[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Confucianism
Chinese religion had a long "pre-Confucian" history, which might be conveniently named folk religion, with all the usual manifestations of shamanism, etc. It reached sufficient maturity by the time of Confucius that he was able so to crystalize and shape it that from that time on it is simply given his name: Confucianism. In speaking of Confucianism we should also bear in mind that it has gone through at least five major periods, which might be briefly described as follows:
- Confucianism of the "classical" period: thought system of the thinkers Confucius (551-479 B.C.E.), Mencius (372-289 B.C.E.) and Hsun-tzu (298-238 B.C.E.).
- Confucianism of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.).
- Confucianism of the middle period, from the fall of the Han up to the Song dynasty (960-1279 C.E.).
- Neo-Confucianism--thought system from the Song through the Ming (1368-1644 C.E.) to the end of the Qing (1644-1911 C.E.) dynasties, when the Republic was founded.
- New Confucianism (in this case, not the same as the like-meaning term, Neo-Confucianism)--twentieth-century rethinking and transformation of Confucian thought, whose "founder" was Hsiung Shi-li.
A question that usually arises at the beginning of any discussion of Confucianism is whether or not it should even be considered a religion, which can be defined as "an explanation of the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live accordingly, based on some notion of the transcendent." Or, should it be classified as such an explanation that is not ultimately based on a transcendent, to use my definition of an ideology as over against a religion.( Tu Wei-ming,(1998)) Julia Ching, however, noted that "From his own account of spiritual evolution, it might also be inferred that Confucius was a religious man, a believer in Heaven as personal God, ... who sought to understand and follow Heaven's will." Her own understanding of religion, she says, includes a consciousness of a dimension of transcendenc.......
