Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

East Asian Languages and Societies

2010

Confucianism

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Confucianism, Authoritarianism, And Democratization In South Korea, Andrew Selman Jan 2010

Confucianism, Authoritarianism, And Democratization In South Korea, Andrew Selman

BYU Asian Studies Journal

Many argue that principles of liberal democracy are generally not compatible with the values and beliefs of a society based on Confucian principles.1 Confucianism promotes loyalty and obedience to and respect for those in authority. If Confucian values form the foundation of a society, then the citizens will show deference to the leaders of that country and will be more likely to submit to authoritarian or even totalitarian governments. The continuation of authoritarian governments in China, Singapore, and Vietnam, all countries with considerable Confucian influence in society, seem to support this theory. Between 1948 and 1987, South Korea also saw …


The Historical Value Of The Chun/Chyou, A. Brooks Dec 2009

The Historical Value Of The Chun/Chyou, A. Brooks

A. Taeko Brooks

The Spring and Autumn period (late 08th to early 05th centuries) is of interest in its own right, and for Chinese historiography in general. I here argue that the Chun/Chyou (CC) or “Spring and Autumn” text, ostensibly a Lu court chronicle, is the best, and the only primary, source for the period.1 I also dispute the competing claim of the Dzwo Jwan (DJ), which some view as a fuller, and a more accurate, account of the Spring and Autumn centuries.2


Defeat In The Chun/Chyou, A. Brooks, E. Brooks Dec 2009

Defeat In The Chun/Chyou, A. Brooks, E. Brooks

A. Taeko Brooks

We here consider how victory and defeat are treated in the Chun/Chyou. We find that the Lu court of Spring and Autumn times viewed military operations not in a chivalric or moralizing way, like characters in Dzwo Jwan (DJ) narratives of Spring and Autumn events, but in a cold-eyed military advantage way.


Military Capacity In Spring And Autumn, A. Brooks Dec 2009

Military Capacity In Spring And Autumn, A. Brooks

A. Taeko Brooks

It has been said that the states of Spring and Autumn (0770-0479) deployed large armies, drawn in part from the general populace.1 But our only contemporary source, the Lu chronicle Chun/Chyou (CC), implies a more limited situation: small elite chariot forces, few battles,2 and tactical frugality. The size of these forces did increase over the period,3 but no major state was destroyed by them. I here review the major features of the military system of the time, noting the limits on what it could achieve – limits that were surpassed only by reorganizing the state itself, a reorganization which virtually …


Enfiefment Renewal In Lu, A. Taeko Brooks Dec 2009

Enfiefment Renewal In Lu, A. Taeko Brooks

A. Taeko Brooks

Three times in the Chun/Chyou chronicle, the Jou King confers a mandate (ming ) on a Lu ruler. The details of these incidents shed light on the nature of Jou enfiefment, as it persisted after the loss of Jou military power in 0771.


The League Of The North, A. Taeko Brooks Dec 2009

The League Of The North, A. Taeko Brooks

A. Taeko Brooks

Among the 104 “covenants” (mvng ) in the Chun/Chyou (CC) chronicle, what distinguishes the 16 tung-mvng (Legge “covenanted together”)? The commentaries give no convincing answer.1 But there must have been some feature that made these covenants different for those entering into them. On considering the political context, I find that the tung-mvng covenants were a sort of collective security agreement, meant to enforce solidarity among the northern states against the military threat from southern and non-Sinitic Chu. I also note that this north/south polarity virtually defines the middle period of Spring and Autumn.


The History And Historiography Of Jyw, A. Taeko Brooks Dec 2009

The History And Historiography Of Jyw, A. Taeko Brooks

A. Taeko Brooks

Non-Sinitic Jyw was located at 35 35’ N, 118! 50’ E, east of the Lu capital and astride the upper Shu River valley, the major north/south route to the lowlands of eastern Chi. Jyw appears often in the Lu chronicle Chun/Chyou (CC), but it was not one of the great states of the age. I here compare the treatment of Jyw in the CC, which acknowledges it routinely, and in the Dzwo Jwan (DJ), which reshapes Jyw into a textbook example of misrule and deserved destruction.


The Syi-Gung Transition, A. Taeko Brooks Dec 2009

The Syi-Gung Transition, A. Taeko Brooks

A. Taeko Brooks

George Kennedy inaugurated the rational study of the Chun/Chyou (CC) by suggesting that the completeness of CC data for the deaths of non-Lu rulers need not be a coded message from some later moral arbiter, but may simply reflect the information available to the Lu court, and that this in turn might depend on the quality of interstate communications.1 I here develop this suggestion, and argue for a turning point under Syi-gung (r 0659-0627), within Kennedy’s “gradually widening horizon” – a change, part of which indeed entailed a wider geographical awareness, in the position of Lu as one of the …