Why shouldn’t the Chinese worship Confucius?

The Chinese have had a long history for worshiping Confucius (551 BC – 479 BC), and built so many temples for him. Confucius has been considered as a saint, for he had accomplished so much in his lifetime: compiled The Spring and Autumn Annals, opened a school, created the sect of the Confucianism, been a senior administrator of his state, gained fame for his wisdom, and influenced generations of elites.

Should all the above deeds award Confucius temples for worship? In the West, people worship Jesus for religious belief. But, in western scholars’ view, Confucius’s teachings were essentially non-religious. His disciples were taught majorly on poetry, history, ritual, music, and ethics, but were required to keep away from the spirits and deities, at least at a distance. Confucius talked about Heaven sometimes, but never pursued the spiritual world like afterlife in religious aspect. He was a social activist, rather than a religious leader. Worship is for spirits in religions, not for prophets or philosophers. How could a secular scholar be worshiped in a religious ceremony?

Confucius was a conformist. His teachings were debated for centuries; his philosophy is hardly accepted by iconoclasts. Confucius’s teachings were considered humanism, but it was based on the rulers’ benevolence, not the rulers’ power balance; he regarded king’s divine right above man’s divine right; his dictums, such as, “King is king, vassal is vassal, father is father, and son is son” and “Under Heaven, only women and ignoble men are difficult to be tempered”, created man-made inequality among people. In contrast, it is a common sense for the Christian West that all individuals are equal in God’s eyes. Confucius’s teaching cannot inspire his followers to make a writ like Habeas Corpus (a Latin phrase, as “that you have the body”). He advocated a social harmony, but that was more wishful than realistic when a ruler lacked checks and balances. His theory is so controversial that it incurred many fiascos with massive destructions during social transitions. Confucianism did not bless the Chinese people well, and did not work in retrospect. How could a disputed philosopher be worshiped in a religious ceremony?

Confucius was a character defected politician at least in modern standard; he could hardly be considered as a statesman. Confucius’s teachings are considered anti-despotism. However, when he had political power, he acted like a tyrant; he executed Sau-Zhen-Mau, a scholar with different philosophy from Confucius’s. I realize that some of Confucius admirers deny this incident now, even though the execution was praised by Confucius’s followers for thousands of years. The charges on Sau-Zhen-Mau were ironically similar to the Socrates’ (469 BC – 399 BC). In the West, threatening intellectuals would be condemned, while the sacrificed intellectuals would be commemorated as martyrs of conscience like Socrates. How can the Chinese forsake the martyr, Sau-Zhen-Mau, but worship the killer Confucius?

Confucius deserves respect for his contribution to the Chinese culture. However, what the Chinese really need is the enlightenment to open mind, not the sentiment to worship Confucius. Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) recognized “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity”, and “All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom”; He claimed a public enlightenment can only come true slowly, and he realized that the enlightenment was a daunting work, for the isolated individuals “through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature.” Yet he didn’t think that through revolution the state of mind of public could be changed truly, instead, he believed that the new prejudices would simply replace the old ones.

Unlike Confucius’s peregrinations, Kant was never really out of town. He did not found a school, either. In fact, he was a lecturer working 26 -28 hours a week without salary for 15 years; his income was utterly from the attendees to his lectures. Now in honor of him, there is a University under his name in Russia. Kant had a deeper understanding on human nature. He was against a constant guardianship for all times, whether it was ratified by the supreme power, by parliaments or not. He believed that by placing one age guardianship as a constant for the succeeding ages, “it would be impossible for the later age to expand its knowledge (particularly where it is so very important), to rid itself of errors, and generally to increase its enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature”. Isn’t it a crime when the Chinese government sponsors and promotes the Confucianism worldwide, meanwhile, suffocates the tinge of freedom?