Chinese Empire

Confucianism as State Orthodoxy

The transformation of Confucianism from a school of ethical self-cultivation into the official state ideology of imperial China was one of the most consequential developments in the history of East Asia. For more than two thousand years, the imperial Chinese state claimed to be governed by the moral principles of the Confucian classics, selected its officials on the basis of examinations in the Confucian canon, and maintained a state cult of Confucius at the central and local levels. The decision to make Confucianism the state orthodoxy was taken under the Han emperor Wu in 136 BCE, and the Neo-Confucian synthesis of the Song dynasty (960–1279) — the doctrine of Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and his predecessors — was the basis of the state orthodoxy for the rest of the imperial period, from the Yuan through the Ming and the Qing. The broader context is set by the overview of imperial ideology, and the Mandate of Heaven is the political theology that Confucianism expressed.

The Han Decision: 136 BCE

The decision of the Han emperor Wu to make Confucianism the official ideology of the state is one of the most important events in the history of Chinese political thought. The early Han had tried a relatively eclectic mix of policies, drawing on Confucian ritual propriety, Legalist administrative practice, and the cosmological ideas of the Yin-Yang school. The decisive turn came in 136 BCE, when the emperor accepted the recommendation of the court scholar Dong Zhongshu (c. 179–c. 104 BCE), a specialist in the Spring and Autumn Annals and a synthesizer of Confucian and Yin-Yang thought.

Dong Zhongshu’s basic argument was that the Confucian classics contained a comprehensive account of the relation between Heaven and humanity, and that the imperial state needed to align itself with this account in order to maintain the cosmic harmony that was the precondition of dynastic legitimacy. He drew on the Yin-Yang cosmology to argue that the emperor’s virtue produced cosmic harmony, and that the omens — the eclipses, the comets, the earthquakes, the floods — were signs of the loss of cosmic harmony. The Confucian classics, he argued, were the foundation of the moral and cosmic order.

The Han emperor Wu accepted this argument and established the imperial academy as a state-supported school for the study of the Five Classics. He appointed specialists in the classics to teach at the academy, established a system of recruitment of officials from among the academy’s students, and proclaimed Confucianism the official ideology of the state. The decision was not absolute: Han emperors also patronized Daoist immortality seekers and the Yin-Yang cosmology that justified imperial rule. But the basic formula was set: the educated official of the imperial Chinese state would be a Confucian, trained in the Five Classics, and the moral order of the dynasty would be expressed in Confucian categories.

The Imperial Academy and the Examination System

The Han imperial academy was the institutional foundation of the state Confucianism that the emperor Wu’s decision inaugurated. The academy was established as a school for the sons of the imperial clan and the high officials, and it was expanded under the emperor Wu to include students of the Five Classics. By the end of the Western Han, the academy had several thousand students, and the state had begun to recruit officials from among its graduates.

The imperial examination system, which selected officials on the basis of their knowledge of the Confucian classics and their ability to compose essays in the prescribed forms, was the most distinctive institution of the Confucian state. The Sui (581–618) introduced the first imperial examinations, the Tang (618–907) developed them into a regularized system, and the Song (960–1279) made them the principal path to office. The Ming (1368–1644) abolished the last vestiges of aristocratic recommendation and made the examination the only recognized path to office. The examination system was abolished in 1905, in the last years of the Qing, as part of the broader program of modernization.

The examination system, more than any other single institution, gave the Confucian tradition its hold on the imperial state. By the Song, success in the examination was the recognized path to social advancement, and the families that produced successful candidates accumulated the land, the connections, and the cultural capital of the local elite. By the Ming, the examination had become the only recognized path to office, and the jinshi (presented scholar) degree was the most prestigious title in the empire.

The Confucian Canon in the State Examinations

The Confucian canon that was the curriculum of the state examinations evolved over the centuries. The Han had a relatively open canon, and the candidates for the imperial examinations were expected to know the Five Classics. The Tang and Song gradually narrowed the canon, and the Song synthesis of Zhu Xi made the Four Books — the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects, and the Mencius — the foundation of the curriculum. The Four Books, with Zhu Xi’s commentary, became the basic text of the examination from the Yuan onwards.

The imperial examinations took different forms in different periods. The Tang examination included composition in the regulated verse forms, the policy essay, and the classics essay. The Song examination was more standardized, with the classics essay and the policy essay as the main components. The Ming introduced the bagu wen (八股文, “eight-legged essay”), a literary form of extraordinary rigidity and great internal complexity, designed to test the candidate’s mastery of the canonical texts and his stylistic control of a very demanding form.

The examination system was the institutional foundation of the Confucian state. It was a remarkable instrument of social mobility, in that it allowed talented men of modest origins to rise to the highest offices of the empire. It was also an instrument of social closure, in that it gave the established gentry families a powerful advantage in the competition for the limited number of examination degrees.

The Song Synthesis: Neo-Confucianism and the State

The most important reinvention of the Confucian state ideology came under the Song, when the Neo-Confucian philosophers produced a comprehensive synthesis of Confucian ethics, Buddhist and Daoist metaphysics, and the inherited classical tradition. The synthesis was the work of several generations: Zhou Dunyi (1017–1073) with his diagram of the taiji; the brothers Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi with their doctrine of li (principle) and qi; Zhu Xi (1130–1200) with his synthesis of the Four Books; and Lu Jiuyuan (1139–1193) with his rival doctrine of the mind.

Zhu Xi was the most important of the Neo-Confucian philosophers. He produced a complete commentary on the Four Books, in which he developed a comprehensive metaphysical system in which li (principle) is the underlying rational order of the universe, and qi is the substantive stuff of which all things are made.

The Neo-Confucian synthesis was controversial in its own time. The Lu-Wang school, founded by Lu Jiuyuan, criticized Zhu Xi’s emphasis on the investigation of things as too intellectual. The Ming saw the rise of the Wang Yangming school (Wang Shouren, 1472–1529), which emphasized the innate moral knowledge of the mind and the unity of knowledge and action, and which became the dominant form of the Confucian tradition in the late Ming.

The Yuan court made Zhu Xi’s commentary on the Four Books the basis of the official examinations in 1313, and the Ming and Qing inherited this decision. The Confucian temple (wenmiao) in every county and prefecture city enshrined the tablets of Confucius and his disciples, and the state cult of Confucius was a regular, regularized ritual of the imperial state.

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