Table Of Content

Copyright 1951 by The Free Press, a Corporatioa MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AME!\lCA Fonnat by Sidney Solomon SF.COND PIIINTlNG I'OVEI\IBEll 1959 LITHOCRAPHF.I> FOR THE PliULISliJo~KS BY NOllt.f: OFFSF:'f PRINTt:RS, INC.~ Nio;w \'OUK CONTENTS PAGE Prefatory Note ix PART ONE-SOCIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS I. City, Prince ancl God 3 1. On Chinese r.'lonev 3 2. City and Guild ' 13 3. l'rincely Administration and tl1e Conception of Deity: A Comparison with the Middle East 20 4. The Charismatic and Ponlificall'osilion of the Central Monarch .'30 II. The F euclal and Prebendal State 33 1. The Hereditary Ch;uismatic Nature of Feudalism 33 2. The Restoration of the Unified Bmcaueratic State 42 3. Central Govemment and Local Officialdom 47 4. Public Charges: the Corvcc-State and the Tax-State 50 5. Officialdom and Tax Collection by Quota Levies 55 III. Administration and Rural Structure 63 1. Feudal and Fiscal Organization 64 2. Army Organization and Wang An-shil1's Attempt at Reform 75 3. The Fiscal Protection of Peasants and Its Results for Rural Society 79 IV. Self-Government, Law, and Capitalism 84 1. Absence of Capitalist Relationships 84 2. The Sib Association 86 • v • » vi « CONTENTS PAGE 3. Organization of the Sib 88 4. Self-Government of the Chinese Village 91 5. Sib Fetters of the Economy 95 6. The Patrimonial Structure 'of Law 100 PART TWO-OHTIIODOXY V. The Literati 107 l. Confucius 113 2. The Development of the Examination System 115 3. The Typological Position of Confucian Education 119 4. The Status-Honor of the Literati 129 5. The Gentleman Ideal 131 6. The Prestige of Officialdom 133 7. Views on Economic Policy 136 8. Sultanism and the Eunuchs as Political Opponents of the Literati 138 VI. The Confucian Life Orientation 142 l. Bureaucracy and Hicrocracy 142 2. Absence of Natural Law and Formal Logic of Legal Thought 147 3. Absence of Natural Sciences 150 4. The Nature of Confucianism 152 5. Freedom from Metaphysics and Inncrworldly Nature of Confucianism 155 6. The Central Concept of Propriety 156 7. Piety 157 8. The Confucian Attitude Toward the Economy and Confucianism's Rejection of the Professional Expert 159 9. The Gentleman Ideal 161 10. The Significance of the Classics 163 11. Historical Development of Orthodoxy 165 12. The "Pathos" of Early Confucianism 167 13. The Pacifist Character of Confucianism 16Q PART THREE-TAOISM VII. Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy 173 l. Doctrine and Ritual in China 173 2. Anchoretism and Lao-tzu 178 3. Tao and Mysticism 179 4. The Practical Consequences of Mysticism 180 CONTENTS PAGE 5. The Contrast Between the Orthodox and Heterodox Schools 181 6. Taoist lvlacrobiotics 191 7. The Taoist Hicrocracy 192 8. The General Position nf Buddhism in China 195 9. The Systematic Rationalization of Magic 196 10. The Ethic of Taoism 204 11. The Traditionalist Character of Chinese Orthodox and Heterodox Ethics 205 12. Sects and the Persecution of Heresies in China 213 1.'3. The T'ai P'ing Rebellion 219 14. The Result of the Development 224 VIII. Conclusions: Confucianism and Puritanism 226 Notes 250 Glossary and Index 29S PREFATORY NOTE T ~lax PUllLICATIOK of Wcbcc'< Confucim>;sm and Tao;sm now makes available to the English reader the entire first volume of Weber's Collected Essays in the Sociology of llcligion, a work which Professor A. D. Nock has evaluated as "not merely work of great ability, but of genius."1 Talcott Parsons has published The Protestant Ethic and the S1Jirit of Capitalism (London, 1930), the essay ·which sr:ts forth Weber's basic thesis. It has given rise to an entire litcrature.2 The essay volume Fr01n Max \Vebcr, edited by I-I. H. Gerth and C. Wright \Jills, Oxford Press (New York, 1946) includes the companion piece, "The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capi talism" and the introductory essay to the preseut volume. For contextual reasons we took the liberty of substituting the title "The Social Psychology of the \Vorld Heligions" for the original heading "The Economic Ethic of the \Vorld Religions, Compara tive Essays in the Sociology of Religion, Introduction." We have named this volume The Religion of China in order to avoid the isms. The last essay, "Zwischenbetrachtung," of the German vol ume, leading over to the sh.1cly of Hinduism and Buddhism, has been published in the aforementioned essays Fmm AJax \Veber. 1. Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York and London, 1937), pp. 500 f., footnote 1. 2. Cf. Hans Gerth and Hedv.rig Ide Gerth, "Bibliography on :rvfax Weber," Social Research, vol. 16, no. 1 (:\larch 1949) pp. 70-89. ~ ix c » X « PREFATORY NOTE For our principles of translating \Veber we refer thl' reader to the Preface of the essays. \Ve fed encouraged by Professor Baum garten who evaluates the English editions to be "in part more reauable" than the original text.=: \Vc hope that the present volume will not fall short of this mark. Possibly we have felt freer than before to drop what in literal translation would SC(·m to be super fluous and redundant words nwkiug for overwritten prose in English. Despite our aim to transpose \Vcber's thought from one lan guage into another the frequent use of the term sib instead of clan might give the text the flavor of a "translation." By now Baden Powell's usage of the term dan for Far Eastem kinship groups seems to be common usage. A. !\1. Henderson and Talcott Parsons have honored it in their translation of \Veber's Theory of Soci.al and Economic Organization (New York, 1947). In spite of the precedent and with great hesitancy we have feit obliged to use the term sib rather than clan for Sippe fl.S 'Neber rejected the "Irish term clan as ambiguous" and used the tenn sib in a technical sense for "gentile charismatically outstanding agnatic descendants of charismatic chieftains."4 As the term sib has not become obsolete as yet in sociological literature and Joseph K. Folsom has used it in his The Family and Democratic Society (New York, 1943) we prefer it to clan at the risk of deviating from common usage. Weber was no sinologist and published his study of China without the benefit of a s-inologist's revision of his text. As he was no pedant he freely used tra~sliterations from the Chinese as found in English, French, German and Russian romanizations. Naturally this presented some difficulties to us. I am grateful to my sinologieally trained collea&>Ue, Professor M. L. Barnett, for going over the galley proofs and checking the romanizations of 3. Eduard Baumgarten, "Versuch iibcr clie menschlichen Gesellschaften und das Gewissen," Studium Gencralc, vol. 3, no. 10 (September 1950), p. 547. 4. Max Weber, The Ilindu Social System, tr. by Hans Gerth and Don 1\-iartindale, University of i'v[innesota Sociology Club Bulletin, no. 1 ( 1950) p. 86. (German text: p. 56, footnote 1.) PREFATORY NOTE » xi « Chinese names and phrases. Some fine points were kindly settled by Professor Y. T. Wang. First draft translations of several chapters have been revised some years ago by lvfessrs. Joseph Bensman and Bernard Green blatt. I am grateful for their valuable assistance. Special thanks are due to Dr. Patricke Johns Heine for her careful reading of the manuscript and numerous stylistic improvements. Dr. Hedwig Ide Gerth has rendered valuable assistance throughout. I am grateful to Professor C. Wright Mills and the publishers, Oxford University Press, New York, for their kind permission to reprint the chapter "The Chinese Literati" of the essay volume From Max Weber. HANS GERTH Madison, Wisconsin Spring 1951