The Synthesis of Confucian Learning

Confucian learning, as discussed in preceding cessions, focused on the importance of self-cultivation.  Rooted in the present, Confucius seldom talked about heaven or humans' relationship to it.  Mencius established a moral universe where human moral cultivation and uprightness would enable an individual's qi (life force) to fill the space between heaven and earth.  But neither Mencius nor Confucius elaborated on the world around humans.  Confucians after Confucius did absorb elements from other schools of thought and developed a more elaborate discussion of the universe around the humans.  In the process, Confucian learning incorporated various strands of Chinese thinking, including Daoism/Taoism, and the Yin-Yang School of Thought.

1. Borrowings from Daoism

In our last session, we discussed the development of Daoism in the Three Kingdoms Era and the ensuing Jin/Chin Dynasty.  Daoism in the latter era became more relativistic, where a universal dao did not exist and everything followed their own dao which were too numerous to define.

 In comparison with the neo-Daoists, the Confucians after Confucius continued in the belief that the universe was fathomable and rules could be found.  Borrowing from the Daoists, they believed that the universe was governed with a universal Dao that manifested in numerous specific dao/rules.  While the early Daoists such as Lao Zi emphasized Dao as congruent with the primordial universe,  the Confucians focused on how the numerous specific dao could be articulated to give a better presentation of the patterns of change in the universe.

2. Patterned changes in the universe according to the Book of Changes.

This universe was not the result of observation, however, but patterned behavior according to the patterns of change described in the Book of Changes, and as represented by the hexagrams in the Book of Changes.  As with other classics, Chinese scholars gave numerous explanations to the Book of Changes, called exegeses.  They were later used as standard explanation for the Book of Changes.  And for everything in the universe, their patterns of behavior should follow those prescribed by the Book of Changes.  Fung gave examples, such as the hexagram for yang, and that for yin, which should guide the behavior of men and women in their roles as wife, husband, and ministers to the emperor, etc.  A universal order was established based on the rules embodied in these hexagrams.  If every one followed these rules, everything would go well.  Otherwise, there would be chaos and disaster.  Therefore the Book of Changes was used to both describe the patterns of change in the world and to serve as the moral handbook for Confucians to guide their own behavior.

3.  Influence of the Yin-Yang School of Thought

The ultimate source of change was the forces of Yin and Yang.  The yin and yang here are generic, and metaphysical terms.  They represent the two sides of the force of change that happen on every level of change in the world.  Whether one plays the yin or yang role in real life is relative (e.g. Fung's example that the husband is yang to his wife, but yin to his father).  Without either yin or yang, there would be no change.  Changes occurred because everything had both yin and yang elements in it, hence its nature was not stable, and was subject to change.

4. The dialecticism of change

The changes as described in the Book of Changes were dialectical, meaning things tend to change to their opposites.  Therefore Confucians discussed extensively the importance of moderation, or the golden mean.  The Golden Mean (zhong yong/chung jung) is a book in the Book of Rites, one of the five classics, perhaps added to the classic after the death of Confucius.  Later, the Golden Mean would play a prominent role in the codified Confucian learning. Because things tend to change to their opposite, the idea of zhong/chung (middle) became very important.  The Book of Changes abounds with dialecticism, and the hexagrams appear in pairs of opposite meanings.  This dialecticism had influenced Lao Zi of early Daoism, who argued that things develop to their opposites, therefore even when one is most successful, one should act as if one was stepping on thin ice, and that even if one lives in comfort, one should think of the possibility of ruin.  Thus one should never do anything excessively, including success.  A modern Chinese adaptation of this belief is "a man fears becoming famous just as a pig fears becoming stout" (a famous man may face ruin next as things go to their opposites, and a stout pig faces slaughtering).

5. Harmony as the result of keeping to the middle ground

Thus the highest Confucian ideal is harmony, because it means nothing excessive.  The borrowing from the Book of Changes seems to work well in explaining the Confucian idea of self-cultivation, with the Confucian emphasis on freedom of egotism and selfishness. 

6. The Great Learning and the importance of knowledge (investigation of things)

One or two hundred years after Confucius, a further definition of the dao in the Confucian world led to a greater emphasis on learning--not just the kind of learning Confucius exhorted: constant self-reflections and humane practices, but actual learning of knowledge, called the investigation of things.  A later book added to the Book of Rites, called the Great Learning, pointed out the important link of this investigation of things in the Confucian goal linking self-cultivation with state prosperity (Fung, 181-182).  This emphasis on the study of the specific dao characterizing the myriad things in the universe before fathoming the ultimate dao that governed the whole universe would gradually become the mainstream of Confucian learning.

7. Eclecticism of Chinese thinking.

It is quite clear by now that the development of Confucian learning relied on absorbing elements from many other schools of learning.  The same can be said with other schools of thought in Chinese history, too.  This eclecticism of learning in a way helped to facilitate the establishment of an orthodox learning in the Han Dynasty--a learning that was formed on the basis of an eclectic borrowing from various schools of thought.