Confucian Revival Research Articles

The Revival of Confucianism: The Relevance of Confucian Thinking Reflected in the Educational System in Contemporary China

The Revival of Confucianism: The Relevance of Confucian Thinking Reflected in the Educational System in Contemporary China

An Onto-Hermeneutic Turn in China's Political Modernization: The Revival and Reconfiguration of Confucianism During the Late Qing Reform

An Onto-Hermeneutic Turn in China's Political Modernization: The Revival and Reconfiguration of Confucianism During the Late Qing Reform

Confucianism and Capitalist Development: From Max Weber and Orientalism to Lee Kuan Yew and New Confucianism

ABSTRACTUsing Said’s orientalism as an analytical framework, this article situates the contemporary Confucian revival within a longue durée of cultural discourse originating in the nineteenth century. From early European accounts such as Max Weber’s Religion of China to the contemporary New Confucian revival prominently championed by Lee Kuan Yew, this article highlights the historical persistence of culture as a catch-all explanation for the economic success or failure of societies. Such an analysis seems more relevant than ever with the growing popularity of Confucian-cultural explanations for China’s economic growth in the past decades.

Guo Moruo on Marx and Confucius

Through the analysis of two of Guo Moruo’s literary works––his “Marx Enters a Confucian Temple” published in 1926, and “Confucius Eats” published in 1935––Guo Moruo’s assessment of Confucius and Marx is discussed. It is shown how Guo Moruo, although being a self-declared Marxist, kept on adhering to some Confucian principles, and how this attitude of his helps to explain why Guo Moruo, after having been criticized in the “pi Kong pi Lin” campaign, is now, within the revival of Confucianism in the People’s Republic of China, being revaluated.

Confucianism for the Contemporary World: Global Order, Politial Plurality, and Social Action ed. by Tze-ki Ton and Kristin Stapleton

Reviewed by: Confucianism for the Contemporary World: Global Order, Politial Plurality, and Social Action ed. by Tze-ki Ton and Kristin Stapleton Bin Song (bio) Confucianism for the Contemporary World: Global Order, Politial Plurality, and Social Action. Edited by Tze-ki Ton and Kristin Stapleton. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. Pp. xxix + 273. Hardcover $85.00, isbn 978-1-4384-6651-4 This edited volume consists of papers reflecting upon the significance of the contemporary revival of Confucianism for aspects of the global order such as capitalism, Asian modernity, liberal democracy, civil society, and mass media consumption. Read as a whole, the volume neither advocates a particular interpretation of Confucian thought, nor claims the efficacy of Confucianism in resolving human predicaments. Instead, it conceptualizes the Confucian revival as primarily an on-going social phenomenon and tries to analyze its broader impacts beyond the framework of the three epochs of Confucian intellectual history (classical Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, and contemporary New Confucianism). While immensely appreciating the objectivity of this volume's editorship, my review of it in the following will respond to its varying chapters from the perspective of a Ru (Confucian) scholar currently working in the U.S. Chapter Two "Confucianism, Community and Capitalism: Chen Lai and the Spirit of Max Weber" can stand alone for analysis, because it focuses on a significant and controversial issue concerning the relationship between Confucian ethics, capitalism in East Asia, and Max Weber. Relying upon Weber's distinction of value rationality versus instrumental rationality regarding the role of the Protestant ethic in the generation of capitalism, Els van Dongen finds it contradictory for New Confucians to advocate Confucianism as both a moral project of correcting inhumane practices and a social project of developing modern capitalist economies in East Asia. However, from my perspective, Confucian thought typically does not dichotomize these two forms of rationality as Weber did. Confucius indeed taught "an exemplary person is dedicated to rightness, while a petty person is dedicated to profits" (Analects 4.16), but he also cared about the economic well-being of the people (Analects 13.9), and the Great Learning also taught that people should "do what is right to generate profits" (yi yi wei li 以義為利), a dictum for later Confucian merchants' business practices. In other words, humane means for the prosperity of humanity are appreciated as moral instruments, and hence, a Confucian economic ideal would not allow the aforementioned dichotomy to take place. This means that while we consider the instrumental value of the Confucian ethic in developing East Asian capitalism, we should abandon the concept of linear causality. As a matter of fact, while a Confucian ethic helped to transmit the practice of capitalist economics from the West, it also transformed it so as to add special Asian features suitable for Confucian ethical scrutiny,1 just as Confucius once surreptitiously hinted at what he was always doing: creating while transmitting (Analects 7.1). In this way, no contradiction exists as such. Chapters Three to Seven can be treated as one group of papers addressing the issue of Confucian democracy. We can use a spectrum to indicate the diversity of opinions among scholars who, either authoring chapters or being discussed in them, have advocated a specific Confucian attitude towards Western liberal democracy. The criteria of locating these scholars in the left or right side of the spectrum pertains to how strongly they endorse liberal democracy, and how far-ranging their advocacy of Confucianism is. While embracing the full range of Confucian thought including at least its metaphysics, ethics and politics, Stephen C. Angle constructs concepts of political philosophy from within the Confucian tradition to respond to related global conversations, and he also advocates major premises of liberal democracy such as general suffrage and the independence of the judicial system, as universal, and hence, being welcomed by Confucianism. Therefore, Angle's idea of "progressive Confucianism" stands at the far left since he advocates both liberal democracy and Confucianism in a whole-hearted, thick way. An-wu Lin stands a bit further to the right compared to Angle, because while appreciating that institutions of liberal democracy are conducive to the flourishing of civil society, Lin prioritizes...

Confucian revival and the hybrid educational narratives in contemporary China: a critical rethinking of scale in globalisation and education

ABSTRACTToday China witnesses a renaissance of classical studies and Confucian Academies across the nation. With an estimated 10 million children attending Confucian kindergartens, classes, and schools, cultural heritage has increasingly become a new marker of social distinction. At the same time, Confucian tradition is often associated with excessive testing, competition, and academic burdens that continue to hinder China's educational innovation. Disenchanted with state-run schools, many urban middle-class families turn to alternative schools that use imported pedagogies such as the Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio to cultivate a better future for their children. In reform-era China, Westernisation coexists with a return to tradition to produce a fascinatingly complex cultural-pedagogical terrain. This paper examines such curiously hybrid educational narratives to understand the idiosyncratic features of Chinese educational globalisation and offer a critical perspective to rethink the concept of scale in comparative education research.

Welcoming a New Stage of Confucian Revival

Editor’s Tang Wenming is a professor of philosophy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, trained in both the European and Chinese traditions, and the author of a sophisticated critique of Mou Zongsan's philosophy. The central idea in this conversation is that contemporary Confucianism must find a way to recover its “edifying” (jiaohua) role in Chinese society. Philosophy is important, says Tang, but Confucianism cannot simply be an academic philosophy; it must have a broader social function, and some sort of institutional innovation is necessary in order to accomplish this.

The Mainland Confucian Revival and Its Problems as Seen from the Perspective of “Civilizational Theory”

Editor’s According to philosopher Chen Yun in this essay, only by reorienting Confucianism around the idea of (Chinese) civilization will it be able to critique modernity, instead of passively accommodating itself to modernity. Like many other MNCs, Chen views all of the contemporary narratives of world history as fundamentally Eurocentric, based on presuppositions that emerged in Western modernity but without acknowledging their reliance on what is really only one among several other civilizational options.

Rebuilding the “Eastern Country of Ritual Propriety”:Decorum Camps, Sŏwŏn Stays, and the Confucian Revival in Contemporary Korea

Rebuilding the “Eastern Country of Ritual Propriety”:Decorum Camps, Sŏwŏn Stays, and the Confucian Revival in Contemporary Korea

The rise of New Confucianism and the return of spirituality to politics in mainland China

In the past two decades, the revival of New Confucianism in mainland China has accelerated and become a crucial component of the intellectual public sphere. New Confucians have appeared alongside the larger groups of liberals and the New Left, often developing in dialogue or contrast with these intellectual neighbours. As part of the series of research dialogues on mapping the intellectual public sphere in China, this article examines recent discourse from New Confucian intellectuals, particularly dialogue with liberals and the New Left, to highlight the major debates and leading figures that define the cultural nationalist movement of Mainland New Confucianism. We show that, despite the immense difficulty of finding power as a minority voice in contemporary China, an integration of the religious and political dimensions of Confucianism in mainstream Chinese social, political, and intellectual culture remains the primary ideal that fuels and unites these intellectuals in the 2010s.

Self-cultivation and the legitimation of power: Governing China through education

A revival of Confucianism in post-Mao China helped the government legitimate its power in the face of a new socio-political and economic situation. This paper specifically explores the role of Confucian self-cultivation in China’s governance. Drawing on Beetham’s theory of legitimation of power and Weber’s tri-typology of authority, we argue that self-cultivation, appealing to ingrained cultural values and traditions, fulfils the criteria of legitimation of power through two principles, namely, differentiation and community interest. In the context of suzhi education (education for quality) and China’s national university entrance exam (gaokao), we interrogate tensions and paradoxes between the need for a presentation of modern and liberal authority and the CCP’s one-party rule. The paper illustrates the complexity of China’s authoritarianism and the intricacies and intrinsic relevance of self-cultivation in current practice.

“Easternization” of Post-Western International Order: Appertaining Confucianism into Bandung Conference Legacy

This paper seeks to develop non-Western theory in IR, particularly appertaining Confucianism into the formation of new global order. Arguably, the role of China in international order has generated debates for IR theorists, which ended in two main conclusions, China as a new hegemonic power or responsible power. It is presumably caused by the diffusion of power in post-Cold War global order, in which China seeks for revival after the ‘century of humiliation’ caused by Western presence in early 20th century. Moreover, the model of China’s leadership under Xi Jinping in which global order is assumed to be related with the revival of Confucianism. Stressing on mutual cooperation, China seeks to shift the international paradigm disorder dominated by the western idea of materialism. Distinctively, this paper will illustrate the notion of Chinese role in the global order by taking its connection with the formation of Bandung Conference. As one of the global leading power, China could play greater role in international sphere, among other by uniting members of developing countries in the Bandung Conference to revivethe alternative way of global order management. Furthermore, the promotion of Chinese Dream as the manifestation of the essence of confucianism under Xi Jinping could become the starting point toward “easternization” of global order under Bandung Conference legacy.

Confucianism as an “Organized Religion”

This is an ethnographic study of the Confucian Congregation—an emerging religious group in Fujian Province, southeast China—with an account of the Congregation’s origin, belief and rituals, organization, and development strategy. The Congregation started with one person providing supernatural healings, and it developed into an “organized religion” with hundreds of members in seven franchised branches. Furthermore, by taking advantage of the contemporary trend of the revival of Confucianism in China, Congregation leaders were even able to achieve a seemingly impossible feat—a legitimate status for their “superstitious” group.

Where Is China Headed? New Tendencies in the Humanities and Social Sciences

China as a whole is facing a marked trend toward indigenization. The past thirty years have seen rapid and profound changes in the social sciences, heralding a new season in the humanities, in which the study of traditional culture has shifted from the sidelines to the center of academic research. Traditional culture, especially Confucianism, with its worldly orientation, is bound to play a central role in deepening and expanding the ongoing conversation with liberalism. At the same time, however, it must still develop values for structuring society and everyday life that are as influential as those of liberalism. The three main challenges to a Confucian revival today are the ruling ideology in China (namely, Marxism), the dominance of Western sociopolitical theory, and the current practices of disciplinary organization.

Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China

Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China

The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China

This is a superb volume for anyone interested in the complex developments of popular Confucianism in contemporary Chinese society. Based on ten years of meticulous empirical research, Sebastien Bil...

Between Tradition and Modernity: Modern Confucianism as a Form of East Asian Social Knowledge

In the last decades of the 20th century, the revival of traditional Confucianism assumed increasing importance and relevance. The revitalization of its complex philosophical heritage thus became part of the most important theoretical currents in contemporary East Asian societies. Due to its potentially stabilizing social function and compatibility with capitalism, Confucianism is often seen as the Asian equivalent of Max Weber’s “protestant ethic”. In modern sinology, this view is known as the “post-Confucian hypothesis”. The appearance of the “vacuum of values” in modern China and its problematization and connection to the transformation of the structure, role, and function of social knowledge provide a good example of the consequences of explosive social transformation. This also raises the question of whether the Confucian modernization model is indeed capable of generating a non-individualistic version of modernity. Proceeding from this hypothesis, the present paper aims to show that the purported relation between modernity and individualism, which international modernization theories have always viewed as “inevitable” or “intrinsic”, is, in fact, little more than an outcome of Western historical paradigms.

Is filial piety a virtue? A reading of the Xiao Jing (Classic of Filial Piety) from the perspective of ideology critique

The recent revival of Confucianism in the PRC raises questions regarding the legitimacy of cultivating Confucian virtues such as ren (仁 benevolence), li (禮 propriety) and xiao (孝 ‘filial piety’ or ‘family reverence’) in an educational context. This article is based on the assumptions that education is an ideologically laden practice and that moral virtues have the potential of functioning to sustain hegemony and other forms of social control. By focusing on the Xiao Jing (孝經 Classic of Filial Piety), a lesser known Confucian classic, it offers the Confucian account of filial piety a charitable reading which then proceeds to examine the ideological dimension of filial piety. By employing concepts such as naturalisation and the public–private distinction in my analysis, I argue that filial piety should be understood through a critical lens. While the question ‘Is filial piety a virtue?’ cannot be answered in a simple, straightforward manner, the discussion on filial piety presented in this article has the potential to shed light on the relationship between politics (understood in a broad sense) and moral education.

China's Particular Values and the Issue of Universal Significance: Contemporary Confucians Amidst the Politics of Universal Values

Efforts by Zhu Xi’s descendants since the mid-1990s to promote his “Family Instructions” not only introduce the activities of one wing of the Confucian revival in contemporary China but also provide a window onto changes in Communist Party policies toward universal values. My analysis culminates with two recent books by prominent Beijing philosopher Chen Lai.

The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China by Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval

Reviewed by: The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China by Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval Anna Sun Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. vii, 332 pp. US$29.95 (pb). ISBN 9780190258146 This is a superb volume for anyone interested in the complex developments of popular Confucianism in contemporary Chinese society. Based on ten years of meticulous empirical research, Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval have produced a brilliant, informative, and intellectually engaging account of the current Confucian revival. It is a substantial text full of intriguing ethnographic details and extensive scholarly references. Reading the book feels like taking a long journey with Billioud and Thoraval, two erudite French scholars of Confucianism and Chinese history, from Beijing to Qufu, from Hong Kong to Taipei, looking for traces of contemporary Confucian experiences in many different spheres of life and exploring them with not only keen anthropological attention but also a deep historical consciousness. What makes this book particularly valuable is its combination of nuanced academic discussions with vivid portraits of ordinary people who are active in this new development. As Billioud and Thoraval put it, [t]he starting point of this study of ‘the sage and the people’ is not a general reflection about contemporary China or Confucianism but concrete field experience and observation of the encounter of individuals coming from popular backgrounds with the figure of Confucius or, beyond him, with a Confucian life ideal that they attempt to appropriate and put in practice. (pp. 7–8) This book has three parts. Part I, “Jiaohua 教化: The Confucian Revival in China as an Educative Project,” deals with the transformation of “Confucian education” in the 20th and 21st century. Part II, “Anshen Liming 安身立命: The Religious Dimension of Confucianism,” discusses various aspects of Confucian religious practice today. Part III, “Lijiao 禮教: Between Rites and Politics,” investigates the fraught relationship between “Confucian ritualism” and the state. The chapters on “Jiaohua 教化” introduce not only the new institutions of Confucian education that have emerged organically in the past twenty to thirty years, but also individual activists who have been instrumental in these endeavors. The institutions include the “Classics Reading Movement” and the subsequent revival of traditional Confucian schools, from schools for children (sishu 私塾) to Confucian academies for adults (shuyuan 書院). The key actors include Wang Caigui 王財貴, a leader in the “Classics Reading Movement” in Taiwan who also has significant influence in Mainland China, as well as ordinary people involved in this movement who are often influenced by both Confucian and Buddhist ideas and practices. [End Page 197] The most interesting case study in these chapters is that of Yidan xuetang 一耽學堂, a Confucian academy school in Beijing founded by Pang Fei 逄飛, a working-class charismatic leader who is unafraid to mold Confucian education in his own vision. For instance, “the Yidan xuetang organizes regular sessions of morning readings of classic texts (like The Great Learning) in small groups in parks where passersby are welcome to join. The sessions […] start with a series of gymnastic exercise,” since they believe that “self-transformation is not an intellectual operation” (p. 77). As Billioud and Thoraval point out, this is a good example of the “modern antiintellectualism” in the current revival, emphasizing bodily and emotional cultivation as much as, if not more than, intellectual learning. Part II of the book, “Anshen Liming 安身立命,” focuses on Confucian religiosity. Billioud and Thoraval acknowledge the inadequacy of the concept of “religion” in framing the kind of activities they observe, and their solution is to focus on dimensions of a multifaceted quest that the popular expression of anshen liming encapsulates well. […] It refers to the aims or ultimate concerns of human life and points both to a search for inner peace and a concern for a destiny, whether personal or sometimes collective. (p. 109) Most importantly, they start from individual experiences, such as the conversion story of Mrs. D, the owner of a vegetarian restaurant in Shenzhen, who has been influenced by Wang Caigui’s teachings. Her account is striking because it merges freely the languages of Confucian and Buddhist...