Conversations with Confucius (551–479 BCE)

The Wiley‐Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice, 2012

China had been organized for centuries. This was followed, in 1911, with the collapse of the last dynasty itself. In 1915 Chinese intellectuals inaugurated a "New Culture Movement" that sought fundamental changes to Chinese values, practices, and even the Chinese language. In many ways this movement was a more pervasive "cultural revolution" than the later Maoist movement of that name. The values of "modern civilization" were on the rise and older traditions like Confucianism were roundly criticized. Confucianism did not die, but after the first decades of the twentieth century, it would need to find new ways to be relevant in Chinese society. After this unpromising start, the twentieth century continued to pose obstacles to any revival of Confucianism. Some political leaders tried to manipulate it as a shallow ideology of loyalty to power, while others tried to wipe it completely from the hearts of China's citizens (most notably during the 1973-1974 "Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius" campaign). There were some exceptions; philosophers and educators like Liang Shuming (1893-1988) and Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) developed Confucian ideas for the new century and sought to teach its ideals both within the People's Republic, to the limited degree that was possible, and in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even further afield. We will hear more about Liang and Mou below, as well as about other political and social thinkers who were significantly influenced by Confucianism even if they did not consider themselves to be "Confucian." There have, in addition, been efforts to establish Confucianism as a state-sponsored religion-notwithstanding the arguments by other intellectuals that Confucianism was valuable to modern Chinese precisely because it was not (in their view) a "religion" in the Western sense. This debate was especially fierce in the early twentieth-century, when the utopian Confucian thinker Kang Youwei (1858

2022

Beginning in the 1980s, a very important development for Confucianism took place in the People’s Republic of China: in what was known as the Culture Fever, many experts on Confucianism who lived outside of mainland China, such as Tu Weiming, were invited by prestigious universities of continental China to give lectures on Confucianism. This fact increased the interest of mainland Chinese scholars in this ancient philosophy, and its study flourished in academia. However, the boom of Confucianism also spread to the PRC’s authorities, who abandoned their distrust of the Master of Lu, and found inspiration in some of his teachings. Moreover, this Confucian boom also spread to the areas of education and society. This phenomenon has been called the “Confucian revival”, and it has become stronger than ever in the present century. Having a huge interest in Confucianism, I decided to research the Confucian revival of the 21st century to show how the revival has changed, and how we can perceive elements of this system of thought in contemporary China. Therefore, this master’s thesis is the result of an investigation of the comeback of Confucianism in mainland Chinese society in this century. The topic of this research will be divided into the areas of politics, academia, and education and society, which I consider to be the realms where the Confucian revival is most visible.

paper published in: Is the 21st Century the Age of Asia? ed. J. Marszałek-Kawa, Toruń 2012, pp. 20-41

2019

With the reform and opening policy implemented by the Chinese government since the late 1970s, mainland China has witnessed a sustained resurgence of Confucianism first in academic studies and then in social practices. This essay traces the development of this resurgence and demonstrates how the essential elements and authentic moral and intellectual resources of long-standing Confucian culture have been recovered in scholarly concerns, ordinary ideas, and everyday life activities. We first introduce how the Modern New Confucianism reappeared in mainland China in the three groups of the Chinese scholars in the Confucian studies in the 1980s and early 1990s. Then we describe how a group of innovative mainland Confucian thinkers has since the mid-1990s come of age launching new versions of Confucian thought differing from that of the overseas New Confucians and their forefathers, followed by our summary of public Confucian pursuits and activities in the mainland society in the recent ...

Despite representing one of the largest economies on the world arena, China has been facing numbers of social and political problems on the domestic front. Issues, such as human rights violations, corruption and inequality, remain to be major public concerns for the country. Currently, China is ranked 84th in the World Happiness Report that measures the level of well-being in a country based on GDP per capita, freedom, life expectancy, etc. This reasonably demonstrates the general social climate in China that has been frequently set as an agenda for public discourse. Such social unrest in the country is often attributed to the post-Mao moral crisis. In this essay, I will first look at the historical processes that inhibited the spiritual development of the Chinese populations. Afterwards, I will move on to discuss the relevance of Confucianism in the modern China by arguing that its ideology, to a certain extent, can act as a moral platform for the Chinese community, and thereby, help it to overcome the threat of moral degeneration.

STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI, PHILOLOGIA, LV, 3,, 2010

ABSTRACT. Confucian Values and the Revival of Confucius’ Thought in Contemporary China. The article deals with the Confucian values in the context of Confucian revival in contemporary China, on the one hand, and with Confucian thought represented by its rang 讓 (“soft”, yielding) type values in dialogue with the Western world on the other. Based on several works by Western authors in the field, the article reviews the matters of metamorphosis and adaptation of the Confucian spirit to contemporary Chinese world, with a stress on the inclination toward communalism, apparently a constant socio-cultural feature in China. Keywords: Confucianism, rang (“to yield”, “to concede”), communalism.

The Cambridge History of Confucianism, ed. Kiri Paramore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

This chapter will be published in the forthcoming Cambridge History of Confucianism edited by Kiri Paramore (forthcoming 2022 or 2023). This ahead of print version has been uploaded on Academia.edu with the authorization of the publisher.