Our time frame is the late Eastern
Zhou dynasty. The kings of the dynasty had long since fled their original
capital and moved to a more defensible position from which they could continue
to rule in name and conduct their sacrifices for the sake of the kingdom, but
nobody really believed in their power or rulership any more. I mean, let's face
it, who're you going to hasten to obey: the duke who rules your local state with
an iron fist and could squash you like a grape, or some guy way the heck off
down south who says he's the Son of Heaven but who your local duke pretty much
ignores except a couple times a year when he sends gifts as per official
procedure and request? Right. Most of the old power structures had fallen apart,
and what you had was a bunch of local aristocrats who spent their time beating
up on each other and periodically oppressing peasants, just because they could.
If this sounds like any of the previous lessons you really shouldn't be
surprised. It's a cycle that repeats itself in Chinese history almost as often
as 'good leader, mediocre leader, bad leader, rivers flooding, new leader'.
Country unites, country goes to pieces, country unites again. Like
clockwork.
Thing is, it's absolutely no fun to be on the receiving end of
one of these cycles. The aristocrats have all the fun and everybody else takes
it in the teeth. Our lesson subject for the day was one of these unfortunate
recipients of forcible dentistry, at least as far as anybody else could see when
he was born. The story begins in a village called Qufu in the state of Lu, the
modern province of Shandong, in the Year of the Rooster, 551 BCE, on the
twenty-seventh day of the eighth month. (It doesn't translate all that well to
the Western calendar - in 1999, that was 5 October, and in 2000, it was 24
September.) His family was of aristocratic ancestry, but long since deposed and
pretty darn poor. His dad was a former magistrate and soldier, and his mom was
supposedly descended from the son of a duke. He was named Kong Qiu by his
parents - the title we know him by didn't come along until a LOT later. As a kid
he was something of a perfectionist - temper tantrums against his toys when
things didn't come out exactly right, for example - and held pretend temple
rituals for fun. (Before you make any comments about this, go and track down a
Roman Catholic born before about 1955 or so and ask them if they ever played
'pretend Mass'. You'll get plenty of stories.) Dad died when the boy was three,
so he was pretty much raised by a single mother. Took a lot of jobs as a young
man so as to support the family. Shepherd, cowherd, bookkeeper, clerk, you name
it, he did it.
Not exactly the kind of background you expect for a
philosopher, huh? Let's have some credit where credit is due, though: at least
he got a good grounding in the practicalities of everyday life. Unlike SOME
philosophers I could mention, HE didn't spend all his time hanging around in the
marketplace chatting with a bunch of idle young Greek men, or settling out in
the countryside well away from anything that might have anything to do with the
real world. Nope. He worked his fingers to the bone, and I'm guessing this got
to him pretty quickly, because it's recorded that he'd decided by age fifteen to
devote as much of his life as he could to the pursuit of learning.
See,
kids? Even back in ANCIENT CHINA, people knew the way out of a really crappy
economic situation was to go to school.
He got married at nineteen to a
girl named Chi-Kuan; their eldest son, Kong Li, was born a year later.The family
is still going strong, mind you. Descendants of theirs have lived in the same
village ever since. One of them, the first to be born outside the region of
Qufu, is currently a hip-hop
star and R&B singer named Kung Ling Chi, or Jeffrey Kung. (It should be
noted that Jeffrey is intent on school as well as music - in his own words,
"School is very important to me. If I am a singer, how long can I sing, maybe 10
or 15 years? I feel like I need a diploma, then I will feel like I have a brain.
And if I don't graduate my parents will kill me.") It took him a while to get
his professional gears in motion after that. Wound up getting himself a position
as a stable manager (see? See what I mean about practicalities?) for the family
that ran his state's everyday affairs.
Not, understand, the actual
family with the title and the official positions and stuff. Nope. Lu, his home
state, had a duke and all, but as is so depressingly common the world over,
there was a power-behind-the-throne family lurking in the background. This would
be the Ji family, and that's who Kong Qiu was working for. In the process he
wound up meeting the actual Duke of Lu, and impressed him pretty
strongly. Gave him a nice chunk of advice, too, mostly about how to get the
better of the Ji family and be a REAL duke, but... well, the Ji family were his
employers... and people get ticky when you start talking about
them like that... so, you know, when the duke and the prime minister got in a
fight and the prime minister, who happened to be from the Ji family, got REALLY
angry and managed to chase the duke out of Lu, guess who was out of a job and
followed the duke the heck out of Dodge? Right.
Okay, so, what you've got
here is a thirty-five-year-old exile with the ancient Chinese equivalent of the
Kennedys mad at him. He's interested in government, he believes the only way to
make his country better is by making sure that everybody is educated enough to
know what they, personally, need to do and how to do it exactly right, and he's
nowhere near anything he ever really knew. Stinks to be him, doesn't it? Yup. So
what's he do? Settles himself down and takes up a position as a freelance editor
right there in the state of Qi. It gives him time to study music, which is not
as frivolous as it sounds - we're talking serious study here, like all the
ancient forms and uses of music. Hymns, folk songs, ritual pieces, you name it.
Also to study literature and poetry, dating back just as far as possible. It
wasn't the best life there was, but it at least got him somewhere - he continued
to advise the duke even with the two of them in exile, and when he returned to
Lu after the Duke's death (most of the Jis had bitten it by then) he finally got
recognized by the new ruler at the age of fifty. Got made a city magistrate. He
approached his job with the same sort of perfectionism he approached his
studies, and the city prospered under his administration. Over the next few
years the duke got to like him even more; he got to be Grand Secretary of
Justice, and finally got made Prime Minister at age 56.
We're talking
seriously happy philosopher here. The position meant that he got to do things
like rectify titles throughout the state, ensuring that absolutely everybody
knew who they were supposed to bow to and who they were supposed to order around
- thereby avoiding gory messes like that whole cock-up with the Ji family. Rites
and rituals and other religious observances had to be put in proper order, too.
He wasn't very big on religion himself - as far as he was concerned, doing
things right and living a moral life constituted enough religion for him - but
anything that was going to be done ought to be done well, and by the right
people. It helped ensure harmony throughout the state and contributed to the
strength of the people, so it mattered. Same deal with music and dance, since
the right song at the right time could make all the difference in society
functioning properly. (I'd give examples here, but all I can think of are
Vietnam protest songs, and all those ever seemed to do was make people
mad.)
All of this went over pretty well with the duke, to the point where
it cheesed off the next state over. They were used to Lu, which was a pretty
small state, being a bit of a pushover. It was functioning smoothly now, and
getting pretty darn strong - couldn't have THAT, now, could they? (I will
refrain from remarks here about the US government toppling Central American
governments to make life easier for US fruit companies to make a profit.) During
one of the sacrificial holidays they sent a bunch of horses and dancing girls to
Lu, and the duke was so thrilled he abandoned his duties to go and receive the
presents - that is, watch women until he drooled, get people to ride the horses
for hours to show how wonderful they were, etc. This was the equivalent of
showing up in, say, a medieval court in a Catholic country during Lent with a
couple thousand pounds of roast beef and getting the king to say 'nah, I didn't
need to do that whole religious fasting obligation thing anyway', at least to
the prime minister's way of thinking, so he pitched a fit and resigned at age
fifty-six.
He spent years wandering through China followed by people
who'd come to admire his teachings over the years, disciples who'd been studying
everything he'd said or written for ages. This bunch of folks called him Old
Master Kong, which is rendered Kongfuzi in Pinyin or K'ung Fu-tzu in Wade-Giles,
and this is where we get the name Confucius from - the Jesuits who first hit
China in later years Latinized it, like they did everything else. Like so many
people who advocate fundamental change at the roots of a system of government,
he found out in a hurry that he wasn't popular. Nobles and other folks who had a
heavy investment in the old, rotten way of doing things heard he was coming, saw
what he was doing, and started plotting to kick his sorry butt six ways from
Sunday. He got arrested and thrown in jail for five days once and almost got
starved to death when he and his followers were basically put under siege by
soldiers from nobles hostile to his teachings. (Managed to get a messenger out
to a friendly king who sent his own soldiers. It helped. A lot.) He made
it back to Lu at age 67 and spent the rest of his life teaching everybody he
could, then writing down everything he knew. He eventually died at age
72.
Okay. Now that we've gone over the Old Master's biography, let's just
spend a bit going over the stuff that mattered so much to him. All social order,
he believed, was dependent upon human relationships. Basic human relationships
were key to absolutely everything else, and if the five that mattered most were
not strictly observed, nothing else right could ever possibly proceed from them.
These were the relations between: parents and children, husbands and wives,
rulers and subjects, elder and younger siblings, and friends. Each relation was
slightly different, but the basics were the same. The superior member of the
relationship - the father, or the husband, or the ruler, or whatever - was
supposed to be benevolent, caring, just and fair; the inferior was supposed to
obey and serve reverently. Note the word 'supposed'. We're in social contract
territory here. If the superior fails in their responsibilities, the inferior's
highest duty is to doing what is right, not to upholding a relationship
that's essentially shot to hell. Remember when we talked about the Mandate
of Heaven? It's the same thing. DON'T SCREW UP.
Especially don't
screw up your kids, either. All social order is based on right relations within
the family. If the parent-child and husband-wife relations aren't right, the
child can't grow up right, and nothing that they do can come out properly right,
and eventually society just goes COMPLETELY ALL TO HELL. Larry Gonick uses this
as an excuse to refer to Confucius as 'the Old Republican' - family values,
anyone? - but that's not really right, because the Old Master didn't think a
whole lot of trade and commerce. That kind of thing was an invitation to fraud
and chicanery - he didn't object to profit and wealth per se, just to
what the pursuit thereof could do to a person, leading them into dishonesty,
fraud, and other nasty ways of being. It was a source of temptation to do wrong.
(Ahem. "The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." Thenk
yew.)
The virtues he prized and taught to be fundamental were
benevolence (ren), morality (yi), propriety/good manners (li), filial piety
(xiao - a big one, understandably), conscientiousness/loyalty (zhong), and
altruism or consideration for others (shu). All of these were things the
gentleman or 'superior man' ought to understand, take to heart, and practice.
Particularly ren, the love of others, and shu, altruism. Love others, honor
one's parents, do what is right rather than what is advantageous, refrain from
doing to other people what you would not want done to yourself, rule by moral
example instead of by violence, fulfil your role in each of the Five
Relationships to the utmost of your abilities, and you get to be considered a
person of virtue and do well in the world. Maybe not the most flexible system in
the world, and it defnitely doesn't allow for the kind of individual liberty and
'pursuit of happiness' that Americans value so much, but all in all really not a
bad deal. Throw in the fact that unlike a lot of other philosophers and
religious figures, the Old Master believed that human nature was fundamentally
decent and in need of education and guidance rather than punishment, and it's
definitely got a leg up on a lot of the other ways out there.
We'll go
over how it got to be so widespread and popular in another lesson. Next one,
however, will be on another chap from the same general time frame - Lao Tzu, the
voice of Taoism best known in the West.
Having said that, allow me to
suggest the following sources to you for information on Confucius himself and
his way of thinking:
An English-language biography
of the sage, from the people at confucius.org.
Another biography,
with a few notes that may point towards a slightly different understanding of
his later career.
A really
marvellous write-up on Confucius' moral teachings.
And some quotes from
the Master on the Five Basic Relationships.
Lesson 8 - Main Chinese History Page - Lesson 10