Confucianism’s Ascent to State Orthodoxy: The Philosophy of Moral Education in the Western Han Dynasty

Abstract

This chapter explores the contexts, reasons, and the process of the rise of Confucianism to state ideology. It first introduces background information related to the renaissance of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty and then discusses Jia Yi’s philosophy, for example his cosmological concept of heaven’s role in promoting the moral development of people, and his idea of using moral education as the foundation of good politics. The following section examines Dong Zhongshu’s contributions to the philosophy of moral education, which include his proposition of making Confucianism the sole ideology, the doctrine of the three grades of human nature, his portent theory about interactions between heaven and man, and his framework of the “Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues” as the goal and content of moral education.