A very brief introduction to the ideas of the Hundred Flowers period in Chinese thought: the search for public order, and morality

1. Early Chinese Thought

2. Pre-Confucian Ideas
• Ancestor Worship
• Mandate of Heaven
• geomancy
– 5 elements: Water, Fire, Earth, Metal, Wood
–Yin/Yang balances

3. Confucius: Seeking Order
• Five Relationships:
– Ruler and subject
– Father and son
– Husband and wife
– Older and Younger brother
– Friends
• "Rectification of Names"

4. Confucius: Education
• Historical Study
– Five Books (Documents, Spring & Autumn Annals,
Odes, Ritual, Changes)
• Ritual

5. Confucian Virtues (1)

6. Confucian Virtues (2)

7. Great Learning
• The ancients who wished to exemplify illustrious
virtue throughout the world would first set up
good governments in their states.
• Wishing to govern well their states, they would
first regulate their families.
• Wishing to regulate their families, they would
first cultivate their persons.
• Wishing to cultivate their persons, they would
first rectify their minds ["hearts"].

8. Great Learning
• Wishing to rectify their minds, they would first
seek sincerity in their thoughts.
• Wishing for sincerity in their thoughts, they
would first extend their knowledge.
• The extension of knowledge lay in the
investigation of things.
• For only when things are investigated is
knowledge extended;
• only when knowledge is extended are throughts
sincere;

9. Great Learning
• only when thoughts are sincere are minds
rectified;
• only when minds are rectified are our persons
cultivated;
• only when our persons are cultivated are our
families regulated;
• only when families are regulated are states
well governed;
• and only when states are well governed is
there peace in the world.

10. The Way: Rejecting Order
• Daoism, literally “The Way”
• Laozi: poetic, obscure, possibly a
contemporary of Confucius
• Zhuangzi: essayist and dialogist.
• Brought together as coherent school of
thought around 3rd c. BCE.
• Rejection of categories, language, striving,
order, virtue.
• Celebration of nature, flow, relaxed existence

11. Mo-zi: Radical Egalitarian
• Universal Love
• Rejection of warfare/defense of small states
• Authority
• Meritocracy
• Frugality

12. Mencius & Xunzi: Dueling Metaphors
• Mencius: "The goodness of human nature is
like the downward course of water. There is no
human being lacking in the tendency to do
good, just a there is no water lacking in the
tendency to flow downward."
• Xunzi: "Wood as straight as a plumb line may
be bent into a wheel that is round as if it were
drawn with a compass, and even after the
wood has dried, it will not straighten out again
because this is the way it has been bent."

13. Legalism:
Order and Power through Law
• Lord Shang (4c bce), Qin minister:
Pragmatism, anti-intellectualism; Authority,
Technique, Law
• Han Feizi (mid-3c bce), advisor to Qin Court:
Two Handles, anti-traditionalist.
• Li Si (late 3c bce), Qin Chief Counselor: Anti-
philosopher, anti-traditional. Poisoned Han
Feizi; executed as part of Qing succession
struggle.

14. Sources
• "Great Learning" from deBary, Chan, Watson,
Sources of Chinese Tradition, v. 1, p. 115.
• Background Image/Confucian Virtues Screen
from Portland Art Museum, Munjadoo Screen
of Confucian Virtues, early 19c Korea. Picture
by Jonathan Dresner
– http://www.flickr.com/photos/jondresner/