The Torch Magazine

Origins of Chinese Philosophy

by C. Walter Clark

    In the distant past, in the territory watered by the Yellow and Yangzi rivers, Chinese civilization was born. By Chinese historical reckoning, the time in question extended from the late "Spring and Autumn" era (722-481 BCE) through the "Warring States" era (481-221 BCE).

    What would one day become China was then divided into a number of independent states. A strong myth of a single civilization under a single ruler in possession of "Heaven's Mandate" existed, but the reality was political division. Capital cities of independent states attracted a growing intellectual class, members of which adhered to one or another teacher and traveled about from one state to another, offering their services as officials or advisers. In Chinese history, it is called the period of "100 Schools of Thought."

    The name is an exaggeration, but there were in fact many schools. Most analyses of Chinese philosophy in the classical period focus on four: Confucianism, Moism, Taoism, and Legalism, each with its own major figures.

Confucianism

    Confucius, whose approximate dates are 550-479 BCE, was a teacher. It is uncertain whether he wrote anything; what we know of his teachings comes from the texts left by his students, whom we might even call his disciples.

    When asked what might be done to bring about social order and good government, Confucius said, "rectify the names"— that is, endow existing institutions with moral purpose, causing them to become what ideally they should be. His philosophical justification for this recommendation was the concept of li, which may be translated as "right conduct" or "proper norms of social behavior." Confucius said "the standard of right is the cultivation of each class of people in its proper course." His teachings were meant for gentlemen, i.e., educated males. The masses in society would benefit by emulating the example of their betters, such emulation being, in his view, natural. Confucius said: "In observing their proper course, men look upward."

    A second important Confucian concept was an ethical ideal called ren, usually translated as "human heartedness," a virtue existing at least as potential in each human being. Gentlemen were encouraged to cultivate this virtue in themselves; through their example, it would be absorbed by the masses. The practice of ren at the highest level, the level of the ruler, would foster "human heartedness" throughout society. Again, quoting from Confucius: "The prince [ruler] is the wind; the common people, the grass; and the grass bends in the direction of the wind." For Confucius, history provided the finest examples of good government and social order. He and many others in his day believed that during a Golden Age in the distant past, sage kings ruled benevolently and everyone in society benefited. This ideal society might be reconstructed or at least emulated in the present.

    Confucius attracted a following, some of whom became teachers, and these in turn gathered students of their own, so the teachings of the master endured and spread and were changed. The two best-known disciples of Confucius were Mengzi (Mencius) and Xunzi. Mencius was born more than 100 years after the death of Confucius, Xunzi more than 150 years after; changed circumstances likely accounted for some of the differences in philosophy between Confucius and these two of his disciples, since, in general, conditions worsened during that time.

    Mencius represented the idealist wing of Confucian thought, Xunzi the realist wing.

    Mencius differed from his master in important ways. For Confucius, legitimate authority was based on Heaven's Mandate, a concept originating in an ancient text called the Book of History, written to justify the fall of the ancient Shang Dynasty and its replacement by the Zhou Dynasty in about 1100 BCE. According to the Book of History, Heaven elected or commanded men to be rulers over the tribes of the world. When the Shang kings, who had once been wise and benevolent rulers, grew cruel and degenerate, Heaven called upon Zhou chieftains to overthrow the Shang. Confucius's interpretation of this idea had held only that legitimate government required Heaven's mandate; Mencius went further, arguing that Heaven's will derived from the people. Heaven "sees with the people's eyes and hears with the people's ears," he wrote. He also stated that "The People are the most important element in kingship; next comes the spirits of the grain; and the prince is of the least importance." In brief, Mencius believed that government should function for the people and with the consent of the people.

    Xunzi, the other great Confucian disciple, writing some fifty years after the death of Mencius in political, economic and social circumstances that continued to deteriorate, adopted a realist rather than an idealist perspective. Xunzi rejected Mencius's view that men were by nature good; the chief quality of human nature was not its inherent goodness, as Mencius taught, but its weakness. Left unguided, people gravitated from one superstition to the next. Men were born with two qualities, desire and intelligence, and social discord arose because, in his words, "desires are many but things are few." What was needed therefore was greater social control, which required a strong state. His policy recommendations required both the carrot and the stick. Carrot recommendations included promotion of rituals, music, and education, plus appropriate welfare measures. Stick recommendations included establishing clear rules of behavior and harshly punishing those who failed to follow the rules. Put simply, Xunzi believed the essential purpose of government was to regulate men's desires. Students of Xunzi were among the founders of the Legalist School, examined below.

Moism

    Between the lifetime of Confucius and those of his disciples Mencius and Xunzi, the decadent tendencies in government and society that Confucius deplored worsened, and a new and important school of thought emerged, associated with the philosopher Mozi. Little is known about the man Mozi, but it is generally accepted that he was born to low social status and may have been an artisan or craftsman. He had no ties to officialdom but manifested impressive mastery of traditional culture. What we know of his thought we derive from the Book of Mozi, which survives only in part.

    In contrast to Confucianism, Moism was not simply a school of thought but an organized movement, supported by its own religious-military organization and headed by a supreme master. We may assume that the initial supreme leader was Mozi himself. Mozi was explicitly critical of several intellectual rivals, but he directed his most telling polemical attacks on Confucianists, whom he condemned for their skepticism regarding Heaven and spiritual beings, their fatalism, and their preoccupation with ritual.

    Mozi believed the order of society recommended by Confucianists to be too static. The rituals they emphasized purposely illustrated existing differences between classes and perpetuated those differences. In the Confucian view, Mozi argued, there was no room for ambition and social mobility.

    At the heart of Mozi's thought is the concept of "universal love," which he presents as a utilitarian doctrine. He argued that in the state of nature, the wills of men differed, and the more men, the more conflicting wills. Mozi was what we in the West would call a "Hobbesian," after the 17th-Century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who argued that human beings were wholly selfish and that society in the state of nature was "a war of every man against every man . . . and the life of man [was] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Mozi had a similar view, concluding that creating a peaceful and orderly society out of such conditions required a strong ruler, a ruler not responsible to the people but to a higher order, to Heaven or God.

    Good government, according to Mozi, required conformity and control. What the virtuous ruler thought right, all must think right. Proper government functioned to keep order and to punish deviants. He acknowledged the possibility of errant rulers whose misdeeds might deserve punishment, but punishment for rulers, he believed, had to come from the deity, not from the people.

    The strategy Mozi designed for achieving his ideal government required an organized movement with a strong leader and a disciplined band of followers. In its organization and practices, the movement would serve as a model of the ideal order. Communal living would be practiced, and life would be egalitarian and austere. It would be an arbitrarily imposed manifestation of "universal love."

    The philosophy of Mozi is highly religious, with Heaven portrayed as a loving sovereign on high. Heaven willed that men love one another, and since men did not by nature love one another, religion might function as an exemplary motivating force. Both religious and political sanctions, he believed, were necessary to what he saw as the two basic functions of government: keeping order and punishing evil.

    Mozi taught that human beings were selfish and contentious in the state of nature; thus individuals must be persuaded or, if necessary, forced to subordinate their interests to the interests and welfare of the community. His ideal political order was a kind of anti-aristocratic absolutism and, perhaps, a theocracy.

Taoism

    Next to Confucianism, the most important and influential native Chinese philosophy was Taoism. While Confucianism emphasizes hierarchy, duty and social responsibility, Taoism invites individuals to flee conventional and mundane limitations on the human spirit. Confucian texts are often dull and moralistic; early Taoist writings are mystical and poetic, full of wit and paradox. Yet in the history of Imperial China, from 221 BCE to 1911 CE, Confucianism and Taoism came to seem not so much in opposition as they were complementary. In Imperial China, it was expected that Confucianism would direct the mind of the scholar-official in his bureaucratic duties and social presence, while Taoism, in his private chamber or mountain retreat, would draw him to the intoxicating beauties of nature and spirit.

    Two great thinkers are identified with the founding and early development of Taoist philosophy: Laozi and Zhuangzi. Laozi, whose name means "old master," with the notion of "venerable" implied, may not have been a genuine historical figure, but the Tao-te Ching, one of the shortest yet most provocative and inspired works in all of Chinese literature, came to be accepted as representative of his thought. The quietness, mysticism and love of paradox that distinguish this work probably represent not the thinking of a single philosopher, but very old strains in Chinese thought.

    Tao-te Ching proposes a philosophy of government and way of life for the ruling class, the only class of people who could read its pages. Its teaching is based upon a great underlying principle, the Tao or Way, which is the source of all being, governor of all life, both natural and human. It is the first principle of life itself and therefore indescribable, as is asserted in the very first entry in the Tao-te Ching:

The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Nameless, it is the origin of Heaven and earth;
Namable, it is the mother of all things.

Always nonexistent, that we may apprehend its inner secret;
Always existent, that we discern its outer manifestations.
These two are the same;
Only as they manifest themselves they receive different names.

That they are the same is the mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door of all subtleties! (de Bary, Chan, and Watson 53)

    In the Laozi or Tao-te Ching, dyadic opposites such as male-female, dark-light, weak-strong appear frequently, and the usage favors soft over hard, passive over active, even perhaps female over male. The style of the Laozi—a combination of very old adages or cryptic sayings, often in rhyme—is unlike that of the works of other schools of thought in early Chinese philosophy. Mixing poetry with prose, and its statements are laconic and paradoxical. These features may explain the work's tremendous popularity and influence through the centuries. Over time many important elements of Taoist teaching were absorbed into Confucianism and later Chinese Buddhism.

    The second great early Taoist philosopher was Zhuangzi, about whom we know little. Sima Qian, the great historian of the second century BCE, provides us with only a few facts: that Zhuangzi once was an official, that he was a contemporary of Mencius, and that he wrote a work of more than 100,000 words, which was, according to Sima Qian, "mostly fable." Yet in the ranks of early Taoist philosophers, only Laozi is better known.

    The central theme of Zhuangzi is freedom. To one extent or another, all philosophers of the Warring States Era addressed the question, how is man to live in a world dominated by chaos, suffering and absurdity? Most philosophers answered with some concrete plan of action. Both Confucius and Mozi, for example, recommended social, political and ethical reforms. Zhuangzi did not. He believed that both man-made ills (war, poverty, injustice) and natural ills (disease and death) were ills only because men recognized them as such. Men, he believed, had come to hold a diseased and fear-inspired view of life, which he illustrates using a macabre metaphor about a leper woman who, "when she gives birth to a child in the deep of night, rushes to fetch a torch and examine it, trembling with terror lest it look like herself." But how is one to persuade the leper woman herself that disease and ugliness have no real validity? Not an easy task. Yet Zhuangzi's message called for individuals to free themselves from the world's realities.

    While most philosophers appealed to the political and intellectual elite of the day, seeking to have their recommendations translated into policies, Zhuangzi's recommendations seemed designed for those seeking spiritual relief.

    He taught using paradoxical anecdotes and seemingly nonsensical remarks, possibly trying to jolt the mind into an awareness of a truth outside the pale of ordinary logic. Certainly he employed in his writings that deadliest of weapons against all that is pompous, staid and holy: humor. The parable of "The Cicada and The Wren," in Arthur Waley's translation, will serve as example:

There are birds that fly many hundred miles without a halt. Someone mentioned this to the cicada and the wren, who agreed that such a thing was impossible. "You and I know very well," they said, "that the furthest one can ever get even by the most tremendous effort is that elm-tree over there, and even this one cannot be sure of reaching every time. Often one finds oneself dragged back to earth before one gets there. All these stories about flying hundreds of miles at a stretch are sheer nonsense." (Waley 33)

Legalism

    The school of thought known as Legalism was founded by Han Feizi, a student and/or disciple of the Confucianist Xunzi. Han Feizi's philosophy was eclectic, containing elements from several of the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought. From a philosopher named Shen Dao he borrowed the concept of authority (shi), which asserted that political control required not merely power but legitimized power, power based on authority. More importantly, he adopted the philosopher Shang Yang's doctrine of law (fa). Shang Yang ridiculed as vain and impractical Confucian arguments stressing moral principles, right conduct, virtue and the like.

    Han Feizi believed three principal causes to be at the root of the disorder in society in his day: first, too many people and too little food, the deadly combination of overpopulation and underproduction; second, selfishness, which he believed to be inherent in all men; and finally, intellectual anarchy, an excess of contrasting philosophies and schools of thought.

    Han Feizi posited that fundamentally there were just two classes in society, which at times he labels the industrious and incompetent, and in other places the useful and idle. Farmers and soldiers were the only two segments of society he accepted as useful. The incompetent or idle segment included aristocrats, artisans in luxury crafts, hermits, innkeepers, scholars and moralists, soothsayers, adventurers and philanthropists.

    Han Feizi's philosophy was the antithesis of Confucian thinking. Rejecting ethical values, he promoted the idea of positive law divorced from moral and religious sanctions. He scorned ideals from the past, ridiculing the belief of Confucius that there had been a golden age when sage kings ruled benevolently. "The enlightened ruler," Han Feizi said, "controls his ministers by means of two handles alone: punishment and favor. What do I mean by punishment and favor?" he asks. His answer: "To inflict mutilation and death on men is called punishment; to bestow honor and reward is called favor" (30).

    Although Han Feizi found little of value in Confucianism, Moism and Taoism proved useful to his argument. Moism stressed the value of uniform standards and advocated the mobilization of society in support of the ruler's goals. So too did Han Feizi. From Taoism he borrowed the concept of wu wei, non-action, asserting that a good ruler governed by non-action. Han Feizi wrote:

When all are in their proper place, then superior and inferior may be free from action. Let the cock herald the dawn, let the cat catch rats. When each exercises his ability, the ruler need do nothing [wu-wei]. If the ruler tries to excel, then nothing will go right. If he boasts of an eye for the abilities of others, he will invite deceit among his subordinates. If he is lenient and fond of sparing lives, his subordinates will impose upon his kind nature. If superior and inferior try to change roles, the state will never be ordered. (35-36)

    Han Feizi's philosophy was pragmatic, and many of its specific concepts proved appealing to those in positions of power or in pursuit of power. A scholar named Li Si, another student of the Confucianist Xunzi, came to be employed by the ruler of one of the warring states, the state of Qin. He applied the practical, ruthless policies of the Legalist school in serving as chief minister to the ruler Shi Huang Di, now remembered as China's First Emperor. The Warring States Era came to an end, China was unified, a tyrannical rule was imposed on society, and policies were undertaken to make permanent the new ruler's control. Writing was standardized, imperial highways were built and made uniform, non-legalist scholars were murdered and their texts burned, and the population mobilized for mammoth construction tasks.    The first emperor's ruthless exactions year after year exhausted the people and the state's other resources. After thirty-seven years as ruler of the Qin state, Shi Huang Di suddenly died at age 49 in 210 BCE, bringing China's first imperial dynasty to an end. A visible hint of the scale of Qin Shi Huang Di's undertaking is suggested by the size of his Terra Cotta Army, parts of which are visible today at a site near Xian, in northwest China.

    The First Emperor's excessive demands on his subjects fomented rebellion and several ambitious rebel leaders emerged. One of these, Liu Bang, eventually succeeded in defeating or co-opting his rivals and in 206 BCE founded the Han Dynasty, which endured (with but one major interruption) for 400 years.

    Han rulers and their advisors found it useful to retain some of the policies recommended by the Legalist school, but they also discovered the utility of incorporating ideas and policies suggested by Confucianism. Its doctrines generally in keeping with the values and practices of traditional society, it was a useful governing philosophy in times of peace and stability, though not in times of economic decline, political turmoil and war.

    Thus a form of Confucianism became the orthodox ruling philosophy in Imperial China. It endured and evolved, becoming the basis for the famous Examination System used to select qualified government officials, its concepts and teachings integral parts of Chinese culture.

Works Cited

de Bary, Wm. Theodore, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson, eds. Sources of Chinese Tradition. NY: Columbia University Press, 1964.

Han Fei Tzu. Basic Writings. Burton Watson, trans. NY: Columbia University Press, 1966.

Waley, Arthur. Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1939.

Biographical Sketch

C. Walter Clark

    C. Walter Clark is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Drake University, where he taught for 35 years prior to retirement in June 1998.

    Following enlistment in the United States Air Force in 1954, he studied spoken Mandarin in a nine-month intensive program at the Institute of Far Eastern Languages at Yale University, after which he was posted to listening stations in Taiwan and Okinawa, monitoring mainland China's shortwave military broadcasts.

    Following discharge from the Air Force Walter, re-enrolled at Indiana University, earning an A.B degree in Political Science in 1960. In that year he was admitted to the Department's Ph.D. program, his graduate work supported by a National Defense Education Act fellowship in Asian Studies. While in the program, he began study of the Russian language and of Russian history and politics.

    He left I.U. in 1963 to accept a teaching position at Drake University. His teaching at Drake included courses on China, Japan, Russia and, beginning in the mid-1980s, the Middle East. His Middle East course was informed by four research and study missions to the region between 1986 and 1992.

    Walter has been a member of the Des Moines Torch Club since 1992. His Torch papers have focused principally on China; one of those papers, delivered in 1995, earned him the Paxton Award.