The Canonization of Confucian learning in the Han Dynasty

Dong Zhongshu (195-105 B.C.) was the first Chinese imperial scholar who proposed to canonize Confucian learning into the state ethic in the Han Dynasty, which was granted, thereby establishing the supremacy of Confucian learning in China and East Asia in the next two millennium. His interpretation of Confucian learning was a synthesis of many schools of thought, among others, the correlative cosmology: correlation between rulers, ministers, and the heavenly bodies. Dong Zhongshu had to compete with devotees to alchemy and other beliefs who tried to distill gold or the elements that would impart everlasting life from sand, and whose followers included some Han emperors.  He tried to revive Confucian learning, especially through studying the Spring and Autumn Annals, a history of the kingdom of Lu possibly compiled by Confucius.  All in all, he tried to avoid the excesses of the Qin Dynasty for the Han rulers.

1. Confucian learning and correlative cosmology.

Correlative cosmology emphasizes the correlation between human practices and heavenly behavior, giving the human practices a more transcendental authority.  It is interesting to note that while Mencius in the 4th century B.C. tried to use the concept of qi (energy, air) to make the Confucian heavenly Way more earthbound and closer to the humans, Dong Zhongshu two centuries or so later tried something more transcendental to justify Confucian ethical conduct.  This could be seen as a compromise of Confucian teachings with more transcendental schools of thought then popular in China.   Dong Zhongshu holds on to some basic Confucian tenets: Heaven is humane.  Heavenly rule and human rule are identical: human rule is derived from and modeled on Heaven.  Human society is hierarchical.  Office is rewarded on the basis of merit.(de Bary, 295) On this basis, Dong Zhongshu emphasized, more so than the Confucian teachings of Confucius and Mencius, the correlation between the ruler and Heaven, and ministers and earth:  Heaven upholds its rule resolutely, which requires the ruler to correspondingly rule with firmness.  Just as the natural phenomenon of heaven needs rules to keep the stars in their orbits, so a ruler needs firm rules to prevent evil ministers stirring up chaos in their offices. On the other hand, the behavior of the ministers and the people are modeled on earth, which is connected to heaven via vital energy (qi/chi), supporting and nourishing heaven.  Loyalty of ministers to their rulers corresponds to earth's faithfulness to heaven. (de Bary, 296-297) Dong adheres to the Confucian belief in a heaven that doubled as a natural phenomenon and as a god with human will, which really serves as the basis of the heaven-man correlative cosmology.   To Dong, heaven actively intervenes in human life, trying to redress human problems through portents (warnings), which, if unheeded by the rulers, would be succeeded by anomalies (abnormal happenings) (305-306) such as drought, locust plague, fire, flood, etc.

2. The mutuality of ministers and rulers.

Dong Zhongshu also continues the Mencian insistence on mutuality between ruler and ruled, perhaps because similar to Mencius, he was in a position to advise the rulers of his day, the Han emperors.  He emphasizes that rulers must take the leadership, but they must also be humble and self-effacing and hire humane and worthy men to serve them.  (de Bary, 297) In his comparison between the ruler/ruled and the human body, Dong also continues to use the Mencian term of qi (vital energy).  To explain what he means by "Those who desire to accumulate vital essence must empty their minds and hearts and still their bodies....Where the form is still and the mind-and-heart empty, vital essence collects," (297)  to use today's language, it means not to be too full of oneself so that (true) knowledge or perception of the outside world can take place.  To do so one often needs to be quiet, so as to focus [one's ethical abilities] and observe.

3. Dong Zhongshu on self-cultivation.

All in all, the orientation of Dong's arguments are quite different from Mencius.  While both Confucius and Mencius seemed to strike a balance between complete self-love and complete altruism, Dong seems to go more toward the latter extreme. Therefore, in his discussions, Dong defined humaneness as loving others instead of the self, and rightness as disciplining the self, which he equated with self-love.  (307-309)  This self-negation is characteristic of Buddhism and, of course, the teachings of Mo Zi. To Dong Zhongshu, on the other hand, humaneness was a principle rooted in human sentiment, as Mencius did.  Hence his story of the minister who was moved by the fawn's mother. (310) And like Mencius, at least in this story, it was important for the minister to uphold the principle of humaneness, even if it incurred the displeasure of the king.

4. The codification of the Confucian canon.

Dong Zhongshu was the first one to propose establishing an imperial college (124 BC) to study Confucian learning and a civil service system based on that learning, although the full implementation of the civil service examination system was to wait till around 600 A.D., and the actual acceptance of Confucian learning as a state ethic was during the rule of emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty (r.49-33 BC).  

With the establishment of the Confucian state ethic, came the need to codify Confucian texts.  It began with Emperor Wu in 136 BC but controversy has continued during the next  two millennium over which were the authentic Confucian texts in the six classics.  One complication was the burning of Confucian books and changes in the Chinese writing system in the Qin Dynasty, which not only made it hard to find the original copies of Confucian texts but also made identifying the meanings of the words in these texts difficult.  A special branch of learning called textual exegesis (today called philology) was developed to decipher the meaning of Confucian texts through a word by word identification and analysis of meaning.