Researching the Ideals and the Value-orientationof the Confucians in Han Dynasty China (Evidential Issues)

This is the second installment of the article discussing the theoretical and evidential issues in researching Confucianism and Confucians in Han Dynasty China. In Section I, It reiterates the importance of multi-dimensional and yet comprehensive approaches to historical research and interpretation of the past. In section II, it critiques Zang Zhifei's misinterpretation of Gu Yan-wu's discussion of Han time Confucians as “disloyal and interested solely in their selfish pursuit of government offices. It cites ample evidence to show that “absolute loyalty to a dynastic house was a post-10th century Neo-Confucian ideal not applicable to Han dynasty China, and that the pre-Han and Han Confucian ideal in government service was to work for the public welfare and to improve and reform existing political culture and institutions to realize the aim of “universal peace and unity (taiping and datong). To this end, many Han Confucians sacrificed not only their political careers but even their own lives and those of their families and clans. In section III, the article retraces changes in the ideals and actions of the Han Confucians from that of modest practical reform in early Former Han, to radical reform demands in the later part of the dynasty leading to the replacement of the dynasty by the New Dynasty of Wang Mang, A.D.9-23, to the disillusionment of the Confucians after the failure of Wang Mang, to the Later Han Confucians' pursuit of personal moral purity, which put them into radical confrontation with the corrupt Later Han court in the Pure Critique movement, leading to their persecution by the court in which an enlarging number of Confucians (both the moralists and the careerists) sacrificed their lives. The article concludes by arguing that it is this Confucian idealism which colored Han time political culture and Han Confucianism, and not the petty concern of careerism which may be common to all historical periods and thus not specific to the Han dynasty , that uniquely characterizes Han dynasty China,