Confucianism and Moral Leadership

Any understanding of the moral content of Confucianism must be based on the fact that Chinese culture at the time of Confucius looked to the example of what was held to be a golden age of virtue. The development of the Confucian school in the fifth century BC represented not only a vital codification and condensation of Chinese wisdom but perhaps even more important, a systematic approach to the codification of a prevailing culture. In his emphasis on ethical forms (li) and on an ethical content for those forms (jen), Confucius advocated adoption of an attitude toward human experience that would, as he hoped, reclaim a new golden age.

The concepts of li and jen had arisen in that age, the Chou dynasty (1025 BC), "the creative age of China's great classical and philosophical literature" (Bodde 378). Li was originally personified, a demigod who "pressed the earth down" while Ch'ung lifted Heaven up (Bodde 391). That construction was of course a metaphor for li as the frame of human experience that was aligned with mythical experience. Thus the main purpose of human experience was

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lso becomes a decisive metaphor for the whole of society, which in the ascendancy of Confucianism in China was the orderly, hierarchical, feudal structure of the earlier dynasties. That metaphor, in turn, is connected to the entire project of education. Absorption of Confucian doctrine was meant to foster education of the ruling classes, which means that education was meant to remind the society's rulers of appropriate and prudent attitudes toward and exercise of authority over fellow citizens, which would inure to the benefit of the whole. Education of appropriate attitudes and behavior at the family level would fan outward to embrace all society. It was thus among the ancients, who, wishing to demonstrate virtue in the empire, "first ordered well their own States." Confucius continues, in the doctrine of the Great Learning: Wishing to order well their States, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, thy first extended to the utmost their knowledge (Great Learning, 1.
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Approximate Word count = 2493
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)