Confucius’s doctrine of the rectification of names

Abstract

Chinese social history in Spring and Autumn period was a time of turbulence and transition in all aspects of social life such as economy, politics, society, culture and ideology. The law regime of the Zhou Dynasty became obsolete. Vassal countries no longer submitted to the Zhou Dynasty, so they made wars to assert their position. Chinese society at that time fell into political turmoil and moral corruption. In that context, the doctrine of the rectification of names of Confucius was introduced, based on a combination of traditional elements and contemporary political and ethical factors that contributed to the movement of "Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought". It was a political and ethical philosophy not only meaningful in contemporary Chinese society but also in later eras. This paper aims at analyzing the contents of the doctrine and the methods to implement “the rectification of names”.