The two great native Chinese traditions and their interplay across 2,500 years. The Way of nature and the Way of human propriety. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu. Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi. Neo-Confucianism. Religious Daoism. The Cultural Revolution and the contemporary revival.
Chinese civilisation has been shaped, more than by any other intellectual force, by the long conversation between two indigenous traditions. Confucianism — the way of human propriety, ritual, social harmony, and educated cultivation. Taoism — the way of nature, spontaneity, non-coercion, and the dao that exceeds names. Each defines itself partly in relation to the other.
The traditional Chinese saying: 儒道互補 — "Confucianism and Daoism complement each other." A scholar-official could be Confucian in office and Daoist in retreat; a single life-cycle could weave both. The civilisation has rarely required choosing.
This deck covers Lao Tzu and the Daodejing, Chuang Tzu, religious Daoism's later development; Confucius and the Analects, Mencius's optimism, Xunzi's realism, the Han establishment of Confucianism, the Tang-Song Neo-Confucian synthesis (Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming), and the modern reckoning — the May Fourth attack on tradition, the Cultural Revolution's violence, and the 21st-century revival under different conditions. Throughout: the texture of two traditions whose continued relevance to a billion-and-a-half people makes them among the most consequential intellectual heritages on the planet.
The two traditions emerged in the same crisis. The Spring and Autumn period (771-476 BCE) and especially the subsequent Warring States period (475-221 BCE) saw the breakdown of the Western Zhou ritual order. The old aristocratic feudalism failed; states fought endlessly; intellectuals tried to diagnose and prescribe. The result was the "Hundred Schools of Thought" (諸子百家) — Confucians, Daoists, Mohists, Legalists, Logicians, Yin-Yang theorists, military strategists.
The shared inheritance of all schools was older. The Five Classics (eventually canonised by the Han) preceded the schools and were claimed by several:
The Yijing (Book of Changes, 易經) — the divinatory-cosmological classic of 64 hexagrams.
The Shijing (Book of Songs / Odes, 詩經) — 305 ancient poems.
The Shujing (Book of Documents / History, 書經) — speeches and edicts of legendary sage-kings.
The Liji (Book of Rites, 禮記) — ritual prescriptions.
The Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals, 春秋) — terse annals of the state of Lu.
Both Confucians and Daoists drew on this shared substrate. They differed on what to do with it.
Kongzi (孔子, "Master Kong"; 551-479 BCE; Latinised "Confucius" by 17th-century Jesuits). Born in the small state of Lu (modern Shandong), of impoverished aristocratic descent. Spent most of his life seeking ministerial positions in various states; brief successes; mostly disappointed. Spent his later years teaching disciples, who after his death gathered his sayings into the Analects.
The Analects (論語, "Edited Conversations") is short — about 16,000 Chinese characters in 20 books — and consists of brief exchanges, aphorisms, and observations. The form is loose; the cumulative effect is precise.
Confucius's central concerns:
Ren (仁) — humaneness, benevolence, the integrating virtue. Variously translated; never reducible to one English word. The Analects defines it differently for different students — for one, "love your fellow man"; for another, "subdue yourself and return to ritual"; the principle adjusts to the practitioner.
Li (禮) — ritual, propriety, correct form. Not external ceremony but the developed capacity to act appropriately in every situation — toward parents, rulers, friends, strangers. Ritual is the school of humaneness.
Junzi (君子) — the "exemplary person" or "gentleman." The cultivated human being, achieved through long study and self-discipline. The opposite of xiaoren (小人, "small person") — the petty, self-interested, uncultivated.
Zhengming (正名) — "rectifying names." Calling things by their proper names is the foundation of social order. When language is corrupted, action goes wrong.
What makes the Analects distinctive: it is not systematic philosophy. It is the recorded voice of a specific man with specific students, in particular situations. The teaching is concrete, conversational, sometimes humorous, sometimes melancholic.
The classical Confucian education — for centuries the basis of the Chinese imperial examination system — required memorising the Analects entirely. The result was a population of educated men (and a smaller number of women) who carried these sentences in their heads for life, and whose moral vocabulary was substantially Confucian whether or not they explicitly identified as Confucian.
The text's tone — earnest, demanding, ironic, deeply concerned with how people actually behave toward each other in concrete settings — has worn well across 2,500 years.
Mengzi (孟子, "Master Meng"; c. 372-289 BCE; Latinised "Mencius"). The second great Confucian, traditionally a student of Confucius's grandson Zisi. Born after Confucius's death; spent his life much as Confucius had — wandering between states, advising rulers, teaching disciples. The Mencius, his recorded teachings (longer and more discursive than the Analects), became one of the Four Books.
Mencius's distinctive contribution: a developed argument for the natural goodness of human nature (性善, xing shan). He demonstrated this through a thought experiment that still works: if you suddenly saw a child about to fall into a well, you would feel a flash of alarm and concern — not because you wanted to befriend the parents, not for reputation, not for any calculated reason, but because you have, in your nature, the "sprout" of compassion (惻隱之心).
From this seed and three others (the sense of shame, the sense of deference, the sense of right-and-wrong), Mencius built his theory of the four cardinal virtues: ren (humaneness), yi (rightness), li (propriety), zhi (wisdom). The virtues are not imposed from outside; they grow from the seeds already in human nature, with proper cultivation.
Mencius also developed Confucian political philosophy. The Mandate of Heaven (天命): rulers govern by Heaven's authority but are accountable; bad rulers lose the mandate; rebellion against tyrants can be legitimate. The argument supplied the standard Chinese justification for dynastic transition for two thousand years.
Xunzi (荀子, c. 310-235 BCE), the third great classical Confucian, took the opposite position from Mencius on human nature.
Xunzi's claim: human nature is bad (性惡, xing e). What is good in humans is acquired (wei, "deliberate effort, artifice"), not natural. Left to themselves, humans pursue desires, fight for resources, and produce chaos. Civilisation is the long, hard work of imposing ritual and education on the raw material of human nature, transforming it into something cultivated.
The disagreement with Mencius was not as great as it sounds. Both agreed that ritual, education, and self-cultivation are central. They disagreed on whether the work goes with the grain (Mencius) or against it (Xunzi). Mencius emphasised innate seeds; Xunzi emphasised acquired habit.
Xunzi's other major contributions: a sustained naturalistic theory of ritual (ritual works because it shapes human emotion through embodied practice — not because Heaven demands it); a sharp epistemology and theory of language; the most polished classical Chinese prose of any of the Confucians.
Two of Xunzi's students became the major Legalist theorists: Han Feizi and Li Si, who would help the Qin state unify China through harsh legalist methods. The genealogy was awkward for the Confucian tradition; Xunzi's own status fluctuated, with later Neo-Confucianism preferring Mencius.
Xunzi has had a 20th-century revival. His naturalism, his attention to social institutions, his rigour, all play well with modern philosophical sensibilities.
Laozi (老子, "Old Master"). Traditionally a contemporary of Confucius (6th C BCE); historically possibly a later, possibly composite figure. Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian (c. 100 BCE) gives the legend: Laozi was an archivist of the Zhou court; observing the dynasty's decline, he rode west on an ox; the border guard begged him not to leave without writing down his teaching; Laozi obliged, produced the Daodejing, and disappeared.
The Daodejing (道德經, "Classic of the Way and its Power") is short — 81 chapters, about 5,000 Chinese characters total. It is the most-translated Chinese book; the most widely read non-Christian religious text in the West; and one of the strangest, most condensed pieces of writing in human civilisation.
The book's distinctive concepts:
Dao (道) — "the Way." The pattern by which the universe operates. Not a god, not a being, but a tendency. Reality's grain.
De (德) — virtue, power, the dao's expression in particular things.
Wu wei (無為) — "non-action," "non-coercive action." Not passivity but action that flows with the situation rather than imposing on it. The water that finds its way; the cook who follows the meat's grain.
Ziran (自然) — "self-so," spontaneity, naturalness.
Against Confucian propriety, Laozi proposes: drop the imposed rules; the dao is older and wiser than your rules; let things take their natural course.
Zhuangzi (莊子; c. 369-286 BCE) is the second great Daoist. The book bearing his name — Zhuangzi, the Inner Chapters of which (chapters 1-7) are likely his work; the rest later — is one of the philosophical masterpieces of any tradition.
Where the Daodejing is gnomic and aphoristic, the Zhuangzi is narrative, comic, and philosophically wild. It tells stories.
The most famous passage: Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly fluttering happily; he wakes; he is Zhuangzi. But — he asks — was he Zhuangzi dreaming he was a butterfly, or is he now a butterfly dreaming he is Zhuangzi? "Between Zhuangzi and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the transformation of things." The question is not solved; it is opened.
Other recurring devices: useless trees that grow ancient because they are useless; cooks who carve oxen for nineteen years without dulling the blade because they follow the natural joints; cripples and outcasts who have understood what the powerful have not; rulers who would do better to leave their subjects alone.
The philosophical claims: language is treacherous; categories are conventional; "this" and "that" trade places when you change perspective; the sage abides in what cannot be named, takes things as they come, dies easily. The free human being is the one who has stopped insisting on a particular shape for the world.
Zhuangzi influenced Chan/Zen Buddhism (the philosophical convergence is striking), Chinese landscape painting, much of Chinese poetry, and — through Daoist transmission — substantial parts of Korean and Japanese culture.
Beyond the philosophical Daoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi (called 道家, daojia, "the Daoist school"), there developed an organised religious Daoism (道教, daojiao, "the Daoist teaching") with priesthoods, temples, scriptures, deities, and ritual practices.
The major historical formations:
Tianshi Dao (Way of the Celestial Masters), founded by Zhang Daoling (2nd C CE) in Sichuan. The first organised Daoist church. Confessional rituals, healing practices, communal organisation. The lineage continues today (the current 65th Celestial Master is in Taiwan).
Shangqing (Highest Clarity) tradition, 4th C CE, focused on visualisation, internal alchemy, and contact with celestial bureaucracies. Aristocratic, textual, mystical.
Lingbao (Numinous Treasure) tradition, 5th C CE. Borrowed Buddhist organisational forms; emphasised liturgy and merit-transfer for the dead.
Quanzhen (Complete Perfection), 12th C, founded by Wang Chongyang. Monastic; asceticism; the synthesis of "the three teachings" (Daoism + Buddhism + Confucianism). Still the major monastic Daoist tradition.
Internal alchemy (內丹, neidan) — the contemplative-physiological practices for transforming the body's vital energies into refined spiritual substances. The "elixir" sought is not external pharmacy but inner integration.
Religious Daoism has historically been distinct from the Daoist philosophy of Laozi-Zhuangzi but draws on the same root. The two together constitute the Daoist tradition broadly construed.
The Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE) had ruled by Legalist principles; it briefly persecuted Confucians (the legendary 213 BCE "burning of the books and burying of the scholars"). Qin collapsed quickly; the Han dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE) followed and ruled for 400 years.
The decisive moment for Confucianism: under Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141-87 BCE), the philosopher Dong Zhongshu (董仲舒, c. 179-104 BCE) advocated and the emperor implemented the establishment of Confucianism as state ideology. Confucian scholars were appointed to government posts; an Imperial Academy was founded (124 BCE); the Five Classics became the canon. Confucianism — in a syncretic form mixing Mencius, Xunzi, yin-yang cosmology, and political theology — became the official framework of Chinese imperial governance for the next two thousand years.
The imperial examination system (eventually formalised under the Sui and Tang) tested candidates on the Confucian classics. Government office was, in principle, accessible to anyone who could master the texts — a remarkable meritocratic feature of premodern Chinese governance, with caveats about who could afford the years of study. Until 1905, when the system was abolished, Confucian texts shaped what a Chinese educated person had to know.
The Han establishment of Confucianism is the political event that made it more than a school — it made it the operating ideology of one of human civilisation's largest and longest-running political systems.
Buddhism arrived in China from Central Asia around the 1st century CE and gradually established itself as a major intellectual-religious force. By the Tang dynasty (618-907), Buddhism was the most dynamic intellectual tradition in China; the great Chan masters, the Pure Land school, Tiantai, Huayan all flowered. Daoism reacted, borrowed from, and competed with Buddhism. Confucianism was politically institutionalised but intellectually somewhat eclipsed.
The Song dynasty (960-1279) saw the great Confucian counter-response. Neo-Confucianism (called 理學, lixue, "School of Principle," or 道學, daoxue, "School of the Way") was a sustained intellectual revival that took on Buddhism on its own metaphysical terrain — developing systematic Confucian metaphysics, cosmology, and contemplative practice — while preserving Confucian ethical-political commitments.
The major figures:
Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073) — author of Taiji Tu Shuo (Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate), proposing a cosmological diagram unifying yin-yang theory with Confucian ethics.
Cheng Hao (1032-1085) and Cheng Yi (1033-1107) — brothers who developed the foundations of the lixue framework.
Zhang Zai (1020-1077) — author of the famous "Western Inscription," articulating a vision of universal kinship: "Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother... All people are my brothers and sisters; all things are my companions."
The synthesiser arrived in the 12th century: Zhu Xi.
Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130-1200) — the most influential Chinese thinker after Confucius and Mencius. Synthesiser of Neo-Confucianism into the form that dominated East Asian intellectual life for the next 700 years.
Zhu Xi's accomplishments:
Canonisation of the Four Books. He selected and standardised the Analects, Mencius, Great Learning, and Doctrine of the Mean as the core Confucian curriculum. His commentaries on these texts (Sishu Zhangju Jizhu) became the official examination texts in 1313 and remained so until 1905. Generations of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese scholars memorised Zhu Xi's commentaries along with the texts themselves.
Metaphysical synthesis. Zhu Xi articulated a systematic cosmology built on two principles: li (理, principle, pattern) and qi (氣, vital energy, material force). All things are constituted by their li (the pattern they instantiate) and their qi (the material in which the pattern is realised). The universe is a vast network of principle-and-substance, with the Supreme Ultimate (taiji) as the totality of all li.
Practice. The Neo-Confucian path is the "investigation of things" (格物, gewu) — careful examination of the principles in things, which are continuous with the principles in oneself. Combined with self-cultivation through quiet sitting, study, and ritual practice.
Zhu Xi's intellectual stature in East Asia is hard to overstate. In Korea (Joseon dynasty) and Vietnam (Nguyen dynasty) his work shaped state-Confucian orthodoxy as fully as in China; in Japan it shaped the Tokugawa intellectual world.
Wang Yangming (王陽明, 1472-1529), Ming-dynasty thinker, military commander, and Zhu Xi's most important Neo-Confucian critic.
The disagreement: Zhu Xi located moral knowledge in the long, painstaking investigation of external things — read more, study more, examine each principle carefully, and over years internalise the right understanding. Wang argued that moral knowledge is innate (the Mencian heritage taken further) and accessible immediately through introspection. The famous moment of his enlightenment came in 1508 in exile in Guizhou: sitting in a cave, he suddenly realised that li is not in the things outside but in the mind itself.
His three central doctrines:
The unity of mind and principle (心即理, xin ji li). Heart-mind is principle. Don't look for moral truth in the external classics; look in the ethical immediacy of your response.
The unity of knowledge and action (知行合一, zhi xing he yi). To know the good and not act on it is not really to know it. Genuine moral knowledge cannot fail to express itself in action.
The extension of innate knowing (致良知, zhi liangzhi). Cultivate and extend the moral knowing you already have, in every situation. The work is not adding external content; it is applying your already-given moral capacity to circumstance.
Wang's school dominated late-Ming intellectual life and was particularly influential in Japan, where Yamaga Sokō, Nakae Tōju, and the later Ōyōmei-gaku tradition shaped samurai ethics and (eventually) the activists of the Meiji Restoration.
Confucianism's influence on Chinese (and Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese) social structure went deep beyond philosophy. The Five Relationships (五倫) — between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder and younger sibling, friend and friend — were the framework of social obligation. Each relationship had its own form of right conduct: loyalty, filiality, distinction, deference, faithfulness.
Filial piety (孝, xiao) — the foundational virtue. Honouring one's parents in life, mourning them properly in death, continuing the lineage. The Classic of Filial Piety (孝經) was a basic text of Confucian education.
The classical Confucian society was therefore strongly hierarchical (rulers above subjects, fathers above sons, husbands above wives, elders above younger), familial (kinship structures the basic ethical-political imagination), and ritual (ceremonies for life-cycle transitions and seasonal observances structured time and meaning). The lineage hall, the family graveyard, the ancestral tablets — these were the most important religious-ethical objects in most Chinese households for two millennia.
The 20th-century reforms (the May Fourth Movement, the Communist revolution, the Cultural Revolution) attacked all of this, with varying success. The hierarchical-patriarchal aspects were genuinely modified by 20th-century changes (women's education, marriage reform, urbanisation). The deeper kinship-ethical structure — care for parents, family meals, the importance of the family in life decisions, ancestor remembrance at festivals — has proved more durable.
If Confucianism shaped social and political life, Daoism shaped much of what Chinese civilisation has produced in the way of art, poetry, and contemplative culture.
Landscape painting. The great tradition of Chinese landscape (山水, shanshui — "mountain and water") painting is thoroughly Daoist in sensibility. The human figures are tiny; the mountains and water dominate; the empty space is as important as the painted; the painter's brush follows the rocks' natural shape rather than imposing on it. Fan Kuan (Song dynasty), Guo Xi, Ma Yuan, Xia Gui — and the entire Yuan-Ming-Qing tradition.
Poetry. The Tang poets — particularly Li Bai (Li Po) and Wang Wei — drew heavily on Daoist sensibility. Li Bai's wine-and-mountain poems; Wang Wei's quiet Buddhist-Daoist landscape poems. The Chinese poetic tradition is not Daoist exclusively (much of it is also deeply Confucian or Buddhist) but Daoist sensibility informs much of its best.
Calligraphy. The art of brushwork. The aesthetic value of vital movement (qi yun, "vital resonance") in the brush stroke. The cursive scripts (caoshu, "grass script") most prized by connoisseurs require Daoist spontaneity to execute well.
Contemplative arts. Tai chi (太極拳), qigong (氣功), traditional Chinese medicine — all drawing on Daoist physiological-cosmological theory.
Garden design. The classical Suzhou gardens follow Daoist principles: irregularity, the integration of building and rock and water, the suggestion of larger landscape in compressed space.
The civilisation has been Confucian in office and Daoist in retreat — and the retreat has produced much of what is most loved.
The classical East Asian formula: 三教合一 (sanjiao heyi) — "the three teachings unite." Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism — each understood in its mature post-Song form — were treated as complementary rather than competing.
The standard division of labour:
Confucianism for the social-political dimension: how to live as parent, official, neighbour, citizen. The educated person's public ethic.
Daoism for the personal-natural dimension: how to attune oneself to the larger pattern, when to retreat, how to grow old, how to die. The educated person's private contemplative practice.
Buddhism for the existential-soteriological dimension: how to handle suffering at the deepest level, what happens after death, how to liberate oneself from the cycle of conditioning.
A traditional Chinese educated man might be a Confucian official by day, study Buddhism in his late evenings, and follow Daoist exercises and dietary practices for his health. The combination was not seen as inconsistent. Each tradition addressed a different region of human life; together they covered the whole.
This pattern — religious-philosophical pluralism as a default mode of life rather than an exceptional ecumenical achievement — is one of the most distinctive features of East Asian civilisation, and one of its instructive contributions to the comparative study of religion.
The 16th-19th-century encounter between Chinese tradition and European modernity reshaped both. The earliest serious contact was the Jesuit mission, especially Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), who lived in China from 1583 until his death and wrote in classical Chinese with sufficient fluency to engage Chinese scholars on their own terms. Ricci translated Confucius into Latin, presenting Confucianism as a "natural religion" compatible with Christian truth. The Jesuit accommodation strategy — finding common ground rather than rejecting Chinese tradition — produced the European Enlightenment's first serious encounter with Chinese thought.
By the 18th century, European thinkers (Leibniz, Voltaire, Quesnay) cited Confucius as evidence that ethical wisdom was available outside the Christian framework. Confucianism became part of European Enlightenment self-understanding.
The 19th-century encounter was harsher. The Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-60) and subsequent unequal treaties exposed China's military and political weakness; the question for Chinese intellectuals shifted from "what can we contribute to world thought" to "how do we save the civilisation."
The diagnostic answers split. Conservatives (the "self-strengthening" reformers of the 1860s-90s) argued for Western technology with Chinese values intact: "Chinese learning for the foundation, Western learning for use." Reformers (Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao around 1898) argued for institutional modernisation with Confucian values reinterpreted. Radicals (the May Fourth generation, 1919) argued that the tradition itself was the problem: only by repudiating Confucianism could China become modern.
The radical view won — for a while.
On May 4, 1919, students at Peking University demonstrated against the Versailles Treaty's transfer of German concessions in Shandong to Japan. The protest catalysed the broader New Culture Movement (1915-1925) — a sustained intellectual attack on traditional Chinese culture, with Confucianism as primary target.
The major figures:
Chen Duxiu (1879-1942), editor of New Youth magazine, later co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party. The slogan: "Down with Confucius and Sons!"
Hu Shih (1891-1962), Columbia-trained, advocate for vernacular Chinese (replacing classical Chinese for ordinary use) and for "wholesale Westernization." Pragmatist (Dewey was his teacher).
Lu Xun (1881-1936), the great writer. A Madman's Diary (1918) — the first piece of modern Chinese vernacular fiction — had its narrator discover, between the lines of the Confucian classics, the words "EAT PEOPLE." The accusation: Confucian ritual order is cannibalism dressed in propriety.
The May Fourth attack identified Confucianism with the obstacles to modernisation: footbinding, arranged marriage, generational hierarchy, suppression of individual initiative, deferral to authority, the imperial examination system that had produced rote-memorising bureaucrats while the West built warships. The critique was not entirely fair to Confucianism (much of what was attacked was Qing-era practice rather than essential Confucian teaching) but it was politically devastating.
Confucianism's institutional position collapsed. The examination system had been abolished in 1905; the dynasty fell in 1911; by the 1920s the tradition had no political home and few public defenders.
The catastrophic culmination of the modern attack on tradition. From 1966 to 1976, Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution mobilised young Red Guards against the "Four Olds" — old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas. Confucius was a primary target.
The "Criticise Lin Biao, Criticise Confucius" campaign (1973-74) — directed nominally at the disgraced Marshal Lin Biao, actually at Premier Zhou Enlai's residual moderate Confucianism — produced a torrent of denunciation. Confucius was framed as the historical ideologue of slave-owning society; Confucianism as the ideology of feudal reaction; the Confucian tradition as antithetical to revolutionary modernity.
The material destruction was severe. Confucian temples were defaced or destroyed (the Qufu temple complex, Confucius's birthplace, was attacked by Red Guards in November 1966 — saved partially because the local cadres limited the damage). Books were burned. Scholars were beaten, exiled, killed. Family ancestral practices were forbidden. Many traditional crafts, recipes, and oral lineages did not survive.
Daoist temples and Buddhist monasteries suffered comparably. Religious practitioners were imprisoned. Sacred objects were melted down. The accumulated material patrimony of religious China took losses from which it has not fully recovered.
What did not happen: the actual erasure of Confucian and Daoist habits from Chinese life. Family loyalty, filial piety, ritualised meals, ancestor remembrance — these proved harder to abolish by decree than the physical infrastructure had been to destroy. After Mao's death in 1976 and the 1978 reforms, the practices began to return.
The post-1978 Chinese reform era saw a gradual rehabilitation of Confucianism, accelerating from the late 1990s.
The drivers: the Communist Party's search for ideological resources beyond Marxism (whose rhetorical force had decayed); intellectual unease about cultural rootlessness; the influence of the East Asian "Confucian capitalist" success stories (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore) and the question of whether Confucian values had something to do with their economic dynamism.
The state moves: the establishment of Confucius Institutes worldwide (from 2004) — Chinese-government-funded language and culture programs at foreign universities; the elaborate 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony foregrounding Confucian quotations; the resurrection of the Qufu Confucius commemorations as international cultural events; Xi Jinping's repeated public invocation of Confucian and traditional Chinese values from 2013 onward.
The intellectual movement: a "New Confucianism" (新儒家, xin rujia) flowering. Major figures include Tu Weiming (Harvard, then Peking University), Yu Ying-shih (Princeton), Mou Zongsan (Hong Kong, earlier generation). Topics: Confucian environmental ethics, Confucian democratic theory, Confucian-feminist dialogue, the comparison with Western liberal frameworks. The journal Dao publishes much of this work.
The popular revival: traditional clothing (Hanfu) movements; private Confucian academies (shuyuan) for children; commercial Confucianism; new temples and ancestral shrines.
How deep this revival goes is contested. Some see substantial rooting; others see state-managed nostalgia. Both elements are present.
Daoism, both philosophical and religious, has had its own complicated 20th-century survival.
Religious Daoism — the temples, priesthoods, liturgical practices — was severely damaged by the Cultural Revolution but has gradually recovered. The major Daoist mountains (Wudang in Hubei, Longhu in Jiangxi, Maoshan in Jiangsu) function again as pilgrimage sites; the Quanzhen monastic tradition continues at Beijing's Baiyun Temple; the Zhengyi (Celestial Masters) tradition continues with its hereditary priesthood (now centred in Taiwan; the mainland branch has its own organization). The China Daoist Association (state-supervised but real) currently lists tens of thousands of priests at thousands of registered temples.
Philosophical Daoism's contemporary fortunes are different. The Daodejing and Zhuangzi have remained classics, read in Chinese schools; their influence in Chinese aesthetics, philosophy, and traditional medicine is uninterrupted. Globally, philosophical Daoism has had an enormous Western reception — the Daodejing is one of the most-translated books in history, and Daoist concepts (wu wei, the dao, the yin-yang complementarity) have entered global vocabulary.
The contemporary Daoist contribution to environmental and ecological thought is increasingly noted. The Daoist insistence on humans as part of larger natural patterns, the wu wei ethic of non-coercive action, the sense of nature as having its own integrity — these resonate with contemporary ecological concerns in ways that have produced serious cross-tradition work (the Forum on Religion and Ecology, founded by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim).
Confucianism and Daoism are not just Chinese phenomena. Their reach across East Asia is substantial.
Korea's Joseon dynasty (1392-1897) was the most thoroughly Confucian state in history. The Korean Neo-Confucian tradition produced major figures — Yi Hwang (Toegye), 1501-1570, and Yi I (Yulgok), 1536-1584 — whose work was at the highest level of East Asian intellectual sophistication. Korean Confucian academies (seowon, with the most famous now UNESCO World Heritage sites) survive as cultural institutions. Contemporary Korean culture remains visibly Confucian-shaped (family hierarchy, education emphasis, public ritual courtesies).
Japan's Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868) used Neo-Confucianism — in both the Zhu Xi (Shushigaku) and Wang Yangming (Ōyōmei-gaku) versions — as state ideology. The samurai class developed an ethical code (bushidō) heavily inflected by Confucian virtue ethics. Japanese Confucian thinkers — Hayashi Razan, Yamaga Sokō, Itō Jinsai, Ogyū Sorai — had their own distinctive contributions. The Wang Yangming school's emphasis on intuitive moral knowledge influenced the Meiji-era activists who overthrew the shogunate.
Vietnam's Nguyễn dynasty (1802-1945) was another deeply Confucian state, with Vietnamese examination culture and Confucian rituals modeled on Chinese practice.
The "Confucian cultural sphere" — China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore — comprises roughly 1.6 billion people and is one of the largest and most economically dynamic regions of the contemporary world. The continuing relevance of Confucian-Daoist heritage to this region is one of the largest under-discussed facts about contemporary global civilisation.
One Daoism overview, one Confucian Analects audiobook, and one general Chinese-philosophy primer.
Taoism Explained · A clear introduction
And two further:
— The Confucian Analects · audiobook. The full text in audio. Listen across several walks; you will know more after than you did.
— Classical Chinese Philosophy · brief introduction. The schools and the conversation between them.
Read alongside: Confucius, the Analects in Edward Slingerland's or Burton Watson's translation. Mencius, in D.C. Lau's translation. Lao Tzu, the Daodejing in Stephen Mitchell (poetic) and Roger Ames & David Hall (philosophical) translations together. Chuang Tzu, in Burton Watson's or Brook Ziporyn's translation. Zhu Xi, in Wing-tsit Chan's Sourcebook. Tu Weiming, Centrality and Commonality (the contemporary New Confucian). Edward Slingerland, Trying Not to Try (the wu wei book). Bryan Van Norden, Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy.
Three claims.
They have shaped one of human civilisation's largest sustained societies for 2,500 years. The world of 1.6 billion people in the East Asian Confucian-Daoist sphere — China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, the diaspora — operates within an ethical-cultural-aesthetic register substantially formed by these traditions. To not know them is to not know a fifth of humanity's intellectual inheritance.
They offer alternatives to the Greek-Christian-Enlightenment frameworks that have dominated Western thought. Confucian relational ethics differs from Western individualism in instructive ways. Daoist non-coercion offers a different model of action than the Greek-Promethean. The way Confucianism and Daoism complement each other — public Confucian, private Daoist — is itself a model of how different ethical frames can interlock without one having to defeat the other. Modern philosophy and ethics have much to gain from sustained engagement.
They have proven durable in ways that test theories of secularisation. Confucianism and Daoism have been declared dead repeatedly — by the May Fourth movement, by the Cultural Revolution, by Western modernisation theories. They have come back. The continued operative presence of these traditions in 21st-century life is empirical evidence that ancient cultural-religious frameworks have more durability than 19th-and-20th-century theory predicted.
Four directions.
State-Confucianism in China. The Xi Jinping government's continued promotion of Confucian heritage as politically usable culture will continue. The questions: how much depth this acquires beyond rhetorical use; whether it co-exists with or supplants Marxist-Leninist framing; how China's neighbours respond to "Confucian soft power."
Diaspora Confucianism. Korean, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Singaporean Confucian heritage — operating in democratic rather than authoritarian state contexts — provides an interesting comparison and possibly a different developmental trajectory. New Confucian thinkers based outside the PRC continue to be where the most independent intellectual work happens.
Daoist environmental ethics. The integration of Daoist thinking with the climate crisis is a promising direction. The Daoist insistence on humans as embedded in larger natural patterns, the suspicion of grand-engineering Promethean projects, the wu wei ethic — these resonate with what the climate emergency requires.
Western reception. Western academic philosophy's serious engagement with Confucian and Daoist thought has accelerated since 2000 (Bryan Van Norden's argument that any "world philosophy" curriculum that excludes Chinese philosophy is provincial). The next decade will see whether this becomes mainstream or remains a specialty area.
For readers wishing to engage:
Read both, slowly. Pick up the Analects in Slingerland's translation; pick up the Daodejing in Ames-Hall's. Spend an hour with each per week, alternating. Read no more than a few pages at a sitting. Re-read.
Note the complementarity. The Confucian and Daoist sensibilities are rarely directly opposed — they are addressed to different aspects of life. The Confucian sentences will work on you when you are thinking about how to be in society; the Daoist sentences will work on you when you are thinking about how to be in nature, in solitude, in old age, in dying.
Try a practice. Confucian: morning self-examination on the day's actions toward family, work, friends. Daoist: a regular walk in nature without phone, with the practice of noticing without imposing. Tai chi or qigong if accessible. The traditions are practice traditions; books alone don't carry their content.
Attend to the Chinese cultural sphere. Watch the films (Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love; Zhang Yimou's Hero; Edward Yang's Yi Yi; Hou Hsiao-hsien). Read the poetry (Li Bai, Wang Wei, Du Fu — David Hinton's translations). The traditions are still alive; their texture is recoverable from contemporary engagement, not just classical texts.
Remember the proportions. The civilisation has lived with both for 2,500 years. The proper time-scale for understanding them is decades, not weeks.
Confucianism asks: how should I live with my parents, my children, my colleagues, my fellow citizens? It supplies a long, careful answer: with ritual propriety, with humaneness, with cultivated wisdom, with attention to where I stand in the web of relationships and what each relationship requires of me.
Daoism asks: how should I live with the larger pattern in which all of that takes place? It supplies a different long careful answer: by attending to what the dao is already doing rather than imposing my will on it; by accepting the alternation of yin and yang, of vigour and rest, of life and death; by holding the centre of myself empty enough that the dao can move through me.
Neither answer suffices alone. The Confucian without Daoist counter-poise becomes rigid, anxious, attached to office and propriety, exhausted by perpetual ritual demand. The Daoist without Confucian counter-poise becomes detached, irresponsible, available to mysticism but not to family or polity.
The two together — Confucian by day, Daoist by evening; Confucian in office, Daoist in retreat; Confucian in youth, Daoist in old age — produced one of the durable forms of human flourishing in any civilisation. The forms remain available, even now, even outside their original civilisation. The instruction is in the books; the practice is the long work of years.
Both the Confucian and the Daoist core texts are short. The Analects can be read carefully in a week; the Daodejing in an afternoon (and re-read, as it should be, for the rest of one's life). The investment is small; the depth is the depth of the practitioner.
The longer secondary texts — the Mencius, the Zhuangzi, the Xunzi, Zhu Xi's commentaries, Wang Yangming's records — reward proportionally longer engagement. None requires the kind of multi-year apprenticeship that, say, the Talmud or the Pāli Canon do; all reward the kind of sustained re-reading that pays off slowly.
The English translations are uneven. The traditions in their original Chinese are dense in ways no translation fully carries; reading two or three different translations of the same passage in parallel often reveals what one alone would miss. The Confucian and Daoist key terms — ren, li, junzi, dao, de, wu wei — should be allowed to stay in Chinese in the reader's mind, since each is undertranslated by any single English equivalent.
For the serious student: a few lessons in classical Chinese (the language of the texts; quite different from modern Mandarin) repays the effort enormously. Even rudimentary character knowledge changes how the texts read.
The traditions are old, deep, accessible, and live. They have not been waiting for anyone to vindicate them. They are simply still here.
Taoism & Confucianism — Volume XV, Deck 6 of The Deck Catalog. Set in Songti on rice-paper. Cinnabar, jade, and gold accents.
Twenty-nine leaves on the two great native Chinese traditions and on the long conversation between them.
↑ Vol. XV · Rel. · Deck 6