The Reception of Confucianism in Vietnam: From Early Times to the early of 20^(th) Century

Title

The Reception of Confucianism in Vietnam: From Early Times to the early of 20^(th) Century

Author

Kim-son NGUYEN

Page

171-187

DOI

10.6163/TJEAS.201712_14(2).0005

Abstract

This article provides a new perspective and approaches to study the reception of Confucianism in Vietnam from the early Vietnamese kingdoms to the early 20th century. An overall lack of materials coupled with the complexity of available sources complicates efforts to study the historical process in which Confucianism was incorporated into Vietnamese society, spanning thousands of years. This article can only offer a brief outline of the process of reception, but it is unable to provide a detailed picture of Vietnamese Confucianism. Rather than depicting the full picture of the propagation (centered on the Chinese perspective) or the reception (centered on the Vietnamese perspective) of Confucianism, this article will focus on discussing only some aspects of the reception of Confucianism in Vietnam under the influence of Chinese culture. This article also avoids general discussions of Vietnamese Confucianism. Instead, it focuses on the process of incorporating Confucianism into Vietnamese society and culture. It attempts to identify the hidden and complex aspects of this process. I argue that the history of Confucianism in Vietnamese can be understood as a process of propagation and reception, localization, and an application of political thought and Confucian ethical concepts to solve actual problems in Vietnamese people’s everyday life.

Keyword

Confucianism, Vietnamese Confucianism, propagation, reception, Political Aspects, Localization, Village Religion

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