The Impact Of Confucianism In Singapore Society

As its ultimate concern is "human being", for two thousand years, Confucianism values of regime, behavior and handling affairs have infused in Chinese souls, penetrated into many different fields of social life and guided their actions. In addition, for adapting to the social situation and trend in the context of the current era, Confucianism constantly improves its content. Thereby, Confucianism gradually becomes a major domain of East Asian civilization, which is not only the main part of Chinese culture for China, but also the part for those countries linked with "Chinese culture circle". Indeed, the early Singapore society that was mainly filled with Chinese immigrants inherited its "humanitarian" thinking in the civil society as well, and then Confucianism was revived under China’s revolutionary impact and the inspiration from Kang Youwei’s creation of Confucianism. However in the modern times, Confucianism was seen as an obstacle to the modernization of China. Scholars who insisted such view would sometimes cite the evidence concerning theories of Confucianism and Capitalism from German scientist Max Weber. Nevertheless, since the late70s, some western scholars including Herman Kahn and Peter L. Berger had been attempting to take some characteristics of Confucianism to explain the rapid economic development of East Asian and add (or correct) the content of Max Weber’s theory, which provided a shining inspiration for Singapore government that was queried by the western society. With the baptism of revolution, reform and critical movement and after removing the outdated content, the traditional Confucianism gained new vitality in the modernized Singapore, presenting its unique values and drawing the world’s focus. Of course, although the government pays great efforts to integrate Confucianism in the fields of moral education and virtue administration, it does not signify that the Confucian virtue will demonstrate well in Singapore’s modern society, or will insure to achieve the goal that everyone trains for his/her noble sentiment to make the others well. Even so, some problems will be picked out by such structured and holistic approach of study and thus offering some references for the modernized countries that are Confucianism-dominated.