Writing Worth Reading
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Writing Worth Reading
As China modernises it is increasingly returning to its traditional culture. Certainly the resurgence of Confucian thinking is part of this re-evaluation. But what is Confucianism?
Confucianism is like Liberalism or Christianity. It’s a very rich and diverse tradition and it’s at least 2500 years old. It’s based on the idea that the good life lies in social relations, starting with family, extending to friends, and to other communities in the country and eventually to the whole world. The key question Confucians ask is: What are the roles we occupy? What are the sorts of obligations that we have in those roles?
Of course Confucius himself is the most famous representative of the tradition, which is why I selected The Analects as my first book, though he viewed himself as the transmitter of an earlier tradition.
It’s a compilation. It’s not written by Confucius himself. It is more a collection of anecdotes of how he engaged his students, almost in dialogue form. And in them, he comes off as a very charming, humorous figure, not at all dogmatic and very modern. I think that’s partly why he’s been so influential.
There’s this view that Confucius was a conformist, but that’s partly because of the way Confucianism has been misused throughout Chinese history. Also because he does have a somewhat different approach to critical thinking than we have today. For him learning is a question of learning in stages, and the early stages have to do with improving understanding. It’s only once one has a good grasp of what our ancestors have said that one is in a position to evaluate it and to think critically about it. So the idea that children should engage in critical thinking would seem very odd to Confucius. More generally in Chinese education, and certainly still today, rote learning is considered important at early stages, to get a grasp of what the great thinkers have said in the past. Then at a certain point we have to think critically about what we learn.
So from its origins as a philosophy, how did Confucianism come to be so closely related to the state?
Well Confucius himself was pretty much a political failure. It took about five hundred years for his ideas to become politically influential. He was advocating his ideas in the Spring and Autumn period when China was not yet unified and basically he roamed from state to state trying to persuade rulers of his political ideals and he wasn’t successful. His most influential interpreter was Mencius, one hundred years later. And he too was pretty much a failure in terms of political influence. It’s only in the Han dynasty, about five hundred years later after Confucius’ time, that Confucianism became the official state ideology. So that was about 2000 years ago.
And even then, the Confucianism that became the official state ideology was arguably different from the original views of Confucianism. It was combined to a certain extent with Legalism, which is the other key political tradition in China. Legalism advocates the use of harsh punishments to control people and it almost justifies a totalitarian form of social control. Confucianism is in favour of light government, of informal means of social control, of harmony based on emotions. And, in principle, that became the official ideology. But in practice it was combined with Legalist ideas.
So in fact what many people think of as Confucianism is actually closer to Legalism.
Well it’s both. It’s a combination that varied throughout Chinese imperial history. It certainly was not exactly the sorts of ideas that Confucianism had in mind, although there was some continuity.
Confucianism is often equated with conformism, is this a fundamental part of Confucius’ philosophy?
Actually it’s the Legalists who are in favour of intellectual conformity as a way of securing social order. The Confucians are not in favour of conformity at all. Indeed one of the most famous sayings from the Analects is: “Exemplary persons should pursue harmony but not conformity.” Harmony really is this idea that you have differences – explained by metaphors like: very tasty dishes composed of many different ingredients that are bland on their own but together they combine to form this delicious dish; or else music, where you have one instrument that sounds OK on its own but when it’s combined with other instruments it produces a beautiful harmony. Confucius himself, if you look at his model as an educator, very much encouraged a constant questioning and constant self-improvement and definitely not a conformist attitude to learning. Rather the opposite I’d say.
So tell me about Mencius, your second choice.
Mencius lived about one century after Confucius but it was not until the Song dynasty, some 1000 years later, that Mencius’ interpretation of Confucius became the most influential one. Mencius believed that we are born good. He had a fairly optimistic view of human nature as well as the view that the government should rely upon informal means of social control rather than harsh punishment as a way of securing social order and harmony.
He’s also known for his views on what constitutes a just war. Could you expand on that?
Mencius is often viewed as the softest of the Confucians, as an idealist who wasn’t sensitive to realpolitik. But he was writing in the Warring States era, which was an age of constant conflict, and he had some principles for warfare--for when warfare is moral or just--which I think are quite well grounded in reality. To my mind they are quite realistic and feasible, and have much in common with modern ideas about just war. He provides an account of when defensive warfare is justified, namely when one is attacked in an unprovoked way by a neighbouring country.
Daniel Bell, Professor of philosophy at China’s Tsinghua University explains that Confucius himself was pretty much a political failure…His most influential interpreter was Mencius, one hundred years later. And he too was pretty much a failure in terms of political influence. It’s only in the Han dynasty, about five hundred years after Confucius’ time, that Confucianism became the official state ideology.
