The purpose of this research is to examine the key ideas of the Confucian tradition vis-a-vis the body of rituals and codes of behavior in the early Chou political order known as li. The plan of the research will be to set forth the principal features of li, which flourished in the period that Confucius himself referred to as the golden age, as well as such features of Confucianism as filial piety, righteousness, propriety and self cultivation, benevolence, perfect virtue, and moral and ethical character. In addition, the role of li in the social order, not only in Chou times but also as espoused and to an extent adumbrated by Confucius, will be discussed.
To properly position the Confucian response to li, it is essential to follow Bodde's declaration that the Chou dynasty was the seat of Chinese culture, "the creative age of China's great classical and philosophical literature" (Bodde, 1961, p. 378). In other words, early Chou is the source of the framework of Chinese civilization as it is commonly understood. Bodde's discussion focuses on a mythic personification of Li as a vague demigod who "pressed the earth down" (1961, p. 391) while Ch'ung lifted Heaven up. This is a metaphorical way of saying that li dealt with practical things of the earth, or the vicissitudes of life as envisioned to be enacted by the people of the earth, a fact confirmed by Bodde's reference to Eliade's famous explanation of the intersection of cosmic and historical time. It follows logically that li would in human experience refer to those human actions that would align them appropriately in mythical experience. Hence the association with ritual, or the human, quasi-sacramental enactment of mythical concepts.
Until Confucius' time, the core of Chinese identity appears to have owed itself to early Chou thought along mythical lines. The historical record appears to bear out that the significance of Confucianism's organized, systematic response...