ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Confucianism as a philosophy of life that overflows from the self into the family, the state, and heaven and earth. It looks at repeated corruptions of classical Confucianism as a support of feudal institutionalism in Chinese history. Confucianism is a philosophy of unconditional reverence for the autonomous individual in all dimensions—personal, familial, political, ecological. Confucianism in traditional China at once assumed a twisted form to powerfully support, and at the same time to powerlessly criticize, with the pristine force of the original Confucianism, the socio-political structure of the agrarian empire which surrounded it. The history of Taiwan, especially after the Second World War, is a story of emancipation from the traditional social hierarchy of agricultural feudalism and, by implication, from the shackles of Confucian authoritarian society and government. The familial-social hierarchy in Confucianism is really an expression of respect for persons in their respective places in the social network.
