The Zhou people that Confucius (551-479 B.C.) idolized, traced their ancestry to the mythical deity, Houji, god of agriculture. This genealogical claim had no factual basis in history. Rather, it had been invented by the Zhou people to mask their barbaric origin as compared to the superior culture of the preceding Shang dynasty (1600-1028 B.C.) which they had conquered and appropriated, just as the Romans invented Aeneas, mythical Trojan hero, son of Anchises and Venus, as father of their lineage to give themselves an ancestor as cultured and ancient as those of the more sophisticated Greeks. The Tang imperial house has been at least humble enough to co-opt only Laozi, a real historical figure rather than a god.
Zhougong (Duke of Zhou) was credited with having established feudalism as a socio-political order during his short regency of only seven years. He institutionalized it with an elaborate system of Five Rites (Wuli) which has survived the passage of time. The Five Rites are: 1) rites governing social relationships; 2) rites governing behavioral codes; 3) rites governing codes of dress; 4) rites governing marriage and 5) rites governing burial practices. He also established Six Categories of Music (Liuluo) for all ritual occasions, giving formal ceremonial expression to social hierarchy. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) revered Zhougong (Duke of Zhou) as the father of formal Chinese feudal culture. The son of Zhougong, by the name of Ji Baqin, was bestowed as the First Lord of the State of Lu by Cheng Wang (1024-1005 B.C.), second-generation ruler of the Zhou dynasty who owed his dragon throne to Zhougong, third-ranking his uncle. Five centuries later, the State of Lu became the adopted home of Confucius, who had been born in the State of Song. However, the pragmatic descendants of Zhougong in the State of Lu did not find appealing the revivalist advice of Confucius, even when such advice had been derived from the purported wisdom of Zhougong, their illustrious ancestor. Confucius, as an old sage, had to peddle his moralist ideas in other neighboring states for a meager living. In despair, Confucius, the frustrated rambling philosopher, was recorded to have lamented in resignation: "It has been too long since I last visited Zhougong in my dreams."
According to Confucius, to rule an empire, the ruler must set an example by being personally virtuous. Clinton beware.
The essential idea underlying the political thinking in Confucian philosophy is that fallen men require the control of repressive institutions to restore their innate potential for goodness. According to Confucius (551-479 B.C.), civilization is the inherent purpose of human life. To advance civilization is the responsibility of the wise and the cultured, both individually and collectively. Enlightened individuals should teach ignorant individuals. Cultured nations should bring civilization to savage tribes. A superior ruler should cultivate qualities of a virtuous man. His virtue would then influence his ministers around him. They in turn would be examples to others of lower rank, until all men in the realm are permeated with noble, moral aptitude. The same principle of trickle-down morality would apply to relations between strong and weak nations and between advanced and developing cultures and economies. Rudyard Kipling's notion of "the white man's burden" would be Confucian in principle, provided that one agrees with his interpretation of the "superiority" of the white man's culture. Modern Confucians would consider Kipling (1865-1936) as having confused Western material progress with moral superiority, as measured by a standard based on virtue. Kipling's romantic portrayal of the model Englishman as brave, honorable, conscientious and self-reliant, while popularly accepted in the English-speaking West, would be generally rejected in the East by those with direct exposure to the breed. The idealized image would be recognized as being a wishful manifestation based on Kipling's apologetic colonial mentality toward his social betters in his home society. It is also a compensation of his own inferiority complex derived from his love-hate relationship with the richness of Indian culture, to which he would be attracted but of which he would be unable to fully appreciate because of his deep-rooted racial prejudice. The universal acceptance of democracy, that most-cherished contribution to civilization by Greek culture, together with modern scientific attitude, gift of the Enlightenment, are perhaps more apt paradigms of Confucian principles of positive cultural influence from the West. Some evil concepts, among which racism is perhaps the most destructive, with Christian evangelistic insistence on monopolistic spiritual salvation ranking a close second, would also be among the direct legacies of the white man's intellectual ascendancy. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) would have thoroughly approved of the ideas put forth by Plato (427-347 B.C.) in the Republic, in which a philosopher king rules an ideal kingdom where all classes happily go about performing their prescribed separate socio-economic functions. Daoists would comment that if only life were so neat and simple, there would be no need for philosophy. Confucian ideas have aspects that are similar to Christian beliefs, only upside down. Christ taught the pleasure-seeking and power-craving Greco-Roman world to love the weak and imitate the poor whose souls were proclaimed as pure. Confucius taught the materialistic Chinese to admire the virtuous and respect the highly-placed whose characters were presumed to be moral. The word: ren, a Chinese term for human virtue, means proper human relationship. Without exact equivalent in English, the word ren is composed by combining the ideogram man with the numeral two, a concept necessitated by the plurality of mankind and the quest for proper interpersonal relationship. It is comparable to the Greek concept of humanity and the Christian notion of divine love, the very foundation of Christianity. Confucius' well-known admonition: "Do not unto others that which you not wish to have done to yourself" has been frequently compared with Christ's teaching: "Love thy neighbor as thyself". Both lead to the same end, but from opposite directions. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) was less intrusively interfering, but of course, unlike Christ, he had the benefit of having met Laozi, founder of Daoism (Dao Jia) and consummate proponent of benign non-interference. A close parallel was proclaimed by Hillel (B.C. 30-10 A.D.), celebrated Jewish scholar and president of the Sanhedrin, in his famous maxim: "Do not unto others that which is hateful unto thee."
The ideal society as envisioned by Confucius requires its members to properly observe rites governing Five Relationships. By observing rites of Five Relationships, each individual would clearly understand his social role, and each would voluntarily behave according to proper observance of rites which meticulously define such relationships.
The Five Relationships (Wulun) governed by Confucian rites are those of:
1) sovereign to subject, 2) parent to child, 3) elder to younger brother, 4) husband to wife and 5) friend to friend. These relationships form the basic social structure of Chinese society. Each component in the relationships assumes ritual obligations and responsibility to the others at the same time he or she enjoys privileges and due consideration accorded by the other components.
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) would consider heretical the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1721-1728), who would assert two millennia after Confucius that man is good by nature but is corrupted by civilization. Confucius would argue that without a Code of Rites (Liji) for governing human behavior, as embedded in the ritual compendium defined by him based on the ideas of Zhougong (Duke of Zhou), human beings would be no better than animals which Confucius regarded with contempt. Love of animals, a Buddhist notion, is an alien concept to Confucians, who proudly display their species prejudice. Confucius acknowledged man to be benign by nature, but in opposition to Rousseau, he saw man's goodness only as an innate potential and not as an inevitable characteristic. To Confucius, man's destiny lies in his effort to elevate himself from savagery toward civilization in order to fulfill his potential for good.
The ideal state rests on a stable society over which a virtuous and benevolent emperor rules by moral persuasion based on a Code of Rites rather than by law. Justice would emerge from a timeless morality that governs social behavior. Man would be orderly out of self-respect for his own moral character rather than from fear of punishment prescribed by law. A competent and loyal literati-bureaucracy faithful to a just political order would run the government according to moral principles rather than following rigid legalistic rules devoid of moral content.
Nostalgic of the idealized feudal system that purportedly had existed before the Spring and Autumn period (Chunqiu 770-481 B.C.) in which he lived, Confucius (551-479 B.C.) yearned for the restoration of the ancient Zhou socio-political culture that existed two and a half centuries before his time. He dismissed the objectively different contemporary social realities of his own time as merely symptoms of chaotic degeneration. Confucius abhorred social atrophy and political anarchy. He strived incessantly to fit the real and imperfect world into the straitjacket of his idealized moral image. Confucianism (Ru Jia), by placing blind faith on a causal connection between virtue and power, would remain the main cultural obstacle to modern China's attempt to evolve from a society governed by men into a society governed by law. The danger of Confucianism lies not in its aim to endow the virtuous with power, but in its tendency to label the powerful as virtuous.
Mencius claimed that the Mandate of Heaven is conditioned on virtuous rule. Mencius (371-288 B.C.), prolific apologist for Confucius (551-479 B.C.), the equivalent embodiment of St Paul and Thomas Aquinas in Confucianism (Ru Jia), though not venerated until eleventh century A.D. during the Song dynasty (960-1279), greatly contributed to the survival and acceptance of the ideas of Confucius. But Mencius went further. He argued that a ruler's authority is derived from the Mandate of Heaven (Tianming), that such mandate is not perpetual or automatic and that it depends on good governance worthy of a virtuous sovereign. The concept of a Mandate of Heaven as proposed by Mencius is in fact a challenge to the concept of the divine right of absolute monarches. The Mandate of Heaven can be lost through the immoral behavior of the ruler, or failings in his responsibility for the welfare of the people, in which case Heaven will grant another, more moral individual a new mandate to found a new dynasty. Loyalty will inspire loyalty. Betrayal will beget betrayal. A king unworthy of his subjects will be rejected by them. Such is the will of Heaven (Tian). Arthurian legend in medieval lore derived from Celtic myths a Western version of the Chinese Mandate of Heaven (Tianming). Arthur, illegitimate son of Uther Pendragon, king of Britain, having been raised in cognito, was proclaimed king after successfully withdrawing Excaliibur, a magic sword imbedded in stone allegedly removable only by a true king. Arthur ruled a happy kingdom as a noble king and fair warrior by reigning over a round table of knights in his court at Camelot. But his kingdom lapsed into famine and calamity when he became morally wounded by his abuse of kingly powers. To cure Arhtur's festering moral wound, his knights embarked on a quest for the Holy Grail, identified by Christians as the chalice of the Last Supper brought to England by St. Joseph of Arimatheahen. Mencius' political outlook of imperative heavenly mandate profoundly influences Chinese historiography, the art of official historical recording. It tends to equate ephemeral reigns with immorality. And it associates protracted reigns with good government. It is a hypothesis which, in reality, is neither true nor inevitable. Necessary to point out that Mencius did not condone revolutions, however justified by immorality of the ruling political authority or injustice in the contemporary social system. He merely used threat of replacement of one ruler with another more enlightened, to curb behavioral excesses of despotism. To Mencius, political immorality is always incidental but never structural. As such, he was a reformist rather than a revolutionary. Machiavelli, in 1512, 18 centuries after Mencius, would write The Prince which would pioneer modern political thought by making medieval disputes of legitimacy irrelevant. He would detach politics from all pretensions of theology and morality, firmly establishing it as a purely secular activity and opening the door for modern political science. Religious thinkers and moral philosophers would charge that Machiavelli glorified evil and legitimized despotism. Legalists of the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.), who preceded publication of The Prince by seventeen centuries, would have celebrated Machiavelli as a champion of truth. Mencius, an apologist for Confucian ethics, was Machiavellian in his political strategy by that he deduced a virtuous reign as the most effective form of power politics. He advocated an utilitarian theory of morality in politics. A similar view to that of Mensius would be advocated by Thomas Hobbes almost two millennia after Mensius. Hobbes would set down the logic of modern absolutism in his book: Leviathan (1651). It would be published two years after the execution of Charles I who would be found royally guilty of the high crime of treason by Oliver Cromwell's regicidal Rump Parliament in commonwealth England. Hobbes, while denying all subjects any moral right to resist the sovereign, would subscribe the fall of a sovereign as the utilitarian result of the sovereign's own failure in his prescribed royal obligations. Revolts are immoral and illegal, unless they are successful revolutions in which case the legitimacy of the new regime becomes unquestionable. In other words, God is the successful devil; or conversely the devil is a fallen god. It is pure Confucian-Mencian logic. As Daoists have pointed out, there are many Confucians who would evade the debate on the existence of God, but it is hard to find one that does not find the devil everywhere, particularly in politics. Similarly, John Locke in 1680 would write Two Treaties of Government which would not be published until ten years later, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, as a justification of a triumphant revolution. According to Locke, men contract to form political regimes to better protect individual rights of life, liberty and estate. Civil power to make laws and police power to adequately execute such laws are granted to government by the governed for the public good. Only when government betrays society's trust that the governed may legitimately refuse obedience to government, namely when government invades the inviolable rights of individuals and their civil institutions and degenerates from a government of law to despotism. An unjust king provides the justification for his own overthrow. Locke, like Mencius two millennia before him, would identify passive consent of the governed as a prerequisite of legitimacy for the sovereign. Confucius would insist that consent of the governed is inherent in the Mandate of Heaven (Tianming) for a virtuous sovereign, a divine right conditioned by virtue. In that respect, it differs from unconditional divine right claimed by Louis XIV of France. However, the concept of a Mandate of Heaven has one similarity with the concept of divine right. According to Confucius, just rule is required as a ritual requisite for a moral ruler, rather than a calculated requirement for political survival. Similarly, the Sun King would view good kingship as a character of greatness rather than as a compromise for winning popular support. Both Hobbes and Locke would base their empiricist notions of political legitimacy not on theological or historical arguments, but on inductive theories of human nature and rational rules of social contract. Confucius based his moralist notion of political legitimacy on historical idealism derived from an idealized view of a perfect, hierarchical human society governed by rites.
For Daoists, followers of Laozi, man-made order is arbitrary by definition, and therefore it is always oppressive. Self-governing anarchy would be the preferred ideal society. The only effective way to fight the inevitably-oppressive establishment would be to refuse to participate on its terms, thus depriving the establishment of its strategic advantage. Mao Zedong (1893-1976), towering giant in modern Chinese history, with apt insights on Daoist doctrines, would advocate a strategy for defeating a corrupt enemy of superior military strength through guerrilla warfare. The strategy is summed up by the following pronouncement: "You fight yours (Ni-da ni-de); I fight mine (Wo-da wo-de)." The strategy ordains that, to be effective, guerrilla forces should avoid frontal engagement with stronger and better equipped government regular army. Instead, they should employ unconventional strategies that would exploit advantages inherent in smaller, weaker irregular guerrilla forces, such as ease of movement, invisibility and flexible logistics. Such strategies would include ambushes and harassment raids that would challenge the prestige and undermine the morale of regular forces of the corrupt government. Such actions would expose to popular perception the helplessness of the immoral establishment, despite its superficial massive power, the paper tiger as Mao would call it. Thus such strategies would weaken the materially-stronger but morally-weaker enemy for an eventual coup de grace by popular forces of good. Depriving an immoral enemy's regular army of offensive targets is the first step in a strategy of wearing down a corrupt enemy of superior force. It is classic Daoist roushu (flexible methods). Informed of conceptual differences of key schools of Chinese philosophy, one can understand why historiographers in China have always been Confucian. Despite repeat, periodic Draconian measures undertaken by Legalist reformers, ranging from the unifying Qin dynasty (221-207 B.C.) during whose reign Confucian scholars were persecuted by being buried alive and their books burned publicly, and up to the Legalist period of the so-called Gang of Four in modern time when Confucian ideas would be vilified and suppressed, Confucianism (Ru Jia) survives and flourishes, often resurrected by its former attackers from both the left and the right, for the victor's own purposes, once power has been secured. There is an ironic Chinese proverb: "Those who succeed become kings; those who fail become bandits." To this one should add: "Those who succeed with Confucianism are hailed by history; those who succeed by other philosophical schools are ignored as deviants."
Henry C.K. Liu