Altering Tian: Spirituality in Early Confucianism

This paper seeks to analyze the three earliest Confucian thinkers and the foundational texts associated with them. In studying these texts this paper attempts to discover how these early Confucian thinkers conceived of Tian. This paper claims the early Confucian thinkers did not make as radical of a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Atkinson, Jacob Thomas
Format: Others
Published: Scholar Commons 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5637
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6835&context=etd
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Summary:This paper seeks to analyze the three earliest Confucian thinkers and the foundational texts associated with them. In studying these texts this paper attempts to discover how these early Confucian thinkers conceived of Tian. This paper claims the early Confucian thinkers did not make as radical of a departure from the Ancient Chinese religiosity as many modern scholars have suggested. It has often been asserted that the tradition presented by these Confucian thinkers was entirely humanistic, altogether separate from the Ancient Chinese religiosityThis paper contests such claims,instead insisting that the early Confucian spirituality still viewed Tian as God and that the three earliest thinkers actually introduced new concepts which expanded, rather than diminished, upon the role of Tian.