Great Unity
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Great Unity
The Great Unity (datong, 大同; also translated Grand Unity or Great Harmony) is the Confucian vision of a public-minded, compassionate, and harmonious social order in which the common good prevails over selfishness, coercion, and conflict. Remembered as a Golden Age associated with the sage–kings, it also functions as an enduring social, moral, political, and religious ideal to be realised through virtue (de), humaneness (ren), and ritual propriety (li).[1] The Great Unity is a close Confucian analogue to the LP conception of a Harmonic Social Structure and is related to the Good Society and Eupsychia.
Concept Map
Key Terms
List of Human Development Frameworks
- Arica School
- Baha'i
- Buddhism
- Confucianism
- Eupsychian Education
- Eupsychian Management
- Eupsychian Therapy
- Gnosticism
- Holistic Nursing
- Jainism
- Karma Yoga
- League For Spiritual Discovery
- Metacounselor
- Monastic Christianity
- Neo-Hinduism
- Religion of Humanity
- Sanatana Dharma
- Shattari
- Sufism
- Taoism
- Theosophy
- Transpersonal Psychology
- Wicca
- Yoga
- Zen
Confucian Terms
Syncretic Terms
- Age of Aquarius
- Divine World Order
- Eupsychia
- Garden of Eden
- Good Society
- Great Unity
- Heaven
- Heaven of Reality
- New Creation
- New Earth
- Pure Land
- Shambhala
- Zion
Related LP Terms
Confucian Terms
Notes
The Classical Vision
Yao presents the Great Unity as part of the Confucian response to disorder and conflict. It is believed to have existed during an ancient Golden Age under the sage–kings, but it is not merely a nostalgic image of the past. Each generation can seek to reclaim it through virtuous and humane government, ethical cultivation, and ritual propriety. Yao identifies its utopian articulation particularly with the Book of Rites, including the chapters known as the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Evolution of Ritual/Propriety (Li Yun).[2]
The Great Unity joins personal transformation to social transformation. A harmonious world depends upon cultivated persons, but cultivated persons also require social and political conditions that favour peace, justice, and humaneness (in LP terms Right Environment.
All under Heaven as a Public Concern
A central expression of the Great Unity ideal is tianxia wei gong (天下为公), which Chen translates as “all under heaven belongs to the public.” The phrase expresses public-mindedness rather than the capture of all under Heaven by a ruler, family, faction, or private interest. Chen explains that modern New Confucians regarded this ideal as an indigenous resource for democratic thinking, while acknowledging that its democratic institutional potential had not fully developed in traditional China.[3]
The associated claim that sagehood is attainable by every person likewise supplies a basis for moral equality: political authority does not create a monopoly upon ethical agency or moral worth.[4]
Harmony Rather Than Uniformity
The Great Unity belongs to the wider Confucian concern with He, or harmony. In Yao’s account, harmony marks the convergence of the Way of Heaven and the way of humanity. It is not simply the absence of open conflict, but a condition in which human relationships, ethical conduct, and cosmic order support one another. Neo-Confucians extended this vision towards a world in which all human beings would be regarded as brothers and all things as companions.[5]
“Unity” should therefore not be read as compulsory sameness. Its Confucian context suggests differentiated relationships brought into harmony through humaneness, responsibility, and appropriate conduct.
Later Reinterpretations
The Great Unity has repeatedly been reinterpreted as a programme for social transformation. In the late Qing period, Kang Youwei and other reform-minded scholars presented Confucianism as a teaching capable of leading China from an “Age of Disorder” to an “Age of Great Unity.”[6]
In the twentieth century, the vision of a Grand Unity Society (datong shehui) informed modern political thought. Yao notes a particularly strong connection between this vision and Sun Zhongshan’s Three Principles of the People. He also argues that the Great Unity tradition gives Confucianism a form of historical optimism: although expressed as the memory of an ancient Golden Age, it can orient action towards a better human future.[7]
LP Context
The Great Unity is a strong syncretic analogue to a Harmonic Social Structure because it does not treat spiritual or ethical cultivation as purely private accomplishments. It imagines a transformed social order in which peace, public-mindedness, care, and harmonious relationships become normal features of collective life.
It also parallels the reciprocal relationship between the Good Person and the Good Society: humane persons are required to create a humane order, while social institutions and relationships help shape the persons who live within them.
The equivalence is nevertheless incomplete. The classical Great Unity is articulated through sage–kings, virtue, ritual propriety, family relationships, and humanity’s relation to Tian. The LP’s Harmonic Social Structure is defined more explicitly through the satisfaction of the Seven Essential Needs, removal of the Five Barriers to Human Flourishing, realisation of Human Potential, and concern for planetary well-being. The Great Unity is therefore best understood as a culturally specific Confucian anticipation of the harmonic social ideal, not as a ready-made LP social blueprint.
Terminological Caution
Datong (大同), the utopian Great Unity, should not be confused with da yitong (大一统), also translated “Great Unity,” which concerns political and cultural unification. Yao discusses the latter in connection with the Gongyang commentary and Dong Zhongshu’s synthesis during the Han dynasty.[8]
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Footnotes
- ↑ Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 169–70.
- ↑ Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism, 169–70.
- ↑ Yong Chen, Confucianism as Religion: Controversies and Consequences (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 156–57.
- ↑ Chen, Confucianism as Religion, 156–57.
- ↑ Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism, 169–70.
- ↑ Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism, 249–50.
- ↑ Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism, 274–75, 281–82.
- ↑ Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism, 84.