Why Modernity Challenges Confucianism

The new semester has started.  I am now busy with class preparation (I read everything that I assign for classes right before class so that it' s fresh...and that steals the time I have to read other things). And I have taken on some administrative duties (Chair of the International Studies program here).  All of which means less time for blogging.  But let me try to fuse class preparation and posting...

For my class, "Nationalism in East Asia," I have the students first read Ernst Gellner's little book, Nations and Nationalism.  It's a punchy read.  He makes a strong case ("strong" in the sense that he argues it vigorously) that nationalism is a product of modernization, especially industrialization and that the "nation" (by which we can presume he also means national identity) is a product of nationalism; as he famously states: "It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round." (54). Thus, he goes on at some length distinguishing agrarian society from industrial society, and in that distinction I can see something that explains why Confucianism might have a hard time gaining intellectual traction under conditions of modernity.  Take this paragraph (pp. 23-24):

If cognitive growth presupposes that no element is indissolubly linked a priori to any other, and that everything is open to rethinking, then economic and productive growth requires exactly the same of human activities and hence of human roles.  Roles become optional and instrumental.  The old stability of the social role is simply incompatible with growth and innovation.  Innovation means doing new things, the boundaries of which cannot be the same as those of the activities they replace.  No doubt most societies can cope with an occasional re-drawing of job specifications and guild boundaries, just as a football team can experimentally switch from one formation to another, and yet maintain continuity.  But what happens when such changes themselves are constant and continuous, and when the persistence of occupational change itself becomes the one permanent feature of a social order?

The point about "cognitive growth" links back to his analysis of the effects of industrial modernization on intellectual life: the rise of analysis - breaking down received knowledge into smaller parts and seeing how and why they might fit together, and whether they might be reconfigured more effectively.  It's a new kind of rationality, a new epistemological skepticism. 

And something similar happens in the social world as well, and the social and intellectual feed off of each other.  It's reminiscent of the great line from Marx:

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

I wouldn't say Gellner is a Marxist, his analysis of nationalism runs counter to much of Marxist thought, but he certainly has a materialist bent to him...

In any event, when I re-read that passage of Gellner's above, it immediately made me think of the modern fate of Confucianism.  These two lines stand out:

Roles become optional and instrumental.  The old stability of the social role is simply incompatible with growth and innovation. 

Social roles are the constituents of Duty (yi) and for a Confucian, even a modern Confucian, they cannot be optional and instrumental.  They are essential and necessary.  Indeed, a modernized Confucianism, if it is to preserve the basic elements of the ancient philosophy, would have to reject the idea that the "old stability" of social roles is somehow so incompatible with modern industrial and post-industrial life that they, the roles, can some be disregarded.  That's why Ames is trying to develop a Confucian role ethics.

I imagine that if Gellner were to attend one of Ames's seminars, he would simply laugh at the impossibility of a role ethics in a modern industrial context.  Who's right?....

Comments

[justsomeguy]

Well, for starters, I'm not sure that it makes sense to apply the European nationalist narrative to all nationalist narratives. Indeed, in Europe it was generally the case that a sovereign ruled over a multi-ethnic, multi-national empire through capricious situations such as marriage alliances.

I'm not sure that such an analysis can be applied to China, which unified early on and more-or-less remained unified. Back to an earlier post about critical Han studies, the Han race is about as homogeneous as the Caucasian race. That is to say, not at all. I mean, you've got multiple mutually unintelligible dialects and a great variety of physical traits yet they are all supposed to be the same thing?

If we applied Gellner's analysis to China, we would either have to conclude that "Han" China (ethnic regions in revolt are in keeping with his thesis, after all) is an anomaly held together by force of arms or that White Europe (so, excluding odd-balls like the Magyar and Basque) ought to have unified long ago.

Of those two lines of argument, I do think the former could bear some useful fruit. But, at the same time, we've got texts going back as far as Confucius, earlier even, where a Greater China is called for. And I don't think it could be very effectively argued that this Greater China is like Greater Serbia, since Serbs do have similarities (like largely mutually intelligible languages) that the "Han" often lack. The writing system gets around this, but we have the controls of Japan and Korea -- both of which broke away from China and developed their own writing systems to boot!

As for roles becoming optional and instrumental, well, to bring things back to your post we can ask what Marxists think of that. They have a word for it: alienation. Pre/anti-modern communitarian paths (a la Sandel) seek to avoid that alienation and are successful at it within the class of people whose alienation is being considered (real bad track record on women's rights, those communitarian societies). Confucianism can fit quite comfortably into that reaction to modernism. That needn't demand that Confucianism be reactionary, though. The role of a good remonstrator is stressed in the Mencius, after all. So, Confucianism can serve that function within the context of modernity for those to whom Confucianism means something.

Maybe not the most glamorous of roles, but hey, Confucius didn't get to have any big glamorous roles in his lifetime either!

[Vik]

This seems suspiciously close to the old Eurocentric/Orientalist stereotype that the past was fixed and static (without creativity) and "modernity" somehow dynamic. I hope someone would open that up to scrutiny right off the bat. Are we really all that different now? Looking at the long arc of history?

[isha]

Looking at the long arc of history:

Vik:

What do you think about Dr. Kegan's website on Taoism and Confucianism? His interpration of history makes any sense to you? Thanks in advance ...

http://www.stars-n-dice.com/fluxtome.html

Isha