The Useless Tree

Confucius Institutes are not about Confucius

There is a bit of a dust up over Confucius Institutes, those Chinese-government sponsored organizations that promote Chinese language teaching in US (and locations all over the world). But before we get to the details of this kerfuffle, a word about Confucius Institutes.

They are not about Confucius.  Rather, the PRC government has chosen to use the name of Confucius as a trademark of sorts for a global soft power branding project.  The Institutes, most of which in the US are hosted by colleges or universities, focus on language learning, with a variety of other cultural activities: Lunar New Year parties: calligraphy; a little Peking Opera; etc.  As far as I can tell - and I have been in conversation with many US academics who have CIs on their campuses (my college does not have one) - there is no systematic effort to engage with Confucian thought in any serious manner. 

Indeed, I find no direct reference to Confucius the man and thinker on their English language web page; though there is a little video on Hai Rui, an upright bureaucrat from the Ming Dynasty (no mention is made of the fact that his story was central to the initiation of the Cultural Revolution in 1966).  The Confucian-killer Qin Shihuangdi seems to get more attention there than Confucius himself.  Bottom line: CIs are not the place to go if you want to learn about Confucianism.

And there are ironies here. The Chinese Communist Party, born of the anti-Confucian radicalism of the May 4th period and vehemently anti-Confucian up through the 1970s, is now reaching for The Master as a happy, avuncular image to adorn a most un-Confucian authoritarian-capitalist modernity.  Kam Louie, in a great piece, "Confucius the Chameleon: Dubious envoy for Brand China (pdf!), gets at some of the problems here:

There is an implicit belief among most people that because Confucianism has long dominated Chinese culture and because Confucius is a Chinese name, we should adopt it to represent China. But that’s like proposing changing the Voice of America to the Voice of Jesus. Most Americans may identify themselves as Christians, but America is much more interesting and diverse than one dominant religion or one individual. In the same way, an institute that purports to promote Chinese culture should not do so in the name of one person, especially if that name or person has generated bitter controversies in the recent past.

And you know there are Christian conservative in the US who would be very happy to change the name of the VOA to the "Voice of Jesus."  Louie continues:

...the confusion surrounding the debates on how to salvage tradition in a new China have been compounded by incoherent interpretations of Confucius’s teachings in recent years. All the indicators suggest that domestically, the advocacy of Confucianism will in practice lead to  the promotion of very conservative and inconsistent values. Internationally, if such values are to be paraded as the best of “Chinese” essences, China’s contribution to world culture will be a confused and regressive one.

He may be right: there is a conservative bias in Confucianism that will limit its applicability in an open, dynamic, globalized postmodern context.  And he is certainly right in suggesting that the explicit purpose of the current CCP-sponsored Confucian revival in the PRC is designed for conservative political purposes: to maintain the legitimacy and power of one-party authoritarianism.  But, for all of that, I still think there is something interesting and valuable in applying Confucian ideas to contemporary questions.  

In any event, to get back to the recent controversy...

About a week ago the US government issued a policy directive indicating that the visas for some Chinese nationals working at Confucius Institutes in the US might be invalid.  The directive is specific and narrowly drawn: the issue involves Chinese nationals whose visa is sponsored by a college and university who then go on to teach in elementary or high schools.  It is not an assault on CIs generally.  Rather, it is an action to implement existing visa limitations that attached to foreign nationals at college and universities. The State Department has since clarified its stance: 

Regulations related to J-1 visas, which are given to people participating in work- and study-based exchange programs, make it clear that foreign professors, academics, and students at the university level are prohibited from teaching in public or private schools at the precollege level, the State Department official said. Those visa holders will have to leave the United States by the end of June and must reapply for the correct visa to return to this country.

It would seem, then, that some sort of other arrangement needs to be made for the elementary and high school teaching functions of CIs.  The underlying problem is that CIs have tended to be embedded in colleges and universities (unlike other organizations like Germany's Goethe Institutes or France's Alliance Française, which are not connected to higher education institutions). At most, a rather minor inconvenience that will likely be tidied up in short order.

You wouldn't know that from this op-ed in the Global Times english edition: "Why is Washington so Scared of Confucius?":

The issue shows that the US' cultural confidence is not as strong as we thought. The promotion of Chinese language and culture by Confucius Institutes makes some Americans uneasy. Only culturally weak countries have such sensitivity.

That seems like a bit of a jump from a rather technical consular issue to a sweeping condemnation of US cultural weakness.  The US is not afraid of Confucius; rather, the US generally doesn't care very much about Confucius.

There is, however, a long-standing critique of CIs in the US, but is not so much a matter of cultural anxiety as it is a political question.  CIs are CCP-sponsored institutions and their mission is to support the soft power of the PRC. The money that flows from the PRC to finance CIs has certain strings attached to it. You will not find an open debate about current political issues in Tibet or Xinjiang being sponsored by CIs.  We all know that. The worry is that the political agenda expands further to limit academic freedom.  US colleges and universities are very defensive about academic freedom.  We don't like political limitations on academic inquiry.  And CIs naturally raise those questions.  We should ask those questions and work to ensure that CIs do not violate academic freedom.  That's how we roll.  And our approach has been very successful in academic and intellectual terms, as tens of thousands of PRC students (including the daughter of President-to-be, Xi Jinping), who travel to the US for college and graduate school, know well.

The People's Daily apparently got a bit stroppy over this:

“This absurd measure reflects illogical thinking and an immature mentality,” said an editorial by state-run People’s Daily. “Finding scapegoats, witch hunting and shifting focuses are not the right ways to do things.”

Ironies about here. At present the PRC is carrying out a policy to crack down on illegal foreigners in China, people whose visas are expired or inappropriate.  Heated rhetoric about "throwing out the foreign trash" has been circulated by prominent media figures.  Foreigners in China are under general suspicion.  So, it seems an odd time for the People's Daily to be complainig about "finding scapegoats" and "witch hunting."

Perhaps we should all just chill out and listen to Confucius, Analects 5.12:

Zi Gong said, "What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men." The Master said, "Ci, you have not attained to that."

子貢曰：「我不欲人之加諸我也，吾亦欲無加諸人。」子曰：「賜也，非爾所及也。」

Reply to Eric X. Li: Cultures are not Incommensurable and the CCP is not Confucuian

Over at the Huffington Post, Rachel Beitarie interviews Eric X. Li, under the title "Democracy is not the Answer."  Li, who describes himself as a Shanghai venture capitalist (which carries a bit of irony, as I will attempt to demonstrate), is a well known apologist of authoritarianism, author of such pieces as: "Why China's Political Model is Superior."  In the most recent interview he engages in a bit of facile Confucius-citing, so I figured that brought his arguments into the general ambit of this blog.  As you might guess, I disagree with him fundamentally.

Li's general project is to construct a kind of Chinese exceptionalism, to show that, whether in the political or economic or cultural realms, China is sui generis and, as the second title above suggests, superior to others.  As an American I am quite familiar with exceptionalist type arguments and, anticipating the Chinese nationalist critique that this post is likely to inspire, I state here that I also reject claims of American exceptionalism.  Whether American or Chinese or French or whatever, exceptionalist arguments are generally historically flawed, deeply flawed, and, bascially, intellectually uninteresting.

Let's go right to a big issue.  Li states:

...And cultures are fundamentally incommensurate to each other, as they have been developed under vastly different conditions, including hard conditions such as geography and climate. On the abstract end, one can claim we all want certain things, such as dignity - who can argue against that? Sounds universal? Yes. But what dignity means not only can be different but also totally opposite among cultures.

Incommensurability is a big philosophical idea, with various debates surrounding it.  In ethics, the notion of "incommensurable values" raises quesitons arising from the idea that: "Values, such as liberty and equality, are sometimes said to be incommensurable in the sense that their value cannot be reduced to a common measure."  I think this is what Li means when he says "cultures are fundamentally incommensurate with one and other..."

But this is where he goes wrong: moving from incommensurable values to incommensurable cultures.  These are not the same and the difference makes a difference.

Most problematically, Li does not define what he means by "culture."  And he provides only the crudest intimation of what he is getting at, something about "geography and climate."  Obviously, he wants to say that "Chinese culture" is not the same as "American culture" or "Western culture," etc.  But at this level of abstraction the invocation of incommensurability makes little sense.

The basic problem is that "culture" is not a useful category for discussing value incommensurability becuase  the value incommensurability problem exists within every category of "culture" that Li implies.  The tensions between freedom and liberty, or -  to invoke a case that Chinese exceptionalists seem to focus on - between individual and collective interests, are common within "American culture" and "Western culture."  We argue about them all the time. 

To avoid this obvious reality, Li has to conjure straw men:

One fallacy in the modern Western political ideology is the so-called freedom of speech. It makes a presumption that speech, unlike acts, is harmless and therefore can and must be allowed absolute freedom....

A quick class in constitutional law would yield rather quickly the understanding that speech is not an absolute freedom, that is it limited in the interest of public safety ("imminent lawless action" anyone?) and other public goods (obscenity). Now, Li might argue that the parameters of free speech are wider in the US than in China, to which there are two responses: 1) this is a political, not cultural, practice that can be developed in various cultural contexts; thus, speech is freer in Taiwan than in the PRC;  2) within American culture there continues to be wide divergence among various groups on what appropriate limits on speech should be, with some American groups coming much close to a "Chinese" standard than others.  Value incommensurability, in other words, is not simply an inter-cultural phenomenon. 

The problem here, for Li, is the underdeveloped concept of "culture."  It seems that he wants us to believe that "cultures" are distinct and impermeable and unchanging.  And that is simply historically and empirically false.  "Cultures" (I put it in scare quotes precisely because of the variability of any specific definition of any particular "culture") are always, and have always been, dynamic and open and overlapping.  Li seems to recognize this when he writes:

This is not to say that aspects of alien cultures cannot be imported and absorbed. Buddhism came into China from the outside and became a major feature of the Chinese civilization. The success or failure of such importation depends on how consistent it is with the fundamentals of the host cultures, whether in its original or adapted forms. Marxism found deep resonance in China's Confucian egalitarianism and its modern features were much needed in China's desperate attempt to modernize. As such, Marxism's adapted forms have taken roots in modern China.

But this just killed his assertion of cultural incommensurability.  If Buddhism is imported and absorbed then it becomes a local expression of the more general category of "Buddhism," and that general category provides a measure by which it can be compared to other examples of the general category - which seems to me to be the very definition of "commensurability."  Same with Marxism.  Now, we can argue that there are important differences between Chinese and Soviet Marxism (there are!) but that discussion operates within the framework of "Marxism" which, again, provides a set of measures to draw similarities and differences.  Commensurability, again.

This shows how useless the term "culture" is.  "Chinese culture" is a collection of many, many practices and ideas and beliefs.  It is big and vast and complicated. Within it are its own instances of value incommensurability (which is one possible way to understand Chen Guangcheng's stance v. those who seek to repress him).  In its vastness, there are similarities and differences with "American culture."  Most aspects of "Chinese culture" are certainly commensurable with "American culture" or other instances of "culture" globally.  (I am not quite ready to say all instances of "Chinese culture" are so commensurable - I am open to suggestions for more specific instances of incommensurability operating at something less abstract than the level of "culture").  Here are two examples:

1) Scientific research.  We must recognize science as a "cultural" practice, in the conventional sense of "culture" as a set of orientations and beliefs and practices.  As such it clashes with other cultural practices - i.e traditional forms of epistemology; magic; superstition; etc.  Scientists in China perform research according to widely held views on proper methodology and reporting. They also perform it within a broader "Chinese cultural" context.  Science, much to the delight of Chen Duxiu, has become a part of "Chinese culture," in a way that it was not at the beginning of the twentieth century.   And they're good at it.  Moreover, they want to be good at it -  a Nobel Prize or two would be highly coveted.  They may have some rather small variations to the usual practice of science, such that we could refer to something as "Chinese science."  But, even if that is the case, there remains a rather well articulated measure for valuing the practice of science.  Thus, that part of "Chinese culture" that expresses itself in scientific research is certainly commensurable with other forms of scientific research world-wide.

2) Women's rights. In traditional China, women did not enjoy the kinds of legal protections that are now common throughout the world.  Indeed, the Communist Party made a rather big deal of how it was the liberator of women from the feudalistic, Confucian patriarchal exploitation of the past.  The New Marriage Law of 1950 was seen, wtihin China, as elevating the social and political status of women, ideally at least.  And today, women in China complain that their rights are not being duly protected, that the social and political gains of the revolution are deteriorating in the opening and reform period.  Whatever one thinks of these particular complaints, what is notable is that they assume a general standard of "women's rights," a general standard that can be used to measure the progress or backsliding of "Chinese women's rights."  Once again, we have inter-cultural - or perhaps we should say transcultural - commensurability.

We could go on, examning more partiuclar facets of "Chinese culture" to demonstrate commensurability with those same aspects of other cultures.  Indeed, the work of Longxi Zhang is interesting in this regard. But one really needs to be called out: economics.

I, for one, absolutely believe that economic life is  a kind of cultural practice.  Markets are based upon certain cultural assumptions and, as they operate, they change other cultural practices.  Contemporary China is a powerful example of this.  Perhaps nothing has changed "Chinese culture" as much as economic reform of the past thirty years.  And those changes have increased the economic-cultural commensurability between China and the US and the "West" and other cultural formations.  Yes, of course, there are differences in how the Chinese and American economies operate.  But mere difference is not incommensurability, which suggests no general standard can be used for comparison and judgment.  And we know, obviously, that every day business men and investors and traders and, yes, "Shanghai venture capitalists," work hard to find ways to make big piles of money from the dynamic pattern of similarities and differences between China's economy and other economies.  

Further, economics, as an intellectual discipline, basicially rejects cultural incommensurability.  It claims to be a universal science (a claim that I do not really accept because they take it too far, ignoring cultural differences within a broader commensurability).  Ask Justin Lin Yifu if China is economically-culturally incommensurable and I suspect he would just laugh.  

And there's your irony: if Eric X. Li was right, he'd be out of a job.  And the fact that he is a successful transcultural investor demonstrates that he is wrong in his assertion of cultural incommensurability.

So, what happened?  Li made too sweeping a claim to try to defend the political authoritarianism of the CCP.  He is trying to construct a grand China exceptionalist argument to wall off the Party from political critics, like Ai Weiwei and Chen Guangcheng.  But upon scrutiny his Great Wall of Chinese Expcetionalism crumbles.  And he is left with a rather bare political apology. 

To get back to the beginning of this post, Li also tries to argue that Deng Xiaoping was something of a Confucian:

In the Chinese tradition, an enduring definition of the end of political governance was articulated by Confucius two and a half millenniums ago. He called it Xiao Kang (as differentiated from Da Tong -- an unattainable ideal). In contemporary terms it can be described as a society of general peace and prosperity with a just legal order and built upon a righteous moral foundation. Interestingly enough, when Deng Xiaoping launched his reforms in 1979 he declared that the goal of the Chinese nation in the next phase of its development was to build or, perhaps more accurately, rebuild a Xiao Kang society.

It was probably no accident that Mr. Deng, in declaring China's national goal, did not rely on the modern Communist ideologies that were instrumental in the revolution that established the People's Republic, but rather reached deep into China's ancient tradition, to Confucius. Measured by the "end" as articulated by Confucius and by Deng, the current one-party state model has so far served China well, albeit with real shortcomings.

Yes, xiao kang is common in Party decriptions of economic reform.  But it is, in the words of John Wong: "... fuzzy and grossly imprecise, especially when applied to a transitional economy like China."  He goes on: "To an ordinary Chinese [xiao kang] may vaguely convey the feeling of being 'neither rich nor poor' or  buqiong buhu". Moreover, it is not a central concept of the Analects or Mencius, no where near the importance of ren or yi or li.  And it is not at all clear that xiao kang is a concept that differentiates Chinese developmental goals for those of other countries, or at least not as it is used in this China Daily op-ed:

The xiaokang idea came fromthe late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s and early 1980s while he was working on the country's developmental blueprint.

The government's goal now, for 2020, is to make sure that xiaokang is everywhere and the people are well-off, in a way that is similar to developed countries in the West.

Oops - that writer needs to read the incommensurability memo...

But the big laugher here is the implication that Deng Xiaoping was a Confucian.  He was not.  He was a dedicated communist-nationalist.  His highest priority was maintaining the institutional integrity of the CCP, which he guided as the country careened into the Great Leap Forward, and saw destroyed by Mao during the Cultural Revolution, and rebuilt after 1979.  It was the Party that he sought to maintain when he gave the order to kill hundreds and hundreds of people in Beijing in 1989.  Those main lines of his career have nothing to do with Confucianism.  Indeed, Deng was anti-Confucian in his willingness to use force to defend the Party.  Xiao kang is small beer in the fullness of Deng's political life.  He was much more interested in building up China's economy as the basis of national strength, something more in line with Legalist thinking. I think the turn to reform in 1979 was a great thing for many Chinese people, and Deng deserves credit for that.  But he was not motivated by Confucianism.

To be clear: Confucianism is a valuable philosophy.  We all can learn from it; we all should learn from it.  I teach it to my students. I think about ways it applies to my own life.  But it is precisely because I take it seriously that I reject its association with the Chinese Communist Party.  Were Confucius alive today he would reject much of what occurs in Chinese politics and economics.

Filial Piety: Only for the poor?

Two contrasting articles suggest how demographic and social-cultural changes in China are making it ever more difficult to realize Confucian virtues there.

First, we have a piece in The Economist that reports on the growth of nursing homes - or, old age homes; assisted living centers; etc. - in China, and how that growth reflects a cultural change in terms of expectations of how care of aging parents should be carried out.  One interesting point here is how religious, and specifically Christian, organizations are taking up the responsibility to create old age homes and care for the elderly.  So, Christians are doing the work of Confucians here... or, to be more charitable (a virtue for both Christians and Confucians), what we have here is a felicitous intersection of moral theories.  Whatever.  

The other, less sanguine, implication is that these sorts of facilities are costly.  And, even if public financing arrangements are available, invariably inequalities will emerge.  The rich will have more and better options; the poor fewer and meaner. 

To project forward a bit: it is rather easy to imagine the privileged class having an easier time paying someone else to care for their parents in a place other than their own homes - the American model, if you will.  In short, they will be able to buy their way out of the more strenuous demands of filiality, which might include keeping parents at home and being personally involved with their care. 

To be clear: I do not think that arranging care for elders at arms length is, in and of itself, somehow an immoral thing.  Quite the contrary, from my own personal experience, I very much understand the difficulties of managing the demands of modern life and the physical demise of parents. (NPR is running a series of stories on just this subject: Family Matters)  My first intention here is simply oobservational: China is subject to these same modernizing pressures and old notions of filiality and parental care are giving way to new realities and arrangements.

But I do want to make a critical point, and that is the same point I would make about elder care in the US: the poor should have reasonable access to good and affordable and secure care for the elderly.  We know this is a problem in the US.  And this story from ChinaSmack suggests that it is also a problem in China:

Filial Son Returns Home to Be With His Dying Father

It is a sad tale: a young man, Cheng Jilai,  from a poor family gets a chance to go to college but gives it up when he realizes his father is dying and there is no one to care for him at home.  It is clear that this family has few options because they have little money.  And so it falls to the son, in this case, to orient his life to the care of his father, a truly virtuous course from a Confucian perspective.  If the son had access to, and could have faith in, something like a nursing home for his father, he might be able to choose to continue in college.  But he doesn't have that choice.  He could simply abandon his father, a choice that would be widely criticized, and not just by Confucians.  He has to take care of his father.  He has to do the right filial thing.

Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh here.  Rich people who can afford good and comfortable nursing homes for their parents are also carrying out their filial duty: they are finding the best possible conditions for their parent's care.  Even if nursing homes are seen, by some, as inherently un-Confucian.  But the story of Cheng Jilai, the filial son whose poverty gives him no choice but to give up college and go home to care for his father, on the face of it, seems more true to the standards of Confucian filiality. 

And if that is true, we are left with a rather uncomfortable conclusion: it is only the poor who have to carry out a more traditional Confucian morality because the rich have the means to make other arrangements....

Confucius is Politically Bolder than Wen Jiabao

Chinese Premier,  Wen Jiabao, gave his last NPC press conference in his official capacity.  His term of office, and political career, is winding down.  Next year another, most likely Li Keqiang, will be in the seat, taking questions from the press...

The western press picked up on Wen's comments about the necessity for political reform:

Mr. Wen’s sole display of passion was reserved for the issue of political reform, a cause he said he would promote to his last breath. His advocacy has rendered him increasingly isolated within a top leadership that, if anything, has more stubbornly resisted tinkering with the system.

In what seemed a message to the next generation of Chinese leaders, he said that political reform had reached a crucial stage, and that stalling or retreating from change “offers no way out.”

“We must press ahead with both economic structural reform and political structural reform, in particular reform in the leadership system of our party and country,” he said. Otherwise, “the gains we have made in this area will be lost, new problems that have cropped up in China’s society will not be fundamentally resolved and such a historic tragedy as the Cultural Revolution may happen again.”

Among those problems, he pointedly noted, are increases in corruption and income disparity and a decline in the government’s credibility.

Although Wen may well be passionate about this idea, I must say we have heard all this before, and nothing has really come of it.  He has made comments over the years that suggest a possibility for political change, but, then, he either does not assert himself to get the job done, or he simply does not have sufficient power to do so.  Either way, and whatever his best intentions, the PRC political system continues to be impervious even to relatively modest political liberalization.

Interestingly, Wen also made direct mention of the Bo Xilai/Wang Lijun scandal.  Although the Financial Times's headline seems a bit overdone - Wen attacks party conservatives - it is unusual for backroom political issues to be br ought to light in such a public manner:

In a rare example of open criticism among senior Communist party officials, Mr Wen took direct aim at Mr Bo who has been tarnished by the revelation that his police chief and key ally Wang Lijun tried to defect to the US last month. Mr Wang is in custody and his case is under investigation.

But the "attack" is muted.  Wen simply says: “The current [Chongqing] party committee and government of Chongqing must seriously reflect on the Wang Lijun incident and learn lessons from this incident...”  Not really a major take down of Bo and Wang..

It's too bad Wen doesn't push harder.  Let's assume he want some kind of genuine political reform.  Let's say he is sympathetic to what seems be a more accomodating approach to dealing with political problems that emerged in Wukan, Guangdong province.  Let's say he really is concerned about countering the corruption that corrodes public institutions.  Why hasn't he used his position to press harder for such goals? 

He would find some support in Confucius, who is often presented as a defender of authority and hierarchy but who actually was quite will to challenge the powers that be if they were pressing society in the wrong direction, as here in Analects 11.17:

The head of the Ji family was richer than the duke of Zhou had been, and yet Qiu collected his imposts for him, and increased his wealth. The Master said, "He [Qiu] is no disciple of mine. My little children, beat the drum and assail him."

季氏富於周公，而求也為之聚斂而附益之。子曰：「非吾徒也。小子鳴鼓而攻之，可也。」

If public officials - in this case Qiu - are facilitating policies that spread injustice and inhumanity, they should be attacked, and one supposes removed from their positions. 

Too bad Wen is not as assertive as Confucius....

UPDATE: Maybe Wen was channeling his inner Confucius.  It now turns out that Bo Xilai has been removed from his posts in Chongqing.  Wow.  We'll see if he hangs on to his Politburo seat.... breaking....

How Confucian is the US?

I hadn't realized just how widespread the concept of "filial responsibility" is in American jurisprudence.  It turns out that 28 states have laws on the books that state that children are responsible for the care of their elderly parents.   A brief NYT post explains:

The rationale, which you can trace back as far as ancient Roman law, is that children have a duty to care for parents. The law sees this as a matter of ethics and reciprocity: Your parents took care of you as children; now it’s your turn to take care of them.

At one time, filial responsibility laws were far more common. As recently as the 1950s, 45 states and the federal government had them on the books. They began to erode during the New Deal, when the Social Security Act passed and the concept of government rather than familial responsibility started to take hold.

But 28 states still have filial responsibility laws: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

Sixteen of these impose civil penalties — they can come after your assets or income if you fail to support your parents. In the eight states where filial responsibility entails criminal penalties, a prosecutor could actually put you in jail. Four states take both approaches.

In Massachusetts, for instance, someone who “unreasonably neglects” to support a parent who is destitute or too infirm to maintain himself could face up to a year in prison plus a $200 fine.

Who knew?  As a Massachusetts resident. I guess I should be relieved that I did not "unreasonably neglect" my mother and her end of life care.  At the time, I was wholly ignorant of the law but struggling to do the right filial thing.  It would all depend, I imagine, on how the lawyers define "unreasonable neglect"...

The article goes on, however:  "But filial responsibility laws are very rarely enforced; 11 of the 28 states that have them have never used them."

"Filial responsibility," would seem to be more of a principle than a practice, at least in the legal sense.  And if that is the case, then the US is not a Confucian society (surprise!) because Confucianism requires that we actually perform our duties.

But in fact Americans, quietly and out of the media spotlight, do perform their familial duties.  A 2009 survey (pdf!) suggests that "caregiving" is very prevalent in the US:

In the past 12 months, an estimated 65.7 million people in the U.S. have served as unpaid family caregivers to an adult or a child. About 28.5% of the respondents surveyed reported being caregivers.

"Caregiving" here is defined as caring for an adult or a child with special needs, not routine child care.

So, maybe we are more Confucian than we realize.  Maybe "filial responsibility" laws are not enforced because most people most of the time do what they can to care for their family members.  Of course there are instances of neglect and abuse, and these must be attended to by legal authorities.  But for most of us it might be that this excerpt from Analects 1.2 rings true:

The noble-minded cultivate roots.  When roots are secure, the Way is born.  To honor parents and elders - isn't that the root of Humanity?

A Confucian Critique of Santorum's Environmental Denialism

Rick Santorum, who somehow is being taken seriously by Republican primary voters, rejects the idea that global warming is a real phenomenon and that it is connected to human activity on the planet.  He castigated President Obama for having a "phony theology" that unscientifically accepts as dogma (I guess) that climate change is happening....

Where to start... Actually, the best place to begin a response might be a nice little blog post over at the National Catholic Reporter.  That's right, people who take Catholicism seriously -  not just certain selective points about abortion and contraception while ignoring the other stuff like torture - come to a very different conclusion on environmental issues:

But Santorum is a Catholic. Maybe he has never gotten further in his reading than Humanae Vitae. So I wonder if he is even remotely aware of Catholic statements on the environment. As recently as May 2011, a Vatican-appointed panel of scientists affirmed that the earth is indeed getting warmer, and urgent measures are needed to reverse the trend through a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, methane and other pollutants...

The writer then gets a bit cheeky: "Rick Santorum needs some basic environmental catechism."  To which one can only say: Amen!

I think Confucius, too, would find fault with Santorum's environmental denialism. 

Confucius would agree, in a conditional and limited manner, to at least one aspect of Santorum's position on climate change.  While not a "dominionist" orientation, which Santorum seems to be embracing, Confucianism would agree that humans have an elevated moral status in relation to nature.  For example, Confucius sees people as being more important than animals, as suggested in Analects 10.12 (which is sometimes numbered 10.11 or 10.17):

One day the stables burned down.  When he returned from court, The Master asked: "Was anyone hurt?" He didn't ask about the horses.

Animals matter less than people, morally, so there is no need to inquire about the horses.  We might expand this suggestion to argue that, if it serves the purposes of Humanity, then using natural resources is justified.  If there is a conflict between human moral good and the environment, the former could take precedence in many, though not all, cases.  Confucianism would thus countenance a more thoroughgoing human presence over nature than, say, would Daoists.

But that presence must be counterbalanced by a certain respect for the environment.  Humans should not wantonly abuse nature.  Indeed, Humanity requires a certain limitation of human action in nature, as suggested by Analects 7.27:

The Master fished with hooks, not nets, and he never shot roosting birds.

He calibrated his actions in accordance to what was required for the nature reproduction of the natural world.  If we add in here the Confucian ideal of material simplicity, symbolized by Yan Hui,  then we can see that the pursuit of Humanity can accomplished in a manner that is respectful of natural processes.

Fast forward to the globalized capitalism of the 21st century, driven by conspicuous consumption and rapacious destruction of nature.  A modern Confucian would look on the scene and say that our relationship to the environment is out of balance.  We are fishing with nets, not hooks, and shooting roosting birds.  The fact of global warming is well established, and it is "very likely" connected to human activity.  Contemporary Confucians would, I believe, accept these points of view, and they would see the link between environmental degradation more generally and materially extravagant human behavior.   There is, as I have argued before, a certain greenness at the heart of Confucianism.

To do full justice to Confucian environmentalism requires a lot more work than I can do here. But I think it is safe to say that the kind of anti-scientific, dogmatic, ideological environmental denialism demonstrated by Santorum as he panders for right-wing votes, would be frowned upon by a modern Confucian.

Confucianism is not a Religion

Now, there's an attention-grabbing headline.  It seems almost arrogant to so directly claim a clear answer to the rather complex question: is Confucianism a religion?  But I put it up there to insert myself into the perennial debate, which has been rekindled in the blogosphere by a well written piece by Peter Berger, sociologist of religion.

Berger comes down on the side of Confucianism as religion.  He does not do so rashly.  He recognizes that much of Confucianism is essentially secularist: there is little to no explicit invocation of a God or gods as creators or exemplars of moral virtue.  Rather, as is so often stated, Confucianism is a "this-worldly" philosophy, a moral theory that seeks to train people in the here and now to do the right thing and become, themselves, the enactors and symbols of propriety.  There is little, if any, concern for cosmological origins or after lives.  At least this is the case for the pre-Qin texts.  A couple of passages from The Analects get at this geist:

The Master never spoke of the supernatural, violence, disorder, or gods and spirits.   7.21

***

When Adept Liu asked about serving ghosts and spirits, the Master said: "You haven't learned to serve the living, so how could you serve ghosts?

"Might I ask about death?"

"You don't understand life," the Master replied, "so how could you understand death?" 11.12

I know just citing Analects passages does not put the question to rest.  There have been impressive analyses over the years contending that Confucianism functioned as a religion in Chinese society, even if it did not fulfill certain definitions of "religion."  And there are ways that Confucianism might be made into or used as a religion historically in China.  So the larger issue is complex.  But, at the end of the day, I find the main body of "Confucianism" to be something other than a religion.

For me the key issue is the de-emphasis on God/gods.  While the early texts presume a spirit world, they just don't make very much of it.  The spirits of our parents matter, but larger transcendent god-like spirits are not really important.  Indeed, in urging us to "serve the living" Confucius seems to be saying that we should not allow propitiation or adulation of spirits get in the way of our immediate earthly duties.

For Berger, the thing that tips the balance in favor of an understanding of Confucianism as a religion is the notion of Heaven - tian, 天 :

....However, there is one classical and rather central Confucian belief that, I think, is unambiguously religious—that of tian, usually translated as “heaven”. It is not theistic, although gods are associated with it. Rather, it is a cosmic order, supernatural in that it transcends the empirical world, over which it presides and with which it interacts. It thus serves as the necessary, ipso facto religious foundation for all the secular virtues propagated by Confucian teachings. It seems to me that this religious character of tian is most clearly expressed in the notion of the “mandate of heaven”: A ruler has this “mandate”, the basis of his legitimacy, if he rules in accordance with the moral rules governing relations between him and his subjects. If he does not so rule, the “mandate of heaven” will be withdrawn, his rule becomes illegitimate and his subjects have a valid reason to disobey or even overthrow him. The distinctively Confucian institution resulting from this idea was that of the “imperial censors”—officials at court with the express duty to reprimand the emperor if he strayed from correct ritual and moral behavior. I take it that this did not happen very often: Emperors, in China or elsewhere, do not take kindly to being reprimanded.

The notion of tian, drawn from early Zhou times, suggests a rather diffuse sense of fate and destiny.  Whether it is "transcendent" or not is not really a settled issue - Hall and Ames famously assert that Confucian thinking is more a matter of immanence than transcendence.  But even if we accept a kind of transcendence in tian, it is still not at all clear that we can say that tian "presides" over the empirical world.  Yes, fate and destiny can shape human lives, but that does not necessarily lead to a kind of predestination or "intelligent design."  Tian, and a Confucian sensibility, fit just as well with a secularist, modern, scientific cosmology, as Frederick Mote suggests, citing Carl Jung approvingly:

The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure.

Mote goes on to give the great line from Needham, who describes ancient Chinese cosmology as providing: "an ordered harmony of wills without an ordainer."

So, I guess the question for me is: is it a religion if it has no ordainer?  If its secularism is more pronounced than Berger suggests, is it something more of a lived moral theory than a religion?  Of course it depends on the definition of religion being used but if Confucianism, with its avoidance of God/gods, is a religion, perhaps we should ask: is socialism a religion?  Liberalism?....

When "Confucianism" isn't really Confucianism

Alistair J. Nicholas, an expatriate pr exec in Beijing, pens a piece in the China Daily that reflects upon cultural differences between China and the West, especially in corporate workplaces.  There are some useful insights into how to get things done and not make a fool of yourself.  But from the very first paragraph he falls into the unfortunate practice of using the term "Confucianism" as a stand-in for contemporary Chinese culture:

The hierarchical nature of Chinese society and the role of hierarchy in the realm of modern social structures defy explanation to Westerners who come from more egalitarian societies. Even after 12 years of living in China, I am confounded by the continuance of this most Confucian inheritance of China's past.

This is a airly typical statement, hearkening back to the Gellner quote above: Confucianism, in practice (and I want to stress that here: what was practiced as "Confucianism" diverged from certain ethical expectations of "Confucianism"...) authorized hierarchical social and political relationships.  So far nothing out of the ordinary here.

But problems set in when we get statements like this:

Of course, there is a downside to China's strict hierarchical structures in business: namely, that merit may be overlooked - or expected to be overlooked - in the rise to the top of the pyramid.

Confucianism, of course, envisions a meritocracy of sorts, an ethical meritocracy: the morally superior should rule and lead.  And we know who the morally superior are not because of what school they went to or who their daddy is but by their actual performance of right actions.  Moral achievement is not existential, it is performative.  Thus, if hierarchy is obstructing meritocracy that is a sign of the failure of Confucianism, not its consequence.  

Of course, we could argue that Confucianism is still culpable because, in the first instance it authorized hierarchy, which then goes on, in an un-Confucian way, to obstruct meritocracy.  But this strikes me as an unfair critique.  Confucianism stands against unmeritorious hierarchy: this is very much the life's work of Mencius...

Another problem emerges with this statement:

But Chinese hierarchy can result in other unfavorable outcomes if not fully understood. For example, Chinese are reluctant to question or challenge their superiors because they have been brought up to respect their elders and others in authority.

While respect for elders is certainly a Confucian idea, it is not unqualified. If elders and/or superiors are doing the wrong thing, children and subordinates should respectfully point out the problem.  While passages from the Analects could be cited here, I like this excerpt from Mencius:

If you don’t resent a parent’s fault when it’s serious, you’re treating parents like strangers.  And if you resent a parent’s fault when it’s slight, you’re treating parents with abandon.  Treating them like strangers, treating them with abandon – either is no way for a child to honor parents. (12.3)

Children, to really honor parents, should treat them as neither strangers nor with abandon.  They should let parents know when there are problems.

In any event, whatever traditional Chinese culture was, or contemporary Chinese culture is, it cannot be simply reduced to "Confucianism," because there are aspects to the culture, old and new, that clearly run against the grain of Confucian morality. 

Chinese culture has always been more than "Confucianism."

Charismatic Virtue

This is s post for my Chinese philosophy friends who might be able to help me understand just how Confucian exemplary leadership works.

Let's just stipulate up front: Confucians believe that the virtuous should rule and they should rule by means of the moral force of their conscientious and continuous performance of virtue.  They can't just ride on their reputations, though a well-earned reputation for doing the right thing is important.  They have to actually do the right thing, in whatever circumstance they find themselves or, failing to do the right thing, they must publicly recognize their failure and recommit themselves to doing the right thing and do it.  If the virtuous so rule, then, Confucians believe, political and social order will be created and maintained.  Something about the publicly observed actions of virtuous leaders will inspire those of lesser moral accomplishments to strive to better fulfill their social and familial duties.  And everyone lives happily ever after....

But a question arises: how exactly does this kind of exemplary moral leadership work?  How is it that the "little people" will follow the noble-minded?  Confucius does not want us to rely too heavily on law; rather, he believes in the attractive power of right action in and of itself. 

I want to suggest that Confucius is implying a kind of charisma that attaches to virtuous action, a kind of charismatic virtue.

By "charisma," I am thinking of these definitional elements from the OED:

A gift or power of leadership or authority...; aura. Hence, the capacity to inspire devotion or enthusiasm.

"Gift" may not capture the Confucian aspect here, drawn as it is from the Christian notion of grace, or gift from God.  But "aura" is helpful.  I think Confucius wants us to believe virtuous action creates an aura of sorts, and that in turn inspires a following: people will enthusiastically devote themselves to follow the virtuous leader.

We can see this suggestion of charisma in The Analects.  Here are two passages:

The Master said: "In government, the secret is Integrity [Virtue - de].  Use it, and you'll be like the polestar: always dwelling in its proper place, the other stars turning reverently about it."  2.1

子曰：為政以德，譬如北辰，居其所而眾星共之.

*    *    *    *

Asking Confucius about governing, Lord Chi K'ang said: "What if I secure those who abide in the Way by killing those who ignore Way - will that work?"

"How can you govern by killing?" replied Confucius.  "Just set your heart on what is virtuous and benevolent, and the people will be virtuous and benevolent.  The noble-minded have the Integrity [Virtue - de]  of wind, and little people the Integrity of grass.  When the wind sweeps over the grass, it bends." 12.19

季康子問政於孔子曰：「如殺無道，以就有道，何如？」孔子對曰：「子為政，焉用殺？子欲善，而民善矣。君子之德風，小人之德草。草上之風，必偃。」

Some translation points, first.  My default text is Hinton's (I know, not everyone prefers this...).  And he translates de - 德 - as "Integrity."  I like this in many cases (as does Victor Mair in his translation of the Daodejing), but here it is problematic.  So, we'll go with "virtue," which is often the translation of choice for de.  Notice, too, that Hinton translates shan - 善 - as "virtuous and benevolent."  Not bad, but it runs up against our rendering of de as "virtue."  Not to worry.  When I refer to "charismatic virtue," it is the de of the noble-minded person - 君子之德 - that I'm going for...

So, let's look at these passages.  The first one implies, on a modern reading, something like a gravitational pull (I know, Confucius himself was not thinking about gravitation... or was he?).  The North Star is the center of our universe (at least as we see it), and all the other stars are drawn to it, held in orbit around it.  In a sense, the pull of the polestar creates order for the others, which is why it is such an apt metaphor for Confucius.  And isn't that rather like charisma - some unseen force that attracts us to a person, that inspires us in some way.

The second passage also implies an unseen force, this time symbolized by wind.  But the notion of "virtue" - de - here is a bit more complicated.  It is specifically the virtue of the noble-minded person that generates the charismatic force that causes others to bend.  The virtue of the little, or common, people, enables them to yield, to recognize the righteousness of the morally accomplished leader and move where it takes them. Their virtue is to be open to the charismatic virtue of the noble-minded

Its that sense of an invisible, attractive magnetism or force that suggests something like charismatic virtue.

I'm not the only one who sees "charisma" in Confucian de (though I think it is an uncommon translation).  Robert Eno, whose marvelous on-line translations I have just discovered, also notes this connotation.  In his translation of the Analects he defines de as:

Virtue (de 德) – a very complex concept, initially related to the notion of charisma derived from power and gift-giving, developing into an ethical term denoting self-possession and orientation towards moral action.

Interesting: the connection to "gift," with its trace of the Western, Christian concept.  And I like the "self-possession," which gets back to "integrity" and the Daoist possibilities of the term.

In any event, while I think it is useful to think of Confucian de, at least the de of the noble-minded, as having an aspect of charisma, I also think we have to be careful to distinguish this from modern Weberian uses of the term. 

Weber's first definition of the term (in Part I, Chapter 3, section i.2 of Economy and Society) works fairly well from a Confucian perspective:

- resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him (charismatic authority).

But when he develops this idea a bit more )in Part I, Chapter 3, section iv.10) we run into a bit of trouble:

The term "charisma" will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional power or qualities.

The trouble comes with the suggestion that charisma attaches to some aspect of an individual's personality.   A Confucian understanding, I believe, would resist this, wanting instead to focus on actions as opposed to personal qualities.  Now, it may be true that noble-minded people who consistent perform right actions will have certain personality characteristics.  And those might be good to have.  But what matters most is not personality but action.  If a person has a good personality, but does not do the right thing, that person is not worthy of emulation, at least not until he or she does the right thing.

So, I think Confucian charismatic virtue inheres in right action, not in specific personality traits.  if a person who is not known for doing the right thing, and who has a bad personality, conspicuously performs a virtuous act, that action would have a kind of charismatic power to it: we would all see it and want to do likewise.  For Weber, if an ordinary person, i.e. one without a charismatic personality, did something extraordinary, ti would not have the same power.

Not sure what this might mean for the famous problem, raised by Weber, of the "routinization of charisma" (it would seem, in the Confucian form, to be dependent on the encouragement and reproduction of right action, as opposed to the succession of individual rulers), but Confucian charismatic virtue is not existential but performative.

Perhaps, then, I should title this: Virtuous Charismatic Action....

Confucius as Contemporary Art

Not sure what to make of Zhang Huan's new exhiibtion at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, entitled, "Q Confucius."   All I know is what I can see on the intertubes.  From that limited perspective, however, it does not appear that the artist in engaging in a facile revival of tradition.  The big animatronic Confucius bust ("Q Confucius no. 2") is speechless: the Sage is not offering us his wise words.  Rather, he just looms there, quietly inhaling and exhaling, in a shallow pool of water, a hulking presence:

It looks a bit ugly to me.  But maybe that's the point: to make the myth more concrete, more imperfect in its embodiment.  Or perhaps Zhang is simply saying that, whatever we think of the cultural ideal, some aspects of Confucianism are always already present in Chinese reality.  He is inescapable.  Whether we engage seriously with his words or not, we have to confront his eternal recurrence.  On a more mundane level, one observer quips:

— the overall effect is like you’re intruding on Confucius’s spa time.

Equally unusual is "Q Confucius no. 6," a robotic Confucius that lurches about within a steel cage.  Apparently, on the day it opened, the robot was joined in the cage by nine live monkeys (not clear if they make any additional appearances).  The monkeys are said to have symbolized, "...the primitive desire in human civilization.  Are we to assume then, since they disappeared after the first day, that Confucius is a civilizing force?  I don't think Zhang is going for that kind of didaticism.  Just look at the piece:

 

This is not a representation of a smooth and lyrical process of civilization.  It is a jerky, almost violent, performance, suggesting difficulty and pain.  Maybe this interpretation gets at it:

Zhang's show reveals the impending struggles of China's people through the acknowledgment of a forgotten way of life. Definitive answers may still be unclear, but Zhang's show asks if the solution may lie in a reclaiming of the past. Zhang's work applies to more than just a specific people, but the entire planet as we strive to find meaning in a world that feels more and more disjointed every day.

But reclaiming the past may not be a "solution."  Confucius in the cage (one wonders if Zhang is alluding to Weber's iron cage) is not settled and comfortable. He thrashes about, armless (unable to hold on to anything), wordless, uncertain.  To me, this does not suggest Confucianism as solution but, rather, Confucianism as another site of struggle and confusion and unrest.  A supposed cultural golden age of the past cannot be reclaimed in the modern/postmodern present.