Since the dawn of civilisation, the forces of nature
and the whims of gods held sway over humanity.
But 2,500 years ago,
humankind experienced a profound transformation.
Suddenly, there were new possibilities.
This is a time when rationality overrode superstition and belief.
This is an ethic which does not rely on the gods.
The world is now explained in terms of natural forces.
We are now responsible for our own destiny.
Upheavals across the globe sparked an ambitious
vision of what humans could achieve,
spearheaded by three trailblazers.
Socrates, Confucius and the Buddha -
great thinkers from the ancient world
whose ideas still shape our own lives.
Is wealth a good thing?
How do you create a just society?
How do I live a good life?
By daring to think the unthinkable,
they laid the foundations of our modern world.
I've always been intrigued by the fact that these men,
who lived many thousands of miles apart,
seemed almost spontaneously, within 100 years of one another,
to come up with such radical ways of thinking.
So, what was going on?
I want to investigate their revolutionary ideas
to understand what set them in motion.
In this programme, I'm on the trail of that quintessential
Eastern sage - Confucius.
He had a mission. But many people at that time did not agree with him.
His vision was modelled on the power of the past and the family.
He believed that education could transform both individuals
and society.
He is talking about your state of mind. Your feelings.
But in the 20th century, Confucius was declared an enemy of communism.
So now, he should be out of favour.
But that hardly seems to be the case.
This is the longest continuous civilisation in the world,
and Confucius has a huge role in that.
It's so amazing to be so close to them. My heart is beating!
In 551 BC, an elderly ex-soldier from the ancient state of Lu
faced a grave predicament.
His family line was in danger of ending.
He needed a son to continue his name,
someone who would be able to perform the vital rituals to honour him
and his ancestors.
The old man took a young wife.
We are told that she went to a sacred mountain
and prayed hard for a boy.
The son she bore would be known as Master Kong.
In Chinese, Kong Fuzi.
In the West, we call him Confucius.
Confucius was born into one of the most advanced
civilisations in the world.
The ancient Chinese were innovators in art,
metal work, agriculture and weaponry.
And from around 1000 BC,
they developed a sophisticated political system.
A network of vassal lords who bore allegiance to one king.
But by the time Confucius was going up,
stability had turned to chaos.
This was an age when all of ancient China
was trapped in a ruthless cycle of war.
Tribal invasions from the west, along with rebellion amongst
the lords, splintered the empire into independent states.
All vying for power.
Spurred on by a kind of arms race, now that cast iron meant that
weapons could be mass-produced, families attacked families.
This was total war.
This collapse in society would become
the catalyst for Confucius' ground-breaking philosophy.
The oldest record of Confucius' life and ideas, the Analects,
were compiled about a century after his death.
These fragments of his conversations,
along with other later histories, give us clues to his life story.
We are told that Confucius was just three when his father died.
Old aristocracy, he had fallen on hard times -
one of the victims of the turmoil of the age -
leaving Confucius' mother to raise her son on her own
in a kind of genteel poverty.
Interestingly, it seems that education was Confucius' lifeline.
Somehow, probably through a mix of private teachers
and home-schooling and, you suspect, the sheer grit and determination
of his mother, Confucius was taught history, poetry and ritual.
While other children played with toys, he's said to have acted
out sacred rituals by laying out cups and bowls.
Now, these weren't just empty gestures,
a bit of spiritual theatre.
The kinds of rituals that Confucius learned played a crucial role
in the ancient Chinese world view.
A world view in which order and harmony,
both on Earth and in the cosmos,
were considered essential goals
if life on Earth was to continue.
The ancient rites that young Confucius knew were performed here,
at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, right up until the 20th century.
The Chinese had a particular religious outlook which
meant that these rituals weren't directed towards a deity.
There is no creative god.
There's nothing like the idea
of a supreme power that dreams
everything into being.
What it posits instead is this notion that there are
two cosmic forces. They're not even really divine,
they're just natural forces, a bit like gravity in a sense.
And on the temple here, you have perhaps the most common,
the most powerful symbols of these two great forces.
And that is the dragon, the heavenly force.
And the phoenix is the female, the cold, the earthly force.
And they are locked in perpetual struggle.
They try to overcome each other.
And it's this incredible dance of power
out of which all life pours.
So what's humanity's role in all of this?
We're fundamental to this. You've got these two great cosmic forces
and our role is to keep the balance, and we do this through ritual.
And that's what this kind of temple complex was built for.
This is where the ruler would come to make offerings to
rebalance these two forces.
And it wasn't just for the rulers, it took place in every single temple,
every local shrine, right down to the household.
Sounds like a potent and a pervasive world view
that Confucius is being brought up with.
Absolutely. It's the only world view he knows.
As he reached adulthood, it looks as though Confucius grew to
appreciate the gaping disparity between the ancient ideal of order
and the reality of life subject to the chaos that raged all around him.
His search for a solution to that intractable problem
at the very heart of Chinese society
would prove to be his life's work.
Fortunately, conditions across the ancient world were nourishing
new ways of thinking.
Improvements in agriculture, increased trade,
and growing urbanisation meant that some in society were less
tied to a life of subsistence, creating the opportunity for
men like Socrates, the Buddha and Confucius to develop their ideas.
The scale of change - economic and technological -
is reflected in archaeological remains,
like this monumental grain store.
Advances in technology from the Iron Age onwards led to an increase
in agricultural yields that were stored in massive pits like this.
Suddenly, for ordinary people, because they had enough food,
life just wasn't a grinding cycle of a kind of hand-to-mouth existence.
Obviously, stores like this provided grain,
but they also gave another great gift - time to think.
When Confucius was about 20, we're told
he landed a bureaucratic job managing grain stores like this.
But his mind was occupied by the turmoil of the day.
Looking around him,
it seemed obvious to Confucius that humanity needed help.
And how he responded is considered a first in Chinese history.
He began to engage in systematic philosophical enquiry.
One thing I like about Confucius is the sense that you get
that he had a kind of natural curiosity,
that he felt compelled to explore, and to try to understand the world.
And in his early 20s, he decided to leave his home state of Lu,
and get on the road.
Travelling west, he would have eventually met the great
Yellow River.
I think we have to imagine him
at this point in his life as a kind of ethnographer,
going from one place to another with open eyes
and an open mind, gathering together experiences and encounters.
The Analects describe Confucius meeting people who had
renounced civilised society and lived amongst nature.
These recluses were the forerunners of Daoism,
that other great belief system of ancient China.
They believed in something known as the Way.
Could you explain to me what exactly the Way is?
Is it possible for humans to influence or control the Way?
Xiexie. Xiexie.
The Daoists believed that developed society diverted us from the Way.
Society was artificial, something people imposed on the natural
spontaneous way of the universe.
Only by reconnecting with the forces of nature could
we achieve harmony once again.
Confucius reacted to Daoist belief with a kind of frustrated
indignation.
"We can't go and live with the birds and the beasts.
"Am I not a man among men?
"If the Way prevailed in the world, there would be no need for me
"to change it."
Confucius' search for solutions to the problems of his day
took on a more practical, political dimension.
For him, the Way wasn't an intangible cosmic force.
Instead, he saw it as the harmony that could be brought about
by a perfectly ordered society,
something attainable by human action.
It was a claim the Daoists thought the height of arrogance.
This critical dispute is embodied in one legendary encounter.
Confucius is said to have come here, the city of Luoyang.
As he was studying in the state archives,
he met an older man and they struck up a philosophical discussion.
As Confucius got up to leave, the old man chastised him.
"Put away your proud air and many desires,
"your insinuating habit and wild will.
"These are of no advantage to you."
The enigmatic old man was none other than Laozi,
credited as the founder of Daoism.
Whether it's true or not, this pairing with such a great figure
reveals the iconic status Confucius would later reach.
And it tells us something else.
That setting in the archive gives us a clue to Confucius' methods.
For him, solutions to contemporary problems lay in a close study
of what had gone before.
The past was a kind of reservoir of truth.
Ever since he was a boy, he had been schooled in ancient texts.
Now, as a man, they became the inspiration for,
and the very foundation of his philosophy.
Recent discoveries have shed new light on these classic texts
of Chinese history -
800 bamboo slips which contain the earliest
evidence of Confucius's words.
They were found in 1993 in the tomb of an old noble man.
Amazing. And they date back to when?
Oh, these were dated to the 4th century BCE,
roughly 100 years after Confucius.
It says something like,
"Set your mind on the way and be virtuous.
"Do everything in accordance with humanity."
Not only the earliest words of Confucius but beautiful words too.
Wow.
And they were so amazing because they provide us new
information on early classics that were very important
to Confucius himself.
And, for example, this particular slip
mention about the classics he would have read.
The Book Of Odes - ritual and music.
But The Book Of History is very important, because it recorded
figures such as the Duke of Zhou, and early kings of the Western Zhou
that was about 500 years before Confucius' time.
And these men were able to lead a society of harmony.
Confucius found in the words of The Book Of History
what he was looking for -
an ideal model where social and political harmony had prevailed,
engineered by the almost super-humanely sage rulers
of the early Zhou dynasty,
in particular, the Duke of Zhou.
When his brother, King Wu, died,
the Duke could have seized the throne.
But it's reported that instead he acted loyally,
ruling as a regent for his nephew, the king's son.
And then, when the boy grew up, fairly and faithfully,
he handed over the reins of power.
Whether these accounts were entirely true is a moot point,
but Confucius saw huge potential in them.
This golden age was robust evidence that social order was possible.
By following the practices and the examples of the early Zhou,
by reviving the past,
there could be solutions to the problems of the present.
It is the great thing about golden ages, they're very comforting.
We believe that if humanity was capable of wonderful things
in the past, we can achieve them once again.
Confucius believed that early Zhou society was the ideal
manifestation of his concept of the Way.
To recreate that harmony,
society needed to return to their high standards.
Especially in terms of ritual.
Confucius was convinced that the ancient rites had been corrupted.
In order to restore the golden age,
he would have to reinstate proper ritual.
Here, in Confucius' hometown of Qufu,
is a temple dedicated to the master.
It's the ultimate place of pilgrimage for many of his devotees.
Mr Kong traces his ancestry back to Confucius
and often leads rituals that his illustrious relative
set such store by.
HE CALLS OUT
But ritual here has always meant more than just ceremony.
It's an all-encompassing ethos that shapes every
aspect of people's behaviour,
including what we might call etiquette and customs.
It seems that Confucius threw himself into understanding
and perfecting the rites of the early Zhou.
Confucius was nothing if not a stickler for detail.
We hear he wouldn't even sit on a mat unless it was dead straight.
But there seems to have been a kind of beauty in his precision.
Just listen to these wonderful words describing him.
"His expression was serious, his step brisk.
"When with his clasped hands he bowed to his colleagues on left
"and right, his robes moved evenly in front and back.
"His hurrying advance was a glide."
Confucius set out to transmit the importance of proper ritual,
promoting his ideas right across the land.
One account describes his rather hostile reception
from a government advisor from the state of Qi.
"Confucius lays such stress on appearance and costume,
"elaborate etiquette and codes of behaviour that it would take
"generations to learn his rule. One lifetime wouldn't be enough."
To this day, Confucius is often criticised for his pedantic
attachment to intricate forms of antiquated ritual.
But what his critics didn't understand is that he had
discovered something radically new within these ancient rites,
something which marked a critical shift in his thinking.
When Confucius' was in his mid-20s, his mother died.
For three years, he dutifully carried out ancestral rites
in her honour.
But he would breathe new life and new meaning into these traditions.
- WHISPERS: - Ah! Oh, yes.
Wow, how beautiful.
So these are things that would actually have been
used in ancestor worship?
Exactly. Ancient Chinese believed that the ghost
and spirits continue to exist after the ancestors die.
So it's important to offer them food and wine in these kind of vessels.
In particular, those made of very expensive bronze.
And everyone would be really engaging in the ritual to continue
a kind of relationship they had before.
Do we know what Confucius thought about all of this?
Well, Confucius still believed that ancestors were still
very important part,
but he started to shift emphasis towards the living,
by saying that it meant that it's important
for us to develop this kind of reverence
and the proper relationship while they are still alive.
As he said in the Analects very clearly, that if you don't know
how to serve the living, how would you know how to serve the dead?
That's really interesting. He's saying actually focus first
on the here and now and on those who are still around you in
the day-to-day before you start to think about those who are long dead.
You are so right.
It's no longer just about objects like this.
It's about your state of mind,
your feelings,
your love and sincerity
from inside that you would have towards these people around you.
Confucius realised that ritual brought out positive emotions in us.
But his really big revelation was that this could permanently
change who we are.
Habitually performing the rituals of history,
with the right attitude and sincerity,
could transform our mind-set.
Virtuous feelings could make virtuous beings.
Ritual for him was not just the way you do things,
exactly follow the traditional and this and the rules,
but even more importantly, you've got to have something inside.
You've got to have a reverence, respect,
because this was the way to cultivate
your inside of goodness, the inside of this kind of
and the qualities.
And the whole person would be transformed on the inside.
But, I mean, that sounds really radical. So he's saying
you need to do things properly, but they're not just a mechanical
action. It affects who you are inside, sort of psychologically?
Yes, yeah, I think this exactly.
Not only just bring order to the social and life,
but also this to create a new psychological under this
meaning there and tried to cultivate this good human qualities.
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting cos he doesn't sell himself
as an innovator, but he was.
Yes, he was,
I think. Confucius said, you know, he was the only transmitter
that transmitted the ancient culture to today, to the future.
But actually, what he did was innovation.
These new things that are really coming from his reinterpretation
of something that already exists, such as the ritual.
Nourishing virtue lay at the core of Confucius' vision.
And he saw transformative opportunities in everyday rituals -
how we speak, how we dress and how we eat.
But one that was particularly close to his heart was music.
He's said to have played the zither and the sounding chimes.
This was a time and place where music was all around,
played on totally wonderful things like this monumental
set of bells that date to just after Confucius' death.
Music was played to accompany ritual in temples and homes,
so if you listen to these, then you'll be hearing the sounds
that would have surrounded Confucius during his lifetime.
BELL DINGS
Confucius was convinced that music had the power to harmonise,
to transform and perfect an individual.
Basically,
this is art as therapy 2,500 years before we invent the phrase.
This practical application of philosophical ideas
in day-to-day life is something that really marks out Confucius,
as well as those other game-changing philosophers -
the Buddha and Socrates.
As a philosopher, you don't just indulge in abstract musings,
you develop a robust delivery mechanism for your theories.
Ideas have to have traction, and they have to have tangible impact.
Confucius was a practical man.
He had been spurred into action by the bellicose times
into which he was born.
His philosophy would only truly be a success
if he it could affect change on a grand scale.
Confucius came to think this -
that shaping and cultivating moral individuals
was the key to creating a stable social and political order.
By figuring out what made a good person,
you could make a good society.
And so his mission was this -
to teach people how to be virtuous in a world of political disorder
and moral decay.
Confucius had given himself a mountain to climb.
How to instil virtue in society, when society's moral contract
was so broken was Confucius' big challenge.
He was to find inspiration from a familiar and enduring institution.
The family.
Hello! Thank you.
Wow, that was quite some welcome! Thank you. Xiexie.
'Confucius noted how families are organised along hierarchical lines,'
with fixed responsibilities.
From birth, we learn our place within key relationships.
Husband, wife.
Father, son.
Older brother, younger brother.
Recognising... Oh, thanks.
Ah, yeah. Thank you very much.
Recognising your... Oh, xiexie.
Recognising your place within these relationships
and fulfilling your mutual responsibilities within that
hierarchy taught essential moral values.
From the family, we developed a sense of loyalty, of honesty,
of duty, of respect, of filial responsibility.
Basically, to love those around us.
Confucius saw that the concept of family was a potent model
and a potential solution for society's ills.
The family showed how authority could be both exercised
and submitted to, fairly and productively.
Not through intimidation, but through mutual assent.
The moral values learnt in the family - affection and care
directed downwards, and loyalty and obedience directed above -
had the potential to transform everyone.
But Confucius saw that arguably their greatest value
lay in relation to the glaring problem at the heart of society -
the waywardness of its rulers.
This magnificent sword embodies what, for Confucius,
was the fundamental problem with Chinese leadership.
This was made when Confucius was alive,
and it tells us all about itself.
There's an inscription here that reads,
"Belonging to King Goujian of Yue. Made for his personal use."
Now, this is obviously a fabulously deluxe object.
And Confucius wouldn't have had a problem with that per se.
He wasn't puritanical.
He enjoyed the good things of life - swimming in rivers,
singing with friends -
and he understood the need for worldly goods.
But he did not think that good men should devote their time and energy
to the pursuit of personal gain.
And he didn't believe in immoderate action,
anywhere, any time, from anyone.
In Confucius' opinion, kings who commissioned swords like this
often abandoned virtue if it got in the way of worldly success.
He saw the way to transform society was to instil
the values at work in the family in the rulers of his day.
To understand the power they wielded,
you only need look at the way they were honoured in death.
This ruler, from around the time of Confucius,
was buried along with 26 expensive chariots
and 70 sacrificial horses.
What kind of connection did Confucius see
between the relationships that he'd observed
between father and son and the family,
and what's going on here?
Well, he looked at the fact that if you had a good father,
he could bring up a good son.
And a good son could then respect the father, and this could work.
So he said "Well, look, if it works at this level,
"let's just take it to the top."
If the ruler views those beneath him as his children
and treats them with love but with firmness, with compassion
but with integrity, then it would it roll down through the system.
And the Confucianist could say, "Look, you see the ruler's
"living like this, you should live like this."
And literally, it would roll down,
like the clouds from the mountain and bring blessing to everyone.
So, for him, might in and of itself wasn't a problem,
but if you had might, then you also had to have
a kind of philosophical responsibility to your people?
Yes. Confucius continued the Zhou tradition that a ruler has
the right to rule because heaven has clearly given them
the power and the authority.
And that's why the top, top ruler was called the son of heaven.
However, that mandate, that right to rule,
can be taken away by heaven. And a sign that heaven has taken it away
is natural disasters, massive earthquakes, floods.
Confucius said if a ruler becomes corrupt
and people are suffering through this cruelty,
then the people have the right to rebel.
And so Confucius, at one level,
tells you - respect, honour, duty, loyalty.
And he also said, "And if that fails, you have the right to overthrow."
Amazing trick.
Confucius' tactic was very direct.
He set out to influence those in power by getting
a governmental post.
One snag was his personality.
He was often seen as arrogant,
too blunt in the way he delivered his advice.
But he also faced a bigger problem.
With enemy armies numbering as many as 300,000 camped on their
borders, and disloyal sons plotting behind their backs,
perhaps it's no surprise that the rulers of the day
failed to take Confucius seriously.
Cultivating moral character and virtuous actions
in such precarious times was just not a priority.
With rejection upon rejection,
Confucius' faltering political career looked set to fail
and his ideas in danger of being lost to history.
But he was tenacious and resourceful.
In his early 50s,
it looks as though he decided to change his strategy.
He gathered together a few belongings
and hit the road once again to continue his moral crusade.
Only this time, he wasn't alone.
He was travelling together with a group of devoted students.
His ability to attract motivated young men
put his mission to transform self and society back on track.
By all accounts, Confucius possessed a kind of compelling, raw charisma.
Now, combine that with intellectual rigour, with bold,
exciting new ideas and inspiring moral instruction,
and you've got a potent mix.
Whilst Confucius had failed alone, a band of around 70 students could
infiltrate the corridors of power at many levels and in many states.
They could be a moral vanguard to advise
and instruct rulers on how to rule virtuously.
And for this vital role, Confucius was scrupulously meritocratic,
accepting students even from the poorest of backgrounds.
In the Analects, Confucius said, "I have never refused instruction
"to anyone, if, of his own accord, he comes to me."
This in itself
was a truly innovatory moment marking an historic shift.
He was urging that Chinese society should no longer be governed
by an hereditary elite,
people who owed their positions simply to their bloodlines.
Rather, it was those who were most virtuous,
most concerned about the wellbeing of others, who should lead.
His way was open to people from any background
to rise to positions of authority.
Confucius shared his ground-breaking commitment to a kind of
egalitarianism with Socrates and the Buddha.
Their solutions were, in theory, available to everyone.
But, to a greater or lesser extent,
when it came to women, they all seemed to have struggled.
None of them were exactly model family men.
The Buddha left his wife and child.
Socrates treated his young wife pretty cursorily.
But at least those two included women in their thinking
and suggested they could be part of a solution to society's problems.
However, when it comes to Confucius,
it seems he had next to no time for the female of the species.
The ultimate goal for Confucius' students was to become a junzi.
Now, this wasn't a title he'd made up.
Just as with ritual, he took something traditional
and gave it a potent new twist.
Junzi was an aristocratic word meaning a son of the lord,
denoting qualities that could only belong to a privileged social elite.
Now, as part of his shift towards a moral elite,
Confucius appropriated it
and changed it to mean the ultimate moral person, a superior man.
A new kind of gentleman, in its most literal sense.
For Confucius, education was crucial.
Drawing on his own life experience,
he saw an unswerving commitment to critical learning
as the path to self cultivation.
He likened the process to polishing jade, crafting one's
virtuous character, to become the perfect moral person.
You had to know The Book Of History
to live by the example of the sage kings and to enact correct ritual.
But what was essential was to be morally alive to your environment.
To understand how to behave intuitively in any situation.
To think for yourself.
Confucius' students joined their master,
moving across war-torn China to try to influence its errant rulers.
They were attacked, beaten and almost starved.
But these testing times sharpened their education.
The challenges they faced forced them
to engage in urgent moral debate.
They proposed solutions to their problems
and then interrogated those,
provoking the intense intellectual discussions
between master and students that you find in the Analects.
They asked questions like,
"Should the junzi accept office in degenerate times?"
"Can you serve a corrupt master
"if you think you can make a difference?"
Confucius encouraged this open-ended,
free-thinking discussion.
Yet his students still looked to him for definitive answers.
Ultimately, they wanted to know - what was the essence of goodness?
For Confucius, there was one all-embracing virtue,
the most essential to cultivate and yet the most difficult to attain.
Something called ren.
Ren is a very splendid word idea, but what does it actually mean?
What quality does it imply?
Well, many people tried to translate it differently.
It's been translated as human heartedness, as good or goodness,
but we prefer now to use the word simply humanity.
Because virtually all Confucian values are linked to this notion.
Courage with ren, then its real courage
rather than just simply bravery.
Justice with ren, then it's a humane justice
rather than just harsh punishment.
Wisdom with ren, then it's being wise not just being smart.
And is this something that you achieve,
or is looking for ren a constant quest?
Every person, by definition of being a person, embodies ren.
In other words, every human being's capable of sympathetic
response to the external world.
But at the same time, to realise ren fully, which means human flourishing
in the most comprehensive sense of the term,
that requires learning.
And learning, of course,
it's not simply the acquisition of knowledge
or internalisation of skills,
but basically learning to build one's character.
And in that sense, it's like the highest ideal.
At the same time, it's a minimum requirement to be human.
Do you think that Confucius felt that he'd achieved ren?
No.
And the interesting thing is many students or followers
of Confucius also said no.
Ren requires continuous process of struggling.
Even to the end of your life, this is still a task incomplete.
So no matter what, the struggle to be fully human continues.
There's something in Confucian philosophy,
a core message, that I find really, genuinely inspiring.
It's his golden rule taken from the Analects.
One student said, "Is there a single word that
"I should use as a rule to live my life by?"
The master replied,
"That would be empathy, perhaps.
"What you do not wish for yourself, don't do to others."
It's this focus on human relations and being compassionate
that I think comes closest to defining
what Confucius meant by the term ren.
I do love this about all three of the philosophers whose
stories I'm investigating.
They made it clear that none of us operate in isolation.
It isn't that man is the measure of all things,
but man's relationship with man.
Confucius continued to travel, and to teach into his later years.
But only a handful of his students went on to hold political office.
When Confucius was 73, he fell ill.
Unable to fulfil his mission, his final words seem defeated
and bitterly disappointed.
"No intelligent monarch arises.
"There is none who will make me his master.
"It is my time to die."
Confucius was buried here, in his hometown, Qufu.
The great transformation he had worked for his entire life
had not been fulfilled.
But his devoted students planted trees around his grave...
and kept his dream alive.
For 300 years, Confucius' ideas continued as just one of many
Chinese schools of thought.
Competing with the likes of Daoism,
it was unable to effect real change in a chaotic world.
But once China was reunited under all-powerful emperors,
stability changed the political landscape.
The first emperor of the Han Dynasty was convinced by his principal
advisor that ruling by brutality had served his predecessor badly.
Allying himself with Confucianism -
and its ideal of rule by virtue -
would lend to his dynasty greater legitimacy.
Many of the values that Confucius set great store by -
the importance of education,
a shared cultural heritage,
an ethical government -
had seemed an irrelevance during the chaos of his lifetime.
But these would prove hugely effective in holding
the new empire together.
Successive emperors enthusiastically took up Confucian ideas,
and education was central.
THEY RECITE IN CHINESE
The poetry, arts, and music of the early Zhou were revived
as a means of cultivating the goodness and virtue within.
School children learnt the Confucian canon by heart,
meticulously writing it out in their best calligraphy.
Knowledge of The Book Of History and rituals of the Zhou Dynasty
became a prerequisite to be part of the civil service.
Confucian education and Confucian texts
became a powerfully integrative force in Chinese history.
And of course it was very useful for rulers to have all that emphasis
on obedience and respect and top-down structure.
THEY REPLY IN CHINESE
Even those who didn't get to go to school learnt his words.
It's actually why we've developed that rather crass form
"Confucius says," because for 24 centuries, right across China,
people WERE all quoting Confucius.
# Confucius say a boy A girl, a moon
# Make wedding bells ring out In month of June
# Confucius say when love come Don't delay
# So, honey, hold me tight
# Tonight's the night
# Remember what Confucius say. #
But all that changed in the 20th century.
Confucianism came under attack.
In 1919, students who wanted China to modernise
and become democratic condemned Confucius for holding them back.
But it was Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s
that tried to annihilate all vestiges of his legacy.
His Red Guard destroyed statues, temples and texts.
They even came here,
to his burial place.
In a telegram to Chairman Mao, they wrote,
"We have dragged out the statue of Confucius.
"We have torn down the plaque extolling
"the teacher of 10,000 generations.
"We have levelled Confucius' grave.
"We have destroyed."
It is really chilling coming here to see how a raging, rigid form
of an ideology tried to obliterate the memory of a man of ideas.
CHILDREN READ TOGETHER
But thousands of years of ubiquitous Confucian education,
particularly the exam system,
had embedded his principles deep within Chinese culture.
By the start of the 21st century, the government began,
once again, to embrace his ideals.
Today, Confucianism is undergoing a renaissance.
And education remains at the forefront.
This is a Confucian school in Qufu.
120 pupils from the ages of six to 18 study the Confucian texts
and classical arts here.
It just one of around 3,000 schools in China
that teaches Confucian values and philosophy.
WOMAN SPEAKS IN CHINESE
STUDENTS REPEAT
So, what is your favourite Confucius quote?
Why do you like Confucius?
Why did you decide to send your daughter to a Confucian school?
It is just fascinating seeing these kids being brought up with
an ancient philosophy at the heart of everything that they think
and say and do.
And actually, they seem to be having a great time.
It's also even more incredible, though, if you think that
just a few decades ago, Confucius was considered an
enemy of the state and none of this would have been allowed to happen.
Or if it did, it would've had to have happened in secret,
behind closed doors
and at the risk of really severe punishment.
In modern China, greater individualism is seen to have
undermined a collective sense of right and wrong.
Confucius' resurgence can be explained by the desire
for a clearer sense of moral purpose.
But I wonder if Confucius' appeal is very simple.
He tells us that whatever our character,
whatever situation we're born into,
being good, living a good life is a possibility.
And that the root to goodness is wisdom.
Now, that means that as a species, in our finest form,
we are all philosophers
in the true sense of the word -
lovers of wisdom.
Across this series, I have examined the ideas of three inspiring minds
of the ancient world.
Socrates brought philosophy down from the heavens
and into people's homes, so that through the training
of our reason, we can achieve happiness for ourselves.
The Buddha changed the question from,
"Is there a god?"
to questions like how to agree on good action
without necessarily agreeing on what happens after death.
Confucius said a ritual is a way to bring out the inside
good qualities, like benevolence, like reverence.
And if more people possess good qualities and they become real human,
then their social life, family life, or community life
will become peaceful.
But, ultimately,
what do they have to teach us in the here and now?
Although these were ideas that were developed 25 centuries ago,
do you think they have as much relevance to our world
as they did to ancient China, ancient Greece, ancient India?
If I want to exaggerate, probably even more so.
They were confronted with a world in disintegration.
Little rationality. Little compassion.
And we are in a world that's much more serious.
Because it's not simply the human world is in trouble,
the planet is in trouble.
And we have in our power the destruction
of all civilisations, including the planet itself.
So a change has to be made.
Not just a change of a political system or economic system -
these are absolutely necessary - but a change of mind-set.
And the retrieval of the wisdom of Socrates, of Buddha and Confucius
is not a question of relevance, it's a question of human survival.
These extraordinary thinkers aren't remote historical figures.
They're pioneers of human consciousness
whose ideas have informed and enriched the lives
of countless people to this day.
Their radical responses to the social upheaval of their age
have, in many ways, determined who we are now.
Their message was inspiring and challenging.
That the world isn't unknowable, unchangeable.
By engaging with it fully, we can lead better
and more meaningful lives.
We have agency.
Our minds can shape the world.
If the mind of Confucius has made you think,
then explore further with The Open University
to discover how great minds have influenced our world today.
Go to the address on the screen
and follow the links to The Open University.