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Show Summary Details Overview chung or shu. Subjects: Philosophy. All rights reserved. Sign in to annotate. The first passage illustrates the gradual and long-term scale of the process of self-cultivation.
These terms merit their own discussion. The self as conceptualized by Confucius is a deeply relational self that responds to inner reflection with outer virtue. Similarly, the self that Confucius wishes to cultivate in his own person and in his disciples is one that looks within and compares itself with the aesthetic, moral, and social canons of tradition.
Aware of its source in Tian , it seeks to maximize ren through apprenticeship to li so as to exercise de in a manner befitting a junzi. At birth, his body was said to have displayed special markings indicating his exemplary status. After his death, he was alleged to have revealed himself in a glorified state to his living disciples, who then received further esoteric teachings from their apotheosized master.
Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, he was recognized as a deity and a cult organized itself around his worship. Feng Youlan has suggested that, had these Han images of Confucius prevailed, Confucius would have become a figure comparable to Jesus Christ in the history of China, and there would have been no arguments among scholars about whether or not Confucianism was a religion like Christianity.
To both ancient modern eyes, fantastic and improbable myths of Confucius should be added more recent myths about the sage that date from the earliest sustained contact between China and the West during the early modern period.
Jesuits steeped in Renaissance humanism saw in Confucius a Renaissance humanist; German thinkers such as Leibniz or Wolff recognized in him an Enlightenment sage. Each remade Confucius in his own image for his own ends — a process that continues throughout the modern era, creating great heat and little light where the historical Confucius himself is concerned. Creel once put it, once a figure like Confucius has become a cultural hero, stories about him tell us more about the values of the storytellers than about Confucius himself.
Such mythmaking was very important to the emerging imperial Chinese state, however, as it struggled to impose cultural unity on a vast and fractious territory during the final few centuries BCE and beyond into the Common Era. After the initial persecution of Confucians during the short-lived Qin dynasty BCE , the succeeding Han emperors and their ministers seized upon Confucius as a vehicle for the legitimation of their rule and the social control of their subjects.
After the restoration of unified imperial government with the Tang dynasty CE , however, the future of Confucius as a symbol of the Chinese cultural and political establishment became increasingly secure.
State-sponsored sacrifices to him formed part of the official religious complex of temple rituals, from the national to the local level, and orthodox hagiography and history cemented his reputation as cultural hero among the masses.
With the fall of the last Chinese imperial government in , Confucius also fell from his position of state-imposed grandeur — but not for long. Within a short time of the abdication of the last emperor, monarchists were plotting to restore a Confucian ruler to the throne.
Although these plans did not materialize, the Nationalist regime in mainland China and later in Taiwan has promoted Confucius and Confucianism in a variety of ways in order to distinguish itself from the iconoclastic Communists who followed Mao to victory and control over most of China in Today, the Communist government of China spends a great deal of money on the reconstruction and restoration of old imperial temples to Confucius across the country, and has even erected many new statues of Confucius in areas likely to be frequented by tourists from overseas.
Predictably, Confucius, as a philosopher, has been rehabilitated by culturally Chinese regimes across Asia, from Singapore to Beijing, as what Wm. In short, Confucius seems far from dead, although one wonders if the authentic spirit of his fifth century BCE thought ever will live again.
Nonetheless, an outline of the most important commentators and their philosophical trajectories is worth including here. Neither knew Confucius personally, nor did they know one another, except retrospectively, as in the case of Xunzi commenting on Mencius.
The two usually are cast as being opposed to one another because of their disagreement over human nature — a subject on which Confucius was notably silent Analects 5. Whereas Mencius claims that human beings are originally good but argues for the necessity of self-cultivation, Xunzi claims that human beings are originally bad but argues that they can be reformed, even perfected, through self-cultivation.
Also like Mencius, Xunzi sees li as the key to the cultivation of renxing. Confucius — B. These complimentary sets of concerns can be categorized into four groups: Theodicy Harmonious order Moral force Self-cultivation 3. Heaven has abandoned me! For Confucius, the paramount example of harmonious social order seems to be xiao filial piety , of which jing reverence is the key quality: Observe what a person has in mind to do when his father is alive, and then observe what he does when his father is dead.
A moral ruler will diffuse morality to those under his sway; a moral parent will raise a moral child: Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, a father a father, and a son a son. It is both a quality, and a virtue of, the successful ruler: One who rules by moral force may be compared to the North Star — it occupies its place and all the stars pay homage to it. Self-Cultivation In the Analects , two types of persons are opposed to one another — not in terms of basic potential for, in The Confucius of the State Such mythmaking was very important to the emerging imperial Chinese state, however, as it struggled to impose cultural unity on a vast and fractious territory during the final few centuries BCE and beyond into the Common Era.
References and Further Reading Allan, Sarah. The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue. Allinson, Robert E. Ames, Roger T. New York: Ballatine, Roger T. Berthrong, John. Peter K. Boodberg, Peter A. Boodberg , ed. Alvin P. Cohen Berkeley: University of California Press, , Brooks, E. Bruce and A. Taeko, trans. New York: Columbia University Press, Chan, Wing-tsit, ed. A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Cheng, Anne.
Creel, Herrlee G. Confucius and the Chinese Way. New York: Harper and Row, Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. Bryan W. Eno, Robert. The Confucian Creation of Heaven. Fingarette, Herbert. Confucius — The Secular as Sacred. New York: Harper Torchbooks, Graham, A. Hall, David L. Thinking Through Confucius. Ivanhoe, Philip J. Which Analects? Lau, D. Confucius — The Analects. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, Legge, James, trans.
New York: Dover Publications, Munro, Donald J.
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