Wuling Congtai (Pavilions of King Wuling) was built by King Wuling of Zhao to inspect troops.  Photo: NIPIC

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Since its teaching by Confucius in the 6th century BCE, Confucianism has been followed by the Chinese people for more than two millennia. Yan-Zhao culture has played an important role in the development of Confucianism.

 

Creativity
During the Warring States Period, the states of Yan and Zhao were characterized with diverse thoughts and ideas, facilitating the formation of an era of great cultural and intellectual expansion in China.

Fangshi, a category of specialists that encompassed alchemists, astrologers, doctors and occultists, flourished in Yan. Such arts played a crucial part in the emergence of Taoism in the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220). Many influential people were followers of the arts of Fangshi. For instance, Zou Yan (305–240 BCE), a philosopher during the Warring States Period, used the theory of the Five Elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) to explain how history worked, deeply affecting Chinese political philosophy afterward. He was also the representative thinker of the Yin-Yang School. The Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian said that “he examined deeply the phenomena of the increase and decrease of the Yin and the Yang, and he wrote essays about their strange permutations and the cycles of the great sages from beginning to end.” Zou’s thought became an important source for the ancient classics explaining and commenting on the I Ching, such as Xi Ci Zhuan and Wen Yan Zhuan. His ideas also inspired the Han scholar Dong Zhongshu (179–104 BCE), who favored the worship of Heaven over the tradition of cults celebrating the Five Elements and promoted Confucianism as the official ideology of the Chinese imperial state.

King Wuling of Zhao (c. 340–295 BCE) was famous for reforms including “wearing the Hu (nomadic) styled attire and shooting from horseback.” He ordered all commanders to adopt the Hu style of dress, which was more suited to fighting on horseback in battles. These reforms greatly improved the fighting capability of the Zhao military and helped the fighting techniques of subsequent wars evolve from chariot to mounted warfare. Moreover, learning from the nomadic groups promoted cultural integration between Huaxia (the Han people) and northern ethnic peoples.

The city of Handan at Hebei Province was once an academic center. Shen Dao (c. 350–275 BCE), a Legalist theoretician, stressed the significance of shi (circumstantial advantage, power, or authority), because he believed that villains didn’t bow to worthy people, but worthy people yielded to power. Shen was most remembered for his influence on Han Fei (c. 280–233 BCE), a great Legalist philosopher, with regards to the concept of shi.

Impressed by Confucius, Gongsun Long (c. 320–250 BCE), another native of the State of Zhao, is best known for a series of paradoxes, including “White horses are not horses” and “On Hardness and Whiteness” (Li Jian Bai). The “White Horse Dialogue” is based on a confusion of class and identity, normally taken to assert the obviously false claim that white horses are not part of the group of horses. “On Hardness and Whiteness,” is based on the example of a stone that is both hard and white. Gongsun said that people could not feel the hardness of a white stone with their eyes and couldn’t know its color by hands. Therefore, there were only white stones and hard stones, but no stone that was both white and hard. These paradoxes seem to suggest a similarity to the discovery in Greek philosophy that pure logic may lead to apparently absurd conclusions. Gongsun’s thoughts contributed to the development of China’s methodology and logistics.

 

Succession and development
In the Yan-Zhao culture, Confucianism was hailed as a dominant tradition, philosophy or way of life. In this way, the Yan-Zhao culture preserved traditional Chinese culture.

Xunzi (c. 313–238 BCE), a Confucian philosopher who was born in Handan, was viewed as a materialist during the Warring States Period. He elaborated and systematized the work undertaken by Confucius and Mencius, giving cohesiveness, comprehensiveness, and direction to Confucian thought. Xunzi made use of Taoist terminology, though he rejected their doctrine. In this way, he put forward an argument that all the transformations in nature were caused by the interaction between Yin and Yang. He said, “When Heaven and Earth conjoin, the myriad things are begot; when the Yin and Yang principles combine, transformations and transmutations are produced.” Xunzi focused on humanity’s part in creating the roles and practices of an orderly society and gave a much smaller role to Heaven or nature as a source of order or morality than most other thinkers of the time. His thought was influential in China and remains a source of interest today.

Confucianism suffered a great loss during the reign of Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BCE), who suppressed the Hundred Schools of Thought which consisted of Confucianism and other philosophies, and Legalism became the endorsed ideology of the Qin Dynasty. It was in the Han Dynasty when Confucian approaches became the official ideology and Confucianism began to revive. Although a few Confucian thinkers, such as Lu Jia and Jia Yi, made important policy recommendations, Confucianism before the emergence of Dong Zhongshu (c. 179–104 BCE) was not particularly influential.

Dong Zhongshu, together with another renowned Confucian thinker, Liu De (171–130 BCE), played crucial roles in the revival of Confucianism. Both of them came from the regions of Hebei Province.

Since a large number of Confucian books were burned in the Qin Dynasty, searching and collecting existing Confucian books was key to the improvement of Confucianism. Liu De did a lot in collecting pre-Qin classics, such as the Shang Shu (Book of Documents), which is the foundation of Chinese political philosophy, the Li Ji (Book of Rites), a collection of texts describing the social forms and ceremonial rites of the Zhou Dynasty, and the Mencius, one of the most important texts of early Confucianism. Those core pre-Qin Confucian classics laid the foundation of the traditional Confucian canon.

The Han Dynasty scholar Dong Zhongshu is best known for establishing Confucianism as the state philosophy of China and as the basis of official political philosophy. As a philosopher, Dong merged Confucian values with the Yin-Yang School, Legalism and Mohism. Dong came up with the idea of Neo-Confucianism, which represented an important innovation of traditional Chinese ideology. He made the theory of the interaction between Heaven (tian) and humanity (ren) his central theme, and established the mandate of Heaven. He considered nature as a form of moral evaluation and social phenomenon as a way for Heaven to influence the mortal realm. The emperor is the “Son of Heaven,” and natural catastrophes such as floods and droughts are Heaven’s way of warning the emperor to examine his personal conduct and correct his mistakes.

 

Dai Jianbing and Du Yunhui are professors at Hebei Normal University.

(edited by REN GUANHONG)