With no doubt that the Neo-Confucianism School has played an important role in shaping the Chinese society during the late imperial centuries in China, which this process could have already been started during the Northern Song dynasty. One central belief of Neo-Confucianism was that “self-cultivation is fundamental for all people”.[1] Though the emphasise of self-cultivation of every individual was a pursuit of higher standards of social morality, this practice seemed to be too ideological to achieve, and it eventually caused somehow opposite political effects in later dynasties.
Different from the traditional Confucianism and the dominant political ideology “the Mandate of Heaven” (tianming) in ancient Chinese dynasties, which meant that the Heaven mandated the emperor with unquestionable power to rule the empire, Neo-Confucianism, as promoted by Zhu Xi, Cheng Yi and Hu Anguo etc., challenged the mandate doctrine and claimed that the rulers’ authority shall be based on their moral conscience (tianli).[2] This was in line with Neo-Confucianism’s core belief of “conscious commitments” of individuals – which also included the imperial rulers.[3]
Zhu Xi’s “learning for emperors and kings” (diwang zhixue) claimed that the imperial ruler’s mind was the ultimate factor for all affairs, therefore established a new way to legitimise the ruler’s authority and the public’s obedience to him, and the way for the ruler to learn and upheld his moral standard was through studying the Great Learning, an important classical Confucianism text.[4] Thus an ideological rule of the empire was established – that the ruler (emperor) could keep high moral standards and to rule the empire wisely as a “sage-king” and a role model of the entire society by studying classical texts of the ancient sages, and therefore a healthy administrative cycle was formed through high pursuits.[5]
Besides the high moral standard expected for the ruler, the officials were also expected to behave in a very high standard of loyalty, unity and selflessness without forming factions, according to Neo-Confucianism.[6] In this utopia-like preset political system under Neo-Confucianism, a highly transparent government from the ruler to the officials at each level was established, and justice and equality was promoted to serve the “heavenly principle” (tianli).[7] However, the problem here was that the Neo-Confucianism governance was far too ideological to be really achieved, and in real practice a ‘flawed’ version of Neo-Confucianism’s governance led to a dramatic increase of the emperor’s own power than anything else.
Neo-Confucianism’s construction of a “perfect society” aimed to transform the purpose of governance to serve the public’s interest and to promote unity of the society.[8] However, such strong belief in unity and social harmony was very far beyond the then social reality, especially without sufficient social productive capacity and a stable border without external threats (such as Liao, Jin and Mongolia, the neighbours to the north of Song). With real threats that the Neo-Confucianism governance distorted under ‘righteous’ claims in its name, such as emperor Zhu Yuanzhang’s actions of executing over 40,000 officials whom suspected by him of plotting against him yet without solid evidence, under the name of “the well-being of the population” – which was Zhu Xi’s ideology that the Neo-Confucian ruler should be a sage by studying classical Confucianism texts and to be dedicated to the public’s welfare, while the result came out to be the strengthening of the emperor’s own authority during the Ming dynasty and the purging of dissenters to the imperial authority. Therefore, the Neo-Confucianism’s well-known goal of promoting self-cultivation to uphold the heavenly principle (cun tianli) while supressing human desires (mie renyu) came out to be ‘too good to be true’.[9] In real practices between Song and Qing dynasty, the ‘misused’ Neo-Confucianism seemed to become ‘upholding the heavenly principle for those having the imperial authority while supressing human desires for the general public in the society’.
[1] Peter K. Bol, Neo-Confucianism in History (Cambridge, MA, 2008), p. 116.
[2] Ibid, p. 122, 129.
[3] Ibid, p. 195.
[4] Ibid, pp. 133 – 134.
[5] Ibid, p. 135.
[6] Ibid, p. 138.
[7] Ibid, p. 143.
[8] Ibid, 202.
[9] Fangqin Du and Susan Mann, Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (Berkeley, 2003), p. 225.