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Chinese Philosophical Terms

Page Contents
Terms Broadly Shared by Confucianism & Taoism	Dào 道 = Way Lĭ 理 = Principle	Dé 德 = Virtue, Power Yīnyáng 阴阳 = Yīn and Yáng
Terms Particularly Stressed by Confucianism	Yì 义 = Righteousness Rén 仁 = Benevolence Lĭ 礼 = Ritual Zhì 智 = Wisdom	Xìn 信 = Sincerity Lián 廉 = Frugality Chĭ 耻 = Sense of Shame Zhōng 忠 = Loyalty Xiào 孝 = Filial Piety
Human Relationships	Ruler-Subject Father-Son Elder brother-Younger brother	Husband-Wife Friend-Friend
Other Terms in Chinese Philosophy	Aì 爱 = Love Băo 保 = Protection Bāo 包 = Contract Bào 报 = Retribution Chéng 诚 = Sincerity Fă 法 = Law Guānxì 关系 = Relationship	Hé 和 = Harmony Liú 流 = Float, Wander Píng 平 = Peaceful Píng'ān 平安 = Harmony Rèn 任 = Responsibility Yuán 圆 = Round Zhèng 正 = Orthodoxy Xié 邪 = Heterodoxy

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Many terms used in Chinese philosophy come up again and again in English texts on this topic, sometimes with widely varying translations. Some writers, both Chinese and foreign, try to describe or even "explain" all of traditional Chinese society by reference to one or a few "keywords," typically single syllables that occur in the Confucian Canon. (That is not particularly sound social analysis, but it seems to happen quite a bit.)

This page briefly discusses some of these terms, especially as used in discussions of Confucianism. I have not included the specialized vocabulary of Taoism or Buddhism. Except in the table of contents, when traditional characters differ from simplified ones, the traditional ones follow in parentheses.

For more on the Confucian Canon, see the Guide to Chinese Sacred Books.

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I. Terms Broadly Shared by Confucianism & Taoism

Dào 道 "Way"

A dào is a path or small road (or freeway lane), and has always been used in swuch a way. However from early times it had metaphorical extensions to mean the inherent characteristics of things, especially of the natural world. It is tempting to translate this "natural law," except that the natural world has always been conceived of as including a moral quality. (Filial piety, for example, was considered to be a virtue to which the universe was responsive.) Dào is therefore not merely how the world is (or the underlying principles of how it works), but also the goodness of how it is. It is the "nature of nature" only if we think of nature as having moral values.

Although Confucian texts frequently refer to Dào, the word gives its name (under an old spelling "tao") particularly to Taoism (Daoism). A basic insight particularly celebrated in Taoism is that Dào is past complete human understanding; hence our understanding of small bits of it is bound to be insufficient. However to the extent that we can grasp it, we can work in accord with it. Following this line of thinking, many struggles become effortless accomplishments when we swim downstream in cooperation with Dào rather than struggling upstream against its current.

Lĭ 理 "Principle"

Lĭ refers to the underlying way in which something functions, and as such often comes quite close in meaning to Dào. Lĭ becomes an important form in Confucianism particularly under the influence of the Neo-Confucian Southern Sòng dynasty (period 15c) writer, Zhū Xī 朱熹, who is often regarded as the founding genius of Neo-Confucianism.

Dé 德 "Virtue, Power"

The term is usually translated "virtue," and in many contexts that works. Indeed the compound "dàodé" 道德 is a close colloquial equivalent of that English word. However it can also suggest the sense of virtue in which one says that, "This book has the virtue of being well written." That is, it can refer to the ability, power, or virtue of something to follow its own nature (its Dào) and succeed in its moral purpose.

Yīnyáng 阴阳 (陰陽) "Yīn and Yáng"

This pair of terms constitutes a set of generic operators to describe binary oppositions wherever they are found: living vs. dead, active vs. passive, male vs. female, sun vs. moon, hot vs. cold, god vs. ghost, etc. There are several intellectual effects of using these generic labels:

• All things labeled yīn can be misunderstood as united in their yīn-ness and contrasted against a similar category of yáng things united by their yáng-ness. (Notice that this is a similar intellectual operation to that described in connection with the "five elements" on a separate page on this web site.)
• There is accordingly little possibility of real "neutrality" in the use of the labels; describing a pencil as yīn and a pen as yáng necessarily implies something about the differences between them beyond the fact that they stand in contrast to each other.
• Despite the traditional associations, yīn and yáng labeling is necessarily in fact relative in many cases. A living woman, for example is female as against male, hence yīn rather than yáng, but she is living as against dead, hence yáng rather than yīn.

While most philosophical tracts, including popular ones, use yīnyáng differentiation to speak of balance and alternation, and stress the necessity of one for another --night and day must alternate-- there is also a line of logic by which yáng is superior to yīn --life is preferable to death. It is a traditional Chinese perspective that in general the stress on balance and alternation is associated with elite, educated, and reflective understanding of things, while the desire to maximize yáng and to war against yīn is associated with vulgar and rustic understanding of things, but this much oversimplifies the situation, for context and object of discussion are much more important than education or social class in the way yīnyáng rhetoric is actually employed.

Yīnyáng thinking and reasoning are found in both Taoism and Confucianism, although appeal to it seems to be rather greater in Taoism, and the familiar yīnyáng symbol (the famous divided circle) is associated especially in China with Taoism.

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Yì 义 (義) "Righteousness"

This term is strongly associated with moral action. It represents the optimally efficacious and moral way to doing things. There is a flavor of public-spiritedness about it. It is associated with faithfulness to contract and strongly associated with loyalty (zhōng).

The joint sense of morality and contract leads to this syllable being used as a prefix for adoptive kinship relations: yìfù 义父 is an adopted father, yìnǚ 义女 an adopted daughter. The term jiéyì 结义 "to contract righteousness" means to become sworn siblings.

(A similar character, yí 仪 [儀], is used in compounds relating to ritual and etiquette and may arguably represent a linguistic link between righteousness and ritual.)

Rén 仁 "Benevolence"

"Benevolence" is the traditional translation, but other possibilities are "good will," "love," and "perfected moral character." The key concept is the readiness or willingness or do what is righteous, that is what is called for by the moral nature of the situation. In Confucian discussions this is often linked to several other terms that are exemplifications of benevolence, particularly filial piety (xiào 孝) and loyalty (zhōng (忠), q.v. Also in this connection come discussions of the "Five Relationships," which I have listed at the end of this page.

Lĭ 礼 (禮) "Ritual"

"Ritual" is a perfect translation of lĭ in some contexts, and a disastrously inadequate one in others. The Chinese term (which is not to be confused with lĭ meaning principle, despite the identical pronunciation) has very broad application, including: (1) formal ritual, whether religious (ritual, rites) or civil (ceremonies); (2) etiquette, whether formalized or informal; (3) behavior that is appropriate to the social context, that is which expresses one's benevolence (rén 仁) and manifest's one's righteousness (yì 义). Most writers argue that ritual must not be empty, but must be performed with "sincerity," which seems to mean that it requires that one fully cathect the status relationships and their symbols that are almost inevitably a part of any system of etiquette.

Confucianism in the hands of pettifoggers risks degenerating into punctiliousness, and this is the essence of much of the Taoist critique against it. At the opposite end, both critics and supporters of Confucianism agree that lĭ necessarily stresses conformity and modernist's argue that this tends to stifle behavioral manifestations of individualism (such as creativity).

Zhì 智 "Wisdom"

There is a different term for learnedness (xué 学 [學] , or today xuéwén 学问 [學問]) that refers to the mere accumulation of knowledge (just as in English one can refer to "book-learning"). Zhì refers rather to the culmination of (1) understanding righteousness (yì 义), (2) experiencing good will (rén 仁), and (3) practicing etiquette (lĭ 礼), all more or less unselfconsciously as a result of having fully internalized the system.

However wisdom also implies an ability to manipulate the world from within this set of values. A sage adviser can be called a "bag of wisdom" (zhìnáng 智囊), and the implication is that the person is a font of useful tactics and strategies. (A famous collection of tales of such people is a book actually called Zhìnáng by Yuán-dynasty [period-19] author Féng Mènglóng 冯梦龙 [馮夢龍].) In actual practice someone might be called a zhìnáng for a prodigious display of peasant cunning, but the proper sense of the term requires a more elevated attention to morality as well.

Xìn 信 "Sincerity"

The underlying concept in xìn is belief (as in believing in Buddhism), but the term has always included a sense of fidelity and trust, being both trusting and trustworthy. Within the Confucian frame of reference xìn refers to the state of a person who buys the system and fully cathects the values involved with righteousness, benevolence, and etiquette and who is free of all hypocrisy about any of it. Unlike wisdom (zhì 智), xìn does not preclude being naïve, stumbling, and unthoughtful.

In the school of Neo-Confucianism associated especially with Míng-dynasty (period 20) philosopher Wáng Yángmíng 王阳明 (王陽明) , the term xìn comes to represent the notion that the world and its principles are a mental representation that we present to ourselves, i.e., something contained within ourselves rather than an external reality as such, a position usually referred to as "idealism" in Western philosophy.

In modern Chinese, xìn is a verb, and it more or less routinely means simply "to believe." (It is used as a noun only in the unrelated sense of a letter or telegram.)

Lián 廉 "Frugality"

The same term refers both to a sense of moderation, both in material goods and in, say, emotion, and to direct frugality. While frugality comes in for only modest attention in the Confucian canon, moderation, often associated with the term "middle" (zhōng 中) is an important theme. Modern Confucians sometimes point to the stress on modesty and moderation as suggesting that Confucianism is "eco-friendly" and hence pre-adaptive to a future in which conservation and the husbandry of resources are major themes.

Chĭ 耻 "Sense of Shame"

Shame or modesty is the ability or tendency to be content not to receive the veneration of the vulgar, nor to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, but to take delight in the performance of one's duty.

Zhōng 忠 "Loyalty"

See below, under the relationship between ruler and subject.

Xiào 孝 "Filial Piety"

See below, under the relationship between father and son.

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III. Human Relationships

Confucian thought defines five core human relationships, referred to in Chinese as the wŭ lún 五伦 (五倫) or wŭ cháng 五常 (although the latter term can also refer to the virtues in the list above). Each is put forth as a pair of social statuses with rights and duties that obtain between them. Presumably the set is not imagined to be exhaustive of all human relationships. (Nothing is said about the relation between merchant and customer, for example.) Rather, they are five models illustrating the way in which human relationships ideally work. The earliest coherent discussion of this is to be found in the writings of Mencius, part of the Confucian canon discussed elsewhere on this web site.

Ruler-Subject 君臣 jūn-chén

Towards a ruler a subject should observe proprieties (lĭ 礼).

Towards a subject, a ruler should be loyal (zhōng 忠). Some writers represent loyalty as a kind of filial piety writ large. However filial piety, slightly broadened as looking after one's family, is easily cast into opposition to loyalty, seen as concern for the state or, more broadly, society at large. A Communist-period Hungarian proverb puts the tension quite clearly: "If you don't steal from the state, then you're stealing from your family." (Ha nem lopsz az államtól, akkor a családtól lopsz.)

Father-Son 父子 fù-zĭ

Towards a father (parent), a son (child) should be filially pious (xiào 孝). Filial piety is, experientially for most of the Chinese population, the most salient feature of Confucian society. It assumes near total submission of a child to a parent, and is the basis of the Confucian model of human relationships as inherently and properly hierarchical, and of the anti-Confucian critique of Confucianism as inherently totalitarian and oppressive. It should be noted that within Confucianism, although a child must obey a parent, the child also has the right and obligation of remonstration (guījiàn 规谏 [規諫]), and if the child believes that the parent is making a mistake, the child should point out the error (three times if one wants to be punctilious) before reluctantly carrying out the order. The same tradition refers to the emperor and his advisors.

Towards a son (child) a father (parent) should be compassionate (cí 慈).

In actual practice, most people defined for fathers a somewhat different role towards children; fathers were supposed to be "severe" (yán 严 [嚴]) to avoid spoiling a child; indeed the word yán is sometimes used as a synonym for father. It was mothers, in contrast, who are most usually described as being cí, just as in other societies.

Elder brother-Younger brother 兄弟 xiōng-dì

Towards an elder brother (sibling), a younger brother (sibling) should be brotherly (tì 悌). I don't know of another language with a particular word that is used only to describe the behavior and attitudes to be assumed towards a younger brother towards an older one, and the translation into English as "brotherly" recognizes the difficulty more than explaining the concept. Obedience is the expectation, and tì is often paired with filial piety in the same breath, suggesting that the father-son relationship should be understood as something of a model for the EBr-YBr relationship.

Towards a younger brother (sibling), an older brother (sibling) should be friendly (yŏu 友). If the YBr's behavior toward his older sibling is modeled, perhaps vaguely, on his behavior towards a parent, the behavior of the EBr towards the YBr, associated with friendship, is therefore ideally far more intimate than a father's would be, a kindly authority, verging on equality.

Husband-Wife 夫妇 (夫婦) fū-fù

To a wife, a husband should be venerable (zūn 尊). The term zūn suggests honor, high rank, and respectability by virtue of high position. The wife, in other words, is to honor her husband.

To a husband, a wife should be humble (bēi 卑). The term bēi is the reciprocal of zūn in other contexts of exalted and humble rank. The contrast that seems to be intended is clearly one of who is in charge (the husband), but with it at least some sense of a reciprocated sense of responsibility and place.

Friend-Friend 朋友 péngyŏu

Towards each other, friends should be friendly (yŏu).

The relationship between friends is the only one of the list of five that is non-hierarchical. The character 朋 represents a pair of cowry shells, and apparently always implied a pair of equal things. The character 友 also simply means friend. (Unlike the other terms, this is not a compound of names of two different statuses, but a synonym compound designating a single status, one of equality.) Mencius is quite clear on the distinctiveness of this relationship as fundamentally non-hierarchical.

Interesting, very close friends often swore (and still swear) oaths of mock-siblinghood, converting themselves from equal friends to unequal siblings, possibly suggesting a greater comfort level in hierarchical than in equal relationships, at least for some people.

One can make another interpretation about the Chinese urge toward sworn siblinghood, however. Such oaths often take place in temples devoted to the god Guān dì 关帝 (關帝), who is quintessentially associated with loyalty (zhōng 忠) and righteousness (yì 义), q.v. There is a suggestion here (and in the remarks of informants I interviewed in connection with a study of sworn siblinghood) that part of the goal of swearing eternal siblinghood is to fix the fidelity of the relationship and avoid the possibility of betrayal by one's friends. This suggests that friendship, whatever early Confucianism may have thought or said about it, was a relatively more fragile relationship than some friends may have hoped.

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IV Other Terms in Chinese Philosophy

Various writers have identified other terms as particularly important in understanding Chinese civilization. Here are a few of the most frequently mentioned.

Aì 爱 (愛) "Love"

This means what it sounds like. As in English, it is quite broad in application, depending on modifiers to specify a more exact meaning. Bó'ài 博爱 refers to universal love, for example, while lián'ài 恋爱 (戀愛) includes an element of sexual desire. Love as a social virtue is usually rén'ài 仁爱.

Băo 保 "Protection," Bāo 包 "Contract," and Bào 报 (報) "Retribution"

One writer has identified this trio of words as jointly the most important construct in understanding traditional Chinese life. The point of the analysis is the need to honor contracts and protect the trust that people must place in each other if society is to function well. (The similarity of sound among these words creates a resonance in Chinese and a confusion in English that makes them a "key to Chinese civilization" that is very well bāo-ed and băo-s the secret well, an appropriate bào for those who do not mark tones.)

Băo 保 "Protection" means principally guaranteeing, protecting, or guarding, so it sits on the edge of the commercialism implied by the English "guarantee" and the military threat implied in "guard" or "protect."

Bāo 包 "Contract" is a more specifically commercial term in many ways, as the translation "contract" implies, but it also can refer to holding and hiding something, with a sense of not letting outsiders have access to it, protecting one's own people and possessions.

Bào 报 (報) "Retribution" is a negative word in English, but it is a neutral word in Chinese, referring to the effects of one's action. An extremely common proverb runs, "Good has a good effect, bad has a bad effect [on the doer]." (Shàn yŏu shàn bào, è yŏu è bào. 善有善报，恶有恶报。 [善有善報，惡有惡報。]) The famous "Tractate of the Most High One on Actions and Consequences" (Tàishān Gănyìng Piān 太山感应篇 [太山感應篇] is one of the most popular Chinese morality texts and centers on this point. (Click here for the original text and an English translation.)

Bào 报 also refers to a report, the public exposure of information. Thus a newspaper or magazine may have this character in its title. The People's Daily is called the People's Bào, for example.

Chéng 诚 (誠) "Sincerity"

Sincerity and honesty are linked in this term, although in the Confucian tradition the result had better also be orthodox, so there is an important link to the idea of internalizing the mainstream tradition here.

Fă 法 "Law"

This syllable is used both for human and for natural law, and even for the method by which something is done, all rolled into one. In Buddhism it is used as a translation of Sanskrit "dharma," and refers to Buddhist law or doctrine, but also to the general Buddhist canon as well as to Buddhist customs, morality, and even occasionally to objects of worship.

Guānxì 关系 (關系) "Relationship"

The expectations of behavior that people in two statuses have of each other by virtue of their two statuses are called their "roles" in sociological English, their "guānxì" in colloquial Chinese. But the word has wider uses. Any sort of a relationship between ideas or things can be a guānxì. The expression "there is no guānxì" means that something doesn't matter or is unimportant. It is what I say to you if you apologize, for example. But what has attracted the interest of commentators is the use of guānxì to refer to influence, "pull," or "drag" that one person may have with another. Because I know you, I go to you to try to get a job for my nephew. I am said to be using guānxì to do it. In the abstract, guānxì in this sense is particularism rather than universalism. Guānxì is seen as effectiveness in getting things done by some people, as corruption by others.

Hé 和 "Harmony"

The term essentially refers to filling, uniting, flowing together, or putting things into accord with each other, and it is a verb or a noun. Another word 合 is also pronounced hé in modern Mandarin and means almost exactly the same thing, but the pronunciations of the two differ in early Chinese and in non-Mandarin dialects. One could say that they have hé-ed together in Mandarin.

Liú 流 "Float, Wander"

This word really refers simply to flowing. Tears, streams and rivers, meteors, epidemics-- all of these liú. However so can people, which is not considered desirable, on the whole. The term liúmín 流民 or liúmáng 流氓 simply means "tramp" and one doesn't really approve of them wandering around in one's neighborhood, and doesn't trust them to do business with. Liúmáng in late dynastic times and today refers especially to local bullies and scoff-laws who subsist on protection rackets, petty thievery, and sometimes hiring out to carry coffins or do short-term manual labor. Although some liúmáng may be married or may operate in small criminal gangs, there is a semantic cloud over the term liú that suggests an individual with little connection to the world, and is probably not married. Unmarried adults are, of course, suspect, since on the one hand they are not conforming to expectations, and on the other they have reduced social ties, and hence reduced constraints to ensure their good behavior.

Píng 平 "Peaceful"

Píng refers not only to peace, in all its dimensions, but also to equality. The differentiation in colloquial language is between píng'ān 平安 (peaceful) and píngdĕng 平等 (equal), but as a single syllable píng incorporates both ideas, and can even refer to flat land as well. In Classical Chinese píng-ing your enemies meant "pacifying" them.

Píng'ān 平安 "Harmony"

A colloquial term referring to a state of things being generally pleasantly uneventful. When work pays off, study goes well, health is good, and human relations are rewarding, in short when live delivers on its promises, the situtation is said to be "harmonious." The negation of this bùpíng'ān 不平安, "disharmony," which means that things are in general not going well: health is poor, there are financial or farming reverses, or whatever. Disharmony may be due to ghosts or other spirits.

Rèn 任 "Responsibility"

This means what it sounds like. It is often used to refer to one's office or responsibilities taken on for the public good. A public office is a "responsibility object" 任务 (任務) rènwù, somewhat on the analogy of a Mexican cargo.

Yuán 圆 (圓) "Round"

Roundness, as in many traditions, is associated with completeness or even perfection.

There is a terminological contrast between píng'ān 平安 "harmonious" and yuán 圆 "round" as two complementary ideals for the family, the first refering to how it functions, the second referring to its conformity to the structural ideal for families, with long-living adults, children of both sexes, and so on. Naturally a structurally defective family has trouble being píng'ān, but the fact that a family is yuán by no means suffices to make it píng'ān.

Zhèng 正 "Orthodoxy" and Xié 邪 "Heterodoxy"

What is orthodox and what is heterodox is a function of what perspective you take, of course. Methodists are heterodox if you are a Catholic, but orthodox if you are a Methodist. Usually the English terms are differentiated by seeing heterodoxy as an outrageous offshoot of orthodoxy.

In Chinese what is zhèng is what is in accord with the true moral nature of the universe, especially as interpreted by the state. What is xié is everything else. Xié comes up over and over in describing small religious sects or gods and ghosts that are not widely worshipped.

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