As a result, Confucian Classics became the core curriculum for all levels of education. In 136 bce Wudi set up at court five Erudites of the Five Classics (see below The Five Classics) and in 124 bce assigned 50 official students to study with them, thus creating a de facto imperial university. By 50 bce enrollment at the university had grown to an impressive 3,000, and by 1 ce a hundred students a year were entering government service through the examinations administered by the state. In short, those with a Confucian education began to staff the bureaucracy. In the year 58 all government schools were required to make sacrifices to Confucius, and in 175 the court had the approved version of the Classics, which had been determined by scholarly conferences and research groups under imperial auspices for several decades, carved on large stone tablets. (Those stelae, which were erected at the capital, are today well preserved in the museum of Xi’an.) That act of committing to permanence and to public display the content of the sacred scriptures symbolized the completion of the formation of the classical Confucian tradition. The Five Classics
The compilation of the Wujing (Five Classics) was a concrete manifestation of the coming of age of the Confucian tradition. The inclusion of both pre-Confucian texts, the Shujing (“Classic of History”) and the Shijing (“Classic of Poetry”), and contemporary Qin-Han material, such as certain portions of the Liji (“Record of Rites”), suggests that the spirit behind the establishment of the core curriculum for Confucian education was ecumenical. The Five Classics can be described in terms of five visions: metaphysical, political, poetic, social, and historical.
The metaphysical vision, expressed in the Yijing (“Classic of Changes”), combines divinatory art with numerological technique and ethical insight. According to the philosophy of change, the cosmos is a great transformation occasioned by the constant interaction of yin and yang, the two complementary as well as conflicting life forces (qi). The world, which emerges out of that ongoing transformation, exhibits both organismic unity and dynamism. The exemplary person, inspired by the harmony and creativity of the cosmos, must emulate that pattern by aiming to realize the highest ideal of “unity of man and heaven” (tianrenheyi) through ceaseless self-exertion.
The political vision, contained in the Shujing, presents kingship in terms of the ethical foundation for a humane government. The legendary Three Emperors (Yao, Shun, and Yu) all ruled by virtue. Their sagacity, xiao (filial piety), and dedication to work enabled them to create a political culture based on responsibility and trust. Their exemplary lives taught and encouraged the people to enter into a covenant with them so that social harmony could be achieved without punishment or coercion. Even in the Three Dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou) moral authority, as expressed through ritual, was sufficient to maintain political order. The human continuum, from the undifferentiated masses to the enlightened people, the nobility, and the sage-king, formed an organic unity as an integral part of the great cosmic transformation. Politics means moral persuasion, and the purpose of the government is not only to provide food and maintain order but also to educate.
The poetic vision, contained in the Shijing, underscores the Confucian valuation of common human feelings. The majority of verses give voice to emotions and sentiments of communities and persons from all levels of society expressed on a variety of occasions. The basic theme of that poetic world is mutual responsiveness. The tone as a whole is honest rather than earnest and evocative rather than expressive.
The social vision, contained in the Liji, shows society not as an adversarial system based on contractual relationships but as a community of trust with emphasis on communication. Society organized by the four functional occupations—the scholar, the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant—is, in the true sense of the word, a cooperation. As a contributing member of the cooperation, each person is obligated to recognize the existence of others and to serve the public good. It is the king’s duty to act kingly and the father’s duty to act fatherly. If kings or fathers fail to behave properly, they cannot expect their ministers or children to act in accordance with ritual. It is in that sense that a chapter in the Liji entitled the “Great Learning” (Daxue) specifies, “From the son of heaven to the commoner, all must regard self-cultivation as the root.” That pervasive consciousness of duty features prominently in all Confucian literature on ritual.
The historical vision, presented in the Chunqiu (“Spring and Autumn [Annals]”), emphasizes the significance of collective memory for communal self-identification. Historical consciousness is a defining characteristic of Confucian thought. By defining himself as a lover of antiquity and a transmitter of its values, Confucius made it explicit that a sense of history is not only desirable but necessary for self-knowledge. Confucius’s emphasis on the importance of history was in a way his reappropriation of the ancient Sinitic wisdom that reanimating the old is the best way to attain the new. Confucius may not have been the author of the Chunqiu, but it seems likely that he applied moral judgment to political events in China proper from the 8th to the 5th century bce. In that unprecedented procedure he assumed a godlike role in evaluating politics by assigning ultimate historical praise and blame to the most powerful and influential political actors of the period. Not only did that practice inspire the innovative style of the grand historian Sima Qian (c. 145–c. 87 bce), but it was also widely employed by others writing dynastic histories in imperial China. Dong Zhongshu: The Confucian visionary
Like Sima Qian, Dong Zhongshu (c. 179–c. 104 bce) took the Chunqiu absolutely seriously. His own work, Chunqiu fanlu (“Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals”), however, is far from being a book of historical judgment. It is a metaphysical treatise in the spirit of the Yijing. A man extraordinarily dedicated to learning (he is said to have been so absorbed in his studies that for three years he did not even glance at the garden in front of him) and strongly committed to moral idealism (one of his often-quoted dicta is “rectifying rightness without scheming for profit; enlightening his Way without calculating efficaciousness”), Dong was instrumental in developing a characteristically Han interpretation of Confucianism.
Despite Wudi’s pronouncement that Confucianism alone would receive imperial sponsorship, Daoists, yinyang cosmologists, Legalists, shamanists, practitioners of seances, healers, magicians, geomancers, and others all contributed to the cosmological thinking of the Han cultural elite. Indeed, Dong himself was a beneficiary of that intellectual syncretism, for he freely tapped the spiritual resources of his time in formulating his own worldview: that human actions have cosmic consequences.