Datong
大同 (dàtóng)
The "Great Harmony": the ideal age when the world is held in common (*tianxia wei gong* 天下為公), without borders, without classes, without closed-off families, where all the elderly and all children are treated as one’s own. First outlined in the *Liyun* chapter of the *Book of Rites*, the theme was later taken up and systematized by Kang Youwei (1858–1927) into a universalist utopia: the abolition of distinctions between states, races, genders, and lineages in the name of a boundless humanity (*ren* 仁). (Confucianism has no separate entry in the nomenclature: this term is classified as transversal.)
The way of Great Unity is perfect equality, perfect impartiality, perfect humanity, and good government in the highest degree.
« The Way of Great Unity is perfect equality, perfect impartiality, perfect humanity, and the highest degree of good governance. » — the path of the Great Concord is perfect equality, perfect impartiality, perfect humanity, and the finest form of government. The datong (大同) names the ideal city of Confucianism: an age where « the world belongs to all » (天下為公), where none hoards for themselves alone, and where old age, childhood, and infirmity find their place without question of who they belong to.
The motif originates in the Liyun chapter of the Book of Rites, but it was Kang Youwei who, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, expanded it into a program. His Great Concord abolishes « the nine spheres of distinction »: between states, classes, races, sexes, families, and occupations. No more nations, no more closed lineages; the child is no longer the child of a father but « a citizen of Heaven ». The utopia springs from a single moral impulse—« the spirit that cannot bear the suffering of others »—extended, step by step, to the ten thousand beings: this is ren pushed to its cosmic limit, the same logic of expansion as the unity of the ten thousand beings.
The datong is not the commons in the sense of Dardot and Laval. The West conceives of it as an instituting activity, a collective action that brings about sharing through deliberation and conflict; Kang Youwei envisions a state of the world, a harmony given as the natural endpoint of moral evolution, where distinction itself fades rather than being negotiated. Where the commons presuppose subjects who co-decide, the Great Concord presupposes brothers who have nothing left to dispute.
The datong is thus not liberal equality, which guarantees rights among separate individuals: it is a universal kinship that dissolves separation.