Confucian Piety and Individualism in Han China

Abstract

Many historians continue to analyze the collapse of Eastern Han rule (A.D. 25-220) in negative language, speaking of the failure of Confucian ethics, while using quite positive terms, such as the growth of individualism, to characterize intellectual life in the following Wei-Chin period (220-420). This essay offers an alternative view : that the breakdown in late Han institutions is ascribable in part to an overemphasis on the two Confucian virtues of hsiao (filial piety) and jang (renunciation). While this breakdown opened a greater variety of choices to individual members of the shih elite, it is probably inappropriate to apply the language of individualism to Wei-Chin life