Chinese travel literature also became popular with the writings of geographer Fan Chengda — and Su Shi, the latter of whom wrote the daytrip essay known as Record of Stone Bell Mountain that used persuasive writing to argue a philosophical point. In philosophy, Chinese Buddhism had waned in influence, but it retained its hold on the arts and on the charities of monasteries.
Buddhism also had a profound influence upon the budding movement of Neo-Confucianism, led by Cheng Yi — and Zhu Xi — Neo-Confucianism was an attempt to create a more rationalist and secular form of Confucianism by rejecting superstitious and mystical elements of Taoism and Buddhism that influenced the philosophy during and after the Han Dynasty. Although the Neo-Confucianists were critical of Taoism and Buddhism, the two did have an influence on the philosophy, and the Neo-Confucianists borrowed terms and concepts from both.
However, unlike the Buddhists and Taoists, who saw metaphysics as a catalyst for spiritual development, religious enlightenment , and immortality, the Neo-Confucianists used metaphysics to develop a rationalist ethical philosophy. Mahayana Buddhism influenced Fan Zhongyan and Wang Anshi through its concept of ethical universalism, while Buddhist metaphysics had a deep impact upon the pre- Neo- Confucian doctrine of Cheng Yi.
The philosophical work of Cheng Yi in turn influenced Zhu Xi. Clothing was made of hemp or cotton cloths in either black and white. Trousers were acceptable for peasants, soldiers, artisans, and merchants, although wealthy merchants might choose to wear more ornate clothing and male blouses that came below the waist.
Acceptable apparel for scholar-officials was rigidly defined by social ranking system. Each official was able to display his status by wearing different-colored traditional silken robes that hung to the ground around his feet, specific types of headgear, and even specific styles of girdles that displayed his graded-rank of officialdom.
However, as time went on this rule of rank-graded apparel for officials was not as strictly enforced. Women wore long dresses, blouses that came down to the knee, skirts, and jackets with long or short sleeves, while women from wealthy families could wear purple scarves around their shoulders. Painting during the Song Dynasty — reached a new level of sophistication with further development of landscape painting.
This piece shows a of deep and serene mountain valley covered with snow and several old trees struggling to survive on precipitous cliffs. This masterpiece uses light ink and magnificent composition to express his open artistic conception. The emphasis on landscape painting in the Song period was grounded in Chinese philosophy. Taoism stressed that humans were but tiny specks among vast and greater cosmos, while Neo-Confucianist writers often pursued the discovery of patterns and principles that they believed caused all social and natural phenomena.
While the painting of portraits and closely viewed objects such as birds on branches were held in high esteem by the Song Chinese, landscape painting was paramount. Artists of the time mastered the formula of intricate and realistic scenes in the foreground and vast open space in the background. Distant mountain peaks rise out of high clouds and mist, while streaming rivers run from afar into the foreground. Immeasurable distances are conveyed through blurred outlines and impressionistic treatment of natural phenomena.
There was a significant difference in painting trends between the Northern Song period — and Southern Song period — The paintings of Northern Song officials were influenced by their political ideals of bringing order to the world and tackling the largest issues affecting the whole of their society; as such, their paintings often depict huge, sweeping landscapes. On the other hand, Southern Song officials were more interested in reforming society from the bottom up and on a much smaller scale, a method they believed had a better chance for success.
For him, the sages were those ancient figures who had established the basic way of socio-political civilized life, the way that Confucius later championed as a transmitter. Yet, far more than learning through books, Sorai valued learning gained through practice in following the way. With this kind of performative learning, students were expected to come gradually to realize a full level of practical knowledge: knowing how to do something rather than knowing that something is the case.
The proliferation of education in early-modern Japan, producing mid-nineteenth-century literacy rates comparable to those of the most advanced Western nations, resulted from a complex set of factors, including the development of mass printing, the creation of schools in the various samurai domains, and the rise of educational movements related to Japanese literature and culture that were highly critical of Chinese-style philosophy of any sort.
Yet, at the base of much of this was the Neo-Confucian view, shared generally by orthodox and heterodox thinkers, that education, whether practical or discursive or both, was a necessary ingredient in the life of all persons who might hope to realize their full potential. As a result, a number of Neo-Confucian texts that included pointed critiques of Buddhism came into Japan. As the anti-Buddhist perspectives of these texts came to be ever more influential throughout the seventeenth century, an increasingly common theme in Japanese Neo-Confucian discourse was its relationship, positive or negative, to Buddhism.
In opposition, Jinsai argued along distinctly commonsensical lines: that for myriad ages heaven and earth have sustained life; the sun and moon have illuminated the world; mountains have stood and rivers flowed; birds, beasts, fish, insects, trees, and grasses have lived as they do now.
Given this evidence from the phenomenal world, Jinsai asked how the Buddhists could claim that all is emptiness or nothingness. Answering his own question, Jinsai said that their emphasis on emptiness derived from their tending to retire to mountains and to sit silently while emptying their minds. Thus, Jinsai argued, the theoretical principles affirmed by the Buddhists—emptiness and nothingness—exist neither within this world nor outside it.
Instead of Buddhist emptiness which he claimed to be groundless, Jinsai affirmed that the principles of love and social relations are found in every aspect of life from humanity down to bamboo plants, trees, grasses, insects, fish, and even grains of sand. Jinsai denied that Buddhist principles received any corroboration in any level of existence whatsoever, dismissing them as heterodoxies utterly lacking any basis in reality. Jinsai maintained that the Confucian way is how people should conduct themselves ethically in their daily lives.
In doing so, he asserted that the Confucian way is both natural and universal insofar as it is understood by everyone in every part of the universe as the inescapable path of all. Rather, its vitality is naturally and universally so. By contrast, the teachings of Buddhism exist only because certain people revere them. If those people vanished, Jinsai maintained, so would Buddhism.
Emphasizing their lack of practicality, Jinsai observed that even when Buddhist teachings are accepted, they bring no benefits. If they are rejected, people lose nothing.
Worst of all, Jinsai said, when the world followed the teachings of the ancient Confucian sages, it was at peace, but since Buddhism had become dominant, great chaos and disturbances have ensued.
Jinsai also criticized Buddhists for abandoning ethics, in particular righteousness and justice gi. While he allowed that Buddhists taught the virtue of compassion, Jinsai added that they ultimately extolled nirvana as the way. Jinsai emphasized the mind as the seat of the moral sentiments giving rise in action to the virtues of humaneness and righteousness. In making this point and at the same time emphasizing the vital activity of the mind, Jinsai enthusiastically endorsed the views of Mencius.
Jinsai pointedly criticized Buddhists and others who followed them for claiming that the mind is empty. He also argued against the Buddhist belief that the mind ought to be made pure, utterly rid of human desires, and empty like a bright mirror or calm like still water.
Jinsai rejected such images for being at odds with the energetic approach to moral action that Confucianism endorses. For Jinsai, moral action emerges from moral sentiments and can never be divorced from the passions.
Because the Buddhists sought, according to Jinsai, to eliminate passions in their pursuit of nirvana , their view of the mind was fundamentally mistaken. It might be added in this connection that Tokugawa Confucians often sought to outdo one another in their opposition to Buddhism. However from the vantage point of heaven and earth, there is most fundamentally neither Confucianism nor Buddhism.
Rather, there is only one way and that is all. But what is clear is that during the early-modern period of Japanese intellectual history, Confucianism and Buddhism came to be fairly distinct philosophical forces, with much critical antipathy issuing from the Confucian camp. As Confucian learning became increasingly secure and respected in its own right, these critiques tended to diminish. Still one senses that for Sorai and his audience, Buddhism did not need to be subjected yet again to a Confucian critique.
Buddhism had its own relevance for some people at certain times, and Confucianism had its own. Confucianism had arrived, apparently, as a largely secular ethic with clear and distinct socio-political relevance that to many suggested not just independence, but even philosophical dominance. Confucius declined to discuss spiritual matters at length, even when asked about them specifically.
Why address the world after, Confucius asked, when one has yet to master the way of humanity within this world? Confucius was not disrespectful of ceremonies for the spirits, but he did emphasize that he maintained a respectful distance from them. Still, if he found himself in attendance at such a ceremony, he behaved as if the spirits were actually there. In the wake of Buddhism, however, it was impossible for Confucians to ignore the topic of ghosts and spirits.
Buddhist literature went into great detail about the Western Paradise, or the Buddhist Pure Land, and the many layers of hell where sinners would be punished by wardens of hell.
Graphic depictions of the spirit world, heaven, hell, demons, hungry ghosts, and angelic bodhisattvas made the accounts seem all the more credible. In Japan, Shinto as well had its own traditions of ghosts, spirits, goblins, and changelings.
To counter such discourse, Neo-Confucians formulated their own explanations of spiritual phenomena, ones offering a more naturalistic account of the apparent activities of ghosts and spirits. Yet, they were far more lengthy overall than anything that Confucius or most prior Confucians had offered. A key feature of Neo-Confucian philosophical discussions of ghosts and spirits is their naturalistic metaphysical character.
As yin and yang expanded and contracted, spiritual forces purportedly emerged with yang, and ghostly forces with yin. While casting ghosts and spirits in metaphysical terms that in certain respects seemed intent on explaining away ghosts and spirits, Neo-Confucians also affirmed that just as yin and yang pervade reality, so do ghosts and spirits.
The spirits are simply the expansive and ghosts, the contractive forces of the world. Recognizing the interrelatedness of ghosts and spirits with the world at large, many Neo-Confucians associated spirits with heaven, spring and summer, morning, the sun, light, music, and so on, while ghosts were linked to the earth, fall and winter, evening, the moon, darkness, rituals, and so forth. With this analysis, Neo-Confucians did not deny spirits, but instead asserted that they infuse every aspect of reality just as surely as do yin and yang.
Providing a basis for ancestor worship, Neo-Confucians typically claimed that within a family line, there is a shared generative force, which entails a shared spirituality. This common spirituality is communicated through the male line in ancestral rites performed by sons to their fathers, grandfathers, and so on. Because the shared family line was considered essential to the shared spiritual basis, Neo-Confucians emphasized that if a family had to adopt a child, then it should take care to adopt a son from a male relative of the father so that the sacrifices offered by the adopted son might be happily accepted by the spirits.
If adoption was outside the male line of the family, then offerings to the family ancestors would actually be communicated to the family line of the adopted son, leaving the family that had adopted the son unhappily neglected. In an effort to curb popular involvement in spiritualistic movements and practices, Neo-Confucians generally described as wanton and improper any participation in a religious ritual or ceremony that had no relationship with the larger family involved with them.
Unlike the naturalistic explanations provided by most Neo-Confucians, Sorai emphasized the integrity of the accounts of ghosts and spirits set forth by the ancient sage kings. Sorai asserted that since the ancient kings had said that there were spirits, then there must indeed be spirits. Likewise with ghosts, as well as a host of other spiritual beings.
In its opening lines, Zhang states that he views heaven as his father, earth as his mother, and the ten thousand things of the world as his brothers and sisters. All that fills the space between heaven and earth he considers as his body. Elsewhere Zhang spoke more metaphysically, describing that which fills all between heaven and earth as qi , or the generative force J: ki that is the creative substantial being and energy of becoming in all things.
Zhang also explained qi in terms of the great vacuity, a notion that sounds Buddhistic but was meant to capture the openness of all becoming to change and transformation.
Yet in the end, qi was the rock bottom of Confucian realism, metaphysically speaking, and was in large part the ontological dimension of things that prompted Confucians throughout East Asia to take the world seriously not as a site of delusion and ignorance, but instead as a both the crucible of their being and an extension of themselves in becoming.
Other Song Confucians offered their own vision of oneness with reality by declaring that the humane person forms one body with the ten thousand things of existence. These visions of oneness and kinship prompted Confucians to paint landscape shanshui paintings, literally paintings of mountains shan and water shui , compose poetry alluding to the interrelatedness of things, and to direct public works projects meant to maintain the harmony and balance of heaven, earth, and humanity. In Tokugawa Japan, this environmental concern took many forms.
In his Questions and Answers on the Great Learning Daigaku wakumon , Banzan outlined various policy proposals, including limits on the construction of Buddhist temples and samurai castles, as a means of preventing deforestation.
He also declared mountains, forests, and rivers — metaphors for the natural world—to be the foundations of the state, and essential components in the longevity of political lines. An important legacy of Confucian philosophy in modern Japanese history derives from Confucian understandings of the philosophy of history. This is evident in the transition from the Tokugawa period, dominated politically by a samurai regime led by a shogun, to the Meiji period, at least billed as a restoration of imperial rule.
Rather than assuming that history was progressing ever forward to incrementally better levels, Confucians tended to see ideals in the past. Therefore, they often advocated a return to a supposed golden age as a means to improve conditions in the present. Confucius himself had denied that he was an innovator, insisting that he only sought to transmit the ideals of the past.
Although Confucius might have cast his work as mere transmission, he was clearly innovating in revolutionary philosophical ways. The political transformation giving rise to the Meiji imperial regime, at least in terms of its philosophical presentation as a return to an ancient, supposedly more ideal model, was characteristically Confucian. So was the fact that this purported return to the past ushered in a profoundly new historical period, one that revolutionized most aspects of life.
The Meiji period, however, soon involved a profound turn away from traditional patterns and toward more distinctively Western ones. This was true in philosophy as well, resulting in the relative atrophy of Confucian studies. However, it is significant that most of the Meiji leaders who promoted Western philosophical ideas had backgrounds in Confucian studies. He increasingly elevated the status of Confucian notions not necessarily as Confucian notions in themselves, but as integral parts of a nationalistic, imperialistic, and militaristic blend serving the interests of Japanese militarists of the s and s.
With the defeat of Japan in , Confucian notions came to be regarded negatively because of their unfortunate appropriation by Inoue and other philosopher-ideologues. They had manipulated the core ethics of Confucian philosophy into a teaching of loyalty to the imperial state and self-sacrifice for the sake of its glory.
In other countries, including contemporary China, interpreters are reexamining Confucianism as a living philosophy of ongoing significance, but Japanese scholars have more viewed it as a historical artifact, not a vital philosophy. As evidence, Paramore cites the oeuvre of Maruyama Masao, one of the greatest political thinkers of the mid-twentieth century.
Thus, Maruyama saw Neo-Confucianism as antithetical to change, and its continuative metaphysics linking the natural and ethical spheres, in need of dissolution. The latter was, in Japan, little more—according to Maruyama—than an expression of spiritual slavery to the ossified philosophy of Song dynasty China, that of Zhu Xi.
The dissolution of the Zhu Xi mode of thought credited to Japanese thinkers such as Sorai seemingly echoed the battlefield advances of the imperial Japanese forces in their conquest of large swathes of China and East Asia. Even though Maruyama was ideologically opposed to the war, his narrative hardly transcended the war rhetoric of Japanese nationalism in its ascent over China.
In the essay, Maruyama discusses Confucianism repeatedly, and admittedly, critically. Evidence of the continued vitality of Confucianism within Japanese philosophical discourse is also at the University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy. Since its founding in , UTCP has sought to establish itself as an international base for the discussion of philosophical problems. UTCP has also sponsored discussions addressing dimensions of Confucianism within Japanese philosophy.
Along similar lines, the International Association for Japanese Philosophy IAJP , founded in by the editors of the Journal of Japanese Philosophy, provides opportunities, through regular conferences and panels, for discussion of a range of topics and themes in Japanese philosophy, including Japanese Confucianism, keeping the latter very much in the mainstream, rather than taboo, going forward. Origins and Varieties of Confucian Philosophy Confucianism began with the teachings of Confucius, despite the fact that Confucius in no way saw himself as founding a school of philosophy.
Introduction of Confucianism into Japan: Early Developments With the territorial and cultural expansion of the Han dynasty into what is today known as the Korean peninsula, the stage was set for the introduction of Confucian texts and teachings into Japan by way of the Korean kingdom of Paekche in the mid-6th century, along with Buddhism and the essentials of Chinese civilization. Early-Modern Confucianism: Major Philosophical Themes Japanese developments of Confucian philosophy are often discussed in relation to the Tokugawa period — , with scant mention of what came before, other than to say that Confucian thought had been submerged earlier in an eclecticism dominated by Zen monks.
Thus when asked about the methods involved in the study of words, Razan explained, Read them horizontally! Read them vertically! Read them from the left and from the right! Comprehend their source! Analyze them and synthesize them until you thoroughly penetrate them from beginning to end.
How could that be true only of the Six Classics? The same method holds for reading other classics! There he stated, I teach students to scrutinize the Analects and Mencius thoroughly so that they will discern the lineage and semantic importance of the sagely Confucian concepts.
When so trained, students recognize the true lineage of [philosophical] notions and fathom their meanings without error. Too few scholars study such philological matters as they relate to the study of meaning, despite the fact that a single misinterpretation can lead to errors that are hardly trivial.
Detailed philological studies of the Analects and Mencius facilitate understanding of those sagely texts and keep students from erratically manipulating them by imposing their subjective thoughts on them. Confucianism in Modern Japan An important legacy of Confucian philosophy in modern Japanese history derives from Confucian understandings of the philosophy of history. Bibliography Abe, Yoshio, Ansart, Oliver, Bellah, Robert, Boot, W. Collcutt, Martin, Tiedemann eds.
Tiedemann, and Irene Bloom eds. Dilworth, David, Valdo H. Viglielmo, and Agustin Jacinto Zavala eds. Dore, Ronald, Dufourmont, Eddy, Harootunian, H. Heisig, James W. The revived Confucianism of the Song period often called Neo-Confucianism emphasized self-cultivation as a path not only to self-fulfillment but to the formation of a virtuous and harmonious society and state.
The revival of Confucianism in Song times was accomplished by teachers and scholar-officials who gave Confucian teachings new relevance. Scholar-officials of the Song such as Fan Zhongyan and Sima Guang provided compelling examples of the man who put service to the state above his personal interest. Zhu Xi wrote commentaries to the Four Books of the Confucian tradition, which he extolled as central to the education of scholars. Zhu Xi was also active in the theory and practice of education and in the compiling of a practical manual of family ritual.
In Confucian teaching, the family is the most basic unit of society. Everyone should respect and obey his or her parents and put the interests of the family before personal interests. It was considered essential that everyone marry, so that family lines would continue and male heirs make offerings of food and drink to their deceased ancestors. During the Song dynasty, the text became one of the thirteen classics of the Neo-Confucian canon and remained a cornerstone of traditional Chinese moral teaching until modern times.
From the Neo-Confucian perspective, merely abstract knowledge was useless unless conjoined with ethical self reflection and cultivation that eventuated in proper moral behavior and social praxis. The Neo-Confucians sought to promote a unified vision of humane flourishing that would end with a person becoming a sage or worthy by means of various forms of self-cultivation. It is also vital to remember that Neo-Confucianism became an international movement and spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
Neo-Confucianism flourished in all of these East Asian countries and since the 16th Century some of most creative philosophical work was achieved in Korea and Japan. In the 20th Century, even amidst the tremendous political and military upheavals throughout the East Asian region, there was yet another revival movement based on Neo-Confucianism now known as New Confucianism. While the New Confucian movement is clearly an heir of its Neo-Confucian past, it is also deeply engaged in dialogue with Western philosophy and is emerging as fascinating form of global philosophy at the beginning of the 21st Century.
Before we explore the revival of Confucian learning throughout East Asia, we need to reflect on just what was being revived. Some have suggested that Confucianism should be renamed, they have suggested Ruism or the Ruist tradition; they point out that this would match more closely what Master Kong thought he was doing in teaching about the glories of Zhou culture.
The problem is that ru originally meant a scholar of ritual tradition and not just followers of Master Kong. By Song times, there are some perfectly good Chinese terms that can be used to define the work of these later Confucian masters. There are a number of terms in use after the Song such as ru or classical scholar, daoxue or learning of the way, lixue or the teaching of principle, xingxue or teaching of the mind-heart, or hanxue or Han learning just to name a few.
All of these schools fit into the Western definition of Confucianism, but the use of a single name for all of them obscures the critical differences that East Asian scholars believe are stipulated by the diverse Chinese nomenclature. While Confucians did almost always recognize each other across sectarian divides, they were passionately concerned to differentiate between good and bad versions of the Confucian Way.
Is it possible to provide a perfect and succinct definition of the Confucian Way? Modern critical scholars are extremely wary of any hegemonic set of essential criteria to define something as vast and diverse as the Confucian Way in all its diverse East Asian forms.
Or is the Confucian Way something entirely different from what would be included or excluded by the criteria of the Western concepts of philosophy or religion? Notwithstanding such proper scholarly reticence, two contemporary Confucian philosophers, Xu Fuguan and Mou Zongsan, have offered a suggestion about at least one sustaining and comprehensive motif that suffuses Confucian thought from the classical age to its modern revivals.
First, Xu and Mou argue that Confucianism has always generated and sustained a profound social and ethical dimension to its philosophical and social praxis. This kind of commitment has lead many western scholars to define Confucianism as an axiological philosophical sensibility, a worldview ranging from social ethics to an inspired aesthetics. Secondly, concern consciousness is always set within a social context. For instance, Confucian teachers have often taught that the folk etymology of ren or humaneness makes the point of social nature of all proper Confucian action: humaneness is at least two people treating each other as they ought to in order to sustain human flourishing.
An unconcerned Confucian is an oxymoron. The content and context of their concern for the world and the Dao will vary dramatically, yet the sense of concern, of having a care as the Quakers taught on the other side of Eurasia, remains a hallmark of Confucian philosophical sensibilities. The historical development of the Confucian Way or movement has been variously analyzed in terms of distinct periods. The simplest version is that there was a great classical tradition that arose in the Xia, Shang and Zhou kingdoms that was perfected in the works and records of the legendary sage kings and ministers and was then continued and refined by their later followers such as Kongzi, Mengzi Mencius and Xunzi.
On the one hand, although later Chinese thinkers decried the ceaseless interstate warfare that characterized the era, on the other hand the Warring States period is remembered as the most creative philosophical epoch in Chinese history.
All of the great indigenous schools of Chinese philosophy find their origin in this period from to BCE when the Qin state finally unified the empire under the rule of the First Emperor of the Qin. After the incredible cultural efflorescence of the Warring States intellectuals, all future philosophical achievements were deemed to be commentary on the depositions of the classical masters.
Later scholars have suggested that this binary division of Chinese philosophical history is too simple and that there are three or more clear divisions for the Confucian movement because it has demonstrated a longevity and continuity of maturation for more than two thousand five hundred years. For instance, some modern scholars suggest that, based on creativity and transformation of the tradition, there was a three-fold division of the classical period, the Neo-Confucian movements of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and most recently the era defined by the impact of the modern West on the East Asian philosophical and religious Confucian worlds.
The most complex periodization differentiates the achievement of Confucian thinkers over the centuries more subtly than either the binary or triadic divisions allow. A strong case can be made for defining six discrete eras in the historical development of the Confucian tradition in East Asia:. In order to give a capsule outline of the development of Confucianism down to the rise of the great Neo-Confucian thinkers in the Song, what follows is a very short set of outlines of the first three of these six periods, which preceded the rise of Neo-Confucian movements.
It is important to remember that although Confucianism began as a Chinese tradition it became an international movement throughout East Asia. A full understanding of Neo-Confucianism requires that attention be paid to its advancement in Korea, Japan and Vietnam along with the continuing unfolding of the tradition in China. According to Master Kong, there was a long and distinguished tradition of sage wisdom that stretched back even before the Xia and Shang dynasties.
Master Kong sought to collect, edit and transmit these precious texts to his students in the hope that such an education project would lead to the renewed flourishing of the culture of humaneness based on the teachings of the sage kings and their ministers. Master Kong was followed by a stellar set of Confucian masters, the most important being Mengzi and Xunzi.
These great Confucian masters not only argued among themselves about the nature of the Confucian way, they confronted the attacks of the other great schools and thinkers of the Warring States period.
The texts attached to the names of these great scholars have served, along with the other early canonical material, to define the contours of the Confucian Way ever since the Warring States period. While Master Kong would have rejected the notion that he founded or created a new tradition, it is to his Analects that countless generations of Confucians return to discover wisdom and insight into the nature of Confucian culture.
Further, great teachers such as Master Meng and Master Xun continue to defend and refine the teachings of Master Kong in robust debate with the other schools of the Warring States period. Although there has always been skepticism about the claim for such authorship, traditional Confucian scholars held that Master Kong himself had an editorial role in the compilation of many of the canonical texts that became ultimately the Thirteen Confucian Classics.
The Han dynasty contribution to the growth of the Confucian Way is often overshadowed by the grand achievements of the classical period. Yet the Han scholars edited almost all of the texts that survived and began to add their own critical commentaries and interpretations to the canonical texts. In many cases these Han commentaries are now recognized as classics in their own right.
One of the features of the Confucian tradition is the use of various forms of commentaries as a vital philosophical genre. It is a period that reveres historical traditions and hence the commentary is viewed as a proper way to transmit the traditional learning.
After the fall of the Han dynasty, there was a marked revival of various facets of the earlier Daoist traditions. The movement was called xuanxue or arcane or abstruse profound learning. Xuanxue thinkers were highly eclectic; sometimes they praised and used the great Warring States Daoist texts such as the Daodejing or the Zhuangzi to frame their complicated philosophical and religious visions, and sometimes they reframed materials drawn from the Confucian tradition as well.
It is universally recognized that the great xuanxue scholars brought a new level of philosophical sophistication to their analysis of the classical and Han texts. Moreover, this was also the epoch of the emergence of the great Daoist religious traditions that mark the Chinese and East Asian landscape from this era down to the present day.
The Daoist religious founders and reformers also claimed the early texts such as the Daodejing , Zhuangzi and the Yijing [The Book of Changes] as their patrimony. The xuanxue revival was ultimately eclipsed by the arrival of Buddhism in China.
The era stretching roughly from to marks the height of the influence of Buddhism on Chinese culture. Along with the translation of the immense Buddhist canon into Chinese, the scholar monks of this era also created the unique Chinese Buddhist schools that went on to dominate the religious life of East Asia.
The Buddhists also introduced novel social institutions such as monastic communities for both men and women. In short, the impact on Chinese society and intellectual life was immense and shaped the future of Confucian philosophy.
It is very important to remember that Confucianism continued to play a vital and even creative role in the history of Chinese philosophy while Buddhism was ascendant. Confucianism remained the preferred approach to political and social thought and much personal and communal ethical reflection was concurrent with the powerful contributions of Daoist and Buddhist thinkers.
Both traditional and modern historians of China mark the year CE as the great divide within the Tang dynasty. This was the year of the catastrophic An Lushan rebellion and although the Tang dynasty formally lasted until its final demise in , it never recovered its full glory. And glorious the Tang was; it is the dynasty always remembered as one of the high points of Chinese imperial history in terms of political, military, artistic, philosophical and religious creativity.
For instance, it was the flourishing and cosmopolitan culture of the Tang world—with everything from metaphysics to painting, calligraphy, poetry, food and clothes—that spread throughout East Asia into the emerging societies of Korea and Japan. Moreover, while the Tang is noted as the golden age of Buddhist philosophical originality in terms of the formation of important Chinese schools such as the Tiantai, Huayan, Pure Land and Chan [Zen in Japanese pronunciation], a number of important Confucian thinkers began to challenge the intellectual and philosophical supremacy of Buddhism.
All three scholars launched a double-pronged attack on Buddhism and a concomitant appeal for the restoration and revival of the Confucian Way. Just after the deaths of this trio of Confucian scholars, a late Tang emperor began a major persecution of Buddhism. Although not a bloody event as persecutions of religions go, many major schools failed to revive fully after and this date, along with the earlier rebellion of An Lushan, marks dramatic changes in the philosophical landscape of China.
Liu is perhaps more of a bridging figure between the early and later Tang intellectual worlds, but he still expressed a number of highly consistent Neo-Confucian themes and did so with a style that links him forward to the Song masters. For instance, Liu, unlike many earlier Tang Confucians, was interested in finding what he thought to be the principles expounded in the classic texts rather than a convoluted, arcane if compendious commentarial exegesis.
He searched for the true meaning of the sages in the texts and not merely to study the philological subtlety of traditional commentarial lore.
Further, Liu passionately believed that the authentic Dao was to be found in antiquity, by which he meant the true ideals of the Confucian teachings of the early sages.
Along with this commitment to finding the confirmed teachings of the sages in the historical records, Liu was committed to political engagement based on these sage teachings. Like all the later Neo-Confucians, Liu asserted the need to apply Confucian ethical norms and insights to political and social life.
Han Yu is considered to be the most important and innovative of the Tang Confucian reformers. He was a true renaissance man; he was an important political figure, brilliant essayist, Confucian philosopher and anti-Buddhist polemicist.
What gives his work such power is that he carried out his various roles with a unified vision in mind: the defense and restoration of the Confucian Way. In order to restore the Confucian Way, Han Yu developed a program of reform and renewal manifested in a literary movement called guwen or the ancient prose movement.
But Han was doing much more than simply calling for a return to a more elegant prose style. He was urging this reform in order to clarify the presentation of the ideas of the Confucian tradition that was needlessly obscured by the arcane writing styles of the current age.
He wanted to write clearly in order to express the plain truth of the Confucian Way. Moreover, Han stressed a profound self-cultivation of the Dao. In order to do so, Han accentuated the image of the sage as the proper role model for humane self-cultivation.
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