ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the course of post-classical Confucianism, concluding with a consideration of the status of Confucianism in the Chinese world today. The Qin dynasty, and the longer-lived Han dynasty that soon succeeded it, were not initially beholden to Confucianism. Tang emperors regarded themselves as patrons of Daoism and Buddhism no less than of Confucianism, and Hans's outspoken criticism of the emperors veneration of a supposed relic of the Buddha nearly cost him his life. A watershed in the history of Neo-Confucianism and in the attitude toward book learning and the study of the past appears in the work of the eremite Liu Yin. The whole of Confucianism became a relentless canonization of tradition. Chen Duxiu faulted Confucianism because he saw it as inimical not to capitalism of which he was never enamoured but to democracy and science. But the anti-Confucianism of the early Republic provoked responses almost immediately.
