Metaphysics and Spirituality: Neo-Confucianism as Response to Buddhism

Abstract

The German sociologist Max Weber has offered us insights about charisma and its bureaucratisation. In the case of Confucianism, after it became a state ideology in the first century A.D., it was as if truth became institutionalised and something was lost in the process. Later thinkers sought to recover the lost truth by returning to the sources of their original inspiration. Each time, however, they could only do so within their own historical and existential contexts, so that each time, they too produced a new synthesis. The problem was that in its turn, each new synthesis became established as state doctrine. Here we are talking about problems that have plagued Confucian society through the ages, as they have also affected Christendom: problems that come in part with success and prosperity. Like any official orthodoxy, Confucianism abhorred dissent, thus stifling creativity and spontaneity. Confucianism has always been the tradition of lay people, which developed without a priesthood and without a church that could effectively stand up to the state. It took the combined popularity of Taoism and Buddhism to arouse a movement of return to the roots of Confucian inspiration, a movement which may be compared historically with that of Christian scholasticism.¹