A History of China (13 page)

Thus, Confucius’s teachings offered a flexible, rational, and moral alternative to the chaos prevailing in China. They were conservative in confirming a defined, hierarchical social structure. Yet they were liberal in challenging the hereditary aristocracy, in supporting a system that encouraged the recruitment of talented and moral men of any social background into high officialdom, and in legitimizing social mobility. They had the additional advantage of making educated and socially responsible men available to rulers who required counsel and assistance in administration. Although the leaders of the Zhou era did not recognize the value of Confucianism, the Han dynasty, which ruled China within several decades after their fall, would promote Confucianism, and later dynasties would adopt it as a state cult.

Mencius followed in Confucius’s footsteps but supplemented his predecessor’s teachings. Born around 372
BCE
, he was active about a century and a half after the death of the revered philosopher. Like Confucius, he became a teacher and traveled widely to disseminate Confucian values and ideas. Until his death in 289
BCE
, he continued to expand upon Confucius’s philosophy. Also like Confucius, he encountered frustrations in his efforts to secure support from the rulers of the various states for his own version of Confucian philosophy.

Mencius was doubtless more optimistic than Confucius about the individual. He started with the premise that mankind was basically good. Yet he diverged sharply from those who advocated a concept of universal goodness. He suggested instead that the extent of a person’s goodness toward others depended on the closeness and social status of the other. Behavior and attitude toward others was based, in part, on one’s position in the social hierarchy. Righteousness (
yi
) mandated specific treatment of others, and the individual had defined obligations toward those of higher or lower social status. Like Confucius, Mencius accepted a hierarchical social structure.

However, on closer examination it turns out that Mencius also demanded proper conduct and benevolence from rulers. In one of his conversations, he admonished a king for focusing on profit rather than on humaneness and righteousness. He said that, if the king would emphasize a humane administration, the rest of the population, modeling its behavior on his, would act humanely toward one another. A humane administration would, in turn, ­guarantee the people’s livelihood, ensuring that ordinary folk would not suffer deprivation or want. Proper land distribution was vital because most Chinese eked out their livelihoods from their farms. Mencius’s humane government would mandate a more equitable arrangement, which was the well-field system that had reputedly been the foundation of a golden age in the past. Under this scheme, each so-called well field would be divided into nine equal sections, with eight households working eight plots while one was a community-farmed public field. This utopian, egalitarian system never truly operated in Mencius’s own time or in some great earlier era in Chinese civilization. Nonetheless, Mencius proposed it as the ideal way to avert instability in the countryside. He did not, however, advocate absolute equality because he believed that society required rulers. Equality also would not prevail within the family because sons needed to obey their fathers and younger brothers their elder brothers, in accordance with the principle of filial piety. Rulers had a responsibility toward the ruled. Mencius reiterated the Mandate of Heaven theory that had dominated political thinking for centuries. Heaven entrusted power to the ruler who, in turn, upheld his mandate by benefiting the people.

Xun Zi (?312–230
BCE
), the third of the most prominent Confucian thinkers, diverged somewhat from his predecessors. However, the oft-depicted idea of Mencius and Xun Zi as representing antithetical poles of the Confucian school of thought is too simplistic. Both emphasized the value of government and civilization; both emphasized morality above profitability; both had an abiding faith in the educability and perfectability of mankind; and, unlike the Daoists, both regarded mankind as the center of the universe. Yet, having endured a longer period of chaos, strife, and brutality during the Warring States period, Xun Zi disputed Mencius’s overly rosy assessment of mankind.

Indeed, in his principal work, known as the
Xun Zi
, Xun Zi baldly stated that “Man’s nature is evil” and that “goodness is the result of conscious activity.” Corrupt governments, unprincipled rulers, and use of magic and prayers attested, in his view, to the chaos generated in an unregulated and disorderly society. Study of the classical texts and practice of the Confucian rituals, which served to curb mankind’s evil yearnings, offered the basic prescription for a peaceful land. Xun Zi had faith in education, stating that once a man was shown the proper path he would follow it. Sages who had studied the classics and become morally purified through proper conduct of rituals would lead the people to pursue the same course. Although humans were intrinsically evil, they could be trained to strive for the good. According to Xun Zi, sages should exhort the people to perform music, dance, funeral, and wedding ceremonies properly and not to be distracted by criticisms of these elaborate and expensive rituals. He attributed vital functions to
li
; it helped people to cope with, regulate, and express emotions of happiness, loss, and failure and to develop proper respect for others in the social hierarchy. However, he rejected belief in prayers for rain and in the intrusion by ghosts and demons into human affairs, treating belief in such figures as superstitions, not rituals.

Unlike the earlier Confucian thinkers, Xun Zi presented his arguments in a logical narrative rather than in anecdotes. Relying on a rational exposition of his views and shunning the elliptical and illustrative stories used by his predecessors, he summarized the main tenets of Confucianism in a direct and forceful style. His work consisted of straightforward exposition instead of the imaginary dialogues concocted by earlier philosophers. He also differed from his Confucian predecessors in offering a trenchant critique of the thinking of non-Confucian philosophers instead of merely satirizing or lampooning them. He disparaged Daoism, for example, for its seeming otherworldliness and its lack of concern for human affairs.

Like Confucius, Xun Zi supported a carefully graded social hierarchy, with every individual recognizing his or her position. Social order necessitated class distinctions, and equality would be disastrous. Similarly, he insisted on proper naming of things and concepts on the grounds that they defined distinctions between groups in society – distinctions that facilitated governance and social order.

Despite Xun Zi’s faith in education, he still believed in the need for ­coercion. Mankind, on occasion, had to be forced to pursue the right path. Unlike Mencius, Xun Zi was hardheaded and not totally confident in mankind’s self-control and drive toward the good. Lacking some of Mencius’s idealism, he proposed a harsher means of curbing mankind’s evil impulses. The rulers to whom both sought to appeal found Xun Zi’s ideas more realistic, and it is thus no accident that he was the only one of these three major Confucians to become a government official. He served in the states of Qi and then the Chu for about three decades.

However, Xun Zi’s realism and pragmatism eventually undermined his standing with Confucians. Late in life he traveled to the state of Qin, where he attracted two disciples – Han Fei Zi, later a principal spokesperson for Legalism, and Li Si, a state minister – who ultimately castigated Confucianism. Yet he himself condemned the authoritarianism of Qin.

In addition to the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and Xun Zi, a number of other texts were associated with Confucianism and were incorporated into the Confucian canon. Two of the most significant derived from a specific work, the
Book of Rites
(
Liji
). Written by members of the Confucian school possibly as late as 200
BCE
, it nonetheless reflects some of Confucius’s views. Like the
Analects
, the “Great Learning” (
Daxue
) section seems often to be directed to rulers, though its teachings apply to the rest of the population as well. It links ruling well with good relations within the family, which, in turn, entailed abiding by the proper moral code. The individual needed to cultivate himself if he were to succeed as the ruler of a good government. In effect, proper conduct by the individual and the ruler would inevitably result in a proper government. If the individual and the family embodied humaneness, the country as a whole would be properly regulated.

The “Mean” (
Zhongyong
), the other passage, was addressed to rulers as well as to ordinary subjects. As its title implies, this section proposed moderation, the Aristotelian mean, as the proper mode of behavior and governance. If the ruler genuinely adopted the moral code that emphasized goodness, he would attract the men he required to establish a stable and benevolent government.
Li
(rituals) mandated a set of reciprocal obligations between the ruler and those he ruled. As a person with a superior status, he still needed to treat those with inferior status according to the proper ritual principles. In essence, his actions ought to reflect his station in life, a view that surely confirmed the existing social hierarchy.

Mo Zi (ca. 470–391
BCE
) also responded to the chaos of the times, but his diagnosis and prescriptions diverged markedly from those of the Confucians and Daoists. Little is known of Mo Zi’s own life or his writings, which his immediate disciples and later Mohists supplemented, edited, and revised. For almost three centuries, his ideas competed, with some success, with Confucianism, but Mohism’s own limitations, as well as the appeal of the Confucian ethical code, led to its decline after the second century
BCE
, save for in small and dedicated bands who owed absolute obedience to the supreme leaders of their respective groups.

Mo Zi’s failure to attract a wide following may have resulted from his ­principal concerns. Looking at a strife-torn China, he emphasized profit and universal love as a means of restoring stability and peace. He offered a simple utilitarian test for evaluation of behavior: he lauded conduct that provided material benefit or that resulted in the greatest profit for the greatest number. Productive use of resources was equated with moral value. Thus, Mo Zi denounced waste, urging the elimination of costly expenditures. The Confucian advocacy of elaborate and expensive funeral and marital ceremonies scandalized him and exacerbated his antipathy for what he perceived to be Confucianism’s corrupting influences on men. The emphasis on music and on the finest food and drink in rituals struck him as overly lavish and extravagant. For Mo Zi, the most wasteful human activity was warfare because of the harm it inflicted on people and the destruction it wrought on the land. He reviled aggressors because expansionist aims would divert leaders’ attention from internal affairs and farmers’ attention from work on the land, not to mention the damage such aims would cause to horses, weapons, chariots, and supplies. His condemnation of offensive war was based primarily upon its destruction and waste, and less so upon ethical concerns. Because aggressive wars were unprofitable, good rulers ought to shun them.

These pragmatic considerations entailed indirect criticism of contemporary rulers and aristocrats. Mo Zi objected to their abuses – wastefulness in useless and costly rituals and in destructive military conflicts. He appeared on the surface to reflect the aspirations and values of the lower and middle classes, for they suffered disproportionately from the excesses of the aristocracy and from warfare. Moreover, his obsession with waste, his denunciation of needless ­consumption, and his opposition to elegant and expensive refinements coincided with the interests of the common people. He also represented their needs in asserting that rulers should appoint capable and virtuous men to positions in government, which implied that merit, not birth, should be the principal criterion. Like the Confucians, he argued that aristocratic background ought not to be a prerequisite for prominence in government; worthiness and ability were more crucial.

Yet his identification with the common people clashed with the means he used to promote his views. Like Confucius, Mencius, and many other philosophers of this era, he traveled from one state to another to persuade rulers and aristocrats to adopt and implement his philosophy. Thus, he could not afford to alienate his prospective patrons by calling for radical changes in the social system. Because such an effort would be self-defeating, he moderated his diatribes against the aristocracy and the elite, instead urging subordinates to avoid engaging in class warfare. In short, he accepted the idea of a hierarchy and undermined his own views on esteeming the worthy and recruiting them in government, believing that the vast majority of those at the bottom would simply accept their lot because the head of the local community and the lord of the region knew what was best. Mo Zi left it to the existing leadership to curb the excesses of the aristocracy and to select good men from whatever class to help the rulers govern. This injunction of obedience to superiors naturally made his views less threatening to the elite.

Mo Zi’s advocacy of universal love also would not challenge the existing social hierarchy: it was simply a vehicle for ameliorating conflicts between the strata. He criticized the Confucian particularistic doctrine of different levels of devotion, which emphasized love for the family above all else, with less emphasis on affection for the clan and other Chinese who were unrelated. His more generous vision encouraged loving Chinese men and women of other families and even non-Chinese as heartily as one loved one’s parents or family. Such unselfishness countered the particularism of mere love of family and of filial piety. However, Mo Zi undercut some of the credit he might have secured for this remarkable and benevolent concept by justifying it on simplistic grounds. He stressed that universal love would result in material benefits and could readily be mandated by forceful rulers. The idealism and innovation of this grand conception did not emerge in Mo Zi’s practical description. He failed to portray a vision that could galvanize and inspire his followers.