Ideological Orthodoxy, State Doctrine, or Art of Governance? The “Victory of Confucianism” Revisited in Contemporary Chinese Scholarship

Abstract

It has been a popular theory in English, Japanese, and Chinese scholarship that a “victory of Confucianism” occurred during the Han dynasty. Some members of these academic communities challenge this theory. However, it has long been overlooked that they do so by adopting different terminology and research frameworks. English scholarship uses the expression “victory/triumph of Confucianism” to refer to the dominance or growth of Confucianism during that period, while the Japanese use “the establishment of Confucian doctrine/religion as the state doctrine/religion” (jukyo kokkyoka 儒教國教化) and the Chinese use “dismissing the hundred schools and revering only the Confucian arts” (ba chu bai jia du zun ru shu 罷黜百家, 獨尊儒術). The expressions, as the current issue illustrates, exemplify three different ways of studying the history of Han Confucianism.