awards to filial sons and chaste wives. The imperial family and other notables sponsored the publication of morality books that encouraged the practice of Confucian values: respect for parents,loyalty to government, and keeping to one's place in society—farmers should remain farmers, and practice the ethics of farming.
This side of Confucianism was conservative, and served to bolster established institutions and long-standing social divisions.
There was, however, another side to Confucianism. Confucius not only stressed social rituals li , but also humaneness ren. Ren, sometimes translated love or kindness, is not any one virtue, but the source of all virtues.
The Chinese character literally represents the relationship between "two persons," or co-humanity—the potential to live together humanely rather than scrapping like birds or beasts. Thus if the "outer"side of Confucianism was conformity and acceptance of social roles, the "inner" side was cultivation of conscience and character. Cultivation involved broad education and reflection on one's actions. It was a lifetime commitment to character building carving and polishing the stone of one's character until it was a lustrous gem.
Master Kong described his own lifetime:. The Han period biographical materials in Records of the Historian describe how a high official of the state of Lu did not come to court for three days after the state of Qi made him a gift of female entertainers.
When, additionally, the high official failed to properly offer gifts of sacrificial meats, Confucius departed Lu for the state of Wei 47, cf. Analects Confucius repeatedly rejected conventional values of wealth and position, choosing instead to rely on ritual standards of value. However, here the standard that gives such objects currency is ritual importance rather than longevity, divorcing Confucius from conventional materialistic or hedonistic pursuits. This is a second way that ritual allows one to direct more effort into character formation.
Once, when speaking of cultivating benevolence, Confucius explained how ritual value was connected to the ideal way of the gentleman, which should always take precedence over the pursuit of conventional values:. Wealth and high social status are what others covet. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not dwell in them. Poverty and low social status are what others shun. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not avoid them. The argument that ritual performance has internal benefits underlies the ritual psychology laid out by Confucius, one that explains how performing ritual and music controls desires and sets the stage for further moral development.
In this way, the virtues that Confucius taught were not original to him, but represented his adaptations of existing cultural ideals, to which he continually returned in order to clarify their proper expressions in different situations.
The virtue of benevolence entails interacting with others guided by a sense of what is good from their perspectives. Examples of contextual definitions of benevolence include treating people on the street as important guests and common people as if they were attendants at a sacrifice It is the broadest of the virtues, yet a gentleman would rather die than compromise it Benevolence entails a kind of unselfishness, or, as David Hall and Roger Ames suggest, it involves forming moral judgments from a combined perspective of self and others.
The Analects , however, discusses the incubation of benevolent behavior in family and ritual contexts. These connections between benevolence and other virtues underscore the way in which benevolent behavior does not entail creating novel social forms or relationships, but is grounded in traditional familial and ritual networks. The second virtue, righteousness, is often described in the Analects relative to situations involving public responsibility.
In contexts where standards of fairness and integrity are valuable, such as acting as the steward of an estate as some of the disciples of Confucius did, righteousness is what keeps a person uncorrupted. Like benevolence, righteousness also entails unselfishness, but instead of coming out of consideration for the needs of others, it is rooted in steadfastness in the face of temptation. More specifically, evaluating things based on their ritual significance can put one at odds with conventional hierarchies of value.
The tale relates how at court, Confucius was given a plate with a peach and a pile of millet grains with which to scrub the fruit clean.
After the attendants laughed at Confucius for proceeding to eat the millet first, Confucius explained to them that in sacrifices to the Former Kings, millet itself is the most valued offering. Therefore, cleaning a ritually base peach with millet:. While such stories may have been told to mock his fastidiousness, for Confucius the essence of righteousness was internalizing a system of value that he would breach for neither convenience nor profit.
In the Analects , portrayals of Confucius do not recognize a tension between benevolence and righteousness, perhaps because each is usually described as salient in a different set of contexts. In ritual contexts like courts or shrines, one ideally acts like one might act out of familial affection in a personal context, the paradigm that is key to benevolence.
In the performance of official duties, one ideally acts out of the responsibilities felt to inferiors and superiors, with a resistance to temptation by corrupt gain that is key to righteousness. The Records of Ritual distinguishes between the domains of these two virtues:.
Treating nobility in a noble way and the honorable in an honorable way, is the height of righteousness. While it is not the case that righteousness is benevolence by other means, this passage underlines how in different contexts, different virtues may push people toward participation in particular shared cultural practices constitutive of the good life. In the Analects, Confucius is depicted both teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believed they were conducted in antiquity.
We have seen how ritual shapes values by restricting desires, thereby allowing reflection and the cultivation of moral dispositions. Yet without the proper affective state, a person is not properly performing ritual. Knowing the details of ritual protocols is important, but is not a substitute for sincere affect in performing them. Confucius summarized the different prongs of the education in ritual and music involved in the training of his followers:.
Raise yourself up with the Classic of Odes. Establish yourself with ritual. Complete yourself with music. That Confucius insists that his son master classical literature and practices underscores the values of these cultural products as a means of transmitting the way from one generation to the next.
He tells his disciples that the study of the Classic of Odes prepares them for different aspects of life, providing them with a capacity to:. In the ancient world, this kind of education also qualified Confucius and his disciples for employment on estates and at courts.
The fourth virtue, wisdom, is related to appraising people and situations. In the Analects, wisdom allows a gentleman to discern crooked and straight behavior in others One well-known passage often cited to imply Confucius is agnostic about the world of the spirits is more literally about how wisdom allows an outsider to present himself in a way appropriate to the people on whose behalf he is working:.
The context for this sort of appraisal is usually official service, and wisdom is often attributed to valued ministers or advisors to sage rulers.
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