8 - The Confucian Challenge

Summary

Chapter 8, “The Confucian Challenge,” focuses on how the Qingli (1041–1049) reformers sought to strengthen existing agencies and procedures and build new ones that would transform Confucian principles into an active Confucian institutionalism – a functioning administrative system. The advent of a strident Confucianism among a small subset of officials in the 1020s and 1030s directly challenged the ecumenical premises and administrative practices of the Song founders. I focus on how committed Confucian literati worked through four institutions – the Secretariat (Zhongshu 中書), the Censorate (Yushitai御史臺), the Bureau of Policy Criticism (Jianyuan 諫院), and the Academies and Institutes (guan’ge 館閣) – to create a new conception of Song “shared governance” (gongzhi tianxia 共治天下). These efforts attempted to replace the earlier notion of personal loyalty to the ruler with a broader concept of loyalty to principles and practices often described as the “essential body of the state” (guoti 國體) or as “public, or impartial, opinion” (gonglun 共論). The moral attainments of Confucian education replaced raw “talent” as a basic qualification for office. The notion of guoti gave preference to ordered hierarchies of offices, each with a defined relationship to the other.