Among all the dynasties, Chinese and foreign, the long-lived Chosŏn (Joseon; also called Yi) in Korea (1392–1910) was undoubtedly the most thoroughly Confucianized. Since the 15th century, when the aristocracy (yangban) defined itself as the carrier of Confucian values, the penetration of court politics and elite culture by Confucianism was unprecedented. Even today—as manifested in political behaviour, legal practice, ancestral veneration, genealogy, village schools, and student activism—the vitality of the Confucian tradition is widely felt in South Korea.
Yi T’oegye (1501–70), the single most-important Korean Confucian, helped shape the character of Chosŏn Confucianism through his creative interpretation of Zhu Xi’s teaching. Critically aware of the philosophical turn engineered by Wang Yangming, T’oegye transmitted the Zhu Xi legacy as a response to the advocates of the learning of the mind. As a result, he made Chosŏn Confucianism at least as much a true heir to Song learning as Ming Confucianism was. Indeed, his Discourse on the Ten Sagely Diagrams, an aid for educating the king, offered a depiction of all the major concepts in Song learning. His exchange of letters with Ki Taesŭng (1527–72) in the famous Four-Seven debate, which discussed the relationship between Mencius’s four basic human feelings—commiseration, shame, modesty, and right and wrong—and seven emotions, such as anger and joy, raised the level of Confucian dialogue to a new height of intellectual sophistication.
In addition, Yi Yulgok’s (1536–84) challenge to T’oegye’s re-presentation of Zhu Xi’s Confucianism, from the perspective of Zhu’s thought itself, significantly enriched the repertoire of the learning of the principle. The leadership of the central government, supported by the numerous academies set up by aristocratic families and by institutions such as the community compact system and the village schools, made the learning of the principle not only a political ideology but also a common creed in Korea.
In Japan, Zhu Xi’s teaching, as interpreted by T’oegye, was introduced to Yamazaki Ansai (1618–82). A distinctive feature of Yamazaki’s thought was his recasting of native Shintōism in Confucian terminology. The diversity and vitality of Japanese Confucianism was further evident in the appropriation of Wang Yangming’s dynamic idealism by the samurai-scholars, notably Kumazawa Banzan (1619–91). It is, however, in Ogyū Sorai’s (1666–1728) determination to rediscover the original basis of Confucian teaching by returning to its pre-Confucian sources that a true exemplification of the independent-mindedness of Japanese Confucians is found. Indeed, Sorai’s brand of ancient learning with its particular emphasis on philological exactitude foreshadowed a similar scholarly movement in China by at least a generation. Although Tokugawa Japan was never as Confucianized as Chosŏn Korea, virtually every educated person in Japanese society was exposed to the Four Books by the end of the 17th century.
The Confucianization of Chinese society reached its apex during the Qing (1644–1911/12), when China was again ruled by a conquest dynasty, in this case Manchu. The Qing emperors outshone their counterparts in the Ming in presenting themselves as exemplars of Confucian kingship. They transformed Confucian teaching into a political ideology, indeed a mechanism of control. Jealously guarding their imperial prerogatives as the ultimate interpreters of Confucian truth, they undermined the freedom of scholars to transmit the Confucian Way by imposing harsh measures, such as literary inquisition. It was Gu Yanwu’s classical scholarship rather than his insights on political reform that inspired the 18th-century evidential scholars. Dai Zhen, the most philosophically minded philologist among them, couched his brilliant critique of Song learning in his commentary “The Meanings of Terms in the Book of Mencius.” Dai Zhen was one of the scholars appointed by the Qianlong emperor in 1773 to compile an imperial manuscript library. That massive scholarly attempt, The Complete Library of the Four Treasures, is symbolic of the grandiose intent of the Manchu court to give an account of all the important works of the four branches of learning—the Classics, history, philosophy, and literature—in Confucian culture. The project comprised more than 36,000 volumes with comments on about 10,230 titles, employed as many as 15,000 copyists, and took 20 years to complete. The Qianlong emperor and the scholars around him may have expressed their cultural heritage in a definitive form, but the Confucian tradition was yet to encounter its most-serious threat. Transformation since the 19th century
At the time of the first Opium War (1839–42), East Asian societies had been Confucianized for centuries. The continuous growth of Mahayana Buddhism throughout Asia and the presence of Daoism in China, shamanism in Korea, and Shintōism in Japan did not undermine the power of Confucianism in government, education, family rituals, and social ethics. In fact, Buddhist monks were often messengers of Confucian values, and the coexistence of Confucianism with Daoism, shamanism, and Shintōism actually characterized the syncretic East Asian religious life. The impact of the West, however, so fundamentally challenged the Confucian roots in East Asia that for some time it was widely debated whether Confucianism could remain a viable tradition in modern times.
Beginning in the 19th century, Chinese intellectuals’ faith in the ability of Confucian culture to withstand the impact of the West became gradually eroded. That loss of faith may be perceived in Lin Zexu’s (1785–1850) moral indignation against the British, followed by Zeng Guofan’s (1811–72) pragmatic acceptance of the superiority of Western technology, Kang Youwei’s (1858–1927) sweeping recommendation for political reform, and Zhang Zhidong’s (1837–1909) desperate eclectic attempt to save the essence of Confucian learning, which, however, eventually led to the anti-Confucian iconoclasm of the so-called May Fourth Movement in 1919. The triumph of Marxism-Leninism as the official ideology of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 relegated Confucian rhetoric to the background. The modern Chinese intelligentsia, however, maintained unacknowledged, sometimes unconscious, continuities with the Confucian tradition at every level of life—behaviour, attitude, belief, and commitment. Indeed, Confucianism remains an integral part of the psychocultural construct of the contemporary Chinese intellectual as well as of the Chinese farmer.
The emergence of Japan and other newly industrialized Asian countries (e.g., South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore) as the most-dynamic region of economic development since World War II has generated much scholarly interest. Labeled the “Sinitic World in Perspective,” “The Second Case of Industrial Capitalism,” the “Eastasia Edge,” or “the Challenge of the Post-Confucian States,” that phenomenon has raised questions about how the typical East Asian institutions, still suffused with Confucian values—such as a paternalistic government, an educational system based on competitive examinations, the family with emphasis on loyalty and cooperation, and local organizations informed by consensus—have adapted themselves to the imperatives of modernization.
Some of the most creative and influential intellectuals in contemporary China have continued to think from Confucian roots. Xiong Shili’s ontological reflection, Liang Shuming’s cultural analysis, Feng Youlan’s reconstruction of the learning of the principle, He Lin’s new interpretation of the learning of the mind, Tang Junyi’s philosophy of culture, Xu Fuguan’s social criticism, and Mou Zongsan’s moral metaphysics are noteworthy examples. Although some of the most-articulate intellectuals in the People’s Republic of China criticize their Confucian heritage as the embodiment of authoritarianism, bureaucratism, nepotism, conservatism, and male chauvinism, others in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and North America have imaginatively established the relevance of Confucian humanism to China’s modernization. The revival of Confucian studies in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore has been under way for more than a generation, though Confucian scholarship in Japan remains unrivaled. Confucian thinkers in the West, inspired by religious pluralism and liberal democratic ideas, have explored the possibility of a third epoch of Confucian humanism. They uphold that its modern transformation, as a creative response to the challenge of the West, is a continuation of its classical formulation and its medieval elaboration. Scholars in mainland China have also explored the possibility of a fruitful interaction between Confucian humanism and democratic liberalism in a socialist context. Tu Weiming