Confucianism in Context: Classic Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, East Asia and Beyond
Confucianism in Context: Classic Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, East Asia and Beyond
Confucianism in Context: Classic Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, East Asia and Beyond
Confucianism
in Context
Confucianism
in Context
Classic Philosophy and Contemporary Issues,
East Asia and Beyond
Edited by
Wonsuk Chang
and
Leah Kalmanson
Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Foreword
Youngjin Choi
ix
Chapter 1
Transmitting the Dao: Chinese Confucianism
John Berthrong
Chapter 2
The History of Confucianism in Korea
Youngjin Choi
33
Chapter 3
The History of Confucianism in Japan
Peter Nosco
53
Chapter 4
What Is Confucianism?
Roger T. Ames
67
Chapter 5
Confucian Person in the Making
Wonsuk Chang
87
Chapter 6
Confucianism and Democracy
Sor-hoon Tan
103
vi
Contents
Chapter 7
Confucianism and Human Rights
Sangjin Han
121
Chapter 8
The Short Happy Life of Boston Confucianism
Robert Neville
145
Chapter 9
A Feminist Appropriation of Confucianism
Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee
175
Chapter 10
Confucian Trajectories on Environmental Understanding
Michael C. Kalton
191
211
215
Glossary
219
Bibliography
227
List of Contributors
235
Index
239
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 was previously published as an article in the Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy. Parts of Chapter 8 appear in Robert Cummings Nevilles Boston
Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-modern World (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2008).
vii
Foreword
About one hundred years ago, Park n-Sik (18591925), a Korean Confucian scholar and activist for Korean independence, warned of the decline of
Confucianism and advocated reforms. He said: The nineteenth and twentieth
centuries have seen the enormous development of western culture, and the
forthcoming twenty-first century will be a time when eastern culture prospers.
Therefore, I am convinced that the way of Confucius will not decline. I predict
that there will be a day when Confucianism will brilliantly shine throughout
the whole world (A New Treatise on Confucianism).
Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century it is impossible to
tell whether Confucianism will prosper as Pak Un-Sik predicted, or if it will
decline. However, Confucian studies are spreading throughout the world as
more scholars recognize Confucianism as a significant resource offering new
approaches to contemporary issues. Needless to say, Confucianism does not
presently function as a social norm in the areas of East Asia where it first
developed. Nations such as Korea, China, Japan, and Taiwan, which formed
the Confucian cultural sphere in the past, have accepted Western technology
and capitalist culture as the means to becoming successful. Of these nations,
Korea and Taiwan have succeeded in establishing capitalism and democracy
as norms, achieving both modernization and westernization in less than half
a century.
Nevertheless, Confucianism has not disappeared from the minds of Asian
people. Especially in the case of Korea, where the Confucian tradition is said to
be now the strongest, Confucianism as a cultural grammar regulates the customs
and the consciousness of the Koreans. Therefore, in order to understand East
Asia societies, one must pay attention to Confucianism. However, confusion
arises due to the many positive interpretations of Confucianism coexisting
alongside the many negative ones. Until the mid-1990s Confucianism was
appreciated as the motivating power for economic development in East Asia.
However, during the l997 Asian financial crisis, Confucianism was blamed
as the main culprit behind the economic problems. Even now Confucianism
is criticized as a form of authoritarian feudal ethics. Yet, at the same time,
ix
Foreword
Foreword
xi
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
rejects the extreme position that Confucianism and democracy are simply
incompatible. She also warns against the assumption that democracy is
necessarily tied to the Western value system. Moreover, she points out that
many Western nations today may not provide the best examples of functioning,
healthy democratic communities. Relying on the writings of John Dewey on
democracy, Tan shows that Confucian values coupled with alternative visions
for democracy within the West can offer the global community better examples
of democratic potential.
In the seventh chapter, Confucianism and Human Rights, Sangjin
Han revisits an incident from contemporary Korean history to explore
human rights in the context of Confucianism. The Kwangju uprising of
1980, a trauma for contemporary Koreans, is the account of a communitys
resistance to military rule. Despite the breakdown of governmental rule
and the seeming anarchy that existed during the days of the uprising, the
people of Kwangju maintained a communal cohesion that allowed them to
successfully resist unjust military authority while at the same time caring for
the needs of individuals injured or otherwise affected by the uprising. Han sees
the Kwangju uprising as an example of spontaneous, communal democratic
self-rule, not imposed on people through a top-down power structure, and
he asks whether Confucian values could ever sustain such a community on a
larger, long-term scale. His interpretation of Confucianism may be properly
called a communitarian approach without authoritarian consequences. He
proposes testing this interpretation against the historical development of
South Korea, one of the most democratized countries in Asia as well as one
of the most strongly Confucian.
In the eighth chapter Robert Neville tells the story of The Short Happy
Life of Boston Confucianism. He challenges the notion that only those
people who are products of an East Asian culture can rightfully be called
Confucians. His title refers to the coincidental concentration of Confucian
scholars in Boston-area universities, but Neville extends the idea of Boston
Confucianism to include a detailed analysis of the possibility for a flowering
of Confucian values in a Bostonian culture. While Tu Weimings prominent
thesis of the third wave of Confucianism sees contemporary Confucianism
as an extension of tradition, Nevilles Boston Confucianism is an attempt to
utilize this emerging, portable tradition from the standpoint of the intellectual
needs of an American philosophical context. His intercultural philosophical
adventure between American philosophers such as Charles Peirce, John Dewey,
and A. N. Whitehead, and Confucians such as Xunzi and Wang Yangming
is nothing less than a transformation of Confucianism in American soil that
aims to create an inclusive world philosophy.
The ninth chapter proposes A Feminist Appropriation of Confucianism,
in which Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee demonstrates the potential for a feminist
critique arising within the Confucian tradition itself, not imposed from the
outside as a harbinger of westernization. Rosenlee resists both the Confucians
who reject feminism as an intrusion of Western values as well as the Western
feminists who reject Confucianism as irredeemably patriarchal. These Western
feminists fail to note that the forefathers of Western philosophy were often no
less dismissive of womens intellectual capabilities. In her feminist appropriation
of Confucianism, Rosenlee preserves core Confucian values, especially those
that emphasize social and familial roles, while showing that they need not be
interpreted either hierarchically or strictly in terms of gender.
Finally, in the tenth chapter Michael C. Kalton offers Confucian
Trajectories on Environmental Understanding. Confucianism has traditionally
addressed itself to the question of the proper place of human beings within
the natural world. Beginning with the assumption that humans are initially
naturally integrated in their environments, Confucians then seek to explain
the causes of imbalances in this relationship and how these imbalances may
be corrected. As Kalton shows, the answers provided by Confucianism to this
question are strikingly relevant to the contemporary environmental crisis.
What contributors in this anthology share in common is an understanding
of the dialogical nature of Confucianism. Throughout different philosophical
eras and distinct cultures, Confucianism is a product of its transactions with
varying circumstances. What contributors do not share is a common focus;
their interests range from the specific historical conditions of Confucianism
in China, Korea, Japan, and the Western world, to significant contemporary
cultural discourses such as philosophical anthropology, feminism, ecology,
democracy, and human rights.
We first gathered this collection of essays as an introductory text to
the world of Confucianism, intended for undergraduate students, both local
and international, in the English-language general education program at
Koreas Sungkyunkwan University. As more Asian universities seek to foster
proficiency in English as well as encourage student participation in global
academic exchanges, we hope that this text will be useful in a variety of
classroom settings. We also hope that Western readers, both inside and outside
the university, will enjoy this representative collection of articles showing the
variety of important trends in Asian and intercultural philosophy today. It is
our sincere hope that we have successfully exhibited the evolving Confucian
narrative as it takes shape, modulates, endures, and thrives, through time
and across cultures.
Notes
1. Water and mountains are recurrent images in the Confucian philosophical
corpus and in artistic works such as landscape paintings. For water, see Analects 6.23:
Introduction
The wise enjoy water; the humane enjoy mountains. The wise are active; the humane
are still. The wise find enjoyment; the humane are long-enduring; and 9.17: What
passes away is, perhaps, like this. Day and night it never lets up. Confucius and
his disciples occasionally refer to mountain or other celestial objects. For example,
Confucius associates himself with image of high mountain in Kongzishijia. See
[Biography of Confucius] in Shizhi [The Record of the Historian] by
Sima Qian.
2. We omit the Vietnamese Confucian tradition in this volume only because
no specialist on the subject was available at the time of its compilation, not because
Vietnamese contributions are negligible.
John Berthrong
10
John Berthrong
2. The Han dynasty Confucians and the rise of the great
commentary traditions on the early classical philosophical
and religious texts (206 BCE220 CE);
3. The renewal of the Daoist tradition and the arrival of Buddhism,
roughly from the Wei-Qin period to the end of the Tang
dynasty (or from about 220 to 907);
4. The Renaissance of the Song (9601279) (also called
neo-Confucianism), the flowering of the Yuan and Ming
dynasties, and the spread of neo-Confucianism into Korea
and Japan (9601644);
5. The Qing dynastys School of Evidential Learning, or School
of Han Learning, and the continued growth of the movement
in Korea and Japan (16441911);
6. Western impact and the rise of the modern world, involving
the decline and then reformation of the Confucian way as
New Confucianism (1912 to the present).
11
12
John Berthrong
has been likened to St. Thomas Aquinas in the West, and there is little doubt
that except for Confucius no one has been more important in defining the
course of the Confucian tradition. Zhu Xis form of Confucianismwhich he
based on the writings of the Northern Song masters Zhou Dunyi (10171073),
Shao Yong (10111077), Zhang Zai (10201077), Cheng Hao (10321085),
and Cheng Yi (10331107)was spread by his followers to Korea and Japan.
Neo-Confucianism actually replaced Buddhism as the principal form of
Chinese thought from the Song to the modern period.
According to Confucian scholars, the great neo-Confucian reformers of
the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties are only second to the great classical Zhou
founders in terms of their impact on Chinese culture. From the Confucian point
of view, no higher praise can be given. If the classical ConfuciansConfucius,
Mencius, and Xunzidefended the learning of the sages during the Spring
and Autumn and Warring States periods of the late Zhou dynasty, the Song
and Ming neo-Confucian masters did the same in countering the challenges
of Daoism and Buddhism in their own ages. Even though there were great
changes and transformations of the way after Zhu Xi, no one can deny the
pivotal role that he played in the renewal and definition of the tradition. And
although one might contest Zhu Xis synthesis in the name of the tradition,
one cannot overlook his contribution to it.
The most important challenge to Zhu Xis summation of the way came
during the Ming dynasty in the form of Wang Yangmings (14721529) epic
struggle to come to terms with Zhu Xis rationalistic study of principle. Wang
Yangming is remembered as the founder of the School of Mind-Heart or
xinxue , in contradistinction to Zhu Xis School of Principle, or lixue
. Wang Yangming, along with being a brilliant critic of Zhu Xis thought,
was also an outstanding general, civil servant, poet, and teacher. He held
that principle, the rationale of dao in human nature, was in the mind-heart
of the sincere student of the way. He further taught a doctrine of the unity
of thought and action based on this understanding of true principle being
in the mind-heart.
The fifth epoch of Confucian learning is itself a reaction to and
transformation of the great neo-Confucian achievements of the fourth phase
of the Song and Ming dynasties. I believe that the Qing School of Evidential
Learning, also called the School of Han Learning or hanxue , is unique
in its concerns and its self-conscious rejection of a great deal of Song-Ming
scholarship. Its great leaders were thinkers such as Wang Fuzhi (16191692),
Huang Zongxi (16101695), and Dai Zhen (17231777). By turns, these Qing
scholars castigated the needlessly abstract thought of the Song and the equally
debilitating subjectivism of Wang Yangmings thought in the late Ming as
wrong turns for the Confucian way. They believed that Confucianism must
be of some concrete, practical use for the people. Hence, they often stressed
13
14
John Berthrong
The trick was to figure out what you were to learn along the way and
then how to put your insight into service of yourself and others. Once you
had found your stance, then the rest would come to you through continued
self-cultivation and education. At the end you could roam free without worrying
about offending heaven (tian ) or other people. His disciples record this
conversation about the Masters teaching: The Master said, Zeng, my friend!
My way (dao ) is bound together with one continuous strand. Master Zeng
replied, Indeed. When the Master had left, the disciples asked, What was he
referring to? Master Zeng said, The way of the Master is doing ones utmost
(zhong ) and putting oneself in the others place (shu ), nothing more. 3
Of course, the disciples realize that the Master is speaking of true humanity,
or the virtue of ren . Only a person of true humaneness could show the
empathy and utmost courage to become a worthy person.
The modern scholar Mou Zongsan (19091995) defines this primordial
Confucian ethical sensibility as rooted in concern consciousness. He believes
that Greek philosophys root metaphors express analysis and wonder about
the nature of being. This is why those touched by Greek thought always
ask the question of why something is as it is. Likewise, the great religions
of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism have metaphors expressing
awe before the divine reality as the root of their spiritual experience. The
characteristic mode of their experience is piety before the awesome character of
the divine reality. Confucianisms root metaphor was and is a concern for the
world. If we need to search for a Western analogy, the Quaker tradition surely
provides one. Quakers speak of having a concern for the world; Confucians
are taught that the Masters one thread is a constant and vigilant concern
for self, family, community, society, nation, the world, and the beyond, the
veritable dao of all that was, is, and can be.
If one asks how concern consciousness arises, the Confucian tradition
always begins with the person as a social being, and the primal aspect of
human social being is the family. Confucians have been accused of idealizing
the family. However, Confucius knew that blind reverence for unreflective filial
piety (xiao ) and respect for the elders could be a mistake. In a passage
that some Confucians have found hard to understand, the Master even mocks
an old man for his ethical failures. What could be more out of kilter with
the stereotype of rigid Confucian morality that demands respect for family
and the elders? But it is clear that Confucius meant just what he said. There
is nothing intrinsically good about an aged person who is without virtue.
Likewise, there would be something wrong with a young person if they failed
to respect a worthy elder. But concern for each person demands reciprocity.
An adult who is merely chronologically old does not merit reverence from the
young. This is a hard teaching, but it fits with Confuciuss persistent demand
that we cultivate the way of virtue and recognize that this way is long.
15
16
John Berthrong
The larger states were destroying and annexing the smaller ones, and all the
rulers were claiming the title of king as they tried to replace the leaders of
the Zhou dynasty. In fact, Mencius believed that there was no way to restore
the Zhou leadership and that what must happen was for some state to reunite
the Chinese world under the aegis of an enlightened ruler.
Philosophically, there was a great debate about the definition of xing ,
human dispositions, tendencies, or nature. On solid Confucian grounds, Mencius
seeks to define what it means to be a human being in order to transform
petty individuals into worthy members of the human race. After a person
has discovered what it means to be human, then Mencius, like most Chinese
thinkers, stresses a regimen for self-improvement that allows the person to
be of service to the larger community. We must remember that for Mencius,
self-cultivation is not merely a private enterprise but a public necessity.
Nonetheless, Mencius wants us to pay special attention to the social
cultivation of the mind-heart (xin ).7 In fact, it is really with Mencius
that the Confucian tradition begins to probe the various ways in which the
mind-heart can be cultivated in order to achieve sage virtue. In debating
with other philosophers, Mencius is particularly concerned with developing
a theory of the mind-heart and explaining how the virtues can be cultivated
within it.
The mind-heart is the repository of all the emotions, passions, appetites,
and even reflective abilities that make us human if properly cultivated. The
problem, as Mencius sees it, is that when we interact with our world without
a properly cultivated mind-heart, this mind-heart is prone to wander about
in all sorts of different directions. According to Mencius, there is nothing
innately wrong with many of these emotions and passions, only that they
can be misguided. Only the truly cultivated mind-heart can correctly guide
the emotions and passions. This is why Mencius often uses the image of the
unmoved mind-heart to speak about the kind of mind-heart that responds to
the Four Beginnings (siduan ) of human nature and controls the passions
and emotions. Hence, only the cultivated mind-heart can control both the
senses and the qi , or the matter-energy of the body.
Mencius rounds out the argument about the cultivation of the mind-heart
and human nature by returning attention to the social dimension of Confucian
thought. Accordingly, it is this mind-heart, informed by the manifestation
of the Four Beginnings, that will recognize the rites as the right ways to
act. And when these actions are the rites of a true king, the world will be
well ordered. The final act of a cultivated mind-heart, the mind-heart of the
cultured person, will be a benevolent government. One of the key features
of Menciuss image of good government is merit for all. A government is
only legitimate if it serves the people. Mencius, like his master, believes that
heaven hears as the people hear and speaks as the people speak and that any
17
ruler would be foolish in the extreme not to listen assiduously to what the
people hear and say.
The third and last of the classical Confucian masters is Xunzi, who
strenuously contravenes Menciuss theory that human nature or dispositions
are good. Xunzi holds that our xing is odious, even potentially evil if it is
not conformed to civilized conduct via proper education in Confucian ritual
theory and practice. Although the argument about human nature is important,
Xunzi still believes that education and ritual will allow for genuine human
flourishing. This irreducible core of Confucian beliefs marks Xunzi as a
Confucian, along with the fact that he saw himself as a Confucian, even if
this did not constrain him to agree with everything in the tradition.
One of the common assumptions about Xunzi, and one that is probably
true, is that he is the most secularized among the classical Confucians. For
him the old religious concept of heaven clearly becomes a name for a natural
process. Xunzi believes that the things of the world are created through the
ceaseless activity of the yin and yang forces in the primal qi. For him there
is no theistic intent for the notion of heaven beyond noting that Heaven
has the constant way; earth has the constant categories.8 These are objective
rules and regulations, indicating that perhaps there are laws of nature beyond
even the power of social convention. But this is not a philosophic topic of
much interest to him. As with all the Confucians, his attention is focused on
human social relations.
Xunzis epistemological stance is in line with his view of the cosmos.
For him, why one knows is part of human nature, and what one knows is
the pattern of things in the natural order. He starts with sensation and moves
on to an analysis of the nature and function of the mind-heart. The real
problem of the mind-heart for him is what he calls one-sidedness. This is
an improper fixation with only one aspect of human life or the world. So,
for instance, he would argue that the early Daoist writer Zhuangzi knows the
world and its dao but not the way of ritual or human government. To be a
mind-heart capable of conforming to the way things are, Xunzi argues that the
mind-heart must be empty, unified, and quiet.9 In essence, the mind-heart
is empty of preconceptions and therefore able to entertain new ideas and
data. It is unified in that it can compare different things or ideas without
confusing their natures. And it is quiet because it is calm, dispassionate, and
not deluded by any new data it may encounter.
Xunzi is also inordinately interested in disputation, logic, and language
theory for a Confucian.10 We will have to come to the much later Song, Ming,
and Qing dynasties to see such clarity of thought about these matters. For
him, concept formation arises from the labeling of things or events in order
to fit reality as conventionally defined. We know that things and words fit
because of empirical observation and the regulation of conventional naming.
18
John Berthrong
He recognizes that names represent family types even if the proper names
are unique. For example, the greatest common name would be thing (wu
). Why do we use certain names and not others? He notes that we do so
merely from convention and long usage over time. And the basis of human
nature is that We are happy and want to eat, cold and desire warmth, labor
and desire rest, love profit and hate injury.11
Although I will not dwell on this aspect of his thought, we need to
remember that Xunzi also sustains a passionate interest in ritual action. In
this he is a good Confucian who is worried about ren and the other standard
Confucian norms. In fact, he has a central place for ritual action (li ) as a
way to make our natures conform to the way things really are. Even if we have
powerful passions, he believes ritual can overcome or control these passions
and will allow us to have a humane life together. What is critical for Xunzi
is that these Confucian virtues are part of our learned or educated conduct
and not something we have by birth.
The key to understanding Xunzis hierarchical system is to understand
the role of the sage. The sage is the person who is able to make constructive
use of active reason. The mind-heart of the sage, having overcome error and
illusion, can become a molder of correct social conduct. The real key here is
Xunzis belief that the mind-heart of the sage can have unrestricted vision.
This vision is based on two things. First, there is historical learning, the
dedicated struggle to examine and sift through all the accumulated wisdom
of the past. The second pillar of the sagely mind-heart is clear, lucid insight.
This is a topic we shall return to shortly. If the sage is going to do all of
these wonderful things for humanity, then Xunzi will have to explain to us
how it will be accomplished. A person must have the ability to overcome the
common prejudices of the empirical mind-heart. We must learn to overcome
our subjective limitations and yet remain passionately committed to the
cosmic moral order. And what we shall see for humanity at the base of this
cosmos is order and hierarchy. But unlike many later Confucians, Xunzi is not
hostile to a complicated economy to create this good form of social order. In
fact, he encourages all kinds of specialized industry: Goods and grain shall
be allowed to circulate freely, so that there is no hindrance or stagnation in
distribution; they shall be transported from one place to another as the need
may arise, so that the entire region within the four seas becomes like one
family.12 He goes on to say: The farmers do not have to carve or chisel, to
fire or forge, and yet they have all the tools and utensils they need; artisans
and merchants do not have to work the fields and yet they have plenty of
vegetables and grain.13 Xunzi is unique among the Confucians in having
something good to say about commerce and merchants: This, wherever the
sky stretches and the earth extends, there is nothing beautiful left unfound,
nothing useful left unused. Such goods serve above to adorn the worthy
19
and good men, and below to nourish the common people and bring them
security and happiness.14
Having reviewed briefly Xunzis notion of civilized human life, we
need to examine more closely his theory of human nature. This is the most
complicated and controversial part of his philosophy. The great opening line of
Xunzis essay on human nature, as I would paraphrase it, reads conventionally:
The nature of humanity is evil, our goodness comes from conscious human
action.15 Whatever else it means, it is clear that Xunzi, at least for the sake of
argument, is seeking to contravene Mencius. He is picking a quarrel, and an
important one. Hence, what Xunzi really means is something like, Human
dispositions are coarse and goodness comes from conscious human effort.
Somehow it seems a bit strange to reduce one of the great quarrels in Confucian
history to an exegetical flaw. What if this reading is correct?
The contemporary New Confucian scholar Xu Fuguan (19031982)
makes the preliminary observation that Xunzi is more empirically inclined
than either Confucius or Mencius. He quotes Xunzis dictum that if not heard
and not seen, although certain, it is not humane (ren).16 Further, Xu Fuguan
notes that Xunzi has very definite views about the relationship of heaven,
earth, and humanity, which are rather different from other Confucian views.
Arguably, Xunzis notion of heaven has more in common with Zhuangzi
than some other early Confucian texts. What this means is that Xunzi has a
naturalist view of heaven as the dao of the cosmos.
In Xunzis view, xing is what all human beings share in being human.
There are three levels of nature: (1) the desire to eat when hungry, (2) the
capacity to discriminate white and black or good and evil, and (3) the
undetermined nature of desire, such that both desire and knowledge are
essential features of nature. Xu Fuguan argues that Xunzi tends to conflate
the empirical and the moral in terms of branches and roots of the same tree
of being. Human nature can be fully cultivated when it accords with the way
things really are. Nature responds to what we desire; hence nature is a kind
of responsiveness within the general generativity of the dao.17 But we need to
remember that Xunzi believes that morality, too, is a part of the way things
are. Had he believed that morality is pure convention, he probably would
have gone even farther in his admiration of Zhuangzis vision, which would
have been too much for any Confucian. The trick is that nature is really a
compound of desire and knowing.
Evil arises out of the capacity for or intensity of desire, not from the
desire itself. Evil is therefore essentially a lack of control, not the natural
responsiveness of human dispositions. The nature of present day people is
such that they are born having a liking for profit, and following this, the result
is a life of struggle and contention wherein courtesy and humility is lost.18
Basically, we need to remember that Mencius wants to reduce the desires to
20
John Berthrong
21
22
John Berthrong
23
Xi tells an exciting tale, but it would have been even more exiting if he had
included the contributions of Northern Song masters such as Wang Anshi
(10211086), Sima Guang (10191086), Ouyang Xiu (10071072), and Su
Shi (10371101)or someone such as Chen Liang (11431194), the great
utilitarian scholar of Zhu Xis own age.24 It is a sad fact, and perhaps one
that can be found in many different cultures, that great philosophers are not
always dispassionate intellectual historians.
In framing his metanarrative of the daotong, Zhu Xi includes a very
narrow selection of the great range of Northern and Southern Song Confucian
scholarship. Peter Bol has called Zhu Xis favorites the philosophers.25 The
term philosophers is a good designation because it captures what Zhu was
looking for in his selection of the four Northern Song masters as exemplars
of the Song Confucian revival. Zhu Xi, following the younger of the Cheng
brothers, Cheng Yi, takes li (order, pattern, rationale, or principle) to be
the defining character of the daoxue movementtherefore, to be a member
of the charmed group meant that you had to be a philosopher of principle
or rationale as Zhu Xi understood the term. He only does what so many
philosophers do; he selects his favorite root metaphor for reality and applies
it to the history of philosophy. In his case, it is a theory of li as the defining
characteristic of the world of objects and events. But his choice of li as the
root metaphor of daoxue obscures that fact that other Confucians during the
Song had alternatives to Cheng Yi, Zhu Xi, and their metaphor of principle,
pattern, rationale, and order.
Beyond Zhu Xis construction of daotong, what were alternative models
for the reorganization and revitalization of the Confucian dao during the
Northern Song? One important aspect of the movement was a series of social
reforms. One of the most important early figures of the revival of Confucian
social theory was Fan Zongyan (9891052). Although the Song government
did not implement the full range of his suggested political and social reforms,
such as changes to the civil service examinations and the foundations of public
education in general, it did start a movement toward the transformation
and expansion of the Song state. The general thrust of such political and
social reform was to encourage an active government in service to all the
people of the empire. Moreoverand this is what made it such a Confucian
enterprisethis reform of the government was to be coupled with a return to
Confucian moral learning with practical outcomes for the complete renovation
of society. It was to be a combination of practical programs and utopian
dreams of moral self-cultivation beginning with the emperor and ending
with villagers throughout China. Although Fan Zongyan was not successful
in implementing the full range of his proposals on a national level, he did
provide a set of rules for a charitable estate for his extended clan that set the
24
John Berthrong
model for such local social reform. His clan protocols remained popular as
prototypes for such forms of Confucian local self-regulation until the end of
the imperial system in the twentieth century.
Born a generation after Fan Zongyans pioneering efforts in social
reconstruction, Wang Anshi (10211086) is forever remembered as the
greatest political reformer of the Northern Song. Along with being a great
Confucian scholar with a special love for the Rituals of Zhou among the
canonical texts, he was an innovative reformer who had a plan for recasting
the entire imperial government. Looking back, the argument between Wang
Anshi and his interlocutors was a classic debate between the activist political
factions within Confucianism that wanted to use a more energetic imperial
government for rapid reform, as opposed to other scholars who were nervous
about too rapid a pace for such drastic and dramatic social engineering.
Wang Anshi fervently believed that if you reformed society via changes in
the educational system and tax policy, you could then bring Chinese society
back to the grand vision of the founding sages. Other scholars believed that
this kind of institutional reform was backward; what needed to be done was
to develop a new program of cultural and personal transformation and then
seek institutional reform.
Other Northern Song intellectuals had different root metaphors. Ouyang
Xiu (10071072), for instance, is remembered as a great classical scholar and
historian. He wanted to use history as a mirror for reform in order to ensure
that scholars and officials paid proper attention to the concrete historical
development of the organs of imperial government. He believed that only by
paying careful attention to the historical record could humane government
flourish under the Song imperial house. If Wang Anshi appealed to classical
models such as the ritual texts of the pre-Han sages and worthies, Ouyang
Xiu cautioned that any such appeal needed to be based on an accurate
historical account as to how these ideals play out in the political history of
the Chinese state.
Along with Ouyang Xiu, Sima Guang (10191086) is remembered as
another great critic of Wang Anshis reform program. According to Sima
Guang, the best metaphor for reform was to think of the dynastic institutions
as a grand palace for the state. What was needed was the restoration of the
various elements of the palace, to rebuild the edifice but still live successfully
within it while the renovations were ongoing. Like his friend Ouyang Xiu,
Sima Guang is best remembered as a historian with a political agenda. In
contradistinction to Zhu Xi, Sima Guang had a very high regard for Xunzi and
Yang Xiong in the Han dynasty. While morality was important to Sima, as it
would be for any Confucian, he devotedly believed that even the most sincere
reformer is constrained by the particular circumstances of history. Reform
must be based on what history will allow at any point. In this regard Sima
25
Guang would take a different view of reform from either the social activism
of Wang Anshi or the more introspective and personal daoxue program of
self-cultivation.
Su Shi (10371101), in turn, provided yet another Northern Song model
for Confucian revival. Su Shi was opposed to what he saw as the philosophical
dogmatism of too many of his Song colleagues, especially Cheng Yi. Simply
put, Su Shi defended a vision of the dao as a way of humane culture with a
deep appreciation of the role of literature and poetry as germane to a genuine
revival of Confucian culture. Befitting such a program for reform, Su Shi is
best remembered as the finest poet among the Song luminaries. He believed
that we inhabit an imperfect world and that even though we need to seek as
best we can for a set of principles to guide our lives, we will never find a set
of moral principles sufficient to bring perfection to the world. What we need
to do is to try to become as impartial as possible in our search for humane
perfectionwe need to use whatever comes to hand to encourage genuine
human flourishing. In order to find such a pattern, Su often wrote commentaries
about the Yijing or Book of Changes as models for such suggestive patterns
of social renewal. In the midst of the committed Northern Song search for
political, social, and moral reform, Su Shi remained a staunch defender of the
role of the arts. Beauty helps us to understand the spontaneity of the patterns
of the cosmos as much as examination of the particulars for moral rubrics. I
believe that Zhu Xi would have done better to find a more prominent place
for Su Shis defense of poetry than to merely dismiss this as an unworthy
waste of time for someone in search of the Confucian way.
Of course, Zhu Xis role was crucial in creating the paradigmatic
neo-Confucian synthesis. By making the choices he did many other Northern
Song thinkers were excluded from the list of teachers of the way. Such notables
as the great politician and reformer Wang Anshi and the poet Su Shi did not
make the list, along with the historians and classicists Ouyang Xiu and Sima
Guang. Zhu Xi ultimately privileged one particular group of philosophers
over all the other Confucian scholarly groups. Nonetheless, Zhu was sensitive
to philosophical creativity in selecting Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai, and the
brothers Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi as his paragons of Northern Confucian
thoughtwith Shao Yong lurking in the background when the philosophical
debates turned to epistemological issues.
26
John Berthrong
their critique and merit a separate discussion, there were immediate Song
dynasty rejoinders to Zhu Xi that argued against his synthesis on philosophical
grounds. The first major rebuttal came from Zhu Xis friend and critic Chen
Liang (11431194), one of the great utilitarian philosophers of the Confucian
tradition. What worried Chen Liang about Zhu Xis daoxue, with its emphasis
on rational analysis of the world through the examination of things in order
to discover a universal orderall linked to a complicated process of moral
self-cultivationwas that it was too idealistic and hence not suited to the actual
geopolitical demands of Southern Song reality. While it is clear that Zhu Xi
was passionately involved the politics of his day, Chen Liang contended that
the world was a more empirically complex place than Zhu Xis system implied:
I simply dont agree with (your) joining together principles and (complex)
affairs (as neatly and artificially) as if they were barrel hoops.26
The nub of the debate revolved around the proper understanding of the
notion of public, or gong , defined as public benefit, or gongli . Here
Chen Liang broke with Zhu Xi and suggested that what was needed for real,
concrete reform were good laws as well as good neo-Confucian philosophers
trained in a metaphysical praxis such as daoxue: The human mind-heart
(xin) is mostly self-regarding, but laws and regulations (fa ) can be used
to make it public-mind-hearted (gong). . . . Law and regulations comprise the
collective or commonweal principle (gongli).27 Such arguments about pragmatic
political theory and even an appeal to the beneficial outcomes of carefully
constructed legal regimes were never well received in the neo-Confucian
period, even if they did point to some genuinely diverse views within the
Song Confucian revivals.
The most influential critique of Zhu Xis daoxue also came from another
good friend, Lu Xiangshan (11391193). The crux of the philosophical
disagreement resides in Lu Xiangshans different interpretation of the role
of the mind-heart in terms of the common neo-Confucian task of finding
the right method for evaluating the moral epistemology of interpreting the
world correctly. In a dialogue with a student, Lu Xiangshan pinpoints his
argument with Zhu Xi:
Bomin asked: How is one to investigate things (gewu )?
The Teacher [Lu Xiangshan] said: Investigate the principle of
things.
Bomin said: The ten thousand things under Heaven are
extremely multitudinous; how, then, can we investigate all of
them exhaustively?
The teacher replied: The ten thousand things are already complete
in us. It is only necessary to apprehend their principle.28
27
There are two important things to notice about Lu Xiangshans critical response
to the question of the examination of things. First, in many ways he does not
disagree with the basic cosmological outline provided by Zhu Xi. Second, his
philosophic sensibility, however, becomes even more focused on the internal
self-cultivation of the person. Many scholars have remarked upon the fact
that we find a turn inward in much of Song and Ming philosophy, and
none more so than in Lu Xiangshans intense desire to find principle within
the person. Of course, this is not to be understood as a purely subjective
idealism. Rather, Lu Xiangshan contends that only by finding principle in the
mind-heart can a person effectively comprehend the rest of the world. The
point is not a solipsistic retreat into the subjective and relativistic reveries
of an isolated individual, but rather a heightened ability to interpret and
engage the world as it really is. The critical question is to find the proper
place to start the investigation of things. If we start with the things of the
world, we fall prey to the problems of self-delusion and partiality that infect
the uncultivated person. But if we can find the correct place and method to
investigate things and comprehend their principles, then we will understand
the actual, concrete unity of principle.
Centuries later in the mid-Ming dynasty, Wang Yangming (14721529)
sharpened what he took to be Lu Xiangshans critique of Zhu Xi. Wang
Yangmings philosophy was inextricably intertwined with his eventful life.
He lived the richest life of any of the major neo-Confucian philosophers,
being a philosopher of import, a poet, a statesman, and an accomplished
general. Wang Yangming began as a young student by attempting to follow
Zhu Xis advice about the investigation of things, or gewu . Once, he
and a group of nave young friends went into a garden to sit in front of
some bamboos in order to discern the true principle of bamboo. The band
of young scholars obviously thought that this would be an easy task. One by
one they fell away, unable to make any progress in their quest to understand
the bamboos principle. Wang Yangming was the last to give up and only did
so after having exhausted himself in the futile effort. He later recounts that he
believed he lacked the moral and intellectual insight to carry out the task at
hand; at that time he did not question Zhu Xis master narrative about how
to engage the world as a Confucian philosopher.
Later, during a painful political exile in the far south of China, Wang
Yangming had a flash of insight into the problem of finding the true location
of principle. As Tu Weiming writes: For the first time Yangming came to
the realization that [m]y own nature, is, of course, sufficient for me to attain
sagehood. And I have been mistaken in searching for the li [principle] in
external things and affairs (shiwu ). 29 Wang Yangming clearly understood
this enlightenment experience as a confirmation that Lu Xiangshan was correct
in declaring that principle was to be found complete within the mind-heart
of the person. In much greater detail than Lu Xiangshan, Wang Yangming
28
John Berthrong
29
New Confucianism
In one of his last lectures, the great contemporary philosopher Mou Zongsan
speaks of the necessity for the New Confucian movement to include all the
great Confucians of the past in the contemporary renewal of Confucian
philosophy. Xunzi and Zhu Xi need to be as much included as Mencius and
Wang Yangming. In fact, a creative Confucian reading of Daoist and Buddhist
texts is probably in order within the rich matrix of modern global philosophy.
Of course, Confucians have always read Daoist and Buddhist texts; it was just
that they were never supposed to proffer a good word about them or admit
that they were stimulated by these alternative traditions in the construction of
their own Confucian philosophies. Moreover, Confucianism is now becoming
an even more global movement than it was in the past.34 It is useful to remind
ourselves that the history of Confucianism has included major contributions by
Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese scholars for centuries. Both the Koreans and
Japanese can make strong cases that during certain periods in the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries they, and not the Chinese, were pursuing
the most creative Confucian philosophy.35 The great Korean Four-Seven Debate
about the relationship of principle and vital force is a perfect example of the
superlative quality of Korean Confucian discourse. And now Confucianism
appears to be making some kind of impact on the world of Euro-American
scholarship along with its cousins, Daoism and Buddhism.36
Confucianism has now spread even farther from its traditional East
Asian domiciles. New or renewed Confucianism needs not only to resurrect
the rich diversity of its past Asian glories, but likewise must engage the best of
global philosophy in fruitful dialogue. As Tu Weiming has argued, Confucian
philosophy is new entering a new epoch, an era marked by its contact with
30
John Berthrong
and appropriation of modern Western philosophy. Only time will tell what
the philosophical contributions of contemporary Confucianism will be to the
global city of the twenty-first century.
Notes
1. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr (1998), 190 (passage 15.29).
2. Ibid., 7677 (2.4).
3. Ibid., 92 (4.15).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 189 (15.24).
6. Ames and David Hall (1987), 287.
7. Please note that other authors in this volume translate the same term xin
as heart-mind.
8. Ren Jiyu (1979), I:210.
9. John Knoblock (1994), 3:104.
10. A. C. Graham (1989).
11. Ren Jiyu (1979), I:225.
12. Knoblock (1990), 2:102.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. This essay composes the Xunzis chapter titled Xinge (). See D. C. Lau
(1996), 113.
16. Xu Fuguan (1975), 22362.
17. Ibid., 22837.
18. Xu Fuguan (1975), 238.
31
The History of
Confucianism in Korea
Youngjin Choi
Translated by Wonsuk Chang
33
34
Youngjin Choi
years and had already affected the morality, norms, and social institutions of
the Korean people when neo-Confucianism arrived on the peninsula. This may
explain why Chosn could so readily transform itself into a Confucian society.
Even in contemporary Korea the Confucian tradition remains intact, more so
than in neighboring East Asian countries such as China and Japan.
The history of Confucianism in Korea can be divided broadly into two
periods: before and after the introduction of neo-Confucianism. Keeping this
broad divide in mind, I will explain the history of Korean Confucianism in
four sections:
1. The periods before the arrival of neo-Confucianism, comprising
the ancient period of the Three Kingdoms and Unified Silla
(first to tenth centuries) and the medieval period of the Kory
dynasty (tenth to fourteenth centuries);
2. The introduction of neo-Confucianism in the first half of the
Chosn dynasty (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries);
3. The further development of neo-Confucianism in the last half of
the Chosn dynasty (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries);
4. The modern period of the Korean Empire and Japanese
occupation (twentieth century to the present).
As Confucian philosophy began to influence institutions and norms in the
earlier periods, it spread to all spheres of life: academia, daily etiquette,
society, and culture. While tracing these developments, I will focus on the
distinctive issues of Confucian philosophy in Korea, thus highlighting the
basic characteristics of a uniquely Korean Confucianism.
35
36
Youngjin Choi
37
38
Youngjin Choi
39
been dead. Already not having vital energy, how could emptiness
spontaneously give birth to vital energy? It has no beginning; it
has no birth. Already not having a beginning, where can it end?
Already not having a birth, where can it cease?6
He criticized Daoist cosmology from the standpoint of neo-Confucianism, in
which vital energy (Ch. qi ) has neither beginning nor end. He defined vital
energy as creativity residing in the process of the world and called it vast
tenuousness, which is tenuous but not empty. Unperceivable vast tenuousness
is the real stuff that fills the cosmos. The pattern (Ch. li ) and the vital
energy are both indispensable components constituting the world. For him,
undifferentiated pattern is tenuous, and undifferentiated vital energy is coarse.
Yet the coalescence of these is mysterious and mysterious. Neither pattern
nor vital energy alone constitutes the world. He saw that the mystery comes
from a place where pattern is in harmony with vital energy.
Fellow-philosopher Lee nchk (14911553) replaced Daoist and
Buddhist notions of emptiness and nothingness with the Confucian language
of the great ultimate and pattern as the real stuff of the cosmos. As a result,
Confucianism became associated with practical learning. Lee nchk annotated
the first passage of Zhou Dunyis (10171073) Diagram of the Great Ultimate to
say that dao was the source of things and patterns, was incomparably high and
subtle, existed near to us, and was in fact easy to practice. Searching for dao
in the distance without inquiring into what is near and practical leads easily
to entanglements with futility. Pattern is real stuff, because it is the source of
the worlds existence and is immanent in the world. The practicality of pattern
is mentioned in Lees letter to Cho Hanbo (c. fifteenth century):
When it has not yet been aroused by any object, but is completely
empty and still, as if without object, this is what is referred to as
the wondrous condition with no sound or smell, or what your letter
refers to as quiescence. But in the midst of its perfect emptiness
and total quiescence it is wholly present throughout everything;
thus it is said that when roused it pervades the universe to its
source. If to the word quiescent you add oblivion, then thats
quiescent like wood and stone.7
The ultimate and the quiescent (Ch. ji and jing ) are Confucian terms
used to describe the transcendence of pattern as an entity. The great ultimate
in the yin and yang (Ch.) is quite different from Laozis nothingness or
Buddhist quiescent oblivion. Thus, Lee claimed that the dao was the due course
of practice in all the affairs of ordinary life and immanent in useful things
and events. In other words, dao was merely a good way of settling up human
40
Youngjin Choi
41
pattern and the Seven Feelings issue from vital energy. Yet in the wake of
Kobongs criticism of the first revision in 1558, Toegye again revised the text
to say: Four Beginnings issue from pure pattern and are entirely good; Seven
Feelings issue from vital energy and pattern, and can be either good or bad.
When Kobong wrote his critiques in reply to Toegyes revisions, the
Four-Seven Debate commenced. Kobong said that Toegye misconstrued
pattern and vital energy as two separate entities by contrasting the Four
Beginnings issuing from pattern with the Seven Feelings issuing from vital
energy. Kobong claimed that the Four Beginnings cannot emerge apart from
the Seven Feelings. He understood the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings
as inseparable feelings that are yet named differently, due only to that with
respect to which one speaks (). His theory of pattern and vital
energy is based on the idea of a mixed state. For him, pattern is the master
of vital energy and vital energy supplies the material for pattern. These two
are certainly distinct, but when it comes to their presence in actual things,
they are mixed together and cannot be split apart.
Toegye addressed his first reply to Kobongs remark about that with
respect to which one speaks. He claimed that pattern and vital energy may
be interdependent, but nevertheless we can refer to them by separate terms.
Regarding human natural tendencies, the point of reference is pattern, not vital
energy, so tendencies can be described as purely good and not evil. The same
logic can be applied to human feelings. Although the Four Beginnings are a
mixture of pattern and vital energy, the point of reference is pattern, so it is
plausible to say the Four Beginnings issue from pattern. He also acknowledged
that the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings are within the boundaries of
pattern and vital energy, because the Four Beginnings come from the human
tendencies of benevolence, rightness, observance of ritual propriety, and
wisdom; and the Seven Feelings are caused by outside entities. He argued
although neither the Four Beginnings nor Seven Feelings are separable from
pattern and vital energy, each points to a predominant factor and emphasis
on the basis of their point of origin, so there is no reason why we cannot say
that one is a matter of pattern and the other a matter of vital energy.
In the second letter in the debate, Toegye revised his position, saying,
In the case of the Four Beginnings, pattern issues them and vital energy
follows, while in case of the Seven Feelings, vital energy issues them and
pattern mounts them ( ); yet he did not
change his basic position. According to Toegye, despite the fact that pattern
and vital energy are inseparable, the Four Beginnings emphasize pattern
over vital energy, and the Seven Feelings focus on vital energy over pattern.
Moreover, the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings can be distinguished from
two different points of view, the mixed and the divided. Toegyes theory
of pattern and vital energy was built on the view of the divided.
42
Youngjin Choi
43
44
Youngjin Choi
He called this the subtle inseparability of pattern and vital energy, meaning
that pattern and vital energy are neither separable nor intermixablethat is,
neither two separate entities nor one unified entity. Instead, Yulgok described
pattern and vital energy as subtle inseparability one and many, many and
one ( ).
His thesis that pattern pervades and vital energy delimits expresses
the generality of pattern and the particularity of vital energy. Thus, his
Four-Seven theory emphasizes the unity of the feelings while acknowledging
the differences in their values. Futhermore, his ideas of human mind and
dao mind assume that there is a channel through which the human mind
can communicate with the dao mind. All these ideas stem from his philosophy
of the subtle relation between pattern and vital energy.
45
46
Youngjin Choi
between sages and common people. On the basis of this he concluded that there
are discrepancies between the natural tendencies of humans and animals.
Concerning the debate over whether human and animals are basically
the same (because both inherit the same five constant virtues), or whether
they are different (because animals only inherit a part of the five constant
virtues), Han Wonjin said humans and animals are endowed with the vital
energy of the five phases, despite differences in partiality. Lee Kan claimed
that human and animals are different in physical nature but should possess
the same qualities of the five constant virtues because both are made of the
vital energy of yin and yang. Therefore, humans and animals have the same
natural tendencies but different physical natures.
Lee may have repeated Zhu Xis ideas here, because Zhu Xi split human
natural tendencies into original nature and physical nature. The original nature,
in which pattern coexists with vital energy without being mixed, has pure
goodness and generality; while physical nature, in which pattern is delimited
by vital energy, produces various consequences depending upon the extent
that vital energy is involved. Ontologically they are not two entities. Original
nature is the term used with respect to pattern, while physical nature is the
term that equally emphasizes pattern and vital energy. Therefore, human and
animals have the same original nature but not the same physical nature. Lees
sameness theory, stemming from Zhu Xis theory of human natural tendencies,
shows that humans and nonhumans share the five virtues in nature.
Han argued that pattern, originally one, has two terms. One can be
spoken of as being beyond disposition (chohyonggi ), and the other can
be spoken of as being according to disposition (ingijil ). The former is
the great ultimate, from the standpoint of which myriad things are the same.
The latter includes heaven, earth, and the five virtues, from the standpoint of
which myriad things are not the same. Here Han Wonjins view of what is
according to disposition refers not to original nature but physical nature.
His argument is not in harmony with neo-Confucianism in general.
While neo-Confucianism uses contrasting terms such as sameness and
difference, or original nature and physical nature, his theory allows for the
threefold stratification of human natural tendencies into chohyonggi, ingijil, and
chapgijil. He argued that human natural tendencies are different from those
of animals according to their dispositions and that the natural tendencies of
each kind are separate, but this is alien to neo-Confucianism. It is as peculiar
as Toegyes doctrine of the self-issuance of pattern.
Han Wonjin saw that human and animals, though different in their
intellectual capacities, both have the capability of cognition. However, he
maintained that they were fundamentally different in terms of higher moral
values such as benevolence, rightness, observance of ritual propriety, and
47
wisdom. In other words, these higher moral values are only possible for
human beings.
Departure from Neo-Confucianism and the Growth of the Pragmatic School
In the Korean history of neo-Confucianism, the study of ritual propriety
is discussed in the theories of the heart-mind and natural tendencies, and
disputes over ritual propriety are of central significance. This developed
extensively from the two debates, Four-Seven and Ho-Rak. The main issues
of these debates concern explicating the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings,
dao mind and human mind, and the heart-mind and natural tendencies of
humans and animals in terms of pattern and vital energy. No matter how
speculative these issues may seem, these debates had clear the political
implications. Neo-Confucian scholars, bureaucrats, and politicians were
sensitive to contemporary social issues, and these social issues continuously
influenced their philosophy, directly and indirectly.
On the one hand, neo-Confucian philosophers made scholarly progress
on these philosophical issues, particularly in the Ho-Rak Debate, and on the
other hand they made political claims on the reform of land and social class
based on Zhu Xis social philosophy. In the same era, H Mok opposed the
Old Doctrine faction in power, which advocated orthodox Zhu Xi studies
and attempted to restore the Six Canons of Confucianism.
In the dispute over the mourning rites, the Old Doctrine faction
represented by Song Si-yl was in conflict with the Southerners faction
represented by H Mok. Eventually the Old Doctrine faction took exclusive
control of power. Many neo-Confucian literati including Southerners were
excluded from participation in the political process, which laid the foundation
for their life and education in the countryside. Lee Ik and Chng Yagyong,
the founders of Pragmatic School, emerged from this background.
Yun Hyu, who participated in the dispute over ritual propriety, departed
from orthodox neo-Confucianism. Particularly, his comments on the Zhongyong
and the Great Learning were substantially different from Zhu Xis annotations.
One difference is his emphasis upon shangdi in the Book of Poetry and Book
of Documents, which Chng Yagyong later repeated in his commentaries on
the Confucian classics. This indicated a return to the original teachings of
Confucianism without recourse to the authority of Zhu Xis annotations.
Many social and economic changes occurred in Chosn in the late
seventeenth century. Large areas of land damaged by foreign invasions were
restored, and a significant amount of commercial capital was accumulated
through intermediate trade between China and Japan. These economic changes
naturally induced social changes. Beginning in the late eighteenth century,
48
Youngjin Choi
49
the Chinese classics and deciphering the ancient characters empirically. Park
Kyu-su (18071876), the grandson of Park Chi-wn and a student of Kim
Chng-hui, energetically implemented the reform policies. Some politicians
of the regime were the followers of the Northern Learning School under the
influence of Kim Chng-hui. This is proof that the school exerted influence on
the rise of enlightenment thought, because enlightenment thinkers in Korea
did nothing but replace the Qing dynasty with Japan and Western countries,
as sources of advanced culture.
The Pragmatic School may be traced back to two sources: Southerners
in the Kynggi and Chungchng provinces, and the Northern Learning School
in the Nak School of the Old Doctrine faction. Despite being two different
or even opposite political factions and academic trends, they collaborated to
give birth to pragmatic learning. In Seoul in the late eighteenth century, there
was active scholarly exchange among intellectuals regardless of their political
alliance, school, or social class. These scholars extended their interests from Zhu
Xi studies to governance studies, literati studies, and encyclopedic studies. These
scholarly trends accelerated among intellectuals as they gained fresh insights
into their changing society and recognized their social responsibility.
In this scholarly and social environment, Chng Yagyong interpreted
the Confucian classics under the influence of Roman Catholic doctrines and
created his own philosophy. He wrote: Humans endowed with acuteness can
be superior to other creatures and explore the ten thousand things. Given
that heaven, earth, and five virtues are equally endowed among humans and
things, who is the master? How can it be that undifferentiated order is the
due course of the cosmos?11 He saw that two different spheres could be
distinguished: humans enjoy morality and independence, while animals and
things are bound to inexorable laws without any moral sense. Here, animals
and things seem to become objects of human desire and exploitation. In this
way, modern consciousness is apparent in his thought.
50
Youngjin Choi
51
Conclusion
The characteristics of Korean Confucianism lie in its emphasizing inner
morality as much as practicality. Confucian literati in Chosn formed
their unique Confucianism in the process of resolving social issues with
neo-Confucian language and philosophy. The political issues of Chsun
society were changed into seemingly pure philosophical debates. This was
partly because Confucians in Chsun were bureaucrats and politicians. Yet
it also shows that the indigenous Korean way of thinkingthe harmony of
oppositesis at work behind Korean Confucianism, whose ideal is to achieve
the continuity of theory and practice, philosophy and real life.
Nowadays, in spite of many challenges, Confucianism is still meaningful
in Korea, because many are actively pursuing Confucian resolutions to the
social and cultural issues of postmodern and late-capitalistic society. In
contemporary Korea, Confucianism is in the present tense.
52
Youngjin Choi
and Chinese cultures, see Seung-kook Lew (1973), Introduction of Yin and
Chou Thought and Ancient Korean Society in Korea Journal 13, no. 6. The
history of neo-Confucianism in Korea is detailed in Wm. Theodore de Bary
and JaHyun Kim Haboush, eds. (1985), The Rise of Neo-Confucianism in
Korea. For an overview of Confucianism and various religions in Korea, see
Donald Baker (2008), Korean Spirituality.
To read more on individual Korean philosophers, see Sa-soon Yun
(1991), Critical Issues in Neo-Confucian Thought: The Philosophy of Yi Toegye;
and Young-chan Ro (1989), The Korean Neo-Confucianism of Yi Yulgok. For
a translation of Toegyes writings, see Michael C. Kalton (1988), To Become
a Sage: The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning.
Finally, for more on the Four-Seven Debate, see Michael C. Kalton et al.
(1994), The Four-Seven Debate: An Annotated Translation of the Most Famous
Controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian Thought; and Edward Y. J. Chung (1995),
The Korean Neo-Confucianism of Yi Toegye and Yi Yulgok: A Reappraisal of
the Four-Seven Thesis and Its Practical Implications for Self-Cultivation.
Notes
1. Roger T. Ames and David Hall (2001), 109110.
2. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. (1998), 129.
3. Kim Pusik, Samguk sagi [History of the Three Kingdoms], trans. Wonsuk
Chang (unpublished manuscript). The passage comes from Part IV, Annals of Silla
of the 37th year of King Chinhung.
4. While most of the terminology in this chapter appears in Korean, some
Confucian terms appear in Chinese. These are marked with a Ch.
5. Chng Tojn, Pulssi chappyn [Criticism of Buddhism], Section 14, trans.
Charles Muller, http://acmuller.net/jeong-gihwa/bulssijapbyeon.html.
6. S Kyngdk, Taehsl [Discussion of the Vast Tenuousness], trans. Jeongyeup
Kim (unpublished manuscript), in Hwadamjip [Collected Works of Hwadam].
7. Lee jk, First Letter to Manggidang, trans. Michael Kalton (unpublished
manuscript), in Hoejaejip [Collected Works of Hoejap].
8. Yulgok chns [Writings of Yulgok] 10.5b; see Kalton et al. (1994), 132.
9. What the author refers to as the five constant virtues are called the five
constants, or wuchang, in the glossary.
10. Hong Tae-young, isan mundap [Dialogues at Ui Mountain], trans. Jeongyeup
Kim, (unpublished manuscript).
11. Chng Yagyong, Chungyong kang'ibo [A Supplement to the Discussion of
the Zhongyong], trans. Wonsuk Chang (unpublished manuscript), in Yyudang chns
[Collected Works of Yyudang].
The History of
Confucianism in Japan
Peter Nosco
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Peter Nosco
and especially individuals who came from the Korean peninsula. Their
services included divination and record keeping: the former associated with
astrologically identifying auspicious dates for important events, or determining
lucky and unlucky directions for travel on a particular day; and the latter
with ritually sacralizing early elites in Japan, especially the nascent Yamato
monarchy. However, the most basic Confucian advice on how to order the
affairs of state, or to regulate and cultivate the individual, would remain absent
from Japanese Confucianism for centuries to come.
Certain Chinese principles of statecraft and other policies often identified
with Confucianism proved useful to Japans seventh- and eighth-century
monarchy. Principal among these were practicing equal-field land distribution,
imposing a single tax upon the people, having a single monarch whose rule
could unite spiritual and political authority, establishing a symmetrical central
bureaucracy, administering performance reviews to those in government
service, undertaking a census, issuing legal codes, participating diplomatically
in a Sinocentric international order, and constructing a capital region. To be
sure, these were as much Chinese as they were distinctively Confucian. Their
success in practice varied widely, and only the existence of a clearly defined
capital region survived beyond the early tenth century.
For centuries one found few recognizable Confucians in Japan, in the
sense of acknowledged authorities on the Chinese classics. Even though the
Song (9601279) and Yuan (12801368) neo-Confucian innovations and
transformations of Confucianism were as a matter of course introduced in
Japan soon after their advent in China, these new teachings had very limited
circulation in Japan. For example, to the extent that the neo-Confucian teachings
of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi were found at all in Japan under the Ashikaga
shogunate (13381568), it was only either in select Zen temples associated with
licensed China trade, or from about the mid-fifteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries
in the noted academic institution, the Ashikaga Gakk (or Ashikaga School).
It was within the walls of this exclusive academy that mostly Buddhist monks
and other members of the Ashikaga familyespecially those who aspired to
high service in the Ashikaga governmentstudied Confucian classics, concentrating on the Yijing or Book of Changes (J. Ekiky), which was prized for
its application to military science, a feature that resonated with the century of
civil war that provided the background for the Gakks heyday.
Besides having an important role in mediating Sino-Japanese relations,
Zen temples were also appropriate institutional settings for neo-Confucian
teachings in Japan, owing to the powerful conceptual resonances between the
respective teachings and traditions. As is well known, the similarities between
certain key concepts in Chan, Zen, and Son Buddhism on the one hand and
neo-Confucianism on the other was always an issue for neo-Confucians, who
even in China at times had to defend themselves against the charge of being
55
derivative of Buddhism and especially the Chan variant. Thus, for example
in medieval Japanese Zen circles the neo-Confucian contemplative practice
of quiet sitting (Ch. zhengzou ) was typically represented as an inferior
variant of Zen sitting in meditation (zazen ), the neo-Confucian idea
of principle (ri ) was understood to have its analog in dharma (h ),
and so on.1
This situation changed utterly with the ill-conceived invasion of Korea
in the 1590s, and Tokugawa Ieyasus (15421616) establishment of the
Tokugawa line of shoguns in the early seventeenth century. The initial successes
experienced by the Japanese invaders resulted in an array of war booty that
included Korean and Chinese neo-Confucian texts. Once brought back to
Japan, these previously unknown texts were distributed to those same Zen
temples where neo-Confucianism was already institutionalized, and within
just a few years of the arrival of these new texts, one observes a number of
Zen monks turning away from Zen Buddhism and to neo-Confucianism for
both intellectual and spiritual succor.
The first prominent convert, and in many ways Japans first committed
neo-Confucian, was the Zen priest Fujiwara Seika (15611619), a descendant
of the celebrated poet and arbiter of taste Fujiwara Teika (11621241). Seika
found much inspiration in the new texts that had arrived from Korea, and
after 1597 he received guidance in their interpretation from a Korean prisoner
of war, Kang Hang (15671618), himself an authority on Zhu Xi. Thereafter,
Seika quickly moved to sever his ties with Zen and to identify himself publicly
as a neo-Confucian, something unprecedented in Japan. Intellectually, Seika
was drawn to both the orthodox teachings of Zhu Xi as well as the heterodox
interpretations of Wang Yangming; and personally he preferred the lifestyle of
a semi-recluse to one of public service. In both these respects he differed from
his most famous student Hayashi Razan (15831657), who was the Tokugawa
periods first champion of Zhu Xis teachings, and the first to place his teachings
in service to the Tokugawa Bakufu (the Tokugawa government).
Hayashi Razan began training as a Zen priest at the Kenninji, where
he came under the tutelage of Fujiwara Seika. Unlike Seika, Razan eschewed
the heterodox interpretations of Wang Yangming and accepted only Zhu
Xis interpretations as correct, here aligning himself with prevailing Korean
interpretations as well. Also, where Seika shunned the spotlight, Razan
embraced it. In 1603 he gave public lectures on the Analects, a revolutionary
act that broke the centuries-long tradition in Japan of esoteric transmission
of scholarship. Then, after Seika apparently declined Ieyasus invitation to
lecture to him on the principles of Chinese dynastic change, Ieyasu turned to
Seikas student and brought Hayashi Razan into his government, not initially
as an advisor but rather as an authority and raconteur on Chinese history,
ceremony, and culture generally.
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This began a long association between the two families. Hayashi Razan
actually served the first four Tokugawa Shoguns, being rewarded in 1630 with
the land and funds to establish a school within Edo (modern-day Tky). By
the time of his death in 1657 Razan had solidified his position and that of his
family as hereditary heads of this school, later renamed the Shheik, or School
of Prosperous Peace, as well as hereditary interpreters of neo-Confucianism
and related matters in service to the Bakufu. The school declined in prestige
after the seventeenth century, only to reemerge in the spotlight during the
1790s at a time when ideological orthodoxy was being championed within
the Bakufu as the cure to societys ills.
An even more ardent champion of Zhu Xis teachings emerged in the
person of Yamazaki Ansai (16191682), the son of a rnin or masterless
samurai who was initially trained in Tendai and Zen Buddhism, and then
gravitated toward the neo-Confucianism of the Southern School in Tosa on
Shikoku, later converting wholeheartedly to the teaching. Ansai chose the
phrase inwardly reverent, outwardly righteous (naikei gaigi ) as
his personal maxim, and acknowledged the influence of the Korean scholar
Toegye (15011570) on his views. Ansai and his school, the Kimon, came
to be renowned for a spirit of moral rigor, whereby students were forbidden
to read works of poetry, literature, or even historyeven when these were
included within the Confucian canonif these were not seen to help the
students advance on the path to moral perfection. Ansais pietistic rigor
eventually proved to be at odds with more liberal forces that were developing
within Japanese urban society, and though his school endured into modern
times, its popularity waned after Ansais death in 1682.
In many ways Ansai seemed to pattern his career after Razans, though
of course they had differing respective strengths. Both were renowned for their
broad learning, and both inaugurated ambitious Japanese historiographical
projects. However, only Razan brought his to completion, and this only
with the posthumous help of his descendants. Both sought opportunities to
enter service to the state, with Ansai eventually catching the eye of Ieyasus
grandson, the Daimyo and Bakufu advisor Hoshina Masayuki (16111672).
Further, both sought to reconcile neo-Confucian principles with beliefs rooted
in the kami-worship of Shinto. Yamazaki Ansais Suika Shinto was the better
known of the two variants, though they shared much in common.
In addition to these pioneers of Cheng-Zhu teachings in Japan, the
heterodox teachings of Wang Yangming also found articulate spokesmen in
the writings of Nakae Tju (16081648) and Tjus student Kumazawa Banzan
(1619-1691), who was particularly concerned with their practical relevance
to the samurai class. Wang Yangmings teachings (ymeigaku ) never
enjoyed the same degree of following in Japan as in China, at least during the
Tokugawa periods (16001867) early years, when the hostility of the Hayashi
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and Kimon Schools was sufficient to keep Wang Yangmings teachings at bay.
They did, however, enjoy renewed popularity toward the end of the Tokugawa
period, when they proved inspirational to several generations of activists who
challenged the declining status quo.
During the seventeenth century, Japans intellectual world was, in fact,
transformed from one in which Buddhist assumptions were dominant, to
one that partook of much the same neo-Confucian legacy as elsewhere in
East Asia, a legacy that included humanism, rationalism, ethnocentrism,
and historicism.2 The humanism of this Confucian worldview rested in the
assumptions that humankind is ultimately the key variable in an otherwise
orderly cosmos, that the highest goal of humankind is good government,
and that all have an opportunity if not an actual responsibility to engage in
self-cultivation as part of a path toward human perfection. The rationalism
that hereafter coursed through much of Tokugawa society was premised on
the assumption that the world as a whole, its various rhythms, and even its
minute specifics are all ultimately knowable, and while the interpretations
of this knowledge of course varied from one scholar to another, the very
assumption that the world was knowable invited a host of scientific and
quasi-scientific speculation and other forms of skeptical enquiry.
The historicism of the Confucian tradition was rooted in the belief
that the copious records of the past held sufficient examples to demonstrate
the historical principle that ultimately good is rewarded and evil punished;
remarkably, when transplanted into its Japanese context, under Chinese
neo-Confucian influence, there were more works on Japanese history written
during the seventeenth century than in all of Japans history to that point.
And, the ethnocentrism that characterized Chinese Confucianismthe
chauvinism of China as the island Middle Kingdom surrounded by seas of
the semi-civilized and barbarian peoplesinspired any number of ardent
Sinophiles in Tokugawa Japan but also subsequently triggered the construction
of new forms of Japanese identity. What is perhaps most remarkable about
the Japanese example is that in Japan neo-Confucianism attained this measure
of influence essentially on its own intellectual merits, and without linkage to
an examination system, as in China and Korea.
Both the aforementioned broad learning and skeptical character
associated with Japanese neo-Confucianism were personified in the career
of one of the Tokugawa periods most richly gifted neo-Confucians Kaibara
Ekken (also Ekiken, 16301714). Trained in Kyto in both herbal medicine
and the orthodox neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi, Ekken went on to distinguish
himself not only as a moral philosopher, but also as an authority on the
taxonomy of flora and fauna, Japanese history and geography, native medicinal
herbs, and even the principles of childrens and womens education. Toward
the end of his life, Ekken in a celebrated passage confessed to having grave
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59
adopted son Tgai (16701738) under whom the school continued to grow,
providing an institutional model for a host of rivals.
The success of the Ancient Learning challenge to the Zhu Xi orthodoxy
has been seen as evidence of Japanese Confucianisms divergence from its
continental counterparts, and its responding to quite different social and
political conditions. Jinsais private academy emerged at the same time as
other self-funding forms of popular culture such as the plays of Chikamatsu
Monzaemon (16531725), the fiction of Ihara Saikaku (16421693), and
the woodblock prints Hishikawa Moronobu (d. 1694). It was also likely the
inspiration for Kada no Azumamaros (16691736) efforts in nearby Fushimi
to found a nativist private academy to rival its Confucian counterparts. Jinsais
academy and the hundreds of competitors it eventually inspired also provided
an important opportunity for voluntary association within the Tokugawa
periods otherwise severely limited public sphere.
Perhaps the most radical innovator within the history of Japanese
Confucianism was Ogy Sorai, whose version of Ancient Learning moved
sharply in a new direction. Generally speaking, Confucians of all stripes
prior to Sorai had argued that the way was to be found in nature, and that
it reflected natural principles. The way was thus understood to be the way of
heaven, and in that sense ontologically prior to creation of earth. Ogy Sorai,
by contrast, argued that the way was merely a comprehensive term, a kind
of shorthand for the rites, music, laws, and institutions of the early Chinese
kings. This being so, the way was to be found not by observing nature or by
looking inward for evidence of cosmic principles within ones inmost being,
but rather within the texts that illuminate these ancient kings and their ages
for us. These texts were not the Four Books of the Analects, Mencius, Great
Learning, and Doctrine of the Mean, but rather the Five Classics and other
ancient texts of all sorts, which were about things, that is, practical matters.
These texts had to be deciphered if their secrets, that is, their way, was to
be unlocked, and Sorai thus advanced the study of Chinese linguistics even
farther than his earlier colleagues in Ancient Learning, insisting that his
students not just learn how to read such materials but that they also compose
in imitation of ancient styles. Significantly, for Sorai if the way was now
essentially demystified and taken outside the realm of the cosmic, the sages
too were now likewise just men. They were great men, to be sure, but they
were great for what they created, and not in any cosmic sense.
Sorai was likely the most celebrated intellectual of his times in Japan.
He advised the Daimyo Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu (16581714), himself an advisor
to the fifth Tokugawa Shogun Tsunayoshi (16461709) for whom Sorais
father served as personal physician. The eighth Tokugawa Shogun Yoshimune
(16841751) was likewise an admirer of Sorai, and Sorai dedicated a study of
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politics and administration to him. Sorais ideas are said to have increased in
popularity even after his death, making the mid-eighteenth century something
of a zenith of Confucian and neo-Confucian influence in Japan, and thereby
also signaling the start of its slow decline.
Some scholars, most notably Maruyama Masao (19141996), have
seen in the historicist ontology of Ogy Sorai the seeds of Japans future
modern transformation.5 From Maruyamas perspective, by taking the way
out of nature, Sorai briefly opened a space for human agency and politics in
mid-Tokugawa Japan, with potential consequences for the Bakufu a century
before its demise. By this argument, the eventual resurgence of naturalist
ontologies by the end of the nineteenth century and their persistence into
modern times had the effect of deforming Japans modernity and neutralizing
effective political action at a time when it was most needed during the first
half of the twentieth century.
Sorais success in attracting the attention of the highest rulers to his
scholarship and views notwithstanding, Confucian advisors at the highest levels
of government were less prominent in Japan than elsewhere in East Asia, and
even the extent of the Hayashi familys influence, as opposed to their prestige,
remains arguable. In the early eighteenth century Arai Hakuseki (16571725),
a broadly learned orthodox Confucian who also wrote with authority on
Japanese history and authored Japans first autobiography (Oritaku shiba no ki
or Told Round a Brushwood Fire), served as advisor to two particularly weak
shoguns. As early as 1694 he won appointment as tutor to the future sixth
Tokugawa Shogun Ienobu (16661712, shogun 17091712), and subsequently
advised Ienobus young son Ietsugu (17091716, shogun 171316).
Hakusekis mission was to transform the Bakufu into a Confucian
monarchy. The Bakufu had already lost much of its martial character and had
acquired many of the trappings of a civilian government by the time of the
fifth Shogun Tsunayoshi. Hakuseki sought to take this a step further, changing
Bakufu structure and ceremony along Confucian models, and even asserting
the Shogun as Japans Confucian monarch (koku ) on the occasion of
the reception of a Korean embassy in 1711. Hakusekis Confucian program
was entirely dismantled during the years after Ietsugu perished in 1716, but
he nonetheless represents one of two paragons of Confucian advisors during
Japans eighteenth century.
The other, who came later in the century, was the equally learned
Matsudaira Sadanobu (17581829). Sadanobu aspired to serve a similar
function, hoping to rescue his age from its various ills by resurrecting the
moral rigor which was believed to have prevailed during the Tokugawas early
years. Sadanobu was the grandson of the eighth Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune,
and in 1787 when not yet thirty he was appointed to the Council of Elders.
From this position he began a systematic purge of the policies of the previous
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were characterized by debates between the Confucian camp and new fields
of knowledge such as the nativists (kokugakusha) and Dutch Learning
specialists (rangakusha). Like the Confucians, the nativists were looking to
resurrect an ancient way, but for the nativists this was something Japanese
and not Chinese. The leading lights among themfigures such as Kamo no
Mabuchi (16971769), Motoori Norinaga (17301801), and Hirata Atsutane
(17761843)were unsparing in their criticisms of the Confucians and their
way, but in both methodology and thematic content, the nativists owed much
to their Confucian rivals.
Dutch Learning became a field of study following the relaxation of
the ban on European books during the reign of the Shogun Yoshimune and
referred to all forms of European knowledge, since of all Europeans only the
Dutch were allowed to reside in Tokugawa Japan, on an islet in Nagasaki
Harbor. Dutch Learning posed particular challenges to Chinese learning
generally, especially in scientific fields of knowledge such as like medicine.
With Confucianism again seen as one part of the broader Chinese learning,
individuals in Japan began to question Confucianisms capacity to address the
increasingly urgent problems of the day.
By the early nineteenth century, one finds an array of voices exclaiming
the decline of those virtues essential to the politys health, if not its survival,
and Confucian voices were again among the most prominent in this chorus,
though now these voices were realigned with the voices of nativists. In the
Mito domain, where typically one-third of the domains revenue was spent on
scholarly endeavors, such as its massive Great Japan History (dai nihonshi)
project, one found an effort to exalt the Confucian virtues of filial piety and
loyalty as distinctly Japanese virtues, said to be represented both now and
historically in a superior fashion in Japan by the peoples unwavering loyalty
to their sovereign and ultimately through him to the solar deity Amaterasu.
This fusion of Confucian and Shinto elements and values provided a potent
ideological mix that proved inspirational to many who began to question the
Bakufus legitimacy during the Tokugawa periods last decades.
The arguments that were used to justify the change in government
were conservative ones rooted ironically in the very Confucian notion of an
organic society that had provided so much of the glue that held Tokugawa
society together. The Shogun, by this argument, was in fact formally the
sei-i tai shgun or barbarian-subduing generalissimo. It was the Shoguns
responsibility to manage foreign affairs, and the Bakufus evident inability to
manage foreign relations from the 1850s on effectively placed the Shogun in
default of one of his most fundamental duties. Using arguments thus rooted
in the Confucian rectification of names (seimei , Ch. zhengming), and
drawing inspiration from Wang Yangmings doctrine of the unity of thought
and action, a coalition of the enemies of the Shogun succeeded in deposing
63
him in a coup in January 1868, dismantling the Bakufu, and forming a new
coalition around the person of the teenaged monarch, from whom the era
took its new name of Meiji. Edo was renamed Tky, and became both the
site of Japans monarchy, as well as its seat of government.
From the start of the new Meiji government (18681912), Confucian
voices were increasingly on the defensive against the ideas that accompanied the
industrially, technologically, and militarily advanced major European and North
American powers. To those who advocated westernization, Confucianism,
like feudalism, became almost synonymous with anything old-fashioned and
hence bad. Nonetheless, the new generation that came to power during the
early Meiji years and then eventually grew into its elders by periods end were
typically cultural conservatives for whom a degree of westernization was the
regrettable but necessary price one had to pay if Japan was to emerge from
its subordinate status relative to the Western powers.
Confucianism remained prominent at the Meiji Court, where the young
monarch was tutored by Confucian conservatives such as Motoda Eifu (also
Nagazane, 18181891). In an extension of the synthesis forged at Mito during
the last decades of the Tokugawa, Confucian conservatism was now melded
with Japanese essentialism in a potent ideology intended to inspire self-sacrifice.
Thus, at the same time that the Japanese government sought to impress the
Western world with its newly promulgated constitution and Diet (parliament),
its legal system, and its railways, one also saw a Confucian emphasis on loyalty
to the monarchy and the importance of being good subjects in the eras most
important ideological documents such as the Imperial Rescript on Education,
recited each day throughout Japans school system. Ironically, Confucianism,
which throughout its history had never been attached to territorial expansion,
now became an accomplice to Japans imperial ambitions.
The legacy of Confucianism in the Japan of the last century is to be found
in three areas: the high value placed on education, including the persistence
of a kind of educational meritocracy; the enduring presence of high levels of
trust in both horizontal and vertical relationships, along with the importance
attached to relationships generally; and the organic conception of society
designating a specific place for each individual in a coherent family-state.
Education has for centuries been an important priority in Japan, and one
in which both individuals and their society have placed a heavy investment.
One of the reasons for the success of It Jinsais academy and the hundreds
others that followed it was that they proved attractive to individuals across
classes. Samurai soon found it vocationally advantageous to credentialize
themselves in various forms of learning, but familiarity with the Confucian
canon was the single most important field. Nonetheless, samurai eventually
came to form a minority in the classrooms of these private academies, as
moneyed commoners sought to acquire for themselves training in all the
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of every sort, it was under the influence of Confucianism from the seventeenth
century onward that one sees the emergence of a societal worldview that
imagines society to be like an organism. This organism in theory works to
perfection when each of its constituent components, that is, each individual, is
fulfilling a personal destiny by attending precisely to individual and collective
responsibilities, duties, and obligations, neither exceeding them nor falling
deficient in any way. Though this imagines a society built of inequalities of
all sorts, the integral role of each individual within the organism provides a
powerful leveling influence, since again in theory each individual is equally
important to the collective missions success. This organic way of conceiving
of society proposes that all its members share the same ultimate goals and
strive collectively toward them, as opposed to a vision of a society in which
equilibrium is attained through the successful mediation of competing interests.
This worldview survives into the present as the dominant one in Japan and
has become fundamental to the present construction of Japanese identity,
where it is often conflated with another Confucian virtue: harmony. Thus,
even though it is arguable whether there are any Japanese Confucians left in
Japan, it is clear that the legacy of Confucianism lives on and will continue
to do so for the foreseeable future.
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Notes
1. Chinese li and fa . The Confucian terminology in this chapter appears
in Japanese.
2. Wm. Theodore de Bary (1959).
3. Chinese li and qi .
4. Chinese ren , zhong , and xin .
5. M. Maruyama (1974).
6. S. N. Eisenstadt (1996).
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in the situations continuing present. Human nature for Tang Junyi then, is
the aggregating yet open-ended disposition of human beings over time, and
is an expression of the ongoing attainment of relational virtuosity, or ren ,
within our inherited natural and cultural legacy, tiandao .
The Confucian conception of consummate conduct (ren ) is the
determining source of what it means to become human. In Tang Junyis
extensive work on human nature (renxing ), he demonstrates a great
sensitivity to the existential coloring of the classical Confucian conception
of the human being. For Tang Junyi, in speaking of a things xing, what is
important is not to say what the xing of this entity is, but to say what the
vectoral direction of its existence is. It is only in that it has growth that it has
xing.20 And among things, the human being is a special case.
The xing of human beings cannot be approached in the same way
as the xing of other phenomena because humans have an internal perspective
on their own constitution that is not available to them in the investigation
of other things. In reflecting on the relationships between experience and
conceptualization, Tang Junyi asserts that:
Coming to know the human possibility is not like seeking to
know the possibilities of other things that can, on the basis of
inference and hypothesis, be known objectively. Rather it comes
from the way in which persons realize their internal aspirations
and how they come to know them. Once we have an understanding
of this human xing, we will of our own accord surely have the
linguistic concepts through which to express it. Such linguistic
conceptualization follows upon what is known of it, and is
formed continuously as the opportunity presents itself. It is not
the case that we first have conceptualizations to which we then
add conjectures, anticipations, or presumptions.21
Tang Junyi thus emphasizes the primacy of the realization of the human
aspirations over the conceptualization and articulation of them, giving
full notice to the personal locus of that realization. He disassociates the
conversation among classical Confucian philosophers over the meaning of
xing from the contemporary science of psychology by asserting that, in
the latter case, there is a desire to treat the human being descriptively as
an objective phenomenon. For Tang Junyi, it is the existential project that
is the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the classical Confucian
conception of xing, and whence we derive our understanding of it. In fact,
it is precisely the indeterminate possibility for creative change that Tang
Junyi identifies as the most salient feature of the human xing. He says that
where xing in reference to some thing might refer to stable characteristics,
properties, or propensities,
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achieve real significance are sages. What these Confucian texts claim is that
all of us have the opportunity to live such significant lives.
In Confucianism, optimal relationality is expressed in the notion of
propriety in observing ritualized roles and relationships (li ) that has its
origins specifically in family reverence (xiao ).34 Tang Junyi describes the
function of li in the following terms:
When the Ritualizing Experience [] chapter of the Book
of Rites discusses the ideal of the era of Great Harmony [
], what is intended is simply that everyone should get what
they deserve. . . . Persons in the process of realizing this purpose
must participate fully in their symbiotic ritualized roles and
relations before each person can get what they should out of
these relationships.35
After all, Confucian harmony is fundamentally participatory and
inclusive, and must be distinguished from indiscriminately enforcing social
order. The ultimate goal is to produce a self-regulating community in which
everyone develops a sense of belonging and takes responsibility for everyone
else:
Lead the people with excellence (de ) and promote social
order through the observance of ritual propriety (li ) and
they will develop a sense of shame, and moreover, will order
themselves.36
On the informal and uniquely personal side, full participation in a ritually
constituted community requires the personalization and reauthorization of
prevailing customs, institutions, and values. What makes ritual profoundly
different from law or rule is this process of making the tradition ones own.
The Latin proprius, making something ones own as in appropriate or
property, gives us a series of cognate expressions that are useful in translating
key Confucian philosophical terms to capture this sense of participation and
personalization: yi is not righteousness as compliance with some external
divine directive, but rather is appropriateness as a sense of what is most
fitting for me and everyone else in this particular communal context. Zheng
is not rectification or correct conductagain, an appeal to some external
standardbut proper conduct as determined by this person within this
context. Zheng is not simply government but governing properly, and
li (ritual propriety) is not just what is ritually appropriate, but personally
doing what is ritually appropriate.37
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Through Confucius, and the sequels to it, Anticipating China (1995) and
Thinking From the Han (1998). For gender issues, there is Li-hsiang Lisa
Rosenlees (2007) Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation.
On Confucian attitudes toward the environment, see Mary Evelyn Tucker and
John Berthrong, eds. (1998), Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of
Heaven, Earth, and Humans. On the religious dimension of Confucianism, see
Tu Wei-ming and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds. (2004), Confucian Spirituality.
Notes
1. One might argue that the bugbear of essentialism is itself a culturally specific
worry. Essentialism arises from familiar classical Greek assumptions about ontology as
the science of being, and from the application of strict identity (or essences) as the
principle of individuation that follows from such an ontology. The well-intended and
hugely erudite scholar Zhang Longxi is concerned that the assertion of radical difference
he quite properly ascribes to my interpretation of Chinese language and culture leads
to relativism and thus incommensurability. In promoting his alternative version of
cultural translation, he insists that: Against such an overemphasis on difference and
cultural uniqueness, however, I would like to argue for the basic translatability of
languages and cultures. . . . Only when we acknowledge different peoples and nations
as equal in their ability to think, to express, to communicate, and to create values, we
may then rid ourselves of ethnocentric biases (Zhang Longxi 1999, 46). The claim
about being equal in the ability to think might sound inclusive and liberating, but it
is anything but innocent. Why would we assume the possibility that other traditions
have culturally specific modalities of thinking is claiming that they do not know how
to think unless we believe that our way of thinking is in fact the only way? Further,
the uncritical assumption that other cultures must think the same way that I do is
for me the very definition of ethnocentrism. I would argue that it is precisely the
recognition and appreciation of the degree of difference obtaining among cultures
that properly motivates cultural translation in the first place, and that ultimately
rewards the effort. Indeed, arguing that there are culturally contingent modalities of
thinking can be pluralistic rather than relativistic, and accommodating rather than
condescending. At the very least, we must strive with imagination to take other
cultures on their own terms if comparative studies is to provide us with the mutual
enrichment that it promises.
2. Translating shu as to follow the proper way enables us to maintain the
path (dao ) metaphor that it suggests. Throughout the early corpus, the term to
initiate zuo is frequently associated with sageliness sheng . Hence Confuciuss
description of himself here is an expression of modesty. Old Peng is Peng Zu ,
a minister during the Shang dynasty who legend has it lived to be some eight hundred
years old. With the name Peng Zuliterally Peng Ancestorand with his remarkable
longevity, he is emblematic of historical continuity. See Mozi 63/39/19 and 81/46/50
where Confucius is taken at his word as being wholly a transmitter, and is criticized
for offering the world a lifeless conservatism. This Mohist criticism of Confucianism
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What Is Confucianism?
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constitutes this nature, but there is agreement that such an essence exists.
Furthermore, it follows that ethical conduct can be deduced from this essence.
According to the Western philosophical project, if we can only recognize our
essential nature, then we can act in accordance with it.
How does Confucianism frame the big questions of humanity? While
the Western philosophical tradition poses the question, What is essence of
the humanity? Confucius poses the more pragmatic question, How does a
person achieve meaning in a given situation? While Western minds search
for pure essences and transcendental reasons, Confucius begins his research
within the matrix of the qualitatively permeated world of qi . One of the
distinctive features of the Confucian view of humans is a lack of interest in
the universality of human nature. As we shall see in the following section,
xing one of the most important terms for the Confucian concept of the
selfdoes not indicate a transcendental essence that all human beings share
in common but a naturally arising disposition.
In the Confucian classics, we do not find definitions of the general
qualities of human beings. Instead, we see an emphasis on different varieties
of people and how they are interrelated with and distinguished from each
other at their peculiar levels of self-cultivation in the concrete situations, roles,
and relationships that constitute them. The Book of Changes (or Yijing) is
populated by great persons, exemplary persons, sages, wise persons, retarded
persons, village people, a one-eyed man, and other lame persons, as well as
warriors, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, families, masses of
people, bosses, dead men, lucky men, men in fellowships, flocks of merchants,
and old ladies. Here, humans are not explicable by some single given design
that underlies natural and moral order in the cosmos. Humans are concrete
individuals participating in specific situations. Persons are not obliged to comply
with objective and universal standards; instead they re-create themselves by
maximizing their own potentials in response to changing environments.
To further explore the becoming of the person in Confucianism, we
need to understand the use of important terms such as tian , ming , and
xing in the Confucian classics.
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This is the way in which Confucian cultural heroes such as the Three
Sovereigns and the Five Emperorsas well as philosophers such as Confucius,
Mencius, Xunzi, Zhu Xi, Chong Yagyong, and Ogyu Soraidevelop and finally
become part of civilized traditions. Confucius is referred to not as a successful
politician but as a man of culture who inherits a tradition and reformulates it
as his time demands. He is not only an authentic follower of Zhou Culture but
also a cardinal reformer of inherited classical documents. Confucius is more
than a transmitter of insight but also an editor and interpreter who sheds
new light on the past and reveals novel significance to his contemporaries,
as well as to his descendants in the present.
Ming
Now we proceed to the notion of ming, variously translated as command,
decree, fate, or destiny, which will further clarify the aforementioned idea
of tian as context or situation. A statement in the Yucong 1, a bamboo text
excavated in Guodian and arguably belonging to the Confucian school, may
serve as a starting point for exploring the notion of ming in Confucianism:
Where there is tian there is ming; where there are events () there are
names (); where there is earth (), there is shape ().4 Here, we need to
broaden our horizon to look at other ancient Chinese philosophical schools
that share certain similarities with Confucianism, though they may differ
on strategies for self-consummation or the purposes of philosophy. There is
a correspondence between the shape of the earth, the names of events, and
the ming of tian. The notion of xing , translated as shape, configuration,
or situation, is an important concept in military theory, referring to terrains
on which a good general can easily gain victory. Xing is the inherent force
in a situation, often illustrated as the cascading of pent-up waters thundering
throughout a steep gorge, or a crossbow drawn back and ready to discharge
its arrow. Having figured out the terrain, the good military commander will
be able to get the most out of the situation. Exploiting the situation, the
commander gains victory where victory is easily gained. Thus, a victorious
army only enters the battle after first having won the victory in the mind of
the commander.
By analogy, we can refer to ming as the immanent propensity of heaven
available for the self-realization of persons. However, the difference between
the shape of the earth and ming of heaven is that the latter largely concerns
communicative activities in the human world rather than geographical
factors. Etymologically, the etymological dictionary Shuowen regards ming
as composed of two parts: mouth and to command. In addition,
it defines ming as shi , to make something happen or to cause. Other
important terms that contain the mouth component in Confucianism are
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jun (exemplary), sheng (sage), and zhi (wisdom). Like ming, these
terms show that Confucianism prizes verbal and communicative activities as
tools for person-making. Ming in Confucianism is concerned with images,
words, and meaningsthe communicative activities that create and coordinate
the behavior of the members of a community.
Much controversy centers on whether ming as a force efficacious in
person-making has deterministic implications. Compare ming to the ancient
Greek forces of ananke or moirae, the unalterable fates, often personified
as a mother and her child. As Aristotle tells us, Sophocles Greek tragedy
shows us the ruthlessness of fate in the life of the tragic hero, who becomes a
prototype of Western heroism. In the Oedipus the King, the oracle persists in
prophesying that inevitably Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother.
Laius, Oedipuss father, tries to avoid his fate by killing the infant Oedipus.
Although Laius has the infants ankles pierced and feet punctured, Oedipus
survives and is raised in the court of King Polybus of Corinth. Eventually,
Oedipus hears the same prophecy that Laius heard and, believing that Polybus
is his real father, tries to escape his fate by leaving Corinth. Nevertheless, on his
way he unknowingly happens to meet and kill his real father, Laius. Later, for
solving Sphinxs riddle, he is welcomed into the city where Laiuss wifeand
Oedipuss true motherJocasta is queen. In ignorance he marries the widowed
Jocasta. Finally, when he realizes that the oracle has been fulfilled, he stabs
out his own eyes in despair and lives as a cursed wanderer in his empire.
Aristotle names the tragic heros sudden recognition of his fate anagonorisis
in the Poetics. Heroic confrontation with the ruthless and deterministic order
of the cosmos is an archetypical theme in Western history. The tragic hero
is a man isolated, fierce, and creative, who challenges the unchallengeable.
Tragic death is a fate he must bear for his hubris. Examples of the tragic
hero are seen in Prometheus, Goethes Faust, Nietzsches Ubermensch, and
even Jim Morrison.
What is the attitude of Confucius, a cultural hero of East Asian
civilization, toward ming? He confesses that he was already fifty years old
before he recognized the command of heaven. However, contrary to any
tragic heroism, Confucius reports progress during the subsequent decades,
in which he becomes attuned to his surroundings and able to freely resolve
conflicts between his inner desires and the circumstances of the outer world:
From fifty I realize the command of heaven; from sixty my ear was attuned;
from seventy I could give my heart-and-mind free rein without overstepping
the boundaries.5
It is also true that Confucius could not resolve every force at play (ming)
in his life in a favorable manner. When his favorite disciple Yen Yuan died,
he felt that heaven had abandoned him. Furthermore, his lifelong aspiration
to find a wise sovereign who could practice the way according to Confuciuss
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counsel was never fulfilled. Notwithstanding, his harmony with the propensity
of heaven may come partly from his consummate level of cultivation and
partly from the immanent nature of ming.6
In the Confucian philosophy of process, there is no counterpart to
moirae as inexorable and inalterable destiny. A common phrase in Chinese,
movement of propensity, implies that ming is subject to change and requires
that peoples aesthetic sensibilities respond to its propensity for achieving
productive harmony. This is why Confucianism cherishes the collaboration
of heaven and humans over human obedience to transcendental law. The
Oedipus tragedy is the product of a culture where transcendental agency
predetermines the irresistible course of life for its creatures. However,
Confucius, though he fluctuated between confidence in his own heavenly
mission and despair over being abandoned, could attain reconciliation and
greater levels of artistry in life.
We should take situations and situated persons into account when asking
to what extent ming is a determinant force. While in some passages ming is
a force beyond human control, in others ming seems to be a weak causal
force that humans are able to exploit. Zigong, one of Confuciuss disciples,
discontented with his conditions (ming), takes steps to enrich himself. The
consummate person is advised that on seeing danger, one should be ready
to lay down ones life. Yet at other times the Yijing advises that one should
not yield to ming.
The degree of determination may be closely related with the degree
of consummation one achieves in cultivation. The more one understands
the propensity of heaven and brings relevant fields into focus in oneself, the
greater is ones influence over the environment. Becoming a holographic entry
point in whole fields, one comes to be unaware of a dichotomy between self
and ming as environing forces. Therefore, just as Confucius does not feel any
conflict between what he desires and what the environing forces limit, so too
will a man who understands the propensity of heaven not go on standing
under a precarious wall.7 The Confucian consummate person in this sense
has the capacity to carry out a course of action requiring other people and
other environing ingredients. Because some critics, such as Mozi (473390
BCE) or Lu Xun (18811936) accuse Confucianism of fatalism, we need to
elaborate this point.
Here, it is useful to remind ourselves that heaven is a field that can
be variously focused according to relationships with particular perspectives.
When people need an exemplar for emulation, heaven seems to be a moral
paragon. However, from the perspective of immanent force, it becomes the
complement of human co-creativity. Thus, it is productively vague, roundabout,
amorphous, and, does not speak. We can understand the indirect presence of
heaven only through various situations and configurations: climates, political
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and historical events, peoples minds, cracks on tortoise shells and buffalo
bones, and records of exemplars deeds and behaviors. All these require
exemplary persons or sages who are entrusted to hear, speak, and present on
behalf of heaven. The consummate person in Confucianism is the one who
can focus the accumulated tradition to give it meaningful wholeness and
novel significance. He or she is the person who determines the indeterminate.
From the standpoint of heaven, the human relationship with ming can be
receptive. Thus, expressions such as to receive ming and to follow ming
are permissible. But from the standpoint of the human, this relationship is
not just receptive but is also a conscious response to the context of heaven.
It is the effectual production of novel harmony. In this case, expressions such
as responding to ming or changing the ming are adequate.
The cognate ming , which refers to the act of naming, connotes a
concerted effort to optimize ones resources for creating adequate sociopolitical
order. It is used interchangeably with ming in the sense of commanding
propensity. The Showen explains ming as depicting self-expression in the
unidentifiable darkness. The act of naming is to focus an image out of vague
fields. The naming of events corresponds with the commands of heaven in
the aforementioned passage. By naming an event, we become able to identify
the event. Understanding the terrain, we can negotiate the earth. Realizing
the propensity of heaven, we can be consummate in our responses to forces
of the environment. When responding to Sima Nius compliant about lacking
brothers, Confuciuss disciple Zi Xia inspires Sima Niu with hope by redefining
the meaning of brotherthat is, altering the mingsuch that brotherhood
could be thought of as an ethical and religious relationship, rather than a
biological one.8 When calling tyrants not sovereigns but outcasts, he altered
the conventional name according to his political and historical judgment.9
Xing
Xing , which has traditionally been rendered as nature or human nature,
is an important notion in the Confucian vocabulary of person-making. I know
of no better way to begin the discussion than by referring to sinologist Angus
Grahams question of whether the Chinese xing is equivalent to the English
nature in his book Disputers of Tao. His careful reading of classical Chinese
texts leads him to suspect the conventional rendering of xing as nature.
According to him, Arthur Waleys mistaken construal of xing as nature is a
result of the assumption that xing is a quality that a thing had to start with.
Such an assumption comes from the meaning of the English term nature,
which originates in the Latin nascor, meaning to be born.
There seems to be agreement among scholars that the character xing
is derived from sheng (to grow, to generate, to be fresh) with the addition
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knowledge, providing both the basis for subsequent deductions and the model
for all human thought. His use of the term res (thing, substance) exemplifies
his substantive approach to the self. The res cogitans (thinking substance) is
understood as fundamentally different and separate from res extensa (extended
substance). The senses are prone to flux and error, the imagination is prey to
fantastic distortions, and the emotions are irrelevant to rational comprehension;
but the mind is capable of comprehending clear and distinct knowledge.
Descartes invariable universal principle, the thinking self, gives authority
to the procedural clarity of mathematical reasoning. He declares: I rightly
conclude that my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing
(or substance whose sole nature or essence is to think).11
More recently, the substantive view of human nature has begun to
be questioned in Western philosophy. One reason for this doubting is the
increasing emphasis placed on the immanent, processual, experiential approach
to the idea of being human. The crack in the monolithic substance tradition
can be traced to the emergence of new thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche
(18441900), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (19081961), William James (18421910),
John Dewey (18591952), and Alfred North Whitehead (18611947). These
new philosophers, defying the substance notion of human nature, tend to see
the self as neither atemporal nor absolute, but as immanent and processual.
Instead of being characterized by an underlying essential substance, a person
is characterized by his or her actions and experiences, such as talents, skills,
capabilities, dispositions, habits, inclinations, and tendencies. For example,
John Dewey disapproves of the rights-based liberalist notion of the original
and isolated constitution of human nature. Dewey creatively employs the
notion of habit in discussing human nature. Being aware that the term habit
is usually used to refer to the repetitious routines of daily life, he discloses
new dimensions of the meaning of habit in the understanding of the self. He
suggests not that we have habits but that we are habits. Habit is a mode of
predilection and aversion that readily responds to a set of stimuli, and is
deliberately modified and refined by conscious efforts. It is an enduring, yet
amenable, pattern of the self through which the hylozoistic energies of the
person, such as passion and emotion, find their channel for expression.
His view reminds me of the Korean Confucian Dasan Chong Yagyong
(17621836) and his argument for interpreting xing (Korean
seong) as predilection (). He thinks of xing as an inchoate predilection
that is consummated by responding properly to the natural, personal, and
social environment. For him, xing is captured well by comparison to the
growing force of living organisms. His perception of xing as predilection
leads him to insist that a person is responsible for accomplishing his or her
good life. Accordingly, he sees personhood as an indeterminate tendency
between the incorporeal predilections of the human mind and the spiritual
predilection of dao mind. Human xing is construed as a process of ethical
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matches the right with dao; without this it starves. It is generated
by accumulation of rightdoing; it is not that by sporadic rightdoing
one makes a grab at it. If anything in conduct is dissatisfying to
the heart, it starves.13
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in Western and Chinese arts and philosophy. For recent work on process
thinking and human nature in Confucianism, see James Behuniak Jr. (2004),
Mencius on Becoming Human.
Notes
1. Yijing, Xici Zhuan 17. My translation; passage numbers refer to all
standardized editions.
2. Analects 19.24. My translation; passage numbers refer to all standardized
editions.
3. Ibid. 15.29.
4. Yucong 1. My translation.
5. Analects 2.4.
6. Interestingly enough, Xiang Wu, a tragic hero in the Chinese tradition,
receives more criticisms than compliments. When Xiang Wu was trapped at the battle
of Gaixia, he sang his famous songs to Yuji, his beloved concubine, lamenting that an
opportune time was missing: My strength could pull mountains, my spirit pales the
world. Yet, opportune time is missing and my horse just refuses to gallop! What can
I do if my horse denies me even a trot? Oh my dear Yu Ji, what would you have me
do? Later historians opinions of him are generally lowhe may have bravery but lacks
wisdom. He is unable to listen to the criticism and wise counsel of his subordinates.
Even at the last minute, he blames missing opportunities for his failures. But destiny
is not an excuse for an individuals wrongdoings in Confucianism.
7. Mencius 7/1/2. My translation; passage numbers refer to all standardized
editions.
8. Analects 12.5: Sima Niu lamented, Everyone has brothers except for me. Zi
Xia said to him, I have heard it said: Life and death are a matter of ones lot; wealth
and honor lie with tian. Since exemplary persons are respectful and impeccable in their
conduct, are deferential to others and observe ritual propriety, everyone in the world
is their brother. Why would an exemplary person worry over having no brother?
9. Mencius 1B8; my translation. For English translations see D. C. Lau (1970),
Mencius; and James Legge (1985), The Chinese Classics. King Hsun of Chi asked, Is it
true that Tang banished Jie and King Wu marched against Zhou? It is so recorded said
Mencius. Is regicide permissible? A man who mutilates benevolence is a mutilator,
while one who cripples rightness is a crippler. He who is both a mutilator and a
crippler is an outcast. I have indeed heard of the punishment of the outcast Zhou,
but I have never heard of regicide.
10. Yijing, Xici Zhuan 1/5.
11. Rene Descartes (1970), 190.
12. I have recently seen emerging dialogues between these Western philosophies
and the Confucian philosophical tradition. I believe these dialogues can contribute to
providing us with rich vocabularies for understanding the Confucian tradition. Joseph
Needham compares the neo-Confucian tradition with Whiteheads philosophy of
organism. See his (1956), Science and Civilization in China, Vol.2. Roger T. Ames and
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the authoritarian regimes of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan also
regarded Confucianism as an obstacle to the realization of democracy and
social justice in South Korea.2
Lucian Pye argued that Confucian political culture was authoritarian
and an obstacle to democratization in Asia, while Samuel Huntington saw
Confucianism and democracy as a contradiction in terms.3 Huntington
predicted a clash of civilization between the illiberal antidemocratic Islam
and Confucianism on the one side and Western liberal democracy on the
other. Likewise, some Asians have argued that the values of liberal democracy
are incompatible with the Confucian culture of their societies, and they have
brought forth Asian values to challenge Western models in the international
discourse on human rights.
We need to separate what are merely politically opportunistic positions
from serious reflection on the issues. Asian societies have a right to choose or
find their own paths, and their specific historical and cultural circumstances
may allow and even require them to shape their futures differently from
other societies. Even if the price is a loss of democracy, societies with a long
historical legacy of Confucian influence may not be better off if that influence
is completely destroyed, assuming that it is possible to do so. Even Western
scholars are not unanimous in their praise of liberal democratic values. Those
who maintain that the values of Confucianism and liberal democracy are
inherently incompatible may still believe that they can coexist as independent
value systems in the same society. Chenyang Li, for example, argues for
coexistence of both sets of values, despite their inherent incompatibility, in
Chinas future.4
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respecting tradition, what these values mean and how they are actualized
could change over time and space. In any case, not everyone agrees that these
values represent what is most valuable to Confucianism; they could be seen
as variously derived from the primary notions of ren , yi , li , and zhi
in contingent social contexts. The Confucian tradition is not homogeneous
in content; instead, it is constituted by the continuity of interpretive practice
focusing on certain core texts (the inclusion and exclusion of which is also
contested). The reconciliation of Confucianism and democracy I shall attempt
in this chapter will focus on what I consider the most important of these
texts, the Analects.7
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a select few? Some may argue that, far from advocating democracy, Confucius
advocated an aristocratic community, albeit he favors rule by an aristocracy
of virtue instead of any de facto aristocracy. It would be anachronistic to
attribute the idea of democracy to Confucius. However, even if the concept
did not exist within the actual Confuciuss intellectual horizons, it does not
mean that modern readers today cannot understand The Analects in ways
that are compatible with democratic thinking. I shall argue that this could be
done by understanding Confucian livariously translated as rites, rituals,
ritual action, ceremony, propriety, decorum, manners, courtesy,
and civilityas a system of symbolic action facilitating what could be
democratic communication, rather than rigid rules of behavior entrenching
an authoritarian social structure. A communitys li would then constitute a
form of communication that enables its members to hold and value things
in common without oppressing individuality.
The early script of li, depicting a sacrificial vessel, first signifies religious
sacrifices. Later, the term extended to the modes of conducting religious
ceremonies, and further to all modes of conduct that were deemed to be proper.
Li came to be understood as traditional or conventional rules of conduct. A.
S. Cua, who characterizes li as rules of conduct, paraphrases Wittgenstein to
elucidate such rules: [R]itual rules, like all rules, stand there like signposts for
the guidance of our will and action.23 It is ones sense of what is appropriate
for a particular stage of ones journey that provides guidance as to whether,
and how, to follow a particular ritual signpost. Although li, as David Nivison
points out, are rules that are flexible and humane, in actual practice, they
could degenerate into rigid and oppressive social shackles.24 Treating li as
universal and immutable rules is contrary to Confuciuss own example of
refusing to be inflexible or to insist on certainty (Analects 9.4).
Understood as ritual, li belongs to a generic kind of social action,
similar to greetings, promises, commitments, excuses, pleas, compliments, and
pacts, that uses symbolic forms to communicate the actors intentions and
expectations, to elicit certain behavior, and generally to make it possible for
human beings to predict one anothers actions and coordinate them. Rituals
are embodiments of shared meanings. They guide actions so that better
coordination can be achieved with less effort than would be possible if one
had to search anew for appropriate ways of interacting in every situation.
Ritual forms organize social life, enhance efficiency of interaction and provide
continuity and stability. Participants in ritual practice communicate with one
another, acknowledging their interdependence and reaffirming their mutual
trust and commitment to their shared goal.
The communicative capacity of li is the source of social harmony.
According to Master You, who was said to resemble Confucius, Achieving
harmony is the most valuable function of li.25 Harmony involves diversity
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totalistic that if one is superior, one is superior always and in all things;
it need not be so inflexible that one is born into a fixed place in a rigid
social order and must live ones life as prescribed by ones position with no
possibility of change. Inequality and equality in the differentiated order of a
Confucian community are relative rather than absolute. Such a community
distributes respect, power, goods, and services proportional to the degree each
individual meets the criteria ethically relevant to what is to be distributed.
In a Confucian differentiated order, there is no permanent elite who enjoys
more of everything at the expense of the rest of the people.
In Confuciuss view, a good ruler of a state or head of a household does
not worry that his people are poor, but that wealth is inequitably distributed
(bujun).31 Other translations of bujun include inequality, ill-apportioned, and uneven distribution. It is highly unlikely that Confucius would
recommend the same quantity for all, more likely that the shares should be
proportional to some ethically acceptable criteria. One such criterion is need
since, Exemplary persons help out the needy; they do not make the rich
richer.32 The responsibility of a government is to satisfy its peoples material and
educational needs (Analects 12.7). Confucius disapproves of the extravagance
of the powerful at the expense of others (Analects 12.9). He went so far as to
disown his student Ranyou for adding to the coffers of the House of Ji, which
was already richer than the Duke of Zhou (Analects 11.17).
In Confucianism, political participation is justified by abilities.
Regarding the question, Who should govern? Confucius is seen as
replacing an aristocracy of birth with a meritocracy of ethical achievement.
Only one with the abilities to discharge the responsibilities of a position
should be allowed to occupy it (Analects 4.14, 13.2, 15.14). Democratizing
Confucianism will require recognizing that participation itself is educational.
Meritocracy is compatible with equality if everyone has a chance of rising
to the highest office. If a society historically has been rigidly stratified, the
language of meritocracy fosters elitist tendencies that, more often than not,
underestimate both the needs and the abilities of those in the lower social
strata. In contrast, the language of democracy, by nurturing a public ethos
that explicitly rejects historical social stratifications and by requiring that
any inequalities be justified rather than taking them for granted, is more
favorable to participation by those from lower social strata. To compensate
for its pernicious historical associations, Confucian democracy would have
to be more self-consciously critical of existing inequalities to ensure that only
those fulfilling its philosophical ethical standards are permitted; it must also
avoid going to the opposite extreme of adopting a hostile attitude toward all
inequalities, even deference to excellence.
For a social order to be differentiated rather than hierarchical there
should be no entrenched social inequalities. Not only must distribution and
participation be based on needs and abilities, but as needs and abilities change
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learning and realizing the way requires personal participation in solving the
common problems of the community. To realize the way rather than merely
follow it, there must be democratic participation in social inquiry to solve
the shared problems of the community.
I have attempted to re-create Confuciuss learning and teaching in
democratic ways by showing how individuality and community can be
reconciled, how Confucian li, far from being rigid rules of behavior entrenching
social hierarchy, enables people to hold things in common and achieve harmony
through communication, how Confucian meritocracy is compatible with a
Deweyan conception of equality, how the Confucian way of life is positively
free through and in its ethical quest, and how realizing the Confucian way
requires participatory learning. This attempt describes what is possible and
desirable rather than any actual Confucian community. It offers an idea of
Confucian democracy that would hopefully guide the actions of those who
would like to be both Confucian and democratic; the greater achievement would
be to persuade others that a democratic Confucianism is the best option for
Confucians in the modern world, and that a Confucian democracy is more
satisfactory than other kinds of democracy in some ways, at least for societies
that value their Confucian legacy. This is a project for another day.
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Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
40.
6. Carsun Chang et al. (1958), 45583.
7. Quotations from the Analects will be cited in the notes. References to ideas
and themes in the Analects will be cited in the text, for the readers convenience.
8. On constructing social ideals, see John Dewey (1916), 89 and Dewey (1927),
28687, 328.
9. Dewey (1938), 303.
10. Dewey (1927), 329.
11. Dewey (1939), 226; Dewey (1938), 295, 303.
12. Dewey (1927), 34550.
13. Wing-tsit Chan (1955), 4:295319.
14. Peter Boodberg (1953), 2:31732; Tu Weiming (1979):18.
15. Analects 6.30. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from The Analects
are from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. (1998).
16. Analects 12.2 and 12.22.
17. Analects 12.1.
18. D. C. Lau (1979),112.
19. The graph for zi begins as a pictogram showing a human nose; pointing to
ones nose is a way of self-reference. Edoardo Fazzioli (1986), 29; Leon Wieger (1965),
325. It is also used as an emphatic pronoun: I myself did it in contrast with the
reflexive use, I did it to myself.
20. Xunzi 29/143/8. See the translation in John Knoblock (1994), Vol. 3.
21. This implied sense of drawing boundaries is supported by the gloss of ji in
the Shuowen jiezi as having definite shape or form and the warp and weft of a loom
indicating an organized structure. Xu Shen (1966), Shuowen jiezi zhu, 748/14b:21A.
22. Analects 6.30.
23. A. S. Cua (1983), 13; Cua (1985), 98.
24. David S. Nivison (1966), 47, 67.
25. Analects 1.12.
26. A Concordance to the Kuo-yu (1973), 1167982.
27. Authors translation. For alternate translations see The Chinese Classics (1970),
5:679, 684; and Lau (1994) 14.2/71/19.
28. For an interpretation of yi as the personal investment of meaning in action,
based on the interaction between a persons individuality and her environment in
specific situations, see Ames and David Hall (1987), 89110.
29. Mencius (2A6) saw the heart of shame as the sprout of yi, although he
used a different term, xiuwu, instead of chi, they are close enough in meaning for
both to be translated as shame.
Sor-hoon Tan
120
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
Analects 2.3.
Analects 16.1.
Analects 6.4.
Isaiah Berlin (1969), 13541.
Ibid., 12122.
Dewey (1927), 329; Dewey (1928), 111.
Ibid.
Analects 2.4.
Berlin (1969): 12122.
Analects 12.18.
Analects 12.1.
Analects 15.29.
Sangjin Han
The relationship between Confucianism and human rights has been explored
by many authors from various perspectives. Some have attempted a liberal
interpretation of Confucianism to argue for the compatibility between
Confucian thought and certain aspects of civil and political rights as enunciated
by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.1 Others have paid attention to
the question of how Confucian traditions could be more fruitfully utilized to
support economic and social rights, such as the right to subsistence, rather
than the individual entitlements of liberal rights.2 Still others have attempted
to show the precise conceptual relationshipssimilarities and differences
between the Confucian ideas of rites, norms, virtues, harmony, and so on,
and human rights as a modern achievement.3 Taking one step further, we can
also find Chinese scholars digging deeply to lay a new basis for a universal
framework of human rights, which is neither a copy of Western hegemonic
individualism nor a parochial confrontation with it.4
In this chapter I wish to explore the idea of a people-centered,
participatory, communitarian human rights based on certain Confucian
traditions and examine the Kwangju democratic self-rule of 1980 from that
standpoint. I am referring to the historical event initiated on May 18, 1980,
when citizens of Kwangju in South Korea rose up in protest against the countrys
military dictatorship and took control of their city. To be sure, my argument
is selective and normative. In other words, the paper is concerned more with
communitarian than liberal approaches to human rights, but with a specific
focus and orientation.5 The term communitarian in this chapter differs from
other conventional usages of this term, which have been accused of justifying
authoritarian power structures in one way or another. In contrast, my use
of the term advocates a participatory and discursive approach to consensus
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formation as the basis of the common good or collective interest. I argue that
the Confucian heritage of minben philosophywhich, loosely, means
the people are the root of the countrycan be normatively reconstructed
so as to yield such a participatory communitarian concept of human rights.6
As such, it neither excludes nor is identical with individual (subjective) liberal
rights, but includes these in its own way.
To be more precise, this chapter attempts to reinterpret the experience
of the Kwangju democratic self-rule of 1980 from the perspective of
people-centered participatory communitarian human rights.7 As we will see,
the Kwangju popular uprising in May 1980 was unique in its rich, practical
consequences. The citizens, when threatened by extraordinarily repressive
military forces dispatched by the central authoritarian government, not only
protested against it vigorously but also shared a collective experience of peaceful
self-rule from May 22 to 26 after the collapse of the local state apparatus and
with the military forces pushed back to the outskirts of Kwangju city. I would
like, therefore, to examine to what extent, if any, this experience of self-rule can
be considered as a realization of a people-centered participatory communitarian
human rights, however imperfect and short-lived it might have been.
123
arson, and looting, if law enforcement breaks down. Yet the experience in
Kwangju was exactly the opposite. Despite a state of anarchy as officially
defined by the military regimethat is, in a situation where law enforcement
agencies were absentthe citizens of Kwangju shared genuine cooperation
and solidarity. An ethic of care and comradeship spread among the citizens
to overcome fear and anxiety in the midst of an intense crisis. The Kwangju
uprising demonstrated that the absence of law enforcement agencies does
not necessarily bring chaos and social threats. On the contrary, communal
solidarity blossomed, replacing the egocentric pursuit of interests and hostility.
So, the third puzzle arises.
Of fundamental significance for our discussion of a people-centered
participatory communitarian approach to human rights is the Kwangju citizens
unique experience of self-rule touched upon by the third puzzle. But let me
mention some salient issues related to each of these three puzzles.
The first puzzle has been a source of various conspiracy theories.
According to the statement issued by the United States State Department,
the paratroopers dispatched to Kwangju were under the jurisdiction of the
Korean Army. For this reason, it was said that neither prior approval of, nor
subsequent consultation with, the U.S. Army in Korea was made when this
unit was dispatched. Thus, it might be the case that the then military regime
dispatched this special unit with the expectation that they would immediately
crack down on the protest movements and maintain order. In fact, this is
exactly what they had done when dispatched to the areas of Pusan and Masan
some months earlier. However, the resistance was unexpectedly intense in the
case of Kwangju, since the armys cruelty invited the extreme moral outrage
of the citizens. When the crisis consequently emerged, however, this was, in
turn, used as a pretext for establishing another military regime in Korea as
we can confirm from what followed thereafter.
As for the second puzzle, the Kwangju citizens experience of inhuman
treatment by the paratroopers seemed to create unbearable pain and anger, to
the effect that they became firmly united in the struggle for human dignity.
One may say that the gap between the experienced world of brutality and
human dignity as a norm became dangerously widened as a consequence of
the paratroopers barbaric and atrocious treatment of the Kwangju citizens.8
Indeed, the citizens were shocked when they saw the troops shoot and kill
unarmed students and put their corpses on trucks to throw them away.9 It
was beyond their imagination that soldiers who were paid by their taxes could
assail innocent citizens in such a cruel way. Thus, they painfully questioned
how these soldiers were any different from communists. This means that
core values in the moral community were severely violated. The question
of human dignity became a burning issue when they saw the paratroopers
kick their fellow citizens like dogs and [they] found themselves agonizing
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over the fact that they were not risking their lives in the struggle to put a
stop to the violence.10
In addition, the denunciation by the military regime of the Kwangju
citizens democratic protest as a violent mob or unlawful rioting led by
communists created anger. Against these sorts of misrecognitions, biases, and
distortions, the citizens desperately fought to reconstitute their own identity
as defenders of democracy and human rights. The following two statements
demonstrate how important the struggle for recognition was for the citizens
of Kwangju, and how deeply they felt humiliated:
From now on, we cannot walk on two feet. We are animals and
should crawl like animals on four limbs because we were treated
like animals. They dragged us into corners, shot us as if we were
animals being hunted down. How was this possible and who will
be responsible for this atrocity? Furthermore, we are degraded as
mob and we will continue to be categorized as such in years to
come. Everyone from our province, our sons and daughters in the
future, will be called mobs.11
The Kwangju incident was not a communist riot but a
righteous movement against the oppression of democracy and
freedom. Thus, the main force behind this noble movement was
neither mobs nor communists. It was we, the democracy-loving
Chonnam people, who rose to protect our rights in the name of
democracy.12
So, the key to the second puzzle can be found in the concept of struggle for
recognition. The citizens of Kwangju, as individuals, made their decision to risk
their lives and join the popular uprising in order to recover their dignity as
humans. It is very likely that this decision was tightly interwoven with moral
and emotional concerns. Yet it is clear that individual self-determination by
the citizens of Kwangju gave rise to the absolute community that Jungwoon
Choi describes, and this made it possible for them to liberate the city from
the army.13
The recovery of human dignity sought by the citizens was realized
not only through the self-affirmation resulting from the brave struggle of
the individual, but also by means of the recognition one received from ones
fellow citizens, from the newly formed absolute community. At the heart of
the absolute community was lovethe human response to an existence more
elevated than ones own. Following the emergence of the absolute community,
those citizens who had hesitated to join the struggle flocked to it to receive
its blessing and were liberated from their fear. It was as if they were reborn
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but would become doubtful if these were used to promote the bad instead
of the good. Simply put, Individuals do not have the moral right to moral
wrongdoing.26
This argument may sound compelling in non-Western countries where
the liberal tradition is lacking and some kinds of communitarian traditions
remain strong. Excessive individualism may be viewed as a cause of moral
decay in the community, along with the materialist values associated with the
cronyism of capitalistic development. In this view, human rights, particularly
liberal rights, are seen not only as too Western but as being likely to destroy the
community. Westernization, for some, becomes a convenient label for all the
evils that eroded the foundation of a sound, non-corrupt Asian society.27
One may argue, as Lee Kwan Yew does, that the American failure to
deal with the problems of drugs and guns effectively has something to do with
the Western tradition of individual-centered human rights. Certainly, it would
make no sense to reject individual sovereignty as such. Nevertheless, there
do arise problems when individuals remain overwhelmingly preoccupied with
their private affairs in the name of human rights and have little consideration
for the possible negative consequences of their actions on the community.
Communitarians may respond that to prevent this kind of moral decay we must
nurture a good community as the condition for individual development.
However, we should ask if it is sufficient for communitarians simply to
voice such complaints. We must raise seriously the question of how we can
best conceptualize communitarian concerns within the language of human
rights. In other words, we must address the charge that the communitarian
critique of individual rights tends to support authoritarian power structures,
one way or another.
It is against this backdrop that prominent scholars of Confucianism such
as Theodore de Bary have launched an impressive project investigating the
liberal aspects of the Confucian heritage. It is no less wrong, they argue, to
deny Confucianism in the name of human rights than to deny human rights
in the name of a conservative interpretation of Confucianism.
It is obvious enough that Confucianism itself did not generate
human rights concepts and practices equivalent to those now
embodied in the Universal Declaration; it is not obvious that
Confucianism was headed in an altogether different authoritarian
or communitarian direction, incompatible with the rights affirmed
in the Declaration. Thus our aim is not to find twentieth century
human rights in Confucianism, but to recognize therein certain
central human valueshistorically embedded in, but at the same
time at odds with, repressive institutions in Chinathat in the
emerging modern world could be supportive of those rights.28
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133
Probably, the best case in point can be found in Singapore where the
influence of Confucianism is still pervasive. In his keynote address at the
Create 21 Asahi Forum on November 20, 1992, for instance, Lee Kwan Yew
pointed out three pathologies of American society which include: (1) law
and order out of control, with riots, drugs, guns, muggings, rape, and other
crimes; (2) poverty in the midst of great wealth; and (3) excessive rights of
the individual at the expense of the community as a whole.48 Explaining
why the United States has been unable to deal effectively with a particularly
sensitive problem, namely drugs, he proudly declared that Singapore had
been able to contain its drug problems owing much to Asian values. To
protect the community, said Lee, we have passed laws which entitle police,
drug enforcement, or immigration officers to have the urine of any person
who behaves in a suspicious way tested for drugs. If the result is positive,
treatment is compulsory.49 He continued:
Such a law will be unconstitutional [in the United States], because
it will be an invasion of privacy of the individual. Any urine test
would lead to a suit for damage for battery and assault and invasion
of privacy. . . . So in the US the communitys interests have been
sacrificed because of the human rights of drug traffickers and drug
consumers. Drug-related crimes flourish. Schools are infected.
There is high delinquency and violence amongst students, a high
dropout rate, poor discipline and teaching, producing students
who make poor workers. So a vicious cycle has set in.50
Indeed, Singapore is an interesting example of Confucian communitarian
ideology and practice. Certain Confucian ethics have been selectively used to
establish a corruption-free, clean government as well as a clean society that
protects the interests of the community.51 Beginning with the premise that
what people want is good government, Lee argues that good government
depends on the values of a people, which means that Asian values are different
from American or Western values. Lees identity is well expressed when he
states: As an Asian of Chinese cultural background, my values are for a
government which is honest, effective, and efficient in protecting its people,
and allowing opportunities for all to advance themselves in a stable and orderly
society where they can live a good life and raise their children to do better
than themselves.52 He then listed seven requirements for good government
as follows: (1) the people are well cared for regarding their food, housing,
employment, and health; (2) there is order and justice under the rule of law,
and not the capricious arbitrariness of individual rulers; (3) there is as much
personal freedom as possible without infringing on the freedom of others;
(4) there is growth in the economy and progress in society; (5) education is
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good and ever-improving; (6) both the rulers and the people have high moral
standards; and (7) there is good physical infrastructure supporting facilities for
recreation, music, culture, and arts, as well as spiritual and religious freedoms,
and a full intellectual life.
Here we find a Confucian path of development toward the expanded
role of the state. Benevolent leadership is called for to protect and nurture
the collective interests of the community. Human rights are not flatly rejected.
Rather, a step-by-step incremental approach is recommended, with heavy
emphasis on community and state interests. In addition, there is consultation
among diverse interest groups to secure and preserve social consensus.
Nonetheless, it remains the case that this path of communitarian development
is more likely to lead to paternalistic authoritarianism than to democracy. 53
Normative Reconstruction of a
People-Centered Participatory Approach
Another mode of communitarian approach is more participatory. It is here
that we should try to make clear what has remained only implicit in the
liberal interpretation of Confucian traditions represented by de Bary and his
followers. We search for a model of consensual determination of the common
good of a community based on participation. What is central is the capacity
of the peoplenot the state or political leadersto be the ultimate source
of popular sovereignty. We are here concerned with the question of how to
preserve and maintain the common good of a society within the framework
of the right to collective self-determination. The Confucian teachings of Zhu
Xi, Cheng Yi, and Wang Yangming, among others, deserve our attention for
their emphasis on the essential voluntarism of the political and social order
of a self-governing community.
The methodological problem of a normative reconstruction is a
delicate issue, however. To begin with, much in a given tradition is open
to interpretation. In this respect, I am interested in an approach aimed at
deconstructing mainstream Confucianism associated with the status quo, while
reconstructing those traces within Confucianism which, though marginal
to the mainstream, are still valid and allow the exploration of the possibility
of a more humane society based on these.54 We may then move from
deconstruction to reconstruction via the reshaping of the foci of tradition.55
This might break down the dominant tendency in Confucianism to legitimatize
the relationship of power, while releasing its hidden but normatively valid
earlier meanings lodged within the same tradition.56
In a nutshell, then, our normative reconstruction depends on what
we take to be the relevant meaning of the tradition in question. Though
135
expressed only in an implicit, often hidden, and marginal form, this meaning
may still have strong normative force. Reconstruction aims at making
explicit this implicit meaning while breaking down the hegemonic uses of
Confucianism.
Perhaps, the potentially universal significance of Confucianism lies in
its emphasis on the profound role of language and consensual communication
rather than in any of its relatively fixed hierarchical relationships, such as
that between father and son, husband and wife, ruler and ruled, and so
on.57 A conception of language as the performative practice by which reality
is created and shaped is implicit in the Confucian worldview.58 As Chad
Hansen puts it:
Language is a social practice. Its basic function is guiding action.
The smallest units of guiding discourse are ming (names). We
string ming together in progressively larger units. The salient
compositional structure is a dao [guiding discourse]. . . . In learning
a conventional name, you learn the socially shared way of making
discriminations in guiding your action according to dao.59
A pragmatic, nonmetaphysical view of language and communication seems
to be deeply built into Confucianism.60 The discursive nature of learning and
knowledge formation is assumed in Confucian traditions, and its political
significance becomes discernable in the Zhongyong, one of the four Confucian
classics.61 The process of decision-making is depicted here as the process
of deliberative communication: it is open to include two extremes, nothing
should be arbitrarily excluded, while, at the same time, it must be deliberative
enough so that the best choices can be made and applied to the people.62
The normative orientation underlying the liberal interpretation of
Confucianism can be made explicit by highlighting Confucianisms emphasis
on the discursive nature of human interaction and knowledge formation.
This normative layer of Confucianism can be reconstructed as the basis of
a communitarian approach to human rights, which may differ significantly
from the authoritarian tracks mentioned above. In this way, I believe that we
can conserve the essential aspects of Confucianism while methodologically
keeping our distance from its conventional preoccupation with hierarchical
relationships. At the same time, we will make the Confucian traditions more
relevant to contemporary issues.
We take up this perspective when we deal with the Confucian question
of rites. Confucians advocate learning by education, not by punishment. Lead
them with edicts, keep them in line with punishment, and the common
people will stay out of trouble, but have no sense of shame. Lead them by
virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will not only have a sense of
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course, the ideas of minquan and minzu could have been realized within the
constitutional framework of representative democracy.
The question of whether people can empower themselves as the subjects
of a direct democracy in modern society is an interesting question and hard
to answer convincingly. Of course, people can make initiatives, as can be
easily seen in many citizens movements today. But no agreement is available
concerning the extent to which we can trust popular empowerment, that is,
the capability of the people to generate and sustain the common good of a
community on the basis of voluntary participation. It is not clear whether
we can assume that ordinary people have the ability to create collective
order through joint efforts. Yet the Confucian minben traditions recognize
this possibility. As the basis of the world, as the root and origin of order,
and as the subject of politics, the people are assumed to be capable not only
of constructing consensual order but also of performing actions in terms of
virtues. As inborn moral assets, virtues are said to be evenly distributed to all
human beings regardless of wealth, power, and status. Mencius thus referred
to virtues as tianjue , or predispositions bestowed by heaven.
There are at least two aspects under which a people-centered participatory
communitarian approach to human rights, as derived from the Confucian
tradition of minben thought, can be applied to the Kwangu citizens experience
of self-rule in May 1980. First, seen from the normative idea of the minben
tradition, the maltreatment by the military of innocent citizens was beyond
imagination and unbearable, giving rise to a righteous rebellion by the people.
The paratroopers dangerously violated the most primordial Confucian norm of
regarding the people as the basis of the world and, consequently, the citizens
of Kwangju as a whole were united in their struggle for human dignity. They
wanted to be treated as human beings, not as animals. They were against
the misrecognitions, systematic biases, and prejudices greatly reinforced by
the military regime and the mass media subjugated to it. The struggle for
recognition bears rich implications for human rights, since the pursuit of
human dignity was the major motivating factor of the Kwangju Uprising.67
Second, of more significance for human rights is the fact the citizens not
only made a righteous rebellion against a nakedly savage military dictatorship
but were also capable of cooperating with each other to create and sustain
peaceful order on the basis of voluntary participation. Here we see a rare
example of collective self-determination outside the institutionalized framework
of representative democracy. Peace and order were achieved by such means as
public assemblies, discussions, mutual care, voluntary services, and so on. In
this way, the collective will of the citizens was formed spontaneously, capable
of regulating affairs in a surprisingly peaceful and orderly way. This experience
is highly suggestive in that it points to the possibility of autonomous self-rule
independent of top-down regulation by the state.
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Sangjin Han
after becoming members of a full-fledged middle class. They are not only
critical of the authoritarian heritages in politics and society but are also more
capable of understanding the situations of minorities. They are eager to foster
participatory democracy, while strongly supporting the Confucian normative
idea of minben development.70
Third, a participatory communitarian development may be more feasible
in a country where civil society functions well independently and autonomously.
In this regard, there is no doubt that the civil society sector has gained a more
prominent role in South Korea than in any other Confucian society. Politics
is no longer a monopoly of parties and politicians but has become subject
to the ever-increasing influence of civil society.
Last, but not least, communications technology is important. In order
for the people to act as the ultimate origin of public order, it is necessary that
they be able to express what they want, aggregate, articulate their demands,
and pursue alliances with others with whom they share common interests.
The more effectively the state controls the means of communication, the more
difficult it is for people to communicate freely. However, recent revolutions in
Internet technology have made it increasingly difficult to keep the Internet,
and its format for public discourse, under control. Here again, we can see
that an Internet-based public sphere has been most intensively developed in
South Korea today.
When we discuss the relationships between Confucianism and human
rights with a forward-looking perspective, we see that it is feasible to test
the possibilities for Confucian innovations against historical developments in
South Korea.71 When speaking of China, we may easily fall into the trap of
confusing the shortcomings of the Chinese authoritarian regime with those
of Confucianism. This mistake can be avoided when we situate our discourse
in South Korea where such factors as the steady advance of democratization,
the increase of the middle class, the expanded role of civil society, and a
vibrant online community, seem to support the possibility of a people-centered
participatory communitarian approach to human rights. Revitalizing Confucian
traditions will be greatly affected by these sociological changes.72
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Notes
1. Wm. Theodore de Bary (1983), (1998b).
2. Stephen C. Angle (2002).
3. Wejen Chang (1998); Chung-ying Cheng (1998); Randal Peerenboom
(1998).
4. Tinyang Zhao (2005a), (2005b).
5. By communitarian here I mean more of a discursively formed voluntary
consensus than an authoritarian definition of collective interests by the state; see
Charles Taylor (1992). I think it possible to work out this approach based on certain
Confucian traditions strong in Korea; Sangjin Han (1999c). It should be noted that this
communitarian approach with discursive orientation is not identical with the brand of
communitarianism advocated by authoritarian figures in East Asia; Han (1999b).
6. In the actual political histories of China and Korea, this idea has been
examined and appropriated in many different ways depending on historical contexts.
As intensively discussed in late Qing, for instance, the differences in conceptual
implications among minben, minquan (human rights) and minzu (democracy) are
undisputable; see Joan Judge (1998).
7. Much research is needed to make clear the relationship between the
experience of the Kwangju uprising in 1980 and human rights. This paper owes much
to Korea Journal 39, no. 2, where we find papers drawing careful attention to the
processes and consequences of how participants in the uprising came to understand
the meaning of the event.
8. Han (1999a), 191.
9. KHMC (1997), 22.
10. Jungwoon Choi (1999), 275.
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Robert Neville
There are Confucians and Daoists who are not East Asians, just as there are
Platonists who are not Greek or even Western. But the idea of a Western
Confucian seems more problematic to some than the idea of a non-Greek
Platonist. Confucianism, of course, is not limited to China, having spread to
Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and elsewhere in East Asia, and to diaspora communities
of these nationals outside of East Asia. But it carries with it, according to the
common belief, a rich East Asian primary culture of family life and authority
structures distinctive to Confucianism and yet alien or irrelevant to the primary
cultures outside of East Asia. Confucianism is thought by many not to be able
to flourish outside of an East Asian family culture. This chapter examines, by
means of an extended anecdote, the conditions under which Confucianism
might be transported to cultures wholly outside the East Asian type.
At the Second Confucian-Christian Dialogue Conference, held in
Berkeley, California, in 1991, three participantsJohn H. Berthrong, Chung
Chai-sik, and Iattended from Boston. At the First Confucian-Christian
Dialogue Conference, in Hong Kong in 1988, we three also were in attendance,
but then only I was from Boston; Tu Weiming from Boston attended the
first conference and helped plan the second. So as the conference opened
in Berkeley, many joking remarks were made about the growing school of
Boston Confucianism. Part of the joke had to do with people moving from
Korea (Chung) and Canada (Berthrong) to Boston. But the larger part was
that the phrase Boston Confucianism is oxymoronic: Bostonians might be
brahmins but only East Asians can be Confucians. Tu Weiming might be
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147
148
Robert Neville
149
150
Robert Neville
151
practically the current social habits in light of a better way. For Confucius,
this took the form of laments about the loss of public and personal virtues
compared with the golden age of ritual propriety, and a campaign to restore
those virtues through a sensible recovery of ritual propriety.
Because of the centrality of this point for Boston Confucianism, it is
worthwhile to note that Confuciuss project has an analogue in Platos. Plato
wrote during a period in which the classic values of Greece, for instance as
expressed by Pericles, had been undermined. The wars with Persia and the
ease of travel to Egypt had shown that there were other ways to have high
culture than the Greek. The Sophists had developed a serious philosophy of
cultural relativism. And the rise of democracy meant in some quarters that
anyones opinion is as worthy of respect as anyone elses, regardless of education,
experience, public spiritedness, or thoughtfulness. Platos philosophic project is
to be read in light of this situation. He invented a subtle metaphysical scheme
for describing the nature of real values and showing how they are easily relativized and misunderstood; he demonstrated again and again the dialectical
process of discerning what is worthwhile in situations; he developed theories
and practical procedures for both educating people to discern the true amidst
relativities and bringing the true to bear upon politics. Most importantly,
he raised the question of what a just person could do in an unjust world
where even the best political efforts would be perverted to unjust ends, and
answered that just people need to go into education. Plato invented the Western university just as Confucius invented or at least popularized the style of
the Confucian teacher. When Confucianism is brought to a culture that has
been prepared by Plato, the frustrated sense of Confuciuss life and his failure
to win at big-time politics may be understood in terms of his extraordinarily
successful alternate strategy.9
The Doctrine of the Mean is a primary scripture of Confucianism because
it provides the classical expression of the Confucian model of the self as a
polar structure stretching between the inner heart of centered readiness to
respond to all things according to their value and the ten thousand things of
the world. All persons are identical with regard to the readiness to respond
in the center, a point identified later in the tradition as universal principle;
but each person is uniquely located in perspective on the ten thousand
things, needing to respond differentially. The structures of psyche, knowledge,
sensibilities, and skills connecting the two poles constitute the self. The
Confucian lesson is that these need to be made sincere and subtly transparent
so that the centered heart can see the ten thousand things without distortion
and act upon them appropriately without perversion. However, the customary
structure of the self in psyche, knowledge, sensibilities, and skills is selfish,
both distorting vision and perverting action, and the Confucian way is to
remedy this selfishness.10
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in the social scale and visitors from abroad. The symbols for this include
taking care of ones family, and exercising love with distinctions. They
also include providing proper support for ministers and officials, and not
confusing the administration of the kingdom by appointing relatives, whom
one should favor with gifts and recognition but not with office unless they
are particularly meritorious. Although the symbols for kingly compassion
are drawn from images of parental care and close personal attention, they
in fact must convey a humanized impartiality throughout the kingdom that
makes the whole a harmonized, personally quickened, fiduciary community.
Tu writes:
In a deeper sense, however, the ruler cannot exercise his power
directly on the people; his political influence can only be extended
gradually through the mediation of appointed officers. If he fails
to identify himself with the welfare of those who are responsible
for the execution of his policies, his leadership will be greatly
weakened. What he must do, then, is to see to it that his esteem
for the worthy, his care for his proximity of blood, and his respect
for the great ministers do not hamper his consideration for all
officialdomincluding the host of subordinate bureaucrats as
well. Indeed, this process of inclusion must also involve artisans,
farmers, and even strangers from far countries. The ruler's moral
persuasion can be truly effective only if it is conducted in the
spirit of impartiality. Once the ruler's concern is limited to special
interest groups, his efficacy as a leader for the whole country
becomes problematical.13
The main burden of Tus analysis, however, is not on the rituals and
symbols that convey personalized impartiality, but on the development of
the character of the king or sage. In this he directly follows the emphasis of
The Doctrine of the Mean. Even in his other writings, Tu continues to stress
the cultivation of the socially profound self, as evidenced in his biography
of the young Wang Yangming (1976a), Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays
in Confucian Thought (1979), and Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative
Transformation (1985). His recent book does not convey the emphasis on
humanizing the self in the title, Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays on the
Confucian Intellectual (1989), but in fact continues that emphasis. Because of
Tus subtle and far-reaching writing and teaching, North-of-the-Charles Boston
Confucianism is a philosophy of the transformation of persons to be fully
human in the modern world, not just the East Asian world but the world of
late modernity and, perhaps, postmodernity. In this, Boston Confucianism
appropriates the lineage of Mencius and Wang Yangming, especially as
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habits of eye contact, manners of entering and leaving conversation, and ways
of insisting and deferring. Signs include the social habits making up family and
community life, the institutional habits of education, communications media,
trade, manufactury, labor, and food production. They include all the ways in
which we represent ourselves, our purposes, our work, and our world, ways
to which we respond in attempting to act out of our identity.15
Boston Confucianism, especially south of the Charles, points out that
the specific habits that form personal and social character, habits that are all
social in their origin and reinforcement, are often deficient for the exercise of
true humanity. They too often pervert or diminish family ties, reducing them
to biology plus the dole. They reduce economic activity to rational exploitation
of self and other. They reduce politics to contests for power among interest
groups. They reduce the arts to expressions of ideology. And sometimes, there
simply are no signs at all the habitual exercise of which constitutes a particular
human dimension of life. For instance, when the modern Western emphasis
on friendship was turned in on the nuclear family, closely associated with
the erotic attachment of wife and husband, there were simply no models left
for same-gender intimate friendship that do not suggest homosexuality. This
particular lack of significant social habits that characterizes the modern West
was not true of the ancient or medieval periods in the West and not true
of many other cultures that separate the intimacy of sex from the intimacy
of friendship.
Thus, Boston Confucianism, by planting the Confucian primary
scripturesespecially Xunzi with the emphasis on ritual proprietyin the
American soil of pragmatic habit-theory and semiotics, recovers Confuciuss
project of criticizing the actual society in terms of the ideals expressed in the
ritual propriety of humanity. The breadth of the field of signs in the American
sense goes far beyond ritual in the ceremonial sense. But then, Confucius and
Xunzi had a very broad view of the significance even of ceremony, and the
generalization from ritual propriety to a culture of humanizing habits formed
by appropriate signs is a natural extension of their insights. By means of this
extension, Confucianism is dialectically connected with the entire tradition of
Western culture, not merely with the ethnic cultures of East Asia. The program
of Boston Confucianism is not merely a call for self-transformation but a
critique of the objective nature of the signs that constitute our culture, and
a call for their reformation in various ways appropriate to the contemporary
situation. Because the self is in fact formed by the objective social habits
according to which it must exercise its humanity, South-of-the-Charles Boston
Confucianism emphasizes a critique and reformation of objective significant
social structures more than an interiorly oriented personal self-transformation.
This point is not a contradiction of the North-of-the-Charles focus, only a
difference in emphasis.16 The united claim is that the genuine humanity of
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personal life in self and society depends upon the cultural availability and
prevalence of the proper signs to frame habit; this is to say, genuine humanity
depends on properly generalized ritual propriety, and this is something we
can do something about, especially through education.
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friends without the elaborate learned ways of behaving that make up mutual
interest, respect, sharing of enjoyment and sorrow, and delighting in one
another with faithfulness. With little culture, people can have children and
receive life from their own parents, but without learned ritualized behaviors
they cannot bring up their children in virtue, or honor their parents in a filial
manner. The Confucian problem with barbarians was not that they had the
wrong culture but that they hardly had culture at all, and the reason was that
they had no or inadequate behaviors of ritual propriety by means of which
to embody the higher excellences of civilization.
Of course, ritual behaviors are conventional. It does not really matter
what forms are practiced so long as they work to give existence to the
cultural virtue in question. Confucius pointed out that regarding ritual hats
it makes little or no difference whether they are linen or silk, whichever is
most convenient. But in showing deference with regard to the temple, a quick
bow while going in the door is a diminishment or routinizing of respect; so
it is far better to make a full obeisance before ascending the temple steps
(Analects 9.3). When Confucian propriety is properly generalized, as I shall
argue shortly, language itself appears as a learned, conventional ritualized
behavior. Being conventional, languages differ from one another. But the
normative question is whether the language in question can convey what is
needed. Those languages that support deep civilization are good; those that
are so impoverished that friendship, family relations, and good government
cannot be expressed are not so good.
The third trait of the Confucian notion of propriety is that it produces
a special kind of harmony. Produces is not the right word, for the harmony
is not a consequent effect of propriety. Rather, the harmony consists in the
practice of the rituals at the right occasions by the right people. This was
Confuciuss most important moral point about proprietywhen ritual propriety
is observed people are brought into cooperative action that respects the place,
needs, and merits of each. Where ritual propriety is not observed, or where
a society lacks the rituals that articulate the diverse positions, needs, and
merits of its citizens, morality falls back to dependence on the following of
moral rules and the happenstance exercise of good will. Unlike moral rules
and good will, propriety is lodged in the habits of bones and muscles and
in the deepest schemes of imagination. Propriety, of course, is no substitute
for the deliberative parts of moral reasoning, nor for sincerity of the heart,
just as having eloquent language and habits of speech does not tell one what
to say or how to intend. But propriety, especially an eloquent and nuanced
language, brings the special harmony that can elude even moral correctness
and the good heart.19
Propriety is the particular part of the Confucian tradition that I wish
here to relate to American pragmatism, although there are other elements that
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with which interpreters interact will correct their representations. For Peirce
and Dewey, knowing as having a mental picture is subordinated to learning
as the correction of the representations that guide interaction.23
Another important contribution of pragmatism is to argue that
representations are not mental entities but habits of the behavior of
interpreters.24 The habits have two main connections. On the one hand, the
pragmatic theory shows how habits are connected with the things with which
interpreters interact, including physical nature, social structures, and other
interpreters. The realities of these other things are correctives to habits that
do not anticipate them accurately. On the other hand, habits are connected
with the human purposes from which interactions take their guidance.
Interpretations have many functions. On rare occasions their purpose might be
simply and only to know. On most occasions, however, they play performative
functions, serving some other purpose which cannot be carried out without
some construal of the world and of how to accomplish things. Sometimes
purposes are passive and interpretations function to enable sheer enjoyment.
Like the Confucians, pragmatists recognize the primacy of the performative
or illocutionary functions of interpretation.25
The interpretations in any interpreter or community are intricately
interwoven and nested the way habits jointly make up a complex life. Semiotics
or the theory of signs is the analysis of the structures of interconnected
interpretations. Interpretations are made up of signs that interpret, signs as
objects interpreted, and signs as the habits of interpreting. Whereas European
semiotics (deriving from Saussure, 1959) focuses on signs as interdefined in
codes, pragmatic semiotics focuses on how signs come to be in this or that
context, how they become determinate or fade into vagueness, how systems
of signs presuppose one another, and how changes in one system of signs
affects other more or less general systems.
Three particular traits of the pragmatic theory of signs should be lifted
up for notice. The first is that it sees any particular interpretation as resting
in a vast background of other interpretations, systems within systems; every
interpretation has a context and every environment of interpretations can
contain an indefinitely large number of focal points.26 The second is that
interpretations are appreciative of the value, worth, and appeal of things, as
well as their dignity and place. These value-elements are all part of the reality
of things, and pragmatism does not have to accept any fact-value distinction
that associates objects with form or structure and value with mental projections. Thus, pragmatism treats experience as fundamentally appreciative, with
the values of objects interacting with the purposes of interpreters. Third, the
pragmatic theory of signs recognizes that appreciative interpretation spreads
across the whole breadth of interpretations from circumambient feelings of the
world and its moods to specific purposes and enjoyments, all in continuity.
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Thus, the pragmatic theory resonates with the sense of continuity, spontaneity,
and aesthetic experience Chang Chungyuan (1963) ascribes to Daoism but
that applies equally well to the Confucian sensibilities.
The continuity from background to foreground interpretations in the
pragmatic theory is supplemented by an even more important continuity,
namely, in the range of interpretive habits. At the fundamental level are
the animal habits of organic nature. In English, the ordinary language of
interpretation is stretched to say that the heart interprets exertion by beating
faster, that the stomach interprets hunger by growling, or that an animal
interprets sudden large movement by fleeing; nevertheless, these organic habits
are low-level interpretations that construe the situation to be a certain way
and respond a certain way. The human range of interpretive habits becomes
distinctive within the animal world with elementary cooperation, gestures,
basic language, and expressive semiotic modes. Together the organic range
of interpretations and those involved in elementary human cooperation and
society constitute a kind of bio-psychic dance, attuned to and structured by
natures rhythms, but reflecting purpose. At this point conventional signs begin
to develop over and above, or as modifying, the natural signs of interpretation.
With the more elaborate development of conventional signs social discourse
becomes possible with complex languages, cultures, and social organizations.
Even though the signs and the habits become more subtle and sophisticated,
with conventional elements that may be artful and abstruse, they still are
modifications and enrichments of the organic and elementary habits. When
societies develop the elaborate sign-systems of high civilization, they have
those elements of ritual propriety about which Confucius and Xunzi wrote: the
elements that modify cooperation so that it becomes respectful friendship, sex
so that it becomes profound love and caring, procreation so that it becomes
family life with filiality, and so forth. As the ancient Confucians knew, it
does not matter exactly which sign-system carries the functions of ritual
propriety, only that a culture have some sign-system that does. This account
of the pragmatic approach to signs shows, first, how signs create culture out
of nature, second, how signs are conventional and, third, how the signs of
high culture constitute the harmonious interactions in which the virtues of
high culture consist. In this way, pragmatism picks up on three of the most
important elements of the Confucian notion of propriety.
My thesis is that the Confucian theory of ritual propriety can be
generalized to include the entire pyramid of signs or organic and social habits,
the higher modifying the lower, the lower undergirding and making possible
the higher. The ancient Confucians did not believe, as the Daoists suggested,
that the higher signs of ritual behavior can be imposed carelessly on baser
habits. On the contrary, the uses of ritual propriety are precisely to fulfill
the potential excellence of more elementary natural habits by turning power
into government, cooperation into friendship, and so forth. The Confucians
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women, ethnic minorities, and persons from lower classes and unconnected
with powerful families. Racial inequalities seem almost intractable but still
there is greater opportunity for racial minorities in Boston and like places
than in places unaffected by the European Enlightenment. Confucians would
point out that even where egalitarian ideals are institutionalized fairly well in
social habits, people still need to be recognized as individuals with unique
positions and values. The abstractness of equality is a dehumanizing burden,
treating people as mere tokens occupying a position in a system, if the social
habits of equality are not also framed with the rituals that recognize persons
in their different and unique qualities. The Confucian task in an egalitarian
society is to develop social habits that recognize and reinforce equality while
also addressing the unique persons playing egalitarian roles.
That Bostons modern society is egalitarian, at least in the habits of
expectation, does not mean that it does not need a hierarchy of roles in
government, business, and other systems such as education. But the hierarchy
aims to be functional in structure and meritocratic in terms of qualification
to office. Tradition has little weight in American culture for defining offices;
offices and roles are constantly being modified, rearranged, invented, or phased
out. The meritocracy of qualifications for office is similar in many respects
to the ideal of the Chinese Confucian examination system, but extends
throughout society, for instance to business. Seniority has to do not with age
but with length of time and experience in a position. Although the functional
hierarchies and meritocratic placement of position holders are always imperfect,
even if it were perfect the Confucian would ask further critical questions. Do
the civilizing habits of the society adequately recognize the whole person in
the office, and are the offices defined so as to be held by whole people? For
instance, a person in a low position at work might be a high official in church
or in the family. A person in high responsibility in government or business
might be extremely needy in the context of family and a very poor athlete
in recreational sports. The civil rituals by which we relate to ourselves and
to others in various hierarchical offices need to acknowledge that holding
those offices is not the entirety of the persons life. Business relations need
not invade privacy, but they ought not deny it either. Confucians in Boston
should work for the social rituals that allow people to relate to others in
official or semiofficial positions as complex human beings.
I shall now turn from the Confucian theme of civility to that of
friendship. The conditions for friendship in Boston reflect the social conditions
mentioned above, namely, inclusive cultural diversity in race, ethnicity, and
religion, egalitarianism, and a social system with functional hierarchies and a
meritocracy. Whereas Chinese Confucianism as well as Western Aristotelianism
have emphasized equality as a condition for true friendship, that condition
cannot obtain in a society with the late-modern conditions of Boston. Even
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egalitarianism means that people are to be treated with equal respect who are
vastly different in age, talent, interests, and background. With rare exceptions,
true friendships in the Boston situation will have to be possible among
unequals, among people of different genders, different ages, different talents
and intelligence, and different positions in social hierarchies.
Boston Confucians then need to point out that at the heart of true
friendship are the social habits or rituals for enduring through a long time.
Friendships are formed only through long endurance of changes in relations
among the friends; gender roles change as people age, social positions change
with age, talents and responsibilities change, as well as offices in hierarchies.
Friends are those who learn to love, respect, and defer to one another through
a long period of changes. In this way, they come to relate heart to heart to
one another as whole persons. Friendships can begin with the infatuation of
a common interest, a shared attitude, or a reciprocal wit; but they need to
develop so as to create a subculture of interpersonal habits that arises through
participating in one anothers lives over time. Confucian ritual strategies need
to be developed to sustain friendships through changes in inequalities over
time. Confucians rightly warn against the fake rituals of instant familiarity
that we associate with salesmen; the manners of instant informality are a
crass simulacrum of friendship when applied to people who do not really
know one another well.
Boston Confucianism needs also to distinguish true friendship from two
other relations with which it is easily confused in late-modern Western culture.
One is the civil relations of functional interaction within society discussed
above, where the social habits with true propriety allow us to recognize people
in their wholeness while relating to them according to their functions. Thus,
we need rituals for dealing with shopkeepers, bureaucrats, and politicians; but
these are not the rituals that necessarily foster true friendship. The second
relation to be distinguished from true friendship is collegiality, which is much
closer to friendship than civil relations and often its source. Collegiality is
the type of relation developed through close proximity, perhaps in working
conditions or through living in the same neighborhood. Colleagues relate not
only functionally but in sharing much of the rest of their social and personal
lives. The rituals of collegiality properly insist that colleagues help one another
when in trouble and rejoice and grieve with one another; in traditional societies
collegiality is what is meant by community. But collegiality is a function
of the circumstances of proximity. When one changes jobs or moves to a
different neighborhood, one can change colleagues with no serious loss. New
people enter into ones life to share events, to help, with whom to rejoice and
grieve. In such a mobile society as has developed in late modernity, proper
Confucian rituals of collegiality are extremely important, but they are not
true friendship that endures the changes of circumstances of proximity. True
friends stay together through change and separation.
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Christian concern for widows, orphans, and strangers led Jesus to denigrate
his personal kinship connections and to appropriate kinship language for
universal relations (Mark 3:3135): we are all brothers and sisters, children of
the one divine father. In both the Jewish and Christian traditions membership
in synagogue or church has taken over many of the senses of interpersonal
identification typical of kinship families but extended to include those
without families. For many people their communal religious identification
is as important as their family identification. Confucianism for American
Judaism and Christianity needs to recognize in family ritual propriety the
identifications members might have with religious communities that exercise
some family-like functions.
Having stressed the differences in family conditions between traditional
East Asian Confucianism and Boston Confucianism, let me now stress the
need for a positive Boston Confucian contribution. American families by
and large do not have the civilizing rituals they need to integrate school
and home life, to acknowledge women with careers who also are mothers
and homemakers, to cope with mature men who can be consumed by job
responsibilities or out of work completely, to mediate the passing on of
family traditions with what children learn at school and work, to dignify
retirement while keeping family ties, and so forth. American families need
yet to cope with the fact that so many family members live alone, separated
from the family. The modern American family enjoys many advantages
of opportunity, and in certain circumstances has obvious problems to be
addressed by more and better jobs or better housing arrangements. But
even if the advantages were celebrated and the problems overcome, there are
insufficient rituals of family life for it to become the home in which people
can be cared for and supported in working out the issues of wholeness in
their lives. Confucianism in Boston and the modern West has both critical
and creative philosophical work to do, in continuity with two and a half
millennia of work in East Asia.
In this chapter so far I have argued that Confucianism (and by
extension other traditions of Chinese thought) is now a world philosophy
with all the intellectual responsibilities this entails. My first line of argument
was that Confucianism can learn from and extend the Western tradition of
pragmatism, and therefore enter into internal dialectical relations with the
Western traditions of philosophy so as to form in part a world tradition
of philosophy inclusive of East Asia and the West. The specific argument
was that Confucianism properly focuses in its emphasis on ritual propriety
the moral implications of the pragmatic theory of signs. The second line of
argument was an illustrative survey of cases in which Confucianism in its
Boston school can relate to modern American society as critic and cultural
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creator through ritual propriety, just as it has done for millennia to East Asian
societies. Both lines of argument are incomplete and merely suggestive. But
I believe they point toward a new dignity and calling, as well as new forms,
for Chinese philosophy.
One must take this discussion of Boston Confucianism with a large sense
of humor. The fact that Charles Peirce, Tu Weiming, and I are Bostonians is
sheerly accidental, and I mean to be speaking for a wide range of people in
America and Asia who approach Confucianism as a portable world-philosophy.
Wm. Theodore de Barys development of Confucian studies and practice at
Columbia University in New York has been longer lasting and more productive
than any of us Confucians from Boston, even if he and his students Judith
Berling, Rodney Taylor, and Mary Evelyn Tucker responded to the altar call
in Berkeley. Liu Shuhsien and Cheng Chungying share the general program
of Boston Confucianism with but brief connections with the City of Boston.
But if, with humor, we take Boston Confucianism as a symbol for a larger
development, there are four novelties to be introduced into the Confucian
tradition in the current discussion.
First, the self-conscious development of a nonEast Asian form of
Confucianism requires internalizing a historical self-consciousness to a degree
unprecedented in the Confucian tradition. Beginning with Confucius, of
course, the tradition has been aware of historical distance and change, even
when conceptions of the past were mainly legendary. The importation of the
primary scriptures of Confucianism to a living tradition in the West, however,
requires that the interpretive context be not only the Yijing but also Platos
Republic, as illustrated above. Just as neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming
learned from the Buddhists and Daoists, Boston Confucianism learns from the
pragmatists, and must interpret itself to the Kantians, phenomenologists, and
Western logicians. The scale of historical transformation, the degree of change,
and the jeopardy of connecting roots with branches is increased now.
Second, to the extent Confucianism flourishes in new forms in the West,
there will be people identifying with it, living according to its primary texts
and programs, and speaking for it, who are not serious scholars. Only a few
Confucians in East Asia are serious scholarsordinary Confucians there imbibe
the philosophy with their culture. But in the West until very recently, the few
and only people who had any connection with Confucianism at all were the
diaspora East Asians and the serious scholars. Like any religious philosophy,
Confucianism looks far better when represented only by its learned leaders.
But from now on, Confucianism will be represented sometimes by people
such as myself who have no pretense at Sinological scholarship and who
read the texts in translation. The price of vigorous success is popularization,
in this case by some who are Westerners.
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Third, success in the West will make multiple religious identity a forced
option for Confucians. The nature of religious affiliation is a complex problem
that has not been addressed yet. Nor has the question been discussed whether
Confucianism is a religion, although it surely is with respect to defining a
way of life and shaping ultimate concern.29 In East Asia at various times,
Confucianism has been affiliated with Buddhism, Daoism, Shintoism, and
Shamanism according to diverse models, with some equivocation regarding
the meaning of affiliation.30 In the West, the question will arise whether
Confucianism is compatible with Christianity, Judaism, and perhaps eventually
Islam. Regarding the first encounter of Confucianism with Christianity, the
Rites controversy ended in a negative answer to that question.31 In the
present situation, I believe the answer is different.
Fourth and finally, the importance of the virtues of public life for Boston
Confucians is made more evident by the emphasis on the recovery of ritual
propriety. The Confucian way, especially for South-of-the-Charles Boston
Confucians, is to attend to the perfection of all those meaningful social and
significatory forms that shape personal and social habits. For it is through
these habits and through the signs that shape them that all human relations
are mediated, even relations to oneself. What is public office but the care of
social structures? What is a scholar-official but a holder of public office who
sees that the principal instrument of administration or care is education? By
no means is all exercise of public office merely a process of education. But
education is perhaps the most effective way of exercising office because it
consists in helping people take on signs guiding their habits that they lacked
previously or practiced badly. Human beings are hardwired to be responsive
to changes in signs. All other exercise of public office involves force, which
is inefficient and counterproductive to free human life.
I worry sometimes that Confucianism seems to be inordinately
attractive to deans. Deans, of course, attempt to administer by a combination
of broadcasts of vision and rewards for good practice; they have little other
power. Is Confucianism merely the view that the world is a somewhat loosely
run school? I think not, at least in its Boston branch. War is an evil shaped
by the ritual signs of enmity, greed, and bitter memory. Poverty is shaped by
the ritual signs that define ownership and exchange. Psychological and sexual
abuse are behaviors shaped by signs feeding needs and passions. Hopelessness,
despair, acting out, neighborhood violence, and self-destructiveness turned
into a subculture are all functions of the signs shaping the realities of our
culture. The signs, the ritual behaviors, are not about something other than
themselves in context: they in their exercise are the very realities of human
life. The Confucians have indeed identified the hard realities of life, and offer
a way to reform them so that self and society are united in goodness.
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Notes
Parts of this essay appear in my (2000), Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition
in the Late-modern World, (Albany: State University of New York Press).
1. See Tu Weiming (1991), The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being
Chinese Today in Daedalus. The original topic for that issue was the Chinese Diaspora.
But it was changed to reflect the distinction between the center and the periphery,
and the changing relations between those two. In either image, the diaspora or the
center-periphery, the assumption is that Confucianism has something to do with
being Chinese. The present essay disputes that.
2. A distinction needs to be drawn at this point between scholars and
philosophers. A scholar, in the Western sense of that term, aims to understand a
philosophy historically in terms of the intimate meanings of its basic texts and the
full social reality of the contexts of its development. A scholar need not ask whether
a particular philosophy is true, or whether it has application for the present time.
Indeed, a good scholar in philosophy needs to be sensitive to and knowledgeable
about conflicting philosophies in order to understand their dialectical tensions.
A philosopher is concerned with the truth and pertinence of philosophical ideas.
Philosophy has a creative element of extending any inherited philosophy into new
contexts, and interpreting new contexts in terms of ideas newly pertinent. Of course,
philosophers depend on scholars for their understanding of historical philosophies,
and some philosophers can also be authentic scholars. Some scholars go beyond
historical understanding to authentic philosophy. But whereas true scholarship requires
knowledge of the original languages of the texts and intimate acquaintance with their
social contexts, philosophers can work from translations and from histories written
by others. Indeed, often the critical meaning of philosophies becomes clear only in
the endeavor to translate them to some other language and culture.
3. To be sure, the response is far more ancient. Both the early Buddhists
and the Nestorian Christians represented important elements of Western thought to
which Confucians had to respond. Christian missions to China in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries also brought Confucians in touch with European renaissance
thought. But it was in the nineteenth century that science and other aspects of Western
modernity came to be taken with great seriousness, as in the work of Kang Yuwei,
for instance.
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A Feminist Appropriation
of Confucianism
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with here, for the sake of brevity. In this chapter, we will limit ourselves to a
discussion of the intersection between Confucianism and feminism.
To begin with, feminists, sinologists, and the like often suppose,
as Margery Wolf did in her critique of Tu Wei-mings reappropriation of
neo-Confucianism, that Confucian personhood coincides with the male self,
and Confucianism as a whole is fundamentally incompatible with feminism.3
But, one might argue that to suppose the incompatibility between Confucianism
and feminism is to impose a racial hierarchy under the guise of feminism,
not to mention the logical fallacy inherent in the wholesale feminist rejection
of Confucianism based on some sexist remarks found in that tradition.
For in either case, the West (whether canonical or contemporary theory) is
construed as the sole supplier of ethical theories and the rest of the world is
seen as a puzzling moral problem waiting to be solved. In other words, since
the indigenous intellectual tradition is seen as inherently sexist and hence
fundamentally incompatible with feminist consciousness, womens liberation
consequently will have to be justified based on morally superior Western
theories. In order to reject such a neocolonial assumption, we will have to
reject the wholesale misappropriation of Confucianism found in feminist
discourse. More importantly, we will have to go beyond feminists negative
assessment of Confucianism by exploring the possibility of constructing a
feminist theory from within the Confucian framework.
However, this is not to say that Confucianism cannot benefit from
feminists critiques, especially the criticism of gender-based divisions of labor
in terms of nei and wai (which will be addressed in detail later). But to
admit that there are elements in Confucianism that need rectification is not
the same as admitting that Confucianism as a whole is essentially sexist and
antifeminist. Likewise, one would not say that Aristotelian virtue ethics, Kantian
deontology, or Nietzschean existentialism is essentially sexist and antifeminist
because some elements of each need rectification. On the contrary, in the West
there is a growing effort made by contemporary scholars to reappropriate the
thought of those sexist philosophers through the lenses of feminism in order
to expand the feminist epistemological horizon.4 Our feminist exploration
of Confucianism here can thus be seen as belonging to the same feminist
movement of reappropriating the canons for the sake of women.
In the following, we will concentrate on key Confucian ethical concepts,
in particular the relational personhood of ren , the virtue of filial piety or
xiao as the beginning of humanity, and the complementary correlation of
yin-yang and nei-wai. Our assumption here is that a hybrid feminist theory of
Confucianism or Confucian feminism is possible. Not only is Confucianism able
to meet the challenges of feminism and to address feminist concerns regarding
womens oppression without going beyond its theoretical framework, more
importantly it is able to expand the epistemological horizons of feminism. In
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other words, despite its emphasis on reciprocal inequalities of social roles and
its emphasis on the familial virtues of filiality and continuity, Confucianism
is presumed to be able to inform feminism with an alternative theoretical
ground for womens liberation. A fully articulated Confucian feminism will be
reserved as a future project in order to do justice to the diverse landscape of
contemporary feminist theories. For now, to provide an outline for this future
project shall be sufficient to demonstrate the possibility of the convergence
between feminism and Confucianism, or that a possible feminist space can
be found within the Confucian tradition.
As an analytic category, gender has troubled feminists greatly, especially
since the existentialists deconstruction of traditional accounts of the essence
or nature of a woman. The category of woman no longer signifies a set
of inborn biological facts that supposedly give support to a naturalized
gender division of labor, nor does it signify a set of distinctive feminine
psychological and/or behavioral traits that somehow compel us to perform
certain gender roles. In the existentialists deconstruction, woman signifies a
total social construct, a pure phenomenon sustained by ones participation in
the process of genderizationthat is, a process of acquiring and embodying
a set of socially recognizable gender norms. As de Beauvoir boldly declares,
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.5 There is no woman as a
natural being out there, but rather each woman as a socially and culturally
recognizable woman is made in accordance with each cultural conception
of what constitutes a proper woman. This existential deconstruction, in
part, frees women from the traditional biological determinism, where
women are taken to be natural beings with a set of natural roles, duties,
and capacities rooted in their obvious biological differences from men. The
existential emphasis on the authentic self defined by its freely chosen projects,
instead of by its predetermined essence and social function, opens up a new
possibility for women to be free from the patriarchal tradition that defines
them. Existential feminism offers a new ethical as well as epistemological
ground for womens liberation.
Such a deconstruction however also poses a difficulty for feminists.
Namely, how can feminists continue to use the category of woman as a
collective term to talk about gender oppression across cultural, racial, and
class boundaries, since there is no woman as such beyond a specific social
construct? In the existentialists world, the phenomenon of being a woman is
coextensive with ones participation in the process of genderization sanctioned
by a specific society as a whole, and nothing more. Hence, in principle, one
can only speak of American women, Chinese women, Latino women, etc., but
not woman as a being that transcends all cultural, racial, or class specificity.
There is not, as it were, a Platonic original idea of woman to function as
the essence underlying each peculiar, cultural conception of woman, and in
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and marginalizing the third world women ironically through their very
inclusion in Western feminist discourse.
In Western feminist scholarship, a fair amount of work has been devoted
to the analysis of the issues of race and class. But the element of culture in
cross-cultural gender studies is relatively neglected, and this is in part due
to the neocolonial assumption that women in other parts of the world are
merely passive victims of their uniformly sexist traditions, which should be
discarded without reservation. But without a genuine understanding of culture,
feminists also erase the very subject matter and the agency of the subject that
they intend to understand. The same pattern of marginalization found between
white men and white women is thereby perpetuated in the transnational
feminist discourse in which the agency and modernity of Western women
is contrasted with the victimization of the tradition-bound, helpless third
world women. The imposition of ones cultural framework onto the world
of the Other reflects only the limitation of ones conceptual horizon, instead
of an approximation of the reality of the Other. Thus, Western authors often
adopt the pose of a moral theorist coming to the rescue of the victimized
third world women. Through this lens, the global feminist movement can
then only be conceived of on a simple impact-response model, according
to which changes in a sexist, traditional society can only come about by
importing Western ethical theories and Western ways of life. This implicit yet
imperialistic dichotomy embedded in cross-cultural studies needless to say
must be rejected so that the affirmation of the moral agency of others, who
then can be thought of as being able to rectify themselves with their own
cultural resources, can subsequently take place.
In the case of Chinese society, Confucianism is the most important
cultural resource for self-rectification, where rectified Confucianism is also a
newly hybrid feminist ethical theory for womens liberation. By concentrating
on Confucianism, however, this project does not intend to preclude the
possibility of constructing Daoist feminist ethics, or Buddhist feminist ethics,
both of which are also important in Chinese cultural narratives. But since most
feminist critiques have focused on Confucianism and most sinologists have
agreed that Confucianism underpins the foundation of Chinese civilization,
it seems fitting that Confucianism be our point of entry into the new world
of a hybrid feminist theory in transnational feminist discourse.
In brief, the connection between Confucianism and Chinese sexism can
be seen through the convergence of three cultural imperatives: the familial
virtue of filial piety, ancestor worship, and the continuity of the family
line. They work as a theoretical, ethical ground to justify and sustain social
practices, most noticeably concubinage, the acquiring of female child brides
and servants, and female infanticide.11 To a large extent, Chinese sexism can
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By contrast, due to the nei-wai distinction, women, the limited beings, are
forever incomplete. The Confucian project of self-cultivation and the ideal
of junzi, although they are not gender specific in their moral content, are
nevertheless beyond the reach of women as gendered beings of nei. Hence,
what needs to be rectified in Confucianism is the gender-based division of
labor of nei-wai, instead of the whole Confucian framework of the achieved
personhood of ren, its emphasis on filial piety, or even the importance of
familial continuity embodied in the practice of passing on the family name
and in the practice of ancestor worshipall are part of the grand notion of
filial piety. In other words, in our hybrid Confucian feminism, the nei-wai
distinction as a gender distinction will need some modifications in order to
create a feminist space.
But first of all, let us outline the basic assumptions of our hybrid
feminist theory that is Confucian and feminist at the same time. First of all,
our Confucian feminism presupposes a relational self situated in a web of
relations that are not just external add-ons to some core self supposed to
exist prior to the external relations. Instead, the substantial self is coextensive
with the web of relations. Ones moral worth in turn is measured against ones
practical achievement in sustaining harmonious social relations beginning
with the parent-child relation, since it is in the parent-child relation that one
first finds oneself in the world. The virtue of filial piety, which emphasizes
the reciprocal care between parent and child, is our starting point of being
human. The parent is to be affectionate, and the child filial; that is to say,
the child must be ritually proper and responsive to the parents wishes.
Without locating oneself in social relations, one is without a substantial
existence, and hence one is not fully personed in the world. This starting
point is Confucian through and through, since it is entirely consistent with
the Confucian achieved personhood of ren, in which a person becomes a
person only through embodying specific social virtues which in turn can
only be actualized in specific social relations and roles, starting with familial
relations and roles.
One possible objection to this is that there is a danger in presupposing
an unequal worth among human beings. The danger, of course, lies in the
possible human rights abuse inflicted on those who fall below the socially
defined minimal qualification for being a person. That is to say, if rights
and entitlements depend on the actual contribution of a person measured
in accordance with the success of her social relations, there would be no
safety net for those who fail to achieve. The discourse on the natural rights
of man is indeed a familiar one in Western political theory in modern times.
Hobbess natural equality of man (and woman!) marks the beginning of
modern contractual theory in which all men are said to be equal and free
without qualification. This Hobbesian equality of man (and woman) however
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strangers, who are also persons-in-relations. Filial care, in principle, can also
be extended to every sentient being that is also situated in the natural relation
of parent-offspring as well, and this extension can be used to provide some
sort of protection for the world of nature from unnecessary human intrusion.
The virtue of filial piety not only asserts the fundamental relatedness of ones
being in the world, but more importantly is able to give the Kantian abstract
respect for persons a concrete content and theoretically extend it from the
human world to the world of all sentient beings.
Secondly, in the outline of a Confucian feminism, we propose the centrality of the virtue of ren as the culmination of ones achieved personhood. The
virtue of filial piety is the starting point of being human, but a person is also
a person in an ever-enlarging web of relations. While family is the focused
center, community, society, state, and the world at large are the extended
fields of the relational self.15 Or, if you will, family, community, state, and
the world at large are a series of concentric circles. The self is enlarged as
the circle of ones concerns and relations is enlarged. The circle of concerns
for ones family is not separate from or in conflict with ones concern for the
state or the world at large. As stated earlier, the private virtue of filial piety is
not a separate virtue from political good; instead, it is the building block, the
foundation upon which the actualization of extended public good depends. In
other words, Confucian ethics assumes the priority of the family, and familial
virtue as the necessary condition for the actualization of public virtue. An
unfilial son or daughter is also an untrustworthy subject; conversely, one way
to ensure the harmony and longevity of the state is to groom trustworthy subjects by grooming filial sons and daughters. Once the foundation is firm, the
embodiment of public good will be firm as well. Or, to put it in contemporary
political rhetoric, strong family values mitigate social discord.
The virtue of ren begins with the virtue of filial piety, which is also the
beginning of being human. It is not surprising that not just etymologically, or
paronomastically, but also philosophically, the virtue of ren and the concept
of person are one and the same in Confucian ethics. Beyond being filial and
deferential at home, a person of ren is also a person of yi , of li , of
zhi , of shu , and of xin . This is so because to be ren is also to be a
person who embodies specific social excellences appropriate to specific social
relations. And since there is no metaphysical ground upon which a person is
a person without qualification, the scope of ones social relations is also the
scope of ones substantial self. The self must, as it were, extend outward to
actualize itself, and at the minimal level, the self must constantly sustain the
existing familial relations through which the self first comes into existence.
In the course of ones lifetime, as the web of relations is extended from the
family to the world at large, so is the range of different social virtues that are
required in order to continue to sustain those relations. The virtue of ren,
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the political relation, the bond between a husband and a wife (or in the
modern sense of partnership) is ideally assumed to last for a lifetime and
the life after. The gender-based hierarchy in the spousal relation will lose its
justification if women are allowed full access to cultural resources like their
male counterparts. In the modern age, an alternative analogy for the spousal
relation would be friendship, which is one of the Confucian five relations.
Although it is true that the basic scheme for all human relations in the
Confucian world is hierarchical in nature including friendship, the assumed
hierarchy in friendship is not gender-based.
The hierarchy in friendship is mostly based on moral authority. The
association among friends is strictly voluntary, and the duration of that
association depends on an assumed common goal. Such a free association
in which people are bound together for a self-defined common goal best
approximates lifelong partnership in the modern age. This rectification of the
relation between husband and wife and the gender-based division of labor is
made within the Confucian framework without resorting to any metaphysical
basis for absolute equality. In other words, the problem of gender disparity
derived from the gender-based division of labor in terms of the nei and the
wai distinction and the hierarchical spousal relation can be addressed by using
resources available within the Confucian tradition. With this rectification,
the theoretical justification for womens liberation is no longer limited to
the liberal argument of individual rights accompanied by an implicit theist
assumption of an absolute equality for all. Our Confucian feminism affirms
the Confucian tradition while taking into account feminist concerns for gender
parity. The result of creating the hybrid identity of Confucian feminism is a
qualified inequality among the unequals based on moral authority instead of
gender per se. Once the gender-based hierarchy and division of labor is taken
away from the spousal relation, what is left is a more flexible rearrangement
of the division of labor within ones household in which a woman can be
in charge of all or part of the wai and a man all or part of the nei, or vice
versa, depending on the common goal set in that particular relationship by
its participants.
Once the gender-based division of labor is eradicated, women will no
longer be confined to the limited realm of nei, and hence would also be able to
achieve the highest cultural ideal of junzi, who are not only ritually proper at
home but also are fully cultured, leading the masses by their virtuous examples.
But eradicating the gender-based boundary of the nei and the wai would
directly challenge the normative gender identity and consequently the sense
of civility in the Chinese world. The difficulty here is not so much whether
such a change should be made; rather, the question is whether such a change
can be justified by the Confucian tradition itself, or whether any change in
gender relations can only be made possible by importing Western ethical
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Notes
A similar version of this chapter was first published in my (2006), Confucianism
and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York
Press).
1. Virginia Held (2006), 2122.
2. For more discussion on this, see Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee (2006), chapter 3.
Also see Lisa Raphals (1998), chapters 6 through 7. Also, Allison Black (1989).
3. Margery Wolf (1994).
4. Contemporary scholars interest in reappropriating those philosophers is attested
to by a series of publications of feminist interpretations of canonical philosophers such
as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, etc. Despite Aristotles and Kants definitive sexist
statements made in their writings, there is no shortage of Aristotelian and Kantian
scholars such as Michael Slote and Martha Nussbaum defending the compatibility of
Aristotelian and Kantian ethics with the feminist concerns of gender equality. In some
cases, scholars such as Martha Nussbaum even defend the superiority of those canonical
ethics compared with the distinctive feminist ethics of care advocated by Nel Noddings,
Eva Kittay, and Virginia Held, for instance. For detail, see Held (2006). Also see Nussbaum
(1999), where she prioritizes the principle of equality over human relatedness.
5. Simone de Beauvoir (1989), 267.
6. For more detail, see Rosenlee (2006), chapters 4 through 5.
7. On the Chinese concept of woman, see Tani E. Barlow (2004), chapter 2.
8. See Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan (1994) and Chandra T. Mohanty
(1991).
9. Wolf (1985), 112.
10. Grewal and Kaplan (1994), 144.
11. See Rosenlee (2006), chapter 6.
12. For footbinding see Rosenlee (2006), chapter 6; also see Dorothy Ko
(2005), (2001), (1997); Beverley Jackson (1997); Fred Blake (1994); and Howard Levy
(1966).
13. For the namelessness of Chinese women, see Rubie S. Watson (1986).
14. See for instance, James E. Tiles (2000). Despite his critique of the abstract
nature of Kantian ethics, Tiles took Kants respect for person as one of his three
proposed measures of morality. The problem with Kantian ethics is not just limited
to Kants penchant for abstract personhood; in particular Kantian ethics imports a
great deal of moral theology by making God the regulative ideal for morality. For
more critique of Kantian ethics, see Rosenlee (2003).
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15. For the relational Confucian personhood, see Roger T. Ames and David
L Hall (1987).
16. These were schools focused on yingyang and Daoist studies, respectively.
17. Tu Weiming (1985).
10
Confucian Trajectories
on Environmental Understanding
Michael C. Kalton
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How to Live
While human beings may belong to the natural universe, we inhabit a niche
of such unique subjectivity and flexibility that the question of guidance for a
proper ethos, a fitting way of life, emerges as a central component of virtually
every society. Creatures that live by instinct, or by a narrower range of appetite
and a weaker ability to modify their environment in predictable ways, must
function on a more automatic level of responsiveness. The community of life
evolves in concert with the more or less predictable activities of its members and
weaves them into a web of interdependent relationships. But humans evolved
a twofold prowess that set them apart. We evolved a communicative prowess
that leads to a form of knowledge that accumulates and grows exponentially
over generations. And we matched this with the manipulative abilities of
opposable thumbs, a combination that has yielded the technological prowess
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Michael C. Kalton
that in the short term means we can no longer be contained within the system
of mutual constraints that demands and rigorously selects members of the
community in terms of their fit. Instead of the sharing the common imperative
of adaptive fit, we pride ourselves on adapting the world to our desires. In
the long run, of course, there is no escaping such systemic constraint, since
we, too, are dependent on the intricate web of life. But in the short run, we
seem relatively free: show us a constraint, and it will be regarded as a problem
to be overcome. Consequently, humans have to invent rules and guidelines,
coming up with an ethos, a somewhat arbitrary but shared way of life. We
alone of the worlds species have needed to create ethics in order to flourish
in our lives together. And as the environmental crisis has now made clear,
we need a more inclusive ethic as well, an environmental ethic, in order to
flourish along with other species in the community of life as a whole.
Many societies have looked to a divine lawgiver as the source of moral
norms. The obligation to obey such norms has been separated from other
sorts of humanly legislated codes as a distinctive area of life called morality.
Confucians have taken a different tack, using a conceptual structure that
emerges from the dynamics of the natural world. In fact, environmental
ethics, or environmentalism, brings to the contemporary world the closest
approximation of the sense of natural guidance that has been central to East
Asian traditions for millennia. In this worldview, the universe to which we
belong emerges and self-differentiates not by divine fiat, but in accord with
its own inner pattern (dao ) in a self-so or spontaneous way (ziran
).14 An oak tree bears acorns, and acorns grow into oak trees in a self-so
way in accord with the natural pattern (dao) already within them.
And just as there is a fitting dao for an oak tree, so too is there a dao
for all creatures, including humans. Every creature is endowed with its own
interior nature that guides and informs its behavior accordingly. All of these dao
or natures enjoy a mutual fit, for they are all diverse emergent manifestations
from a single source. This is evident in the shared East Asian concept of a
single dao running through all things. Song Confucians, who often substituted
the term li for dao, made a cornerstone of their metaphysics and cosmology
of the proposition, Li is one, but manifested diversely.15
The East Asian concept of dao, or its close counterpart li, are intuitions
grounded in the interdependent fit so evident in the workings of the complex
natural world around us. If everything works harmoniously in terms of
everything else, there must be some inner unifying pattern running through
it allan organic wholeness most easily grasped in the paradigmatic unity of
a single living body. By a self-so dynamic, members function to bring about
the well-being of the complex whole to which they belong.
Against the background of this shared understanding of the universe as
a single, living system, Confucian thought took up the question of the complex
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world of human life, where humans seem too easily to get out of touch with
the guidance that naturally informs every life and every situation. The ideal of
self-cultivation was thus framed in terms of the spontaneous appropriateness of
response, which characterizes the natural world. The ideal figure, the sage, is in
such perfect touch with the guidance inherent in every situation that he responds
appropriately in an entirely spontaneous, self-so manner. The situation of every
person is no different from that of the sage, except that we must struggle with
the blockage that somehow obscures guidance and distorts responsiveness.
The remarks concerning the need for ethics with which we opened
this section point to a caveat regarding this way of stating the ideal:
because of our language-based cumulative learning and the power of our
manipulative techniques, we no longer enjoy the self-so fitness that emerges
from the coevolutionary dynamics of the life community. The reality of an
all-encompassing and deeply pragmatic normative guidance is real enough in
the long run, and we must indeed find and practice a way of life that works,
that is, fits. The contemporary term for this is sustainability; Confucians
called it the mandate. But the thoughtless perfection of the bird that eats
when hungry and drinks when thirsty is far too simple a model to encompass
the complexity that goes with human society. We must cultivate a sensitivity
and responsiveness to appropriate guidance in a mode proportioned to the
scope of our powerswhich are likewise the scope of our problem.
Confucians responded to this by a continual emphasis on the importance
of self-cultivation and careful attention to its various modes. Of course the
mode of cultivation must fit the nature of the problem or hindrance involved,
so the pivot of this entire endeavor becomes the manner in which one grasps
the nature of the problems we humans confront.
The Problem
Virtually all religious traditions, and their secular counterparts as well, agree
that humans confront major problems. However, each religious tradition
develops its distinctive character in the enunciation of the nature of these
problems. Buddhists profoundly analyze the root dynamics of suffering,
Christians wrestle with sin and forgiveness, Muslims with submission.
Confucians, taking as their paradigm the spontaneously life-giving dynamics of
the world of nature, question deeply what it is that deflects human responses
from the life-giving mark. They assume no fundamental and fatal flaw: humans,
like other creatures, exhibit varying degrees of excellence and limitation, but
Heaven and Earth do not produce fundamentally flawed forms of life. If
something distorts our fitting response to our situation, it must be sought in
tensions inherent in the dynamics of the system itself.
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How then can one describe this problem? What separates or cuts us
off from a naturally endowed life-giving responsiveness? Mencius spoke only
of the impact of negative social experiences, but Song Confucians sought a
deeper explanation. Zhu Xi reflected a new direction by paying attention to
the dynamic life of the flow of feelings in our heart-mind. He said: Therefore
those who can bear seeing others suffer and are without commiseration are
just blocked up by selfishness and have not yet recognized the li of their
mind that runs through the self, Heaven and Earth, and all creatures. Thus
the essence of seeking humanity is simply a matter of not losing ones original
heart-mind [benxin ].16
So something in our heart-mind includes concern for Heaven and
Earth, and all creatures, and something obstructs that concern and blocks
it up. Selfishness locks our concern into our small individuality, so it cannot
flow into the great whole to which we belong. As Song dynasty Confucian
thinkers pondered this tension between individuality and belonging to a
larger whole, they elaborated an understanding that naturally expressed itself
in terms of paired contrasting concepts. One side of the pair reflected mainly
the ideal of holistic unity and the single flow of life. These were concepts such
as the supreme ultimate (taiji ), principle (li), original nature (benxing),
and dao-mind (daoxin ). The other side of the pair reflected mainly our
physicality, and hence the individual separateness that could easily lead us
astray into selfishness. These were concepts such as material force (qi ),
material nature (qizhixing ), and human mind (renxin ).
The Mencian story that highlights the life-giving force flowing through
all things is naturally holistic, encompassing all creatures in a pervasive
systemic unity. But even if society and the whole natural world form one
great interdependent system, the system is made up of physically distinct
individual units. Ideally, the individual would harmonize naturally with
the whole. But with individual distinctness, there is always the possibility
of the individual putting his or her own interests first. Due to their central
concern for self-cultivation, Song Confucian thinkers developed Menciuss
story into a philosophy that saw systematic reality in terms of the tension
between holism and individual existence. They often explained that Mencius,
in his situation, had need to concentrate mainly on the holistic side of things,
the good feelings of the original nature that are in unified flow with the
heart-mind of Heaven and Earth. But for self-cultivation to have the desired
effect, it was also necessary to pay careful attention to the potential problems
of individuality as well.
Song Confucian concern with regard to the tension between holism
and individuality is reflected in their discussions and attitudes regarding
human feelings. The emergence of feelings in response to situations is the
concrete, real manifestation of the deepest dispositions of our nature. Just as
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our nature reflects both our connectedness with all things (our benxing) and
our individuality (our qizhixing), we can see the same aspects in our actual
feelings. The famous Four Beginnings discussed by Mencius and paired with
the life-giving process of the four seasons by Confucians of the Han dynasty,
were clearly holistic in scope and function, as we have seen in our discussion of
humanity (ren). But the classic Book of Rites presented another list of feelings,
the so-called Seven Feelings (qiqing ): desire, hate, love, fear, grief, anger,
and joy.17 Clearly, these could overlap with the feelings discussed by Mencius.
But while Menciuss formulation clearly regarded the holistic sidethat is, the
side of the feelings that integrates us with othersthe seven feelings could
also easily operate in a self-centered way. Thus, to the contrastive pairs of
principle force and material force, dao mind and human mind, and original
nature and physical nature, Song dynasty Confucians added a contrastive pair
of feelings, the four beginnings and seven feelings.
The Song Confucian concern for cultivation of the heart-mind invited
further psychological definition and reflection on the tension between the
system and the individuality inherent in the nature of our existence. Mencius
laid the foundation for understanding our common shared life and the feelings
that join us appropriately with all creatures. Later, in the Song dynasty,
Confucian thinkers filled out this story with a solid account of individuality,
metaphysically and cosmologically grounded in the concept of the physical
nature. Individuality was not regarded as evil, but it was considered the
aspect of existence that easily leads to blocking up our proper connection
with other creatures; this proclivity to self-centeredness is the origin of
distorted responsiveness. Ideally, feelings should do full justice to both these
dimensions of our existence.
The Song Confucians thus developed a keen and theoretically grounded
awareness regarding the tensions inherent in the kinds of feelings that animate
the lives of our heart-minds. It is well known that Korean Confucians during
the Chosn dynasty (13921910) developed this level of the Confucian discourse with unmatched care and sophistication. Every nuance of the relative
dynamics of the four beginnings and the seven feelings was examined and
argued in the course of the famous Four-Seven Debate, which became the
hallmark discourse of Korean Confucian thought. Toegye (15011570) and
Yulgok (15361584) are the most prominent names in this controversy, but
the question is so compelling that it was taken up and argued anew by each
generation who thought seriously about the feelings that guide us.
The question explores community, individuality, and the origination
of our feelings. Toegye and Yulgok discussed it in terms of li and qi, the
philosophical concepts Song Confucians used to account for the communal
and individual sides of existence. There is only one existence, and it is both
communal and individual, both li and qi, both shared and separate. How then
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do these two aspects of our reality function in the arising of our feelings?
Are both sides always included in the same way? Are there some feelings,
such as those spoken of by Mencius, that originate in a special way in the
commonality of our existence, even though our individual heart-mind is the
vehicle of their manifestation?
The concepts of li and qi enabled a probing investigation of these
questions. With such sophisticated conceptual tools, Toegye and Yulgok
achieved one of the great discussions of the origins and scope of the life
of our heart-mind.18 Toegyes effort above all was to explicate how li, the
communal, interconnected aspect of our reality, could be a primary activating
source in the movement of our feelings. He wanted to explain how that
connection was so powerful it could mobilize forceful feelings that lead beyond
our separateness and individuality. His formula for the origination of such
feeling was: Li gives issue and qi follows it. For Toegye and Yulgok, this
was a gripping philosophical problem. In our own time, it is being put to an
empirical test: Can we transcend our individualism and anthropocentrism to
act for the well-being of the human community and for the community of
life beyond the human species, or will we wait until the threat is so imminent
that we are finally moved, perhaps too late, by our powerful feelings for
self-preservation?
The assumption that the latter is true, that self-interest is the final arbiter
of human activity, lies at the heart of much contemporary despair in the face
of the growing environmental crisis. While the Confucian analysis offers no
easy optimism, it does present a more complete and potentially useful view of
the human situation. Indeed, contemporary systems theorists are also paying
serious attention to the critical role of the evolution of symbiotic and altruistic
dynamics. No longer does survival of the fittest imply only self-centered
struggle and competition; the fitness of cooperation in an interdependent
systemic network has full recognition among contemporary systems thinkers.
Confucians, however, have also spent several thousand years dedicated to
finding ways to cultivate human character in the light of these realities.
203
parent and support to our own lives. This advance in ecological understanding
only underlines the crux of the problem and emphasizes the importance of
what Confucians have to offer regarding practical self-cultivation.
Confucians framed their approach to self-cultivation with a saying
taken from a work compiled more than 2,500 years ago, the classic Book
of Documents: The human mind is perilous, the dao mind is subtle; be
discerning, be undivided. Hold fast the mean!19 By human mind they
meant the feelings attached to maintaining our personal well-beingthe
seven feelings of the Toegye-Yulgok debate. They regarded this as perilous
because, however necessary such feelings might be, they can easily lead to
an inappropriately self-centered dynamic. The dao mind refers to feelings
that relate us appropriately to the larger community to which we belongthe
equivalent of Menciuss Four Beginnings. It is subtle in the sense that such
feelings can easily be missed or overwhelmed, drowned out in the insistent
noise of strong feelings that would have us take care of ourselves first and
foremost. The mean or centeredness to which we should hold fast is not an
average tradeoff between these two, but rather a center like a bull's-eye, right
on the mark, whatever is appropriate to any given situation.
Confucians attended carefully to the interplay of these sorts of feelings
because they were aware that feelings form the first line of our response to
any situation. Human conduct is motivated, directed in some way or other.
Feelings not only move us, they move us in some direction, that is, they
constitute the first line of guidance. In situations of conflict or confusion,
we have a second line of guidance: we can slow down and think about what
to do and why. But thought, with the task of sorting out appropriate and
inappropriate feelings and inclinations, is itself already deeply influenced
by feelings. In view of this, Confucians advocated the cultivation of a calm,
focused, self-possessed state of mind much less subject to the strong pull
of individually oriented self-centered desires. They introduced a meditative
practice, quiet sitting, as an aid to such cultivation.
Confucian focus on cultivating selected sorts of feelingsthose that
attune us in a life-giving way to the living web of interdependence to which
we belongstemmed from an acute awareness that we are endowed only
with the seeds of various sorts of feelings. That is why Mencius spoke of
the four feelings he identified as four beginnings, or the core guidance
system for acting as full human beings, the human dao. Neglect them and
they remain rudimentary inclinations lost in the welter of other pulls on
our mind-and-heart; cultivate them and they become humanity, rightness,
propriety, and wisdom.
Feelings we deliberately nurture tend to thrive and grow strong while
those neglected tend to become more muted. But since we feel and respond only
within a matrix of living relationships, it is an oversimplification to think that
204
Michael C. Kalton
cultivation of the feelings has only to do with ones personal efforts. Mencius
explained that the humans of his society showed little sign of the life-giving
feelings inherent in human nature because they got bent out of shape day
after day by dealing with life in a dissolving society. His perceptive analysis
identified two poles, the most public and the most personal sectors of social
life, as sources of the self-organizing dynamics of society. In many passages he
argued as if the good or bad example of the king and high ministers would sway
the whole community; in many others he sounded as if everything hinges on
the quality of our most immediate personal relationships in the bosom of the
family. High-profile figures clearly shape the tone and practice of society. But
so, too, does our personal character shape family life. The quality of family life
ramifies into the local community, which sends ripples into a yet wider area in
the upward dynamic we associate with the power of grassroots movements.
How, then, do such dynamics affect contemporary society? What
kinds of feelings are brought forth and ingrained by social currents in the
responsive life of our modern minds-and-hearts? How fare the dao-minded
and human-minded sides of our inclinations and feelings, and with what
environmental consequences? And finally, how can personal cultivation impact
this in a way that makes any difference?
Looking first from the perspective of dynamics originating at the most
public pole, the top-down dynamic, a striking phenomenon is the emergence
of a global consumer ethos. Propelled by the media, the United States occupies
much the same example-setting position in contemporary global consciousness
that Mencius saw the king occupying in an earlier political and social order.
Images of American affluence fill the television and movie screens of nations
around the world, showing them the good life that can be had if only they
can develop their own economies. Advertising and marketing conflate
consumption and well-being so that even people who have everything will
feel a need to acquire more, the latest model, the largest, the smallest. Obesity
now ranks with AIDS as a global pandemic that threatens to swamp health
care systems, giving us a grim symbol of how shortsighted is the consumer
vision of the good life. At the same time our other forms of consumption
undermine the health of the life community, so we find that our increasing
affluence is accompanied by a wave of extinctions. The human mind, in the
form of an insufficiently reflective, short-term focus on personal convenience
and comfort and on maximizing a single species in the community of life,
enjoys a trajectory of unprecedented self-aggrandizement.
The ancients observed that the dao mind is subtle, less evident,
seemingly more easily overwhelmed than the human mind. But the
self-transcending dao mind too is an inborn and necessary component of
our feelings, and it likewise enjoys enlarged dynamics in the contemporary
world. The same media that purvey the dream of affluence also bring images
205
206
Michael C. Kalton
207
its unintended side effects. Generations of fish are in the net before they can
reproduce. Forest habitat disappears. Rivers lose spawning beds to waters
cascading from deforested hillsides, and the waters into which they flow
become dead zones depleted of oxygen because of the unprecedented algae
blooms fed by the runoff of fertilizers intended to speed and increase plant
growth in the fields growing our food.
Because we maintain our lives only in an interdependent relational
community of life, Confucians emphasized the need to slow down in order
gain the reflective self-possession that would free the life-giving responsiveness
appropriate to conducting ourselves in this community of interdependent
lives. Our own immediately felt needs seem evident and invite quick action.
Understanding the needs and situation of others, and perceiving how our
own necessities deeply intertwine with those of others, is a wisdom born
from deeper reflection and carried out in a more thoughtful practice. While
the focus of Confucian thought was mainly on rectifying problems that
disrupt human society, we now see and experience the further need for this
personal cultivation in order for human society to fit appropriately with the
larger community of life. To thrive within a community affected by ones
actions requires familiarity, understanding, and concern. Confucians called
the frame of mind conducive to such a way of living maintaining reverence.
Such reverence, a combination of attention, caring, and respect, is exactly
the human quality upon which the well-being of the earth community now
seems to depend.
This slowing down, giving reverence time to grow and function, might
be regarded as a quality of life issue today. Increasing numbers of people,
overstimulated by the intensity of our consumer society, want to stop moving
so fast; they feel a lack of connection and want more time to care about
what there is to care about right around them: the people, the places, the
world of nature and its myriad forms of life. Beginning at a personal level,
this quest already sends ripples of reorganization through society. Simple
living is not only a magazine title but a movement. An Internet search for
the phrase yields 236 million results. Norwegians decided to reverse the time
is money syndrome and seek more time rather than annual raises. Similar
considerations have moved a number of European countries to shorten the
work week, even as vacations and holidays have expanded. This slowing down
contradicts the competitive global dynamics of ever-increasing production
and consumption, but it responds to a deep human need. When France
tried in 2006 to again lengthen its reduced work week in the name of global
competition, the country was wracked by such rampant social protest the
measure had to be rescinded.
Such quality of life issues and movements are not yet the kind of deep
cultivation Confucians meant by maintaining reverence, but they belong to the
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Michael C. Kalton
same inclination, seeking a less hurried pace to enable a more deeply aware and
responsive mode of living. In these developments we see dao mind not as just
some moral duty, but an attractive pull of our feelings, reflecting a dimension
of our responsive life without which neither we nor the community of life can
thrive. But it takes time to cultivate this side of life, time to spend with family
and friends, time to participate in the community, time to take walks in the
woods or by the river, time to reflect on ones actions and interactions, time
to grow in sensitivity to appreciation for the whole community of life. The
Confucian emphasis that we must take the time to appreciate with reverent
responsiveness this net of relationships within which we are sustained and
through which we sustain others has, if anything, gained in meaning. It has
also gained in urgency.
Conclusion
The Confucian tradition, arising amid conditions of political and social
dissolution in ancient China, made community its central concern. The
dao that Confucians investigated and pursued was seen as informing the
self-organizing (ziran) dynamic of life-giving relationships in the natural world,
including human society. When we allow self-centered dynamics to distort the
function of community, they observed, we break down the natural or original
flow of life through the community. Self-concern has its place, but it easily
becomes a distorting focus that destroys the larger web of relationships. We
well know the path leading from self-interest to competition and thence into
the dynamics of hostility, defense, and aggression.
Such, in fact, were the dynamics prominent in the social milieu of
Mencius. But he saw that a more fundamental or original condition
wholenessprecedes disintegration. The denuded mountain, he says, was not
originally barren, but full of life. Humans are not originally barren islands
of self-concern; they are full of a connective life that naturally ramifies into
a community of care. Our deepest feelings, he maintained, move us with
empathetic concern for the well-being of others.
Now that our technologically enhanced prowess enables us to modify
the world so rapidly and on such a large scale, it becomes imperative that
those interventions be informed not only by a concern for the well-being of a
single species, ourselves, but for the entire living community. We are threatened
with denuded, barren mountains of our own making; we know they were not
originally like that. And we sometimes feel almost hopeless confronted with
the globe-spanning power of a self-interest-driven, profit-maximizing economic
system. But that also is of our own making, and if we consider the evidence
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210
Michael C. Kalton
Notes
1. Translated in Michael Kalton (1988), 51.
2. Translated in Kalton (1988), 146. Zhu Xi begins here with a quote taken
from Cheng I.
3. Paraphrase of Mencius 6A8. Authors translation; chapter and passage
numbers refer to all standard editions.
4. Mencius 2A6.
5. Mencius 1B15.
6. Mencius 6A6.
7. Song Confucians explicated a metaphysical framework of Daoist proportions
and a sophisticated theory and method of cultivating the inner life of the heart-mind
that could rival the Buddhists. This revitalized neo-Confucianism predominated
throughout East Asia down to the modern era. Neo is a Western scholarly addition,
a recognition of the scope and significance of these developments. They, however,
simply regarded themselves as Confucians, faithful restorers carrying forward the
tradition of Confucius. I therefore will not discriminate, but use the term Confucian
inclusively, and designate certain historical thinkers or developments by dynasty, as
was the common Confucian practice.
8. Translated in Kalton (1988), 5152.
9. Yishu 2A, 2a. Authors translation; chapter and passage numbers refer to
all standard editions.
10. Zhuzi Yulei 95.8b9a. Authors translation; chapter and passage numbers
refer to all standard editions. Zhu Xis name, along with the two Cheng brothers, is
attached to the Cheng-Zhu school of thought, the major or orthodox Song school
of Confucian thought.
11. Book of Changes, Hexagram 24. Authors translation from the Yijing; chapter
and passage numbers refer to all standard editions.
12. Book of Changes, Appended Remarks, Part 2, Chapter 1.
13. Zhuzi Yulei 105.71a.
14. In the modern lexicon of East Asia this term is now used to translate the
Western word nature or natural.
15. The dictum originated in a discussion of Cheng Yi and Yang Shi regarding
The Western Inscription. Chengs letter is translated in Wing-tsit Chan (1963), A
Sourcebook of Chinese Philosophy, 55051.
16. Zhuzi Yulei, 95.8b9a.
17. Book of Rites, Chapter 9. Authors translation; chapter and passage numbers
refer to all standard editions.
18. For a translation of the extensive exchange of letters in which the debate
was carried on, see Kalton (1994), The Four-Seven Debate.
19. Book of Documents, Part 2, 2.15. Authors translation; chapter and passage
numbers refer to all standard editions.
20. This process is presented in the first chapter of the Great Learning, and from
the Song dynasty onward became a centerpiece of Confucian thought.
21. Doctrine of the Mean, Chapter 22. Authors translation; chapter and passage
numbers refer to all standard editions.
Appendix I
List of Names
The following is a list of names that appear in this book, including for the
readers reference the native characters. Names printed in bold also appear
in the glossary.
Chinese Names
Carsun Chang or Zhang Junmai (18861969)
Chen Liang (11431194)
Cheng Hao (10321085)
Cheng Yi (10331107)
Confucius or Kongzi (551479 BCE)
Dai Zhen (17231777)
Dong Zongshu (c. 179104 BCE)
Fan Zongyan (9891052)
Gao Yihan (18841968)
Gaozi (c. 420350 BCE)
Han Yu (768824)
Huang Zongxi (16101695)
Laozi (c. sixth century BCE)
Li Ao (fl. 798)
Liu Shu-hsien (b. 1938)
Liu Zongyuan (733819)
Lu Xiangshan (11391193)
Lu Xun (18811936)
Mou Zongsan (19091995)
Mozi (473390 BCE)
Mencius or Mengzi (371289 BCE)
Ouyang Xiu (10071072)
Ruanyuan (17641849)
211
212
Appendix I
Japanese Names
Arai Hakuseki (16571725)
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (16531725)
Fujiwara Seika (15611619)
Fujiwara Teika (11621241)
Hayashi Razan (15831657)
Hirata Atsutane (17761843)
Hishikawa Moronobu (d.1694)
Hoshina Masayuki (16111672)
Ihara Saikaku (16421693)
It Jinsai (16271705)
It Tgai (16701738)
Kada no Azumamaro (16691736)
Kaibara Ekken (also Ekiken, 16301714)
Kamo no Mabuchi (16971769)
Kumazawa Banzan (16191691)
Maruyama Masao (19141996)
Matsudaira Sadanobu (17581829)
Motoda Eifu (Nagazane) (18181891)
Motoori Norinaga (17301801)
Nakae Tju (16081648).
Appendix I
Ogy Sorai (16661728)
jin (c. fifth century)
Tokugawa Ienobu (16661712)
Tokugawa Ietsugu (17091716)
Tokugawa Ieyasu (15421616)
Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (16461709)
Tokugawa Yoshimune (16841751)
Wani (c. fifth century) K. Wang In*
Yamaga Sok (16221685)
Yamazaki Ansai (16191682)
Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu (16581714)
Korean Names
An Hyang (12431306)
Chang Hyn-kwang (15541637)
Choe Chiwon (b. 875)
Choe Han-ki (18031877)
Choe Ikhyn (18331906)
Cho Hanbo (c. fifteenth century)
Chng Che-tu (16491736)
Chng Chiun (15091561)
Chng Mong-chu (13371392)
Chng Tojn (13371398)
Chng Yagyong (17621836)
Chumong (5819 BCE)
Han Wonjin (16821751)
H Mok (15951682)
Hong Taeyong (17311783)
Kang Hang (15671618)
Kim Chong-hi (17861856)
Kim Pusik (10751151)
Kobong (15271572)
Koi (234286)
Kongmin (13301374)
Knchogo (r. 346375)
Lee Chae-hyn (12871367)
Lee Chin-sang (18181885)
Lee Hangro (17921868)
Lee Hynil (16271704)
Lee Kan (16771727)
213
214
Appendix I
Appendix II
Historical Periods of
China, Japan, and Korea
Below is a list of the historical periods of China, Japan, and Korea. Relevant
periods are annotated with information regarding Confucianisms history.
Names and terms printed in bold also appear in the glossary.
China
Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors (c. 2070BCE)
Xia (22001751 BCE)
Shang (17511045 BCE)
Zhou (1045249 BCE)
Western Zhou (1045771 BCE)
Eastern Zhou (770256 BCE)
Spring and Autumn Period (722481 BCE)
Warring States Period (480221 BCE). The lifetimes of the famous
Warring States philosophers, Confucius (551479), Mencius (371289),
and Xunzi (c. 310 BCE).
Qin (221206 BCE)
Han (206 BCE220 CE). Beginning in the Han, Confucianism becomes
entrenched as offical state ideology and remains a political force until
the founding of the republic in 1911.
Western Han (206 BCE9 CE)
Xin (923)
Eastern Han (25220)
Three Kingdoms (220280). This initiates the Wei-Qin period (220420),
which sees the rise of neo-Daoism (xuanxue) and the arrival of Buddhism,
both of which influence Confucian thinking.
Western Jin (226316)
215
216
Appendix II
Japan
Jomon (dating back to c. 10,000 BCE)
Yayoi (c. 900 BCE250 CE)
Yamato (250710). In the fifth century, the Korean scholar Wang In is
said to have introduced Confucianism into Japan.
Nara (710794)
Heian (7941185)
Kamakura (11851333)
Kemmu Restoration (13331336)
Muromachi (13361573). From the mid-fifteenth to mid-sixteenth
centuries, Confucianism becomes a topic of study at the Ashikaga
Gakk.
Azuchi-Momoyama (15731603). Following the Japanese invasion
of Korea in the 1590s, Japan receives an influx of Korean and Chinese
neo-Confucian texts, which are distributed among Zen temples for study.
Zen priest Fujiwara Seika (15611619) becomes the first prominent
convert to Confucianism.
Edo (16001827). The Tokugawa government begins its long association
with Confucian advisors. Starting in the Edo period, Confucianism
Appendix II
217
Korea
Kojosn (2333 BCE57 CE)
Three Kingdoms (57 BCE668 CE)
Kogury (37 BCE668 CE). The National Confucian
Academy is founded in 372 in Kogury.
Paekche (18 BCE CE). During the reign of King
Knchogo (346375), the Paekche scholar Wang In introduces
the Confucian classics to Japan.
Silla (57 BCE CE)
United Silla (668935). Lifetime of noted Confucian
philosopher Choe Chiwon (b. 875).
Kory (9181392). In this, Koreas medieval period, Kim
Pusik (10751151) writes a Confucian history of the Three
Kingdoms period.
Chosn (13921910). In this active period of Koreas
intellectual history, great debates such as the Four-Seven Debate
and the Ho-Rak Debate occupy Confucian scholarship.
Glossary
Analects. See Lunyu.
Ashikaga Gakk (Japanese). The oldest institute of higher learning
in Japan, it promoted Confucian studies, especially from the mid-fifteenth
to mid-sixteenth centuries.
bakufu (Japanese). Government, often refers to the shogunate. See
shogun.
Book of Changes. See Yijing.
Book of Documents. Also Book of History or Classic of History. See
Shujing.
Book of Mencius. See Mengzi.
Book of Rites. Also Classic of Rites. See Liji.
Book of Songs. Also Classic of Poetry. See Shijing.
Book of Xunzi. See Xunzi.
cheng (Chinese). Commonly translated as integrity or sincerity; a concept
closely associated with the classic text Zhongyong.
Confucius and Confucianism. See Kongzi.
daimyo (Japanese). Heads of powerful regional families in feudal
Japan.
dao (Chinese). One of the most fundamental and most disputed terms
in Chinese thought, often translated as way. It has been interpreted to
mean, among other things, a metaphysical entity, a cosmological or social
order, or an ethical code.
Daoism or daojia (Chinese). A major indigenuous philosophy of China,
along with Confucianism, Moism, and Legalism. Central texts include the
Daodejing and Zhuangzi . The legendary founder Laozi
is said to have been a contemporary of Confucius.
daotong (Chinese). A term meaning transmission of the dao coined
by neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi to express the continuity between the
classical Confucianism of the Warring States period and the Confucian
revival of the Northern Song dynasty.
219
220
Glossary
Glossary
221
222
Glossary
Glossary
223
224
Glossary
Glossary
225
226
Glossary
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233
Contributors
Roger T. Ames is Professor of Philosophy and editor of Philosophy East and
West. His recent publications include translations of Chinese classics: Sun-tzu:
The Art of Warfare (1993); Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (1996) and Tracing
Dao to its Source (1997) (both with D. C. Lau); the Confucian Analects (1998)
and the Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing
(forthcoming) (both with H. Rosemont); Focusing the Familiar: A Translation
and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong, and A Philosophical
Translation of the Daodejing: Making This Life Significant (with D. L. Hall)
(2001). He has also authored many interpretative studies of Chinese philosophy
and culture: Thinking Through Confucius (1987), Anticipating China: Thinking
Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (1995), and Thinking
From the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture
(1997) (all with D. L. Hall). Recently, he has undertaken several projects that
entail the intersection of contemporary issues and cultural understanding.
His Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy
in China (with D. L. Hall) (1999) is a product of this effort. Almost all
of his publications are now available in Chinese translation, including his
philosophical translations of Chinese canonical texts. He has most recently been
engaged in compiling the new Blackwell Sourcebook of Chinese Philosophy, and
in writing articles promoting a conversation between American pragmatism
and Confucianism.
John Berthrong, educated in Sinology at the University of Chicago, has been
the Associate Dean for Academic and Administrative Affairs and Associate
Professor of Comparative Theology at the Boston University School of
Theology since 1989. Active in interfaith dialogue projects and programs,
his teaching and research interests are in the areas of interreligious dialogue,
Chinese religions and philosophy, and comparative philosophy and theology.
His published and forthcoming books are All under Heaven: Transforming
Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue (1994, with a Chinese translation
from Renmin Chupanshe 2006), The Transformations of the Confucian Way
235
236
List of Contributors
List of Contributors
237
238
List of Contributors
Studies (vol. 34, no. 1) on the theme of Christians in Japan, which he co-guest
edited with Mark R. Mullins.
Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Hawaii, West Oahu. She is the author of Confucianism and WomenA Philosophical Interpretation (2006) in addition to numerous articles
published in various journals such as Philosophy East and West, International
Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of Chinese Religion, Asian Philosophy, and
China Review International. Her latest project is on the comparative study of
maternal thinking, care ethics, and Confucianism, which will appear in the
anthology Liberating Traditions: Essays in Feminist Comparative Philosophy.
Sor-hoon Tan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the National University
of Singapore. She has published in international journals and contributed to
edited works on Chinese philosophy, pragmatism, and comparative philosophy.
She is author of Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction, editor of
Challenging Citizenship: Group Membership and Cultural Identity in a Global
Age (2005), and co-editor of The Moral Circle and the Self: Chinese and Western
Approaches (2003), Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History (2004), and
Democracy as Culture: Deweyan Pragmatism in a Globalizing World (2008).
Index
Ames, Roger, and David Hall, 15, 82,
99, 101n12, 105, 118, 188; and Henry
Rosemont, 107
An Hyang, 37, 213
Analects, 2, 6n1, 34, 53, 55, 59, 79, 97,
106, 116, 150, 219, 222, 224, 226; and
desire, 115; and family relations, 78,
82, 108; and government, 113, 115,
147; and harmony, 74; and li (ritual),
108, 110, 111, 159; and qi cosmology,
71; and ren, 107, 108, 117; and the
self, 88, 109
Arai Hakuseki, 60, 65, 212
Ashikaga: the school or gakk, 54, 216,
219; government, 54
Berthrong, John, 3, 83, 101n12, 145,
148, 173n31, 209
Book of Changes. See Yijing
Book of Documents (Shujing), 47, 203,
210, 223, 224
Book of Rites (Liji), 80, 117, 172, 201,
210, 220, 222224
Book of Songs (Shijing), 117, 219, 223,
224
Buddhism, 1013, 28, 29, 3540, 5357,
64, 147, 150, 160, 169, 170, 175, 179,
187, 191, 195, 199, 215217, 220
Carsun Chang, 105, 211
Chan, Wing-tsit, 107, 108, 158, 172n5
Chang Hyn-kwang, 44, 213
Chen Liang, 23, 26, 211
239
240
Index
Index
Huang Zongxi, 12, 211
hungu, 38, 44, 221
Ihara Saikaku, 59, 212
Islam, 14, 104, 147, 170, 199
It Jinsai, 58, 212, 63
Judaism, 14, 167, 168, 170; JudeoChristian tradition, 87, 89, 99
junzi, 4, 68, 70, 108, 111, 180, 181, 186,
221
Kada no Azumamaro, 59, 212
Kaibara Ekken, 57, 66, 212
Kamo no Mabuchi, 62, 212
Kang Hang, 55, 213
Kant, Immanuel, 87, 153, 160, 169,
172n14, 176, 182, 183, 187, 189n4,
189n14
keguan, 82, 221, 226
Keightley, David, 4, 68, 69
keji, 108, 109, 221
Kim Chng-hi, 48, 213
Kim Pusik, 36, 213, 217
Kobong, 4042, 213, 220, 221, 224
kogaku, 58, 221, 223
Kogury kingdom, 35, 36, 217
Koi, 35, 213
Kojosn, 35, 217
kokugakusha, 62, 221
Kongmin, 35, 213
Kory period, 34, 36, 37, 140, 217
Kumazawa Banzan, 56, 66, 212
Knchogo, 36, 213, 217
Laozi, 38, 39, 146, 211, 219. See also
Daoism
Lau, D. C., 107, 108
Lee Chae-hyn, 37, 213
Lee Chin-sang, 44, 213
Lee Hangro, 50, 213
Lee Hynil, 44, 213
Lee Ik, 47
Lee Kan, 45, 46, 48, 213
Lee n-chk, 39, 40, 214
Lee Saek, 37, 214
241
242
Index
Index
wai, 180, 181, 184186, 224
Wang Anshi, 2325, 172n4, 212
Wang Bi, 11, 84n11, 212
Wang Fuzhi, 12, 150, 212
Wang In, 36, 53, 213, 214, 216, 217, 224
Wang Yangming, 5, 12, 22, 2729, 45,
50, 51, 5558, 62, 134, 150, 153, 155,
172n17, 212, 216, 224, 226; Wang
Yangming School, 44, 45
wanwu, 71, 89, 224
Warring States period, 9, 12, 15, 21, 22,
215, 219
wen, 180, 224
Weng Fanggang, 48, 212
wu, 18, 224
wulun, 164, 225; five relations, 164, 186
Xia dynasty or kingdom, 9, 68, 215
Xia Yong, 137
xiao, 4, 14, 68, 70, 79, 80, 85n34, 176,
225. See also Confucianism: and
family relations
xin , 16, 26, 30n7, 36, 78, 95, 115,
183, 195, 225; heart-mind, 195197,
200202, 205, 201n7, 224, 225; heartand-mind, 92, 98, 114, 114; mindheart, 12, 13, 1618, 20, 21, 2628,
225; xinxue 12, 28, 224
xin , 58, 66n4, 225
Xin dynasty, 215
xing , 111, 112, 225
xing , 4, 16, 17, 19, 40, 7678, 84n23,
88, 9498, 225
Xu Fuguan, 19, 105, 212, 223
Xun Yue, 11, 212
Xunzi, 3, 5, 10, 12, 24, 29, 85n32, 91,
109, 146, 212, 215, 219, 222; and
Boston Confucianism, 150, 153, 157;
and human nature or xing, 15, 17,
19, 152, 225; and natural and social
order, 20; and ritual in civilization
and culture, 18, 157, 158, 162
Yamaga Sok, 58, 213, 223
243
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