Confucianism is not Nationalism

    There are so many misuses of Confucianism!  Here is a fairly common one, projecting an image of modern Chinese nationalism back to Confucius.  It is taken from a Washington Post story today: "China Pushes Public To Mind Its Manners: Curbing Bad Habits Is Pre-Olympic Goal."  The offending passage cites Sha Lianxiang, a professor of social psychology at Renmin University in Beijing:

"The honor and shame of an individual is related with that of the nation," Sha said. "This goes back to the time of Confucius, when Chinese were taught to protect the honor of the nation. Society is a complicated network, and we play our roles as members of a collective unit, so this is natural for us."

 No, no, a thousand times no.  Confucius did not emphasize the "honor of the nation."  He demanded that individuals fulfill their personal duties, especially familial duties, and if everyone did that, then the larger political community would be stable and peaceful.  Honoring parents and elders is the "root of Humanity" (Analects, 1.2).  We should, according to Confucius, take care of our family business first; the "nation" will then take care of itself.

     Another problem here is the use of the term "nation."  The best scholarship on the meaning and history of nationalism understands it as a modern phenomenon.  There may have been nation-like political entities in pre-modern times, and ancient China could come fairly close to what is meant by "nation," but the socio-cultural "horizontal solidarity" characteristic of national identity is a distinctly modern thing.  For elaborate arguments to this end see: Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, among many others.

     A "nation" requires a certain scale of communication and identification, as well as a certain social depth (i.e. reaching down into the mass of common people), that are simply impossible to achieve in pre-modern circumstances.  In ancient China, after the Han dynasty which came up with the first version of the bureaucratic examination system, the centralized state was a key factor in the creation and reproduction of an elite level culture shared across a very large territory.  But this was not a modern nationalism because it applied to only a relatively small stratum of rich and powerful people.  The mass of peasant farmers did not speak the "national" language (they were mostly illiterate), and their daily cultural understandings and experiences varied widely across the very large territory controlled by the state.  Chinese nationalism, as we know it today, is a product of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as are virtually all modern nationalisms everywhere.  Indeed, it did not really become a mass nationalism until the 1930s, when Japan invaded (following the analysis of Chalmers Johnson), or maybe the 1920s (if we buy the argument of Arthur Waldron).

      Furthermore, if we look at the Analects, there is only one mention of anything remotely related to "China."  David Hinton's translation of 3.5 runs like this:

The Master said: "Those wild tribes in the far north and east - they still honor their sovereigns.  They're nothing like us: we Chinese have given up such things."

     "Chinese" here refers to those people within the various states then at war with one another during the Warring States period (there was no singular "Chinese state" in the time of Confucius).  It is also a rough delineation between those people who were more "civilized" as opposed to those nasty "barbarians" out there.   Of course, the "civilized"/"barbarian" distinction" should not be taken to strongly.  After all, the "barbarian" Qin kingdom would eventually take over and become included in the definition of "China." 

     Other translations of the same Analects passage suggest a more diverse political situation.  Here is Ames and Rosemont:

The Master said: "The Yi and Di barbarian tribes with rulers are not as viable as the various Chinese states without them."

 No "we Chinese" there.  Simon Leys goes with:

The Master said: " Barbarians who have rulers are inferior to the various nations of China who are without."

       "Various nations" suggests socio-cultural diversity among the "various states."  No singular, modern Chinese nation there...

      Leys has a great footnote on this passage that I want to reproduce in part, but I will continue below the fold:

...this important passage raises fascinating problems of interpretation.  There are two ways of reading it - with opposite meanings.  It say either "Barbarians who are fortunate enough to have rulers are still inferior to Chinese who do not have such luck," or "Even barbarians have rulers - in this respect, they are unlike (i.e. better than) the Chinese who do not have any."

Through the ages, commentators have inclined now to the first reading, now to the second, in a way that often reflected their own historical circumstances....

      And therein lies our current problem: we tend to read Confucius from our own historical perspective.  That is what professor Sha is doing when he suggests "nation" somehow was a meaningful category "in the time of Confucius."  It was not.  There was no unified "Chinese" state that might reproduce a standardized "national" culture.  There were possibly "various nations of China;" and there was certainly not a modern mass nationalism.

     Confucius, in short, was not a Chinese nationalist.

Comments

[chriswaugh_bj]

Excellent post. I hope you don't mind, but you've inspired me to go off on a rather long-winded rant in which I quote this post extensively.

[Sam Crane]

Chris,
I read your post and generally agree. One concept that is sometimes invoked to get at the "proto-nationalism" of early "Chinese" identity, is "culturalism." This is meant to imply a process (not a state!) of cultural formation without some of the political connotations of modern nationalism. It might also better apply to an elite level cultural homogenization (again, a process, not an absolute state) as opposed to a mass national consciousness. The term culturalism - which suggests a commitment to a sense of civilization and universal humane values - was first used in this way by Joseph Levenson. It is a more open and inclusive idea (i.e. it is not based on race of ethnicity; anyone can become civilized...) than nationalism often is. Of course, others have pointed out the fuzziness of the boundary between nationalism and culturalism; one of my favorite pieces along these lines is: James Townsend, "Chinese Nationalism," in Ungar and Barme, eds, Chinese Nationalism (M.E. Sharpe, 1996). I might not put as much weight on the Xia as being a moment of cultural unity (it probably existed coterminously with Shang). In legend, the Zhou served more of that purpose, especially for Confucius. But the general point is well taken: "China" did not start with Qin; and what we think of "China" today was not what was happening (especially in terms of cultural and political unification and centralization) in pre-Qin times.

[chriswaugh_bj]

Thanks for that. This idea of culturalism is interesting, I might look into that some more.

"The term culturalism - which suggests a commitment to a sense of civilization and universal humane values"

Sounds almost Confucian to my very inexpert ears.