Unit 9 · The Confucian Classics

A canon is a set of books that a community treats as its most important texts. In Han China, the canon was the Five Classics. They were the Book of Songs, the Book of Documents, the Book of Changes, the Book of Rites and the Spring and Autumn Annals.

Each is a different genre, or kind of writing. The Songs is poetry. The Documents is speeches and records from early kings. The Changes is a divination book. The Rites describes ceremonies and conduct. The Spring and Autumn is a short year-by-year chronicle of the state of Lu.

Tradition held that Confucius edited or wrote some of these books. Modern scholars think most are older or later than Confucius, and grew over time. What is clear is that from the Han on, officials were expected to know them well.

The Book of Songs (Shijing) holds 305 poems, most from about 1000 to 600 BCE. Some are folk songs about love, farming and soldiers far from home. Others are hymns sung at court and at ancestral temples.

The first poem, "Guan ju," pictures ospreys calling on a river island and a young man longing for a gentle lady. Han commentators read it as praise of a queen’s virtue. Many modern readers read it as a love song. The same poem, two readings.

Confucius valued the Songs highly. In Analects 17.9, he tells students the Songs can stir the mind, help them observe, help them get along with others, and teach them duties to father and ruler. In Analects 2.2, he sums up all 300 poems in one phrase: no twisted thoughts.

The Book of Documents (Shangshu) gathers speeches and announcements credited to early kings and ministers, including the Zhou speeches on the Mandate of Heaven. As you learned, some chapters were later forgeries, which scholars sorted out over centuries.

The Book of Changes (Yijing, or I Ching) began as a divination manual. It uses 64 hexagrams, figures of six broken or solid lines. People cast yarrow stalks or coins to choose one, then read its text. Later commentaries, the "Ten Wings," turned it into a book of philosophy about change, yin and yang.

The Book of Rites (Liji) explains ceremonies from mourning to archery, and why they matter. Two of its chapters, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean, would later become two of the Four Books.

Zhu Xi (1130–1200) was a scholar of the Song dynasty. He wanted a clear path into Confucian learning. So he grouped four texts as the Four Books: the Analects, the Mencius, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean.

Zhu Xi advised students to read them in a set order: first the Great Learning for the outline, then the Analects for the foundation, then the Mencius, and last the Doctrine of the Mean for its depth. He wrote detailed notes on all four and published them together in 1190.

His reading shaped centuries of study. In 1313, the Yuan government made his commentary the standard for the civil-service exams. It stayed the standard until the exams ended in 1905. Later thinkers, like Wang Yangming, challenged parts of his reading.

The Great Learning is short. Its most famous passage traces a chain: to bring peace to the world, first govern the state well; to do that, first order the family; to do that, first cultivate yourself; and to do that, first set your heart right and make your thoughts sincere.

The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong) is about balance, or zhong. It describes a state in which feelings are not yet stirred and then, when they arise, hit the right measure. It also stresses cheng, sincerity or being true, which it links to the Way of Heaven.

Both texts are paraphrased here, since the public-domain translations named for this course do not include them. Tradition credits the Mean to Confucius’s grandson Zisi. Many modern scholars date both texts to the late Warring States or early Han.

The Mencius is named for the thinker Mengzi, or Mencius (c. 372–289 BCE). It is much longer than the Analects. Many passages are full conversations, where Mencius argues with kings, students and rival thinkers.

The book has seven books, each divided into two parts. Scholars cite them as 1A, 1B, 2A and so on. So Mencius 2A.6 means book 2, part A, passage 6. Legge’s translation labels the parts "Part I" and "Part II" and uses titles from the book’s rulers and students.

The Mencius was not always in the canon. For centuries it was read as one philosopher among many. It rose in status during the Song dynasty, and Zhu Xi’s Four Books made it central. The next chapter looks closely at its ideas.

Open the Analects anywhere and you find short entries. Many begin, "The Master said." Others show a student asking a question, or describe how Confucius dressed and ate. The book has 20 books and roughly 500 passages. Editions number some passages differently.

Confucius did not write it. The Chinese title, Lunyu, means something like "selected sayings." His students, and their students, gathered the material. Most scholars agree it reached roughly its present form by the early Han.

Scholars debate its layers. Some argue that books 3 to 9 hold older material and that the last books were added later. Others think the evidence is too thin to be sure. Readers can still notice that some books feel different from others.

Some Analects passages are sayings: one sentence to think about. "The Master said" introduces a thought, with no setting. Readers must imagine when, why and to whom it was said. That open space is one reason commentaries grew so long.

Other passages are dialogues. In Analects 12.1, the student Yan Hui asks about ren, humaneness. Confucius answers that it means mastering oneself and returning to ritual. Different students ask the same question and get different answers. Many readers think he fitted each answer to the student.

Book 10 is mostly scenes. It describes how Confucius behaved at court, at home and at meals. He would not sit on a mat that was not straight. These details show ritual as part of daily life, not only temple ceremony.

The classics did not stay inside China. In Korea, Silla and later Goryeo and Joseon rulers set up schools and exams on the classics. The Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) made Zhu Xi’s learning its official philosophy.

In Japan, scholars studied the classics for centuries. In the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), schools of Confucian thought flourished, and some scholars, such as Ito Jinsai, argued with Zhu Xi’s reading. Vietnam held exams on the classics from 1075 until 1919.

Because the classics were written in classical Chinese, educated people across East Asia could read the same texts even when they spoke different languages. Each country also built its own interpretation.

Mencius (c. 372–289 BCE) lived about a century after Confucius. Tradition says he studied with students of Confucius’s grandson. Like Confucius, he traveled to advise rulers. The book named for him records his arguments.

His most famous argument is in Mencius 2A.6. Suppose someone suddenly sees a child about to fall into a well. They will feel alarm and compassion. Mencius says this is not to win the parents’ friendship or neighbors’ praise, or because they dislike the child’s cry. The feeling comes on its own.

From this, Mencius concludes that the heart of compassion is part of being human. Someone without it, he says, is not fully human. This is a thought experiment, an imagined case used to test an idea. Readers still debate whether it proves what he claims.

In the same passage, 2A.6, Mencius names four feelings. The feeling of compassion is the start of ren, humaneness. The feeling of shame is the start of yi, rightness. The feeling of modesty and yielding is the start of li, ritual propriety. The sense of right and wrong is the start of zhi, wisdom.

The Chinese word Mencius uses, duan, can mean a beginning, a tip or a sprout. Many translators choose "sprout" to show his picture. Virtue is not complete at birth. It is a small shoot that can grow into a tree, or be crushed.

Mencius says people have these four as they have four limbs. If they extend them, it is like a fire starting to burn or a spring starting to flow. If they neglect them, they cannot even serve their parents.

If people are good by nature, why do so many act badly? Mencius answers with a picture in 6A.8. The trees on Ox Mountain were once lovely. But people cut them with axes, and cattle and sheep grazed the new shoots. Now the mountain is bare, and people think it never had trees.

Human beings are like this, Mencius says. The good heart is cut down day after day. But each night, and in the calm of early morning, a little goodness grows back. Bad conduct cuts it down again. Its nature was never bare.

In 2A.2, Mencius tells of a farmer of Song who worried his grain was growing slowly, so he pulled on every sprout. He came home tired and boasted he had helped them grow. His son ran to look; the plants had withered. Moral growth, Mencius suggests, cannot be forced, but it cannot be ignored either.

Mencius spoke boldly to kings. In 7B.14 he ranks what matters in a state: the people first, the altars of the land and grain next, and the ruler last. Few thinkers of his time said such a thing to a ruler’s face.

He urged humane government. A king should lower taxes, not waste the people’s labor in farming seasons, and make sure the old do not go hungry. In 1A.7 he tells King Xuan of Qi that the king’s own pity for an ox being led to sacrifice shows he has the heart to rule well.

Mencius believed that a ruler who shows care wins the people’s hearts, and that such a ruler cannot be stopped. He connected this to the Mandate of Heaven: Heaven sees as the people see, a line he quotes from the Book of Documents.

In Mencius 1B.8, King Xuan asks whether it was right for the founders of Shang and Zhou to overthrow the kings before them. Was that not a subject killing his ruler? Mencius answers that one who destroys humaneness and rightness is a mere tyrant, a ’fellow.’ He has heard of killing the fellow Zhou, the last Shang king, but not of killing a ruler.

The point is sharp. A ruler who is cruel to the people has already stopped being a true ruler. The Mandate of Heaven has passed from him. Some later readers called this a right of rebellion.

Rulers noticed. Tradition reports that the first Ming emperor, in the 1300s, was angered by such passages and had an edited Mencius prepared with some passages removed. Scholars also debate how far Mencius meant to go; he did not call on ordinary people to rise up.

Book 6A opens with a debate. The thinker Gaozi says human nature is like willow wood, and rightness is like cups and bowls. Making people good is like carving the wood. Mencius replies: do you follow the willow’s nature, or must you do violence to it? If violence, then you say goodness harms human nature.

Gaozi tries another image. Human nature is like water whirling in a pool. Open a channel east and it flows east; open one west and it flows west. So nature is neither good nor bad. Mencius answers in 6A.2 that water may not prefer east or west, but it always flows down.

Water can be splashed over your head or forced uphill, Mencius adds, but that is force, not its nature. So it is with people who do wrong. This debate shows how carefully early thinkers built arguments with analogies.

Xunzi (c. 310–235 BCE) was the leading Confucian of the late Warring States. He taught at the Jixia Academy in Qi, and later lived in the state of Chu. Tradition says Han Feizi and Li Si studied with him.

Chapter 23 of the Xunzi is titled "Human Nature Is Bad." Xunzi says people are born loving profit, feeling envy and wanting to please their eyes and ears. If they follow these, fighting and disorder follow. Goodness, he says, is the result of conscious effort (wei).

"Bad" here does not mean wicked from birth in every act. Many scholars translate the word e as "bad" or "crude." Xunzi means that raw desires, left unshaped, lead to conflict. His answer is teachers, ritual and law.

Xunzi uses images from craft. A warped board must be steamed and clamped in a press frame before it is straight. Dull metal must be ground on a whetstone before it is sharp. In the same way, he says, people need teachers and ritual to become good.

His first chapter, "Encouraging Learning," opens with a famous line: learning must never stop. Blue dye comes from the indigo plant, yet it is bluer than the plant. Ice comes from water, yet it is colder. A student, shaped by learning, can surpass the teacher.

For Xunzi, ritual is the great human invention. The ancient sages, he says, saw that desires led to conflict and created rites to set limits and share goods fairly. Ritual does not destroy desire; it guides it.

Mencius and Xunzi agree on much. Both honor Confucius, value learning and ritual, and hope for humane rulers. Both think people can become sages. They disagree on where goodness starts: inside, as a sprout, or outside, through training.

Zhu Xi and the Song Neo-Confucians sided with Mencius. The Mencius became one of the Four Books, and Xunzi was left out. Some blamed Xunzi for his Legalist students. Yet Xunzi’s views on ritual and learning shaped Confucian practice for centuries.

Modern readers revisit the debate. Some psychologists see sprouts of empathy in infants. Others stress how much children learn from their surroundings. Scholars caution against treating either ancient thinker as simply right; the debate itself is what the tradition keeps.