| The New Life Movement was initiated in 1934 by Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kai-shek] to mobilize the Chinese people and transform them into citizens of a modern nation. Jiang hoped that achieving the goals of the movement, which in large part included reforming manners and habits of daily living, would “save the nation”from the various threats and challenges it faced. The foundation of the movement was Confucianism, and the cardinal virtues of li (propriety), yi (righteousness), lian (discerning right from wrong) and chi (a sense of shame), were the structure within which the movement's goals were articulated, and reflected the effort of the Nationalists (Guomindang) to reclaim Confucianism as an essential part of Chinese heritage.; In addition to these and other overt references to Confucianism, the New Life Movement reflects fundamental aspects of political Confucianism in both policy and implementation, and demonstrates the inseparability of the political with other aspects of religion in Confucian religiosity. This is seen especially in the official directives to insure public morality and to control education, and in the effort to direct and control daily personal habits, an important part of the foundational Li Ji (Record of Rites) and echoed in myriad statutes through imperial age. Jiang and the Guomindang exhibit this mode of Confucianism, where state authority extends to dictating the details of even personal habits in order to effect transformations of the body and morality which will better society, an example of the subordination of the individual to the community, even in the context of self transformation and self improvement.; In addition to considering the New Life Movement, this dissertation challenges the tendency of studies of Confucian religiosity to focus on individual experience and self-transformation at the expense of the politically motivated and implemented forms of Confucianism, thus characterizing the side of Confucian religiosity which is authoritarian. |
