The Trouble with Confucianism (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values)

As Confucian thinking makes a comeback in contemporary China, people are wondering if it will merely serve as a conservative tool for a despotic government as in imperial times, or if it could act instead as a liberalizing force. Wm. Theodore de Bary, depicting Confucius and certain later Confucians as Old Testament prophetlike figures, suggests that the true Confucian spirit is one of protesting and rectifying governmental injustices. This model of Confucianism, de Bary illustrates, is not a backward dogmatist intent on maintaining the status quo at all costs, but a whistle-blower, a moralizing evangelist responsible to the people and to heaven for speaking out against existing evils and abuses. Throughout, de Bary sympathizes with the scholar-official who feels trapped between the needs of the people and the will of an autocratic government, which reflects a parallel dilemma in today's China.