Two Confucian Theories on Children and Childhood: Commentaries on the Analects and the Mengzi

Abstract

In this article I uncover, describe, and analyze two native Chinese theories by way of exploring the commentarial tradition through the centuries on two passages from Confucian classics: Mengzi 孟子 4B12 and Analects 論語 11.25. One view I explore is of the child as a cluster of role-specific duties, whereupon debates regard proper behavior for a junior in society; a second conception is of the child as an existential quality to be preserved or rediscovered, or a special stage in life to be honored, whereupon the debates within the commentaries regard effective methods for preserving or rediscovering one’s human nature. In concluding, I compare this latter conception of children with the theories on childhood development articulated by the great 20th-century developmental psychologist Erik Erikson (1902–1994), whose views inform a number of seminal and important studies on children in China. I show how the latter Confucian view and Erikson’s are substantively different and yet can be seen as complementary.