CONFUCIANISM. — This term designates the entire body of religious, ethical, and political doctrines that Confucius (v.) gathered from antiquity, inculcated through his life and teaching, and transmitted to posterity; doctrines which Mencius (Meng Tzu, 372?–289? B.C.) consolidated, and to which Chu Hsi (1130–1200) unfortunately gave that atheistic interpretation and rationalistic form which dominated from the 12th to the 20th century. Although it is neither a religion nor a properly philosophical system, for more than two millennia Confucianism has occupied for millions of Chinese the place of both, and has shaped the fabric of China throughout the centuries.
This body of doctrine is found scattered in the Five Classics and the Four Books, to which Confucius, in one way or another, according to ancient tradition—though now strongly shaken by critics—has attached his name. While it was formerly commonly held that all these books were either written or at least edited by Confucius, today many scholars maintain that none of them can be traced back beyond the 3rd century B.C. The list of the Five Classics includes:
1. The Book of Changes, a kind of semi-mystical manual of divination, consisting of two parts, the older of which is generally attributed to King Wen (Wen) and his son, the Duke of Chou (Chow), and thus dated to the 11th century B.C., while the more recent part must be attributed to the disciples of Confucius, and thus dated to the 5th–4th centuries B.C.
2. The Book of Historical Records, a collection of prose documents purporting to give the concatenation of events in China from the beginning of its history—or rather prehistory—down to the 7th century B.C., a collection attributed to Confucius, destroyed in the burning of books in 213 B.C., recovered in 140 B.C., lost again, and then rediscovered, this time only in part, the other half having been added in the 3rd century A.D.
3. The Book of Odes, a collection of 300 odes, likewise attributed to Confucius, the oldest of which may date from the 13th–12th centuries B.C., and the most recent to the beginning of the 6th century B.C.
4. The Records of Rites contains texts compiled in their present form between the 4th and 5th centuries B.C., though some passages may be of even greater antiquity.
5. The Spring and Autumn Annals is a dry chronicle of the State of Lu, Confucius’ native state, from 722 to 484 B.C., also attributed to the great master.
The quintessence of Confucianism is then condensed in the Four Books, where, from the 12th century A.D. onward, Chu Hsi gathered the following works:
The Great Learning, extracted from the Records of Rites, of which it forms chapter 39, and now comprising eleven chapters, the first of which is said to be by Confucius, while the other ten (one of which was added by Chu Hsi himself, who believed it missing) are attributed to a member of his school from the 4th century B.C.
The Doctrine of the Mean, likewise extracted early from the Records of Rites, of which it forms chapter 28, attributed to a great-grandson of Confucius, K’ung Chi (483–402 B.C.), who may also be a pseudonym.
The Analects of Confucius is a collection of sayings and aphorisms of the great master, initially transmitted orally, then committed to writing by the disciples of his disciples at the beginning of the 4th century B.C.; the present text dates to the 2nd century A.D., but was based on three texts from the 2nd century B.C., now lost.
The Works of Mencius convey in clear and elegant prose the thought of Mencius, regarded as the “second sage” of China after Confucius; known since the 3rd century B.C., and perhaps even earlier, they did not become the subject of study until the 2nd century A.D., when the first commentary on them appeared, and they were not elevated to the status of a classical book until 1062; possibly written by his disciples, they were probably revised and polished by Mencius himself, who supervised their final edition.
The content of Confucianism, as found in these sources, is religious and ethical.
From a religious standpoint, Confucius never presented himself as the founder of a religion, nor much less as a god; the Chinese have always regarded him as the first “sage” of China, and as such have honored him for about two thousand years. His religious thought is therefore that of the ancients, who venerated a Supreme Being, to whom, from the beginning or at least from the 13th–12th centuries B.C., they gave the name of Ti, the Sovereign Lord, more often of Shang Ti or the Supreme Sovereign, and from the 11th century B.C. onward also that of T’ien or Heaven, alone or accompanied by adjectives such as August, Vast, etc. These names, moreover, were perfectly interchangeable, as shown by this passage from an authentic chapter of the Historical Records (IV, 94): the fame of King Wen “reached the Supreme Sovereign, and the Sovereign approved; then Heaven gave a great mandate to King Wen.” The Analects show that for Confucius, as for the ancient Chinese, Heaven is the “only Great One” (VIII, 19), since all things depend on it (XIV, 38), even life and death (VI, 8), wealth and honors (XII, 5); it is He from whom the philosopher receives his own virtue (VII, 22) and his doctrine (IX, 5), enabling him to act as a god and to defy his enemies (IX, 5); it is to Him that he often turns in prayer (VII, 34), since He is provident (II, 4) and the only One who fully knows him (XIV, 37); He is an infallible (IX, 11) and unappealable (III, 13) judge, and therefore worthy of respect by all, even by the superior man (XVI, 8). Confucius also seems to have intuited the proof of God’s existence through causality and order, affirming that there is no need for Heaven to speak, since the four seasons proceed regularly and beings are produced in the world, as if they were the voice of God (XVII, 18). Commenting on this verse from the Book of Odes (I, 17), which attests to the spirituality and transcendence of God: “The actions of the Supreme Heaven have neither sound nor smell,” Confucius—or at least his school—exclaims: “This is the height of perfection!” (Doctrine of the Mean, conclusion).
To this Supreme Sovereign or Heaven, from the dawn of the nation, the sovereign was accustomed to offer sacrifice in the southern suburb of the capital. Indeed, markets and fairs—that is, commercial exchanges—are still held in China today in the suburbs. It was also in the suburbs that the ancient Chinese wished to conduct their
Divinity. Outdoors, beneath the azure vault of the heavens, before dawn, they offered sacrifice to Heaven on a raised platform built in the suburbs, to the south of the capital. The character that denotes both the raised platform and the sacrifice to Heaven is pronounced chiao, and it is composed of two elements: the first, which precedes, signifies relations or exchanges, and the second, which follows, signifies city, hence exchanges before the city, that is, the capital. This sacrifice was exclusively reserved for the sovereign. It was performed as early as the 20th century B.C., and throughout the second and first millennia B.C., always in honor of the one Heaven, which could not be the true God. Only in 31 B.C. was Earth associated with Heaven, and from that moment until 1911, with the advent of the Republic, the cult of Heaven and Earth assumed prodigious importance. This double cult had the unhappy consequence that the concept of a personal Heaven was almost imperceptibly extended to that of material heaven, and, as if this were not enough, countless second-, third-, and fourth-order deities were added over time. Of these, only about ten were historical or legendary divine figures, while all the others were celestial, atmospheric, terrestrial, and aquatic deities. Finally, in the 14th century, there was at least a partial return to the original simplicity, by suppressing, or at least greatly reducing, these secondary deities. Moreover, these latter, which served almost as satellites to Heaven and Earth, were no longer divinized human beings, but celestial or terrestrial beings, which therefore were subordinate to Heaven or Earth. Even the Heaven-Earth dualism seems to have been, at least for the most learned, merely verbal, conceptual, and apparent, and that through Heaven and Earth one intended to honor, after all, that one personal Heaven, known and worshipped from the earliest centuries, under the name of Supreme Ruler. Indeed, speaking of the ancients, Confucius would have said: “With the sacrifice of the suburbs to Heaven and that of the Earth, they served the Supreme Ruler” (*Invariable Medium*, 19), that is to say that despite the apparent dualism, indeed through this dualism, one always intended to honor the one Supreme Ruler.
It thus appears that the cult of Heaven, whose most solemn act was the sacrifice performed by the emperor once a year at the winter solstice, had, in the last five hundred and more years of the Empire, almost entirely regained the freshness and purity of its earliest centuries. This cult was neither Buddhist nor Taoist and unfolded within and according to the principles of the...
Confucius, however, like the Chinese in general, was more inclined toward ethics and practical living than toward metaphysics and abstract questions. And in this he excelled, as is evident from his *Discourses*, to which all the following bibliographical references pertain unless otherwise indicated.
As for individual ethics, Confucius does not pronounce on the much-debated question among Chinese philosophers of whether human nature is by itself good or bad. He maintains that men are born equal, but that they then differentiate themselves according to the habits they acquire (XVII, 2), dividing into four classes. At the top is the sage, to whom both knowledge and virtue are innate; immediately below is the superior man, who acquires both through study and diligence; next comes the stupid man, who, despite his capacity, strives to attain both; and finally the fool, who makes no effort to rise above his stupidity (XVI, 9). Indeed, few are those who follow virtue (XV, 3), while many are captivated by beauty (IX, 17; XV, 12). Yet the man of character, the man of virtue, does not seek to save his life at the cost of virtue, but rather is ready to sacrifice his life to remain in virtue (XV, 8). This latter consists in “ne quid nimis” (VI, 27). Among the virtues, Confucius recommends sincerity, justice, courage, wisdom, urbanity, and especially *jen*, which can mean benevolence, philanthropy, or even humanity. It is noteworthy that he arrived at a kind of negative charity; to a disciple who asked him for a motto to serve as an ideal throughout his life, the master replied: “Would it not be charity, that is, what you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others?” (XV, 23). For him, study was a joy (I, 1). He could therefore say to the disciple: “Study as if you would never reach the goal and as if the danger of forgetting what you have learned were always present” (VIII, 17). Moreover, the scholar must not delude himself: “Knowledge consists in knowing what is and what is not” (II, 17). The highest ideal of humanity after the “sage” is the superior man, whose moral portrait is as follows. He seeks clarity in what he sees, discernment in what he hears; he is affable in manner and modest in behavior; he is sincere in speech and respectful in action; if he doubts, he inquires; if he feels the stirrings of anger, he restrains himself by considering the inconveniences that would result; when he makes good deals, he is concerned with justice (XVI, 10).
If we turn from the individual to the family, Confucius especially inculcates in children filial piety toward their parents, which consists in “serving them according to the prescriptions while they are alive, and after their death in burying them and making offerings to them always according to the prescriptions” (II, 5). A son must take care of his parents’ persons, of what he has received from them, that is, his own body, and of ensuring their perpetuation through the centuries by means of male offspring obtained in marriage, perhaps even in polygamy. Moreover, he must conform his will to theirs while they are alive, and after their death he must continually keep their memory alive in himself by making frequent offerings to them. The apex of filial piety’s perfection consists in imitating the ancient sages, who “served the deceased as they had served them in life, served them in death as they had served them when they were present” (*Invariable Medium*, 19). Indeed, in Confucian thought, a son always remains a son, just as a creature always remains a creature in relation to God. It follows that the acts performed toward the deceased are nothing but the continuation of those performed while they were still alive. The son knelt before a father or mother while they were alive and presented them with food; now that they are dead, he wishes to continue doing the same as if they were still living, which is required by the filial piety as understood by the Chinese.
From the family one then proceeds to the State. In the Confucian system, whoever knows how to govern his own family also knows how to govern the State, which is nothing more than a larger family. The sovereign rules by virtue of the “Mandate of Heaven” that he has received, but this mandate is not eternal, for through the vices of the one invested with it, it can be lost or pass into other hands. Confucius, perhaps joking about the word *com*, which can mean both “to govern” and “to be upright,” declares: “To govern is to be upright” (XII, 17). He maintains that the sovereign’s influence over the people, for good or ill, is immense. “The superior man is like the wind, and the common man is like the grass; when the wind blows over the grass, it necessarily bends” (XII, 18), that is, it is subject to the influence of the stronger. When the prince “is upright, the people do their duty even without any order being issued; but when he himself is not upright, even if he issues all the orders he wishes, they will never be obeyed” (XIII, 6). Conversely, the prince’s vices are the cause of the people’s vices; to one who had usurped a dignity that did not belong to him and yet complained about the great number of thieves, Confucius courageously observed: “If you were not so rapacious, no one would steal, even if you were willing to offer a reward to the thief” (XII, 17). For Confucius, the virtuous sovereign is like the polestar, which, though remaining motionless, draws all the other stars to itself (II, 1).
This body of doctrine, which from the first centuries of the Christian era until the early years of the 20th century was regarded as the sole and true orthodoxy of China, was always jealously guarded by the Confucian literati. In this immense constellation, two names stand out: Mencius and Chu Hsi. The former devoted his entire life to the practice and dissemination of the principles outlined above, while the latter gave a nefarious direction to Confucianism by interpreting the clearest ancient texts on Heaven and the Supreme Ruler in a distinctly materialistic way, an interpretation that unfortunately persisted at least until 1904.
It was for this reason that when Fr. Matteo Ricci encountered this teaching at the end of the 16th century, already undermined by the school of Chu Hsi, he very wisely rejected the arbitrary interpretations of that school and returned to the ancient Chinese texts, restoring their original meaning. Having performed this necessary purification, it seemed to him that Confucianism was not a religion in the strict sense, but rather a political-literary academy, which moreover imposed nothing contrary to the truth of the faith and in ethics largely agreed with the teaching of the Church, except, naturally, on polygamy; even the cult of ancestors, of course, could be tolerated, at least until it could be fully Christianized. This was the approach generally taken by the Jesuit missionaries of the 17th century, while missionaries of other orders thought differently. And yet even in 1934, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Nationalist government in Nanking declared unequivocally to the press that Confucianism, lacking theology and any claim to doctrinal infallibility, is a philosophical school rather than a religion, and that Confucius is a great man to be honored but not worshipped. And in 1948, a former follower of Confucius, who had served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Council of Ministers, later converted to Catholicism, became a priest and a monk, and at the end of a long life wrote: “Confucianism, whose moral norms are so well founded and beneficial, finds in Revelation and in the existence and life of the Catholic Church the most luminous justification of all that it possesses of human and immortal truth, and at the same time finds in it the completion of light and moral power that resolves the problems before which our sages humbly paused, understanding that it is not for man to pronounce judgment on the mystery of Heaven, and that in venerating the providence of Heaven, one must await the moment when the Creator Himself deigns to reveal Himself, if He so pleases” (C. Lou Tseng-tsiang, *Souvenirs et pensées*, 2nd ed., Paris 1948, p. 78).