THE CONCEPT OF T'IEN IN THE CONFUCIAN THOUGHT OF THE LATE CHOU DYNASTY AND ITS ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS

The purpose of this study is to unravel the origin and nature of the concept of the deity of Heaven, T'ien, in the classical Confucian literature of the late Chou dynasty (551-233 B.C.) with the objective of uncovering the Confucian "god-concept" and thus gaining a possible new insight into the nature of Chinese religion. The study concentrates principally on the works of Confucius, Mencius, and Hsun-tzu, with a philological excursus into the etymological background of the word, T'ien.;The first specific problem of the study centers on the origin or etymological background of the word, T'ien. Here the philological theory of H. G. Creel is explicated and critiqued, resulting in an alternate theory for the origin or "original function" of the deity of Heaven. The theory is twofold: (1) That the Confucian religious metaphysical thought expressed in the notion of T'ien finds its origin in the evolution of the Chinese religious consciousness; that is, in a movement away from an analogical way of thinking to an ethical symbolic way of thinking; and (2) that this evolution of thinking was prompted by two historical-sociological factors; namely, a religious factor in which the deity of Heaven finds its original function in association with the cult of ancestor worship and its highest deity, and, secondly, a political-ethical factor prompted by the introduction of the T'ien-ming.;Now these two factors, it is argued, constitute the architectonic foundation or structure in the Confucian bi-polar conception of the deity of Heaven in the writings of Confucius and Mencius. Philosophically stated, Heaven is, on the one hand, the symbolic expression of the universal-principle of creativity. On the other hand, Heaven is the symbolic expression of the concrete function of the universal-principal of creativity. This same structure underlies the explicit concept of Heaven in Hsun-tzu's thought. Hsun-tzu, however, went decidedly beyond the traditional formulation, drawing out the logical implications already inherent within the early Confucian belief structure.; The study concludes with an attempt to draw out the religious-ethical implications of the notion of Heaven for interpreting the nature of Chinese religion. The implications are threefold: (1) That the notion of Heaven requires an understanding of God in terms of an "immanent-transcendence;" (2) That the notion of Heaven requires an emphasis upon the "concrete" as centered in human nature in its religious-ethical outlook; and (3) That the notion of Heaven in Confucian thought advocates a moral-humane community as the destiny or goal of religious practice.;The approach of the study, and therefore its primary interest, is philosophical; that is, it is interpretative rather than exegetical. While exegetical scholarship is extensively used, since one cannot divorce a philosophical reading of a text from careful historical linguistic analysis, the goal is to progress beyond commentaries to an interpretation of the meaning of the texts as a whole. And it is this concern for wholeness that guides the interpretative approach of the study, an approach in which structuralism provides a methodological model but only with the understanding that the approach of the study is not intended to be a form of structuralism. The argument is simply the conviction that there is a deep, integral structure inherent in the notion of T'ien and that only through a holistic understanding and approach can one penetrate the surface semantics around the deity of Heaven and arrive at an appreciation and understanding of its meaning.