How Modern Can Confucius Be?

     A rather ambivalent editorial in the People's Daily:

Needless to say, Confucius is the most attractive symbol in Chinese traditional culture. But when a rapidly growing China is trying to build a new image and engage in greater interaction with the outside world, can "Confucius" still represent today's modern and thriving China? This needs to be taken into serious consideration.

    I find that when such rhetorical questions are posed in Chinese, the implied answer - the presumed conclusion - is negative.  Thus, by asking the question, the editorial is, essentially, suggesting that "Confucius" cannot really "represent today's modern and thriving China."  This is further implied in the piece's final paragraph:

China is undergoing rapid development and experiencing a variety of new emerging trends. New "Chinese symbols" such as: Yao Ming, Liu Xiang and Zhang Ziyi, who all represent China's new era, have gained world recognition. However they will not become substitutes for Chinese traditional symbols characterized by "Confucius", but help to enrich traditional Chinese Culture as well as represent a flourishing modern China. The Chinese should find a way to make their traditional cultural symbols a better expression of modernity as well as a way of making better use of their new cultural symbols. In fact, the reason why there is so much global interest in China is that there is curiosity over how China develops into a modern country and what new modern Chinese cultural symbols will emerge.

   But the writer(s) seem to be saying that, while Confucius is not the only or best summarizing symbol of "modern China," he is still one of various cultural resources the feeds into a multifaceted image of "modern China."  This seems about right to me.  What Confucianism is, or can be now, is not what it was in Confucius's own time, or even a hundred years ago.  China and the world have changed too much - socially, culturally, economically, politically - to allow for a static re-enactment of past practices.

    The big question, then, is: what, specifically, does Confucianism add to modern life?  The first part of the answer has to be a rejection of the patriarchy and authoritarianism of the past.  But I am one of those who believes that we can shed these old associations and still find some important insights in a modernized Confucianism.

Comments

[花崗齋之愚公]

I think it matters too that the "Confucius" to which the article refers is the historical Confucius--a symbol of a particular tradition and not Confucius or Confucianism as a living tradition of universal values.

[Sam]

Yes. Exactly. And I think what I am trying to do here is to invoke the "living Confucius" of universal values against the resusitated "historical Confucius" of tradtional practices. Thanks for the comment.