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This chapter presents a translation of chapters 1–11 of Abiding in the Mean and the Constant (sometimes translated as the Doctrine of the Mean), one of the Four Books, along with Zhu Xi’s commentary. For Zhu Xi all thirteen classics were precious, but he developed a graded curriculum. At the top he placed the Four Books: the Great Learning (Daxue大學‎), Analects (Lunyu論語‎), Mengzi (孟子‎), and Abiding in the Mean and the Constant (Zhongyong中庸‎). Their appeal, he wrote, was their “ease, immediacy, and brevity.” Pattern-principle could be more readily investigated and accessed in these four works than in any other text, or in any other thing. Only when they had fully mastered these four texts would Zhu encourage students to turn to the previously authoritative Five Classics (the Classic of Changes, Odes, Book of Documents, Book of Rites, and Spring and Autumn Annals).

What Are the Major Health Consequences of Air, Water, and Soil Pollution? When the smog settles in, coughing, wheezing, watering of the eyes, and shortness of breath are common, but these are relatively benign effects of air pollution. More serious respiratory problems associated with exposure...

How Does China’s Air Pollution Compare with Air Pollution Elsewhere? It depends on who is doing the surveying (e.g., the WHO or World Bank), the metric used (e.g., PM10, PM2.5, or percentage of the country’s population exposed to unhealthy air), and the period covered (one...

How Has Globalization Contributed to China’s Pollution? As discussed in Chapter 3, globalization has fueled much of the economic growth China has enjoyed since 1980. With its large labor force, low wages, and large supply of cheap energy, the country became the “workshop...

Where Is China’s Coal Consumption Trending? Coal has been the primary energy source driving China’s recent “economic miracle.” In 2000 the country went through 1.5 billion tons of coal, and as energy demands have continued to skyrocket, so too has the consumption of coal. By...

What Are the Public’s Sources of Environmental Information? Environmental information is more widely available than ever, from an increasingly wide range of sources. News Media The state-operated television network, CCTV, and state-directed news outlets, like Xinhua, the People’s Daily, China Daily, China...

What Are Some of the Main Environmental Challenges China Has Faced Historically? By the end of the first millennium BCE, the population in China was already 50 million; by 1000 CE it had doubled, and by the mid-19th century it had reached 400 million. Population...

What Is Contaminating China’s Water Resources? Viewed in the context of the skyrocketing industrialization, urbanization, and population growth of the past 30 years, the widespread contamination of the water supply that now plagues China would seem almost inevitable. Yet, because the country’s water has been...

How Much of China’s Land Is Contaminated? China’s land area is about 3.7 million square miles (world’s third largest after Russia and Canada). Roughly 11.5% to 15%, depending on the source, is arable (approximately 334 million acres). This represents about 7% to 9% of the...

What Are Some of the Consuming Traits of a More Well-to-Do China? As China’s GDP has grown, so has the wealth of its people. In January 2016 China was home to more billionaires than the United States (594 vs. 535). According to PEW Research, average...

Has the Chinese Government Been Responsive to the Challenges Posed by Pollution? Premier Li Keqiang’s 2014 declaration of “war on pollution” was meant to signal to the Chinese people that Beijing recognizes the full scope of the country’s pollution crisis as well as the public’s...

To understand China, it is essential to understand Confucianism. First formulated in the sixth century bce, the teachings of Confucius would come to dominate Chinese society, politics, economics, and ethics. Confucianism: A Very Short Introduction explores the major philosophical ideas of the Confucian tradition, showing their profound impact on state ideology, imperial government, the civil service examination system, domestic life, and social relations over the course of twenty-six centuries. It focuses on two of the Sage's most crucial philosophical problems—what makes for a good person, and what constitutes good government—and demonstrates the enduring significance of these questions today and how the Confucian tradition sits alongside Western ideas and technology.

The ‘Epilogue’ considers the harsh condemnation of Confucianism in the early decades of the twentieth century by leaders of the nationalist May Fourth movement. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in Shanghai in 1921 and, despite two decades of struggle with the Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek who believed in the basis of Confucian ideology, the People's Republic of China was established by Mao Zedong in 1949. Confucianism was deemed the enemy of the proletariat and the Communist state. The 1976 Cultural Revolution set China on a course of economic and political reform, and since 2000 the government have endorsed Confucianism. But what does the future hold for Confucianism in China?

Confucius lived in a period of the Zhou dynasty when China had splintered into small, independent, warring states ruled over by feudal lords whose authority was maintained not through moral behavior and genuine concern for the welfare of the people, but through laws, punishments, and force. ‘Confucius (551–479 bce) and his legacy’ shows that many thinkers attempted to address these problems, but Confucius' socio-political and philosophical teachings did not win immediate, universal acclaim. The Analects, a collection of his teachings recorded by his disciples, achieved its present form in the second century bce. Its two main concerns are: (1) what makes for a good man; and (2) what makes for good government.

‘The individual and self-cultivation in the teachings of Confucius’ explains that a moral vanguard of individuals is called for by Confucius and his followers. These individuals move others to proper behavior through the power of their example. By practicing the rituals and respecting the mutual responsibilities required to sustain the so-called five relationships—father–son, ruler–subject, husband–wife, older brother–younger brother, and friend–friend—they provide a model for those around them to follow and thereby bring harmony to family, community, and empire. The prominent role played by the individual in creating the good sociopolitical order explains why Confucian teachings, throughout the ages, give such profound attention to the process of self-cultivation.

‘Government in Confucian teachings’ describes Confucius' teachings on the ideal ruler and the process of government. A good ruler is a superior man (junzi) who must model the morality he would like his subjects to cultivate. Culture and tradition, Confucius suggests, are more effective, stronger tools in shaping the behavior and ideals of the people than legal and penal codes. A good ruler will appoint as officials only those men who share his commitment to Confucian principles and the social and material well-being of the people. Government must be fiscally sensitive, mindful of the heavy burden taxation places on the people.

‘The reorientation of the Confucian tradition after 1000 ce’ discusses the “school” of Confucianism referred to as Neo-Confucianism, which came to dominate Chinese intellectual and political life from the eleventh century and that guided the Chinese imperial government and the foundation of the civil service examination systems until the early twentieth century. Neo-Confucianism upholds the values and ethics of classical Confucianism, but reorients it in two important ways: (1) it grounds the values and ethics of classical Confucianism in an elaborate system of metaphysics generated over the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and (2) it creates a structured program of self-cultivation, a step-by-step template for “becoming a sage.” But why did Neo-Confucianism emerge at this particular time?

‘Confucianism in practice’ shows how Confucianism was played out in everyday family life, in the moral education of peasants and elite alike, and in the administration of the state. Premodern Chinese society and politics were heavily guided by Confucian principles. Prior to the thirteenth century, civil service examination candidates were expected to demonstrate mastery of the Five Classics. In 1313, with the growing influence of the Zhu Xi school, the government decreed the Four Books would now serve as the basis of the examinations. Despite undergoing frequent change and reform, the system remained intact for nearly fifteen hundred years and was a powerful force in shaping and sustaining China's cultural and social norms.

As early as the han dynasty, exegetes of the texts in the Confucian canon were preparing written commentary on them, and by the dynasty's end they were interspersing their glosses in the body of these texts as interlinear, running commentary. From this time on, few Chinese would have read any classic from the canon without commentarial companion. And, as Confucianism came to be identified over the course of the imperial period with the Chinese cultural traditionpar excellence, the writing of interlinear commentary on the canon of texts became a standard, even dominant, mode of scholarly and philosophical discourse for Chinese literati. It was in commentary that these men would offer their reflections on the meaning of Confucian doctrine as it had evolved through the centuries and attempt to construct a philosophical or moral vision meaningful in a world far removed from that of the classical age.

In studying the ideas of Sung Neo-Confucians, scholars have made much use of the so-calledyü-lutexts, or “records of conversations.” Disciples, sitting in the presence of their master, would record his exchanges with them; less frequently they would jot them down later from memory. The ideas of many of the foremost thinkers of the Sung dynasty (960–1279) are better known to us as a result of the stenographic efforts of their disciples: the teachings of Chang Tsai (1020–1077), Cheng I (1032–1107), Cheng Hao (1032–1085), Hsieh Liang-tso (1050–1103), Yang Shih (1053–1135), Lu Hsiang-shan (1139–1193), and Chu Hsi (1130–1200), to name but a few, were transmitted to later generations inyü-lu, recorded and edited by devoted followers.

Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi (1130-1200)--a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning? Part One of Learning to Be a Sage examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the Conversations of Master Chu.

Most scholarship on Chu Hsi has been devoted to explicating his influential Neo-Confucian metaphysics, and espacially his understanding of the two central concepts of li and ch'i. Little attention, however, has been paid to the role played by ghosts and spirits (kuei-shen) in this metaphysics. Yet the record of his conversations with disciples and his collected writings reveal a Chu Hsi who not only professes a profound belief in the existence of ghosts and spirits but also attempts throughout much of his life to explain their fundamental nature, to make them intelligible. For Chu, spirit beings, like all other things in the universe, are explicable in terms of an inherent li and their particular allotment of ch'i and, as such, are part of our understandable world, indeed natural to it. In this way, Chu incorporates spirit beings into an articulated, coherent world-view. The conventional boundaries between the natural and spirit realms that prevail in the West would thus seem to have little relevance in Chu Hsi's philosophical vision, where the two realms are intermingled and indistinguishable