The Useless Tree

Confucianism is not catching on in the United States

As my semester winds down, and grading final papers and exams presses in on me, I find my attention turning (don't worry, I'll get back to the grading shortly) to more pleasant summer pursuits. For me, this year, those include attending a conference in Beijing, or, to be more precise: "The International Conference on Comparing China and the West: Bringing the Disciplines Together," to be held at Peking University (they still use the old school Wade-Giles transliteration) in July.  I'm not quite sure who all will be there or what the line-up of papers and presentations will be (the conference web site has not yet posted a program), but it should be interesting.

What attracts me about this conference is the opportunity to write and present something on certain issues that have emerged in the wake of my most recent book (which is grinding along toward publication, likely in October).  That volume works through a number of cases of how concepts drawn from pre-Qin Confucianism and Daoism might be applied to contemporary social and ethical issues in America. Now that it is done and nearly out, I have begun to think more broadly about how such intercultural conceptual transpositions work.  What can Confucianism be in the contemporary US?  It cannot be what it was in pre-Qin China, and it cannot be exactly what it is in contemporary China, but can it be something still recognizable as "Confucianism" in America now?  I have, up until this point, simply assumed that the answer to this question was "yes, there can be a contemporary American Confucianism."  But what does that entail?

I have been willing to assume the possibility of an American Confucianism because, as I hope my book illustrates, I can see how ideas drawn from early Confucian texts can be systematically applied to ethical debates here and now. They are not wholly alien to contemporary American concerns.  With a little bit of interpretive work, they yield reasonable and understandable contributions.  In a more general sense, as I read and re-read and re-re-read these texts, I am constantly noticing how ideas from them speak to me in an immediate sense. These books do have meaning in our own time; we can find meaning in them; we can make meaning from them.

And, of course, there has been a great deal of intellectual work done in recent decades that clarify how Chinese and American thinking can intersect and synthesize.  I'm now reading Gish Jen's new book, Tiger Writing, and I am beginning to believe in the virtual inevitability of the hybridity of the independent and interdependent selves.  We are all now, always, both (I will elaborate that idea later in another post...)

While all of this seems plain to me, however, what I also notice is the absence of explicit reference to Confucianism outside of a rather small circle of comparative philosophers and historians and writers. In a time when it is more possible than ever to bring Confucianism into American thinking, it just does not seem to be happening.  Or, it is happening only excrutiatingly slowly.  Confucianism, as my title today suggests, does not seem to be catching on in the US.

I have some ideas for why this is so, and what might have to be done to change things, but I am still working them over (i.e. haven't written the conference paper yet!).  Today, I just want to point out a rather blatant example of what I mean when I say Confucianism is not catching on.

Last week, The New Yorker ran a piece, "The Baby in the Well," by psychologist Paul Bloom.  It is a relfection on the notion of empathy, working through certain conventional understandings of its importance to ethical life and laying out, contrarily, the case against it.  It is a typically smart New Yorker piece, with the cheekiness to question something that we would assume everyone is for: empathy.

For me, the totally baffling thing about the article is its failure to cite an obvious reference for this subject matter: Mencius.  To those familiar with that great Confucian thinker (like my friends over at Warp, Weft and Way), the title of Bloom's piece seemed to be invoking one of the most famous images in Mencius:

Here is why I say that all human beings have a mind that commiserates with others.  Now, if anyone were suddenly to see a child about to fall into a well, his mind would be filled with alarm, distress, pity, and compassion. That he would react accordingly is not because he would hope to use the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the child's parents, nor because he would seek commendation from neighbors and friends, nor because he would hate the adverse reputation [that would come from not reacting accordingly].  Bloom, 2A6

"Reacting accordingly," for Mencius, is moving to prevent harm to the child, which is impelled by a deep human capacity for commiseration and empathy.

This is a perfect trope for Bloom's purposes, but, alas, it is nowhere mentioned.  The "baby in the well" of the title refers to a couple of cases in American history of children actually falling into wells and attracting national attention, which Bloom ultimately believes is misplaced.  But if he wants to make a case against these sorts of emphatic reactions, wouldn't it be great to invoke the most famous "bady in the well" reference in all of Chinese experience?

But, no.  When "baby in the well" is brought to mind in American discourse, very few people, relatively speaking, make what for some of us is the blaring obvious connection to Mencius.  And that is because Confucianism, more generally, has not caught on in the US.

Perhaps I could blame, in some way, Bloom for this failure. If he is seriously thinking about empathy, and employing the "baby in the well" image, he should, as a highly accomplished academic psychologist, know that the apt Mencius reference is there for the taking.  But that would be unfair.  His training and professional experience largely ignore ancient Chinese sources, which are simply out of sight and out of mind.  In another, longer piece, "The Moral Life of Babies," from the New York Times Sunday Magazine, he makes one reference to Confucius, as a source of the "golden rule," but, again, no consideration of the Mencian assertion that we are born with an innate capacity to do good.  Similarly, one of the books he mentions in the "Baby in the Well" article, The Emphatic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin, makes only glancing reference to Confucius, again in relation to the global presence of "golden rule" ethics.

Thus, a vast tradition, which strikes me as so clearly relevant to contemporary questions, is largely an afterthought for many intellectuals working on issues central to that tradition.

The problem, it seems to me, is not simply a matter of the ancientness of ancient Chinese thought.  Ancient Greek and Roman and Christian and Jewish thought are regularly invoked in American intellectual life.  We are raised on those sources and we, many of us, believe that those traditions continue to be immediately relevant to our contemporary lives.  In these cases, old can be good.

But ancient Chinese thought is an eon and an ocean away.  It just seems so remote, at the outset, that many Americans may just not want to try to look there for meaning. 

There are also political obstacles to the wider diffusion of Chinese thought in the US. The public embrace of Confucianism by the current PRC government, connects in the minds of some, the ancient philosophy with contemporary political practices that are seen as odious.  Why would you want to embrace ancient Chinese thought if it is a pillar of current Chinese authoritarianism.   To be clear: I do not believe that Confucianism necessarily produces authoritarianism; indeed, if may function best, as a moral theory, in a democratic political context.  But I think the perception is there for some, maybe many, Americans: Confucianism has been historically, and continues to be today, an ideological tool used to bolster centralized state power.

Thus, part of the solution is to make clear that Confucianism can be consonant with liberalism, which I take to be fundamental to American cultural, as well as political, understanding.  And I believe such accommodation is possible.

But it is more than politics.  For those of us who see the ways in which ancient Chinese thought can speak to modern American life, our work is cut out for us: we just have to make the case, day in and day out, in the widest possible array of illustrations, that Confucianism and Daoism and other philosophical perspectives do indeed have something to say today us today.  Maybe in this case familiarity will breed appreciation.

Further to the Daoist Trolley (non)Problem

Wow. Lots of hits for my post on a Daoist response to the Trolley Problem.  It was put up on the Reddit Philosophy page and that brought a deluge of readers, many, I imagine, first-time visitors to this blog.  Hundreds of comments were generated over there, too many to process here.  But it all brought some further thoughts to my mind and I want to record them here.

It seems that many of the Reddit commenters either did not read the post carefully or did not read the whole thing through. Lots of people jumped on me for intepreting wuwei as "doing nothing".  I certainly realize that wuwei does not mean that we must always literally do nothing.  Indeed, few seemed to notice that I had a second translation there, one that I had hoped suggested the active aspect of wuwei: "nothing's own doing."  This is David Hinton's term, and I have always apprecitated it.

So, yes, I agree, wuwei is not an absolute restriction on action.  Later in the post I make this explicit:

[Daoism] would offer no imperative to act, but it would also offer no imperative not to act.  If action occurred spontaneously and immediately, a Daoist would not ask for reasons.  There might be many casues of such action.

But I think the rather stark "doing nothing" serves a certain purpose. Often, in whatever circumstances we might face, we can feel an urge to "do something," to take some action to change what is unfolding before us.  The default assumption is that we can intervene to make things "better".  This is what Daoism resists.  By positing a notion of wuwei, it pushes back against our feel-good assumptions about the likely efficacy of our actions in the world.  How often have we heard of unintended consequences overwhelming what, at first, appeared to be a happy ending?  Time is an especially harsh adversary in this regard.  What might appear effective at one moment can emerge, a year or two or ten later, as folly.  We must do something to get rid of Saddam Hussein! We must act! And act the US did, with baleful results.

The Trolley Problem is, of course, highly abstract. We have no sense of context, no sense of particulars, no sense of history.  As such, it if fairly meaningless: we live and act in particular contexts, and those contexts certainly shape our reactions.  I, personally, have never been in a situation anything like the Trolley Problem. I have no idea, really, how I might actually behave in a moment like that. The whole thing is set up, in my estimation, to privilege consequentialist thinking. If "all else were equal" and the stark choice of one death versus five deaths were before us, what would we do?  Well, "all else" is never equal.  Life is always more complex.

Daoism, and Confucianism for that matter, are much more contextually sensitive than consequentialism.  Ethical calculations from either of these perspectives (yes, I realize Daoism is not a fully formed ethical theory, nor is it meant to be...) would seek to understand the surrounding circumstances more fully, before action is taken, because right action must be attuned to context.  In the peculiar conditions of the Trolley Problem hesitation might produce inaction. But, without further knowledge of the particulars, we cannot judge the ultimate goodness or badness of such inaction.  One of the five saved does not have to turn out to be a mass murder but just, perhaps, a negligent driver who inadvertently kills a child ten years in the future.  How would the mother of that child judge the earlier hero of the Trolley Problem?   How can we know what good or bad will come, years from now, from our actions today? 

The bottom line is this: to simply assert that killing one to save five is necessarily correct, is to live in a world of abstractions that has no real relevance for how life is actually lived. 

Some commenters have suggested that Daoism is just not suited for a construct like the Trolley Problem.  I understand this contention, and I partially agree with it.  I agree that the Daodejing and Zhuangzi fundamentally resist the very idea of a consistent and universally applicable set of principles that might be used for resolving moral dilemmas.  To the contrary, they embrace dilemmas as a basic feature of the fullness and complexity of Way.  But for all of that I still believe that these books can be used to inform how we live our lives now.  They are very much about being in the world and, as such, can give us some insights - though never hard and fast rules - for how to act or not act as Way unfolds around us.  However imperfect, I think there can be Daoist responses to the ethical problems we face now.

And I very well understand how many people, perhaps especially Americans, will be dissatisfied with Daoist nonaction or minimalist action.  For those who are searching for clear answers to vexing problems, dissatisfaction will be their first reaction to a philosophical perspective that rejects the very possiblity of clear answers.  In chapter seven Zhuangzi writes: "You mean you're only now realizing that there are no answers?"

To a Daoist, the Trolley Problem is not a Problem at all

A reader sent in an interesting email, asking how Daoism might respond to the "Trolley Problem."  A great question!  Let's think it through.

For those not familiar with it, the "Trolley Problem" (I will link here to the obituary of Phillipa Foot, the philosopher who coined the term) runs something like this: a trolley has lost its brakes and is hurtling down the track; straight ahead of it, five people are stuck on the track; on a siding, one person is stuck on the track; either way the persons on the track will be killed; should the driver of the trolley actively turn onto the siding and kill one person, or allow the trolley to continue forward and kill five people?

This is a classical example of consequentialism, which tells us that our ethical judgments should be determined by the consequences of our actions.  On those grounds, the driver should intervene and turn the trolley to kill only one person.  Deontological ethical theories have much more difficulty with this scenario.

But what would a Daoist do? 

Those familiar with Daoism will immediately say "nothing," given the prominence of wu-wei - 无为 - "doing nothing" or "nothing's own doing" to Daoist thought.  And that is generally the first Daoist answer.

The Daodejing gives us some reason for nonintervention in the face of horrible events, even when some sort of action might have an ameliorative effect.  We might think that our action is reducing  pain and suffering in the world, in preserving five lives when one is lost, but is that really the case? Are we really reducing the sum total of pain and suffering in the world (a consequentialist calculus)?  A Daoist would reply that we cannot know, and thus should not act.

To act on the consequentialist logic is to assume that certain factors will not change in the future.  We cannot know whether one of the five persons saved might go on to be a mass murderer and produce much more pain and suffering in the world than we realized.  And how can we know the possible future accomplishments of the one person we caused to die?  Perhaps he was destined to be a great doctor, able to save many lives.  The apparent "moral clarity" of consequentialism is a fiction because we cannot know the consequences of our actions beyond the most immediate moment.

The beginning of Daodejing 29 gets at this sentiment:

Longing to take hold of all beneath heaven and improve it...

I've seen such dreams invariably fail.  All beneath haven is a sacred vessel, something beyond improvement. Try to improve it and you ruin it.  Try to hold it and you lose it.

As does this excerpt from DDJ 23:

Wild winds never last all morning and fierce rains never last all day.  Who conjures such things if not heaven and earth, and if heaven and earth can't make things last, why should we humans try?

Both passages suggest something beyond human comprehension: the world moves in mysterious ways; we cannot know, or improve upon those movements, and to try is to court something worse.

And just to be clear that bad things, like capricious deaths as a result of a runaway trolley, are inevitably apart of "all under heaven" we have this from DDJ 62:

Way is the mystery of these ten thousand things.

It's a good person's treasure and an evil person's refuge.  Its beautiful words are bought and sold and its noble deeds are gifts enriching people.

It never abandons even the evil among us.

That last line is a bit chilling.  In the Chinese text,"bad persons" - 人之不善 - is the subject.  People who are bad; people who do bad things: they are invariably a part of the fullness and complexity of Way. So, even if the trolley's breaks were fine and the driver was drunk and negligently ran over and killed six people, he would not be beyond the realm of human experience in Way.  We might punish him for this specific action (there is a general aversion to killing in Daoism) but we should not expect that we will, thereby, somehow solve the problem of evil in the world.  Bad things, like five people dying in a trolley accident that a morally ambivalent driver chose not to avoid, are inevitable and inescapable.

But Daoism does not express a clear principle that can be followed in most cases.  It would offer no imperative to act, but it would also offer no imperative not to act.  If action occurred spontaneously and immediately, a Daoist would not ask for reasons.  There might be many casues of such action.

For example, when Zhuangzi's wife dies, his immediate reaction is to grieve like anyone else; he feels the loss (as Graham has it).  After some time, he comes to realize that her passing is utterly natural, and conventional expressions of grief are simply misunderstandings Way.   But in that initial emotional response, we might imagine an impulsive, natural action that reflects who he is in that moment.  Were she to be standing on the track in front of him, and he were driving the trolley, perhaps he would throw the switch and kill five strangers.  He might just do it, unthinkingly, because something within his impelled him to.  Or maybe he wouldn't because, somehow, the prospect of five dead innocents might paralyze him.  In either case, he simply reacted, spontaneously, to what was before him in Way; and, in either case, that is justifiable in terms of Daoism.

Ultimately, the inconclusiveness of Daoism would be dissatisfying to rationalist consequentialists.  But it is not at all clear that consequentialism yields a superior moral outcome, because, as Daoism tells us, we cannot adequately know the full and true consequences of our actions.

The Chinese Political System is not a Meritocracy

Daniel A. Bell has a piece today in the CSM, arguing that the PRC political system is, basically, a meritocracy that holds lessons that might correct the flaws of US democracy.  Bell is a philosopher and he tends to operate in normative terms (i.e. what a meritocracy ought to be; what a democracy ought to be; how the ideal of meritocracy might improve democracy).  I do not want to engage with the normative questions because there is a rather glaring empirical problem: the current Chinese political system is not a meritocracy by the definition Bell puts forth.  And I think we could push a bit further to say that, in fact, the imperial Chinese system was not a meritocracy either, if we consider a somewhat broader definition of that term.

Bell gives us his definition of meritocracy right up front:

Political meritocracy is the idea that a political system is designed with the aim of selecting political leaders with above-average ability to make morally informed political judgments. That is, political meritocracy has two key components: 1) The political leaders have above-average ability and virtue; and 2) the selection mechanism is designed to choose such leaders.

He goes on to report that various methods of rigorous recruitment into the Chinese Communist Party have moved the Chinese political system toward this ideal.  But there is much evidence that leads to the opposite conclusion: that the very nature and structure of the CCP vitiates the possibility of realizing meritocracy.

I should point out here that various writers and scholars have delved deep into the study of CCP, and their work demonstrates that personal gain and loyalty to the existing power structure are the animating features of the contemporary CCP.  It is not about "morally-informed political choices;" it is about gaining power and advantage.  Richard  McGregor's book, The Party, and Minxin Pei's work on the "trapped transitions" are good starting points for understanding how the PRC polticial system actually operates.

To return to Bell, notice that his definition of meritocracy focuses on "morally-informed political choices," which is to be expected, given his normative focus.  We might also define merit more in terms of technical competence (i.e. promoting people who have the technological and scientific skills necessary to answer complex modern questions).  For now, we will just focus on Bell's normative definition; but we will have reason to return to the other definition later, when considering some broader, historical aspects of the issue.

Contrary to Bell's normative aspirations, the CCP is currently not an organization that recruits and promotes and rewards people for making the best "morally-informed political choices."  We can see this at both the top and the bottom of the political heirarchy.

The case of Bo Xilai, whom some will want to mimimize as exceptional, is quite instructive.  Bo rose to the top fo the political system, the Politburo, and was aiming for the very, very top, the Standing Committee.  He got there by building a personal empire of connections and payments and coercion.  He was quite willing to distort the law to his own purposes of personal power:

Bo’s enormous power as the top Communist official in Dalian manifested in other more sinister incidents. After Dalian-based journalist Jiang Weiping wrote three anonymous articles in a Hong Kong publication that criticised Bo for his role in a corruption scandal, he was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of subversion and stealing state secrets. He served nearly six years before he was freed and fled to Canada.

Persecuting journalists who are trying to tell the truth about corruption is not a  "morally-informed political choice."  

And things got worse, much worse, when Bo took power in Chongqing and initiated an anti-crime campaignto burnish his political image:

"The anti-mafia campaign in Chongqing wasn't based on the rule of law," says lawyer Li Zhuang, who represented an alleged gang member. "It was an anti-mafia campaign for political purposes. It overrode the law, it ignored basic legal procedure and it even violated basic human morality."

When Li first met client Gong Gangmo, Gong told him Chongqing police had tortured him sporadically over a period of eight days and nights.

"They hung him from the ceiling, so he could touch a table with his toes, but he couldn't put his heels down," Li recalls being told. "He was hanging for a long time, so he soiled himself. An interrogator took him down, and ordered him to clean up the mess with his hands, and wipe the floor with his shorts. Then they hung him up again naked."

It should be noted that Bo's trangressions were illegal and immoral by the standards publicly espoused by the CCP in it's efforts to develop the "rule of law" in China:

“Even by Chinese Communist Party standards, this is unacceptable,” said Cheng Li, an analyst of the Chinese leadership at the Brookings Institution. “This is red terror.” 

If Bo's police chief had not desperately run to the US Consulate in Chengdu to get out from under the scandal, Bo might still be in power, moving toward the highest office.  The internal workings of the Party had been impotent in the face of his actions.  It was only when the story broke internationally, and the eyes of the world were able to see the truth of Chongqing, that the Party removed Bo.

Bo is unusual only in the scale of his abuse of power.  He got away with a lot because he had a lot of power.  But at lower levels of the vast Party machine, the interests of power regularly contravene morality.  Again, when I say "morality" here I do not need "Western" standards, but standards articulated by the Party itself.  This is what we see in the Chen Guangcheng case.

It was local Shandong party authorities who held Chen without charge, beat him and punished his family.  They did so to isolate and silence him so they could preserve their local power and, they thought, their reputations.  Obviously, these were not "morally-informed political choices."

We could go on to adduce other cases.  Suffice it to say, if the PRC political system were truly a meritocracy it would not have to routinely lie and distort in its efforts to maximize its power, as it did in the 2003 SARs outbreak, and the 2005 Songhua River spill, the 2008 Siquan earthquake school collapse scandal, or what now appears to be dissembling and evasion in reporting the truth about the Beijing flood. None of these are indicative of "morally-informed political choices."

Now, it must be said that there are, no doubt, many well meaning and ethically upstanding people working in the PRC's vast bureaucracy.  But the system, with its powerful material incentives for corruption and self-interest, does not live up to Bell's ideal of meritocracy.  It makes me think of Gandhi's response when asked about western civilization: "it could be a good idea."

Finally, if we think in more technocratic terms, a meritocracy that centers on promoting people with the best technical and scientific credentials, we might also find the current Chinese political system lacking.  We could debate that.  But thinking in these terms leads us to a conclusion about imperial China: when confronted with the challenges of Western technology in the 19th century it proved to be incapable of systemic adaptation and, thus, was lacking a certain technical meritocracy.  Mandarins and gentry were too wed to the old order, they benefited materially and politically too much, to concern themselves with change.  There were, of course, some Chinese leaders - Kang Youwei, Liang Qiqiao, countless entrepreneurs and activists - who tried to change.  But they were thwarted by a system that did not promote people with the technical expertise required to understand and manage the transformations that the times required.  Political and personal interest reigned supreme.... Come to think of it, that sounds rather like 2012 as well....

Bottom line: US democracy is flawed. There may well be some aspects of China's experience that could be useful in thinking about how to improve US politics and society.  But CCP meritocray is not one of them because it does not actually exist.

(illustration from Pigs Incorprated)

Why We Need Chinese Philosophy

I want to recognize, and expand upon, Justin H. Smith's piece in the NYT, "Philosophy's Western Bias."  He makes a case for why academic philosophy departments should incorporate more "non-Western" schools of thought in their curriculum.  I am all for it.  But I must say, right up front, that I am not an academic philosopher, but a political scientist who has drifted into ancient Chinese thought.  And it is from that perspective that I have a somewhat different take on this issue than Smith.

He points out that concerns for diversity, in and of themselves, are not a sound basis for the inclusion of "non-Western" thought into our on-going discussions of "philosophy" (Lots of scare quotes, I know.  But Smith is questioning the definitions of all of these terms...).  He is direct in his critique:

The goal of reflecting the diversity of our own society by expanding the curriculum to include non-European traditions has so far been a tremendous failure. And it has failed for at least two reasons. One is that non-Western philosophy is typically represented in philosophy curricula in a merely token way. Western philosophy is always the unmarked category, the standard in relation to which non-Western philosophy provides a useful contrast. Non-Western philosophy is not approached on its own terms, and thus philosophy remains, implicitly and by default, Western. Second, non-Western philosophy, when it does appear in curricula, is treated in a methodologically and philosophically unsound way: it is crudely supposed to be wholly indigenous to the cultures that produce it and to be fundamentally different than Western philosophy in areas like its valuation of reason or its dependence on myth and religion. In this way, non-Western philosophy remains fundamentally “other.”

He then goes on to provide a starting point for a more effective argument for the relevance of non-Western philosophy:

An alternative approach to the history of philosophy — one that takes the aim of opening up the discipline seriously — would treat both Western and non-Western philosophy as the regional inflections of a global phenomenon.... Now it is of course very difficult to define “philosophy,” but if we think of it broadly as systematic reflection on the nature of reality and on humanity’s place in that reality, then it is clear that Europe can make no special claim to be the home of philosophy.

Yes.  And let me add my own, rather simplistic, point here: Chinese philosophy is valuable to us here and now because it concerns itself, deeply and directly, with large questions of  "the nature of reality and... humanity's place in that reality."

I tend to focus on politics, and in that realm it is clear that Chinese philosophy has much to contribute to any discussion of issues such as: Who should rule?  How should they rule?  How should we understand political legitimacy?  What role does violence play in politics?  etc. This is not really a matter of "Western" v. "non-Western" to me. They are large questions that have been contemplated is many diverse places and times, and the broad history of that extensive conservation remains relevant, in all its facets, to us today.  

We seem to assume automatically that the ancient Greeks - so far removed in time and culture from the contemporary US - are relevant to today's political world.  Well, ancient Chinese thinkers are similarly pertinent.  Some might reject that assertion, and argue that the Greeks invented democracy, and that our politics is rooted in that democratic tradition; thus, since the ancient Chinese lacked a notion of democracy, they are not as germane to contemporary American political debates.  

Politics, however, is about more than democracy v. authoritarianism.  It is true that in their own times ancient Chinese thinkers did not think in terms of "rule of the people."  However, their focus on humane public policy and ethical standard of leadership are certainly relevant in a contemporary democratic context.  And they are equally relevant in a contemporary authoritarian context - as I have argued regularly here, the leaders of the CCP have much to fear in a strong and consistent application of Mencian political principles...

Here's an example. When thinking about sound government, and political strategies that might produce sound government,  Analects 12.7 offers this (Ames/Rosemont translation):

Zigong asked about governing effectively.  The master said to him, "Make sure there is sufficient food to eat, sufficient arms for defense, and that the common people have confidence in their leaders."

"If you have to give up one of these three things," he said, "which should be given up first?"

"Give up the arms," he replied.

"If you had to give up one of the remaining two," he said," which should be given up first?"

"Give up food," he replied. "Death has been with us from ancient times, but if the common people do not have confidence in their leaders, community will not endure."

子貢問政。子曰：「足食。足兵。民信之矣。」子貢曰：「必不得已而去，於斯三者何先？」曰：「去兵。」子貢曰：「必不得已而去，於斯二者何先？」曰：「去食。自古皆有死，民無信不立。」

There's a lot in there. Effective government requires something like a Weberian state, insofar as that suggests a coercive apparatus (兵). It also requires that the state provide a certain basic sustenance to the people within its territory: a kind of performance legitimacy.  But, ultimately, legitimacy is not simply a matter of providing material sustenance.  The "confidence of the people" (民信) is more than bread alone.  It is a matter of consistent sincerity on the part of political leaders in attending to the well-being of society at large.  A government that rewards the rich at the expense of the poor, or concerns itself more with the maintenance of a particular ruling group while ignoring growing social inequalities, will lose the confidence of the people.  Leaders in both China and the US could learn from that now.

I don't want to ignore Daoism here.  It, too, is certainly of relevance to contemporary political and philosophical debates.  Its political significance lies largely in its critique of power and greed and, yes, injustice.  While the Daodejing and Zhuangzi do not put forth much in the way of positive political principles (i.e. ideas that might be used to build an effective government), its perspective from outside of power is certainly valuable in terms of political analysis.

Personally, I find Daoism's insights into broader questions of ontology and epistemology to be more alluring than its politics.  Zhuangzi, in particular, seems to prefigure 20th century debates about knowledge and language and reality.  While not a postmodern (Zhuangzi would resist the notion that language constitutes reality; rather he would contend that language is inadequate in capturing the fullness and complexity and dynamism of reality), his thinking is certainly relevant to conservations about Derrida and Saussure.

We could go on, but will leave it there.  Or, better, let's leave it with Zhuangzi (Hinton translation):

The spoken isn't just bits of wind.  In the spoken, something is spoken.  But what it is never stays fixed and constant.  So is something spoken, or has nothing ever been spoken?  People think we're different from baby birds cheeping, but are we saying any more than they are?

夫言非吹也。言者有言，其所言者特未定也。果有言邪？其未嘗有言邪？其以為異於鷇音，亦有辯乎，其無辯乎?

The Porosity of Culture

Just want to add my voice to those others (on Twitter) who have called out the nice little piece in the NYRB on translator Red Pine (aka Bill Porter).  For me, it demonstrates some of what I have been blogging about of late: the ways in which "culture" is open and intelligible and learnable.  

Porter lived for a long time in Taiwan, practicing Buddhism and translating Chinese texts into English. He has now found somewhat greater publishing success (not that that was what he sought) in China.  A couple of his more recent books, observational travel writing, have been translated into Chinese and sold fairly well there.  He is, therefore, someone who has moved between cultures and, I suspect, melded apparently disparate cultural practices into his own life.

His Chinese publisher makes an interesting comment in the NYRB story:

“Our culture is really broad but how does it affect our daily life? Today we’re very westernized—our food, clothing and so on—but here is someone from the West who finds value in China,” Tang said in his short introdutction. “Why does he do this? What does it say to us Chinese?” 

This point - the modern transformation of Chinese culture - is noted again in these lines about the popularity of his travel writing:

His [Porter's] goal is to tell interested foreigners about revealing byways of Chinese culture. Unexpectedly, this approach also works for Chinese, many of whom are about as removed from their culture as Porter’s target audience is in the West. But this means that what is a niche market in western countries—the Chinese culture enthusiast—is a mass market in China. It also helps that Porter is a foreigner. Many wonder how foreigners see this complex culture, which during the 20th century Chinese writers, thinkers, and politicians blamed for their country’s demise.

I suspect this is true: Many Chinese do not make a study of the ancient texts, largely because the old books are seen as not particularly useful for a modern, competitive life.  However, the novelty of someone who is putatively "outside" the culture, but who then enters into it, or at least enters into some facets of it, provides a new window for seeing the culture for those who are putatively inside it.  His "Western" perspective on "Chinese culture" illuminates and shapes the "Chinese" perspective on "Chinese culture."

But at what point do the "Western" perspective and the "Chinese" perspective spill into one another, dissolving clear distinctions?

Daodejing 20 takes up these themes.  And here is the Red Pine translation (which seems to ignore the first line; something like: "give up learning and troubles end"):

Yes and no aren't so far apart lovely and ugly aren't so unalike
what others fear we too must fear
before the moon wanes everyone is gay as if they were at the Great Sacrifice or climbing a tower in spring I sit here and make no sign like a child that doesn't smile lost with no one to turn to
while others enjoy more I alone seem forgotten my mind is so foolish so simple
others look bright I alone seem dim others are certain I alone am confused receding like the ocean waxing without cease
everyone has a goal I alone am dumb and backward for I alone choose to differ preferring still my mother's breast

絕學無憂，唯之與阿，相去幾何？善之與惡，相去若何？人之所畏，不可不畏。荒兮其未央哉！衆人熙熙，如享太牢，如春登臺。我獨怕兮其未兆；如嬰兒之未孩； 儽儽兮若無所歸。衆人皆有餘，而我獨若遺。我愚人之心也哉！沌沌兮，俗人昭昭，我獨若昏。俗人察察，我獨悶悶。澹兮其若海，飂兮若無止，衆人皆有以，而我 獨頑似鄙。我獨異於人，而貴食母。

Of course, the apparent confusion that comes with the erasure of cultural boundaries and certainties ("I alone am confused receding like the ocean waxing without cease...") is, for a Daoist, a good thing....

The Dao of Inter-Cultural Commensurability

I've been thinking more about the possibilities of inter-cultural commensurability since my last post on the topic.  A thought has come to me that I want to posit and explore here:

The entire topic of commensurability/incommensurability is, essentially, a Western problematique.  It is generally not an issue in pre-Qin Chinese thought and is premised on a kind of oppositional thinking that is largely alien to classical Chinese thinking.  If this is true - and I look forward to comments and critiqes from readers - a certain irony would follow, at least for those who want to argue that "Chinese culture" and "Western culture" are basically incommensurable, insofar as the very assertion, by using a Western concept, would undermine the claim.  But let's dig into the argument...

The first, best place to start is Zhuangzi.  I tend to read chapter one as a discourse on incommensurability - but one that ultimately sets up a further claim of a kind of commensurability within incommensurability (a classic Daoist reversal thing...).  At the opening of the chapter, the author draws a mental picture of fantastic creatures - a giant fish, an immense bird - beyond our comprehension.  And then a few passages later has a brief exchange of words between two more mundane creatures (Graham translation):

A cicada and a turtle-dove laughed at it, saying, 'We keep flying till we're bursting, stop when we get to an elm or sandalwood, and sometimes are dragged back to the ground before we're there.  What's all this about being ninety thousand miles up when he travels south'?

蜩與學鳩笑之曰：「我決起而飛，槍 榆、枋，時則不至而控於地而已矣，奚以之九萬里而南為？」

The cicada and the turtle-dove can simply not comprehend the vast and mysterious super-creatures.  The latter are outside the knowledge of the former.  And, to make this point plain, the author has a quail make the same kind of statement a bit further along, and then states (Hinton translation):

Such is the dispute between large and small.

此小大之辯也

It is not just that the small cannot understand the big, but that we cannot use the experience of the small to come to know the experience of the big.  A kind of incommensurability.  And this, as we will see in a moment, presumably runs in the other direction well: we cannot use the experience big to come to know the experience of the small.

Each thing has its own unique position in, and movement through, the totality of all things (which we will call dao - way).  That, at least, is how I have tended to read this passage from chapter two (Watson translation):

Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable.  There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable.  For this reason, whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Xishi, things ribald and shady or things grotesque and strange, the Way makes them all into one.

物固有所然，物固有所可。無物不然，無物不可。故為是舉莛與楹，厲與西施，恢恑憰怪，道通為一。

All things in Way have their own unique presence and reality and sufficiency in Way.  We cannot use the quality of one thing as a standard to measure other things.  This could be taken as a radical incommensurability, operating not at the level of culture, but at the level of each individual thing in Way.  Gotta love that Zhuangzi: always tossing out some truly radical ideas...

But....but...notice that last line above.  "The Way makes them all into one."  There is a commonality to all things.  They are the same in their radical uniqueness.  And also in their coincidence in Way.  What is important for understanding is not hierarchical standards of certain qualities (i.e. "more" or "less" beautiful) but, rather, the synchronicity of of things in Way.  Indeed, it is the presence of each thing in and of itself, and all together, that defines any particular moment of Way.  Each thing has an equal importance in that definitional work.  No one thing can simply define the others.

And that is a kind of commensurability, to the extent that it suggests that, while we cannot use the quality or experience of one thing to judge another, we must be open to including each and everything in any understanding of our Way-context.  I am defined by all of the things around me right now: the computer screen in front of me; the tree outside my window; the student center off to the west; etc.  I can't really know my moment in Way without opening my perception to all of these other things.  They are, or should be, constitutive of my understanding.  They all relate to me in the moment. 

Or maybe not.  I am fairly confident in arguing that Zhuagzi puts forward a notion of radical incommensurability that operates at the level of each indiviudal thing in and of itself, and is not, obviously, limited in any meaningful way by something called "culture."  I think, but am somewhat less confident, that this could suggest a kind of commensurability within incommensurability.  But I will wait for comments and critiques before I try to make more of that contention....

Long story short: there is no reason to believe that "culture" is a meaningful concept for Zhuangzi.  He is arguing on an intra-cultural level, denying, in a sense, that the behavior and activities of individuals can meaningfully add up into a consistent and  replicable "culture."  "Culture" is, at once, too big - in that it suggests meaningful coincident relationships well beyond the lived experience of ziran: 自然 - the natural occurence of things; and too small, in that if fails to capture the fullness and complexity of Way. 

As to the too-bigness of "culture," we can think abou this line from Zhuangzi chapter 6, one of those great moments where Confucius is counselling Yan Hui to move in a most un-Confucian direction.  When Yan Hui tells him that has given up on the Confucian virues and is now just sitting and forgetting, Confucius "says" (Graham translation):

If you go along with it [i.e. just sitting and forgetting], you have no preferences; if you let yourself transform, you have no norms.  Has it really turned out that you are the better of us?  Oblige me by accepting me as your disciple.

同則無好也，化則無常也。而果其賢乎！丘也請從而後也。

It's that line: "if you let yourself transform, you have no norms" (化則無常也) that suggests a renunciation of "culture," which we might understand as a consistent articulation and reproduction of norms.  Zhuangzi does not want such things, such humanly-created concepts of "culture," to obstruct us from opening ourselves to, and following, Way.

As to the "too-littleness" of culture, we can think about these lines, from chapter 2 (Watson translation): 

The Way has never known boundaries; speech has no constancy.  But because of [the recognition of a] "this," there came to be boundaries.  Let me tell you what the boundaries are. There is left, there is right, there are theories, there are debates, there are divisions, there are discriminations, there are emulations, and there are contentions.  These are called the Eight Virtues.  As to what is beyond the Six Realms [i.e. the cosmos], the sage admits its existence but does not theorize.  As to what is within the Six Realms, he theorizes but does not debate.  In the case of the Spring and Autumn [Classic], the record of the former kings of the past age, the sage debates but does not discriminate.  So [I say,] those who divide fail to divide; those who discriminate fail to discriminate.  What does this mean, you ask?  The sage embraces all things.  Ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discriminations before others.  So I say, those who discriminate fail to see.

夫道未始有封，言未始有常，為是而有畛也。請言其畛：有左，有右，有倫，有義，有分，有辯，有競，有爭，此之謂八德。六合之外，聖人存而不論；六合之內， 聖人論而不議。春秋經世，先王之志，聖人議而不辯。故分也者，有不分也；辯也者，有不辯也。曰：何也？聖人懷之，眾人辯之以相示也。故曰：辯也者，有不見 也

For our purposes the message here is: those who divide the world into "cultures," and put forth discriminations and debates based on those divisions, fail to see. They fail to see the fullness of Way.  And there is no reason here to believe that the possibilities and constraints of human understanding advanced in Zhuangzi should be limited only to people in one "culture" and not others.

Bottom line: an assertion that "cultures" are a meaningful category of incommensurability makes no sense from a Zhuangzi-ian point of view.

I could go on but will stop there for now.  Perhaps later this week I will continue with some ideas about how Confucianism, in its early guises, would also, though from rather different perspective, press against the idea of inter-cultural incommensurability. 

 辯也者，有不見 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.

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?....

Yan Xuetong, History and Philosophy

Sorry for the blog silence - lots of work and distractions.  But I'm back now...

Yesterday's op-ed in the NYT by Chinese international relations academic, Yan Xuetong, has sparked a great deal of discussion on listservs and web sites.  Manyul has already posted on it here, where I made a hasty comment yesterday.  Today I want to develop my response a bit more....

Yan's op-ed is a condensation of his more recent book, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power, in which he plumbs pre-Qin texts for insights into international politics, since the Warring States period was essentially a multipolar political struggle, and extends that thinking to the contemporary world.  A good review of that work can be found here.  Yan's thinking is complex.  He is situating himself in the intellectual realm of international relations theorists, identifying himself as a "realist," but engaging in normative theory, an "idealist"(pdf!) project typically shunned by realists.  He is also crafting arguments that speak as much to the need for domestic political reform within the PRC as with that state's foreign policy.  Some interesting stuff there...

But back to the op-ed.

I am concerned that, in his realist-idealist mash-up, Yan conflates history and normative theory.  In speaking about the pre-Qin period, he writes:

It was perhaps the greatest period for Chinese thought, and several schools competed for ideological supremacy and political influence. They converged on one crucial insight: The key to international influence was political power, and the central attribute of political power was morally informed leadership. Rulers who acted in accordance with moral norms whenever possible tended to win the race for leadership over the long term.

China was unified by the ruthless king of Qin in 221 B.C., but his short-lived rule was not nearly as successful as that of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, who drew on a mixture of legalistic realism and Confucian “soft power” to rule the country for over 50 years, from 140 B.C. until 86 B.C.

While it may be true that many philosophers agreed on the need for morally informed leadership - Confucians, Mohists - Legalists, especially as demonstrated by Hanfeizi, did not.  Han was merciless in his critique of Confucians, referring to them as one of the "Five Vermin."  From that chapter of his book we read:

Thus King Wen practiced benevolence and righteousness and became ruler of the world, but King Yen practiced benevolence and righteousness and destroyed his state.  This is because benevolence and righteousness served for ancient times, but no longer serve today. 

Of course, Han offered counsel to, and ultimately died at the command of, the Qin king, a man infamous for his trampling on benevolence and righteousness.

What is important to note here is that the prominence of the ideal of humane rulership was limited.  It was expounded by Confucian intellectuals but not embraced by many of the actual rulers of pre-Qin states.  If we learn anything from Mencius, it is the existence of so many political leaders whose rule was far from the standards of Humanity he advocated.

Qin Shihuangdi was the most ruthless, inhumane of them all.  And he was the ultimate victor of the Warring States period.  His state, Qin, unified, by brutal force of arms, all the rest.  Moreover, the political structure and legal system developed by Qin continued on long after the demise of his short-lived dynasty.  In that sense, Legalism won the political battle, for it was Legalism that determined the structure of Chinese states historically.

I mention this to counter Yan's statement that: "Rulers who acted in accordance with moral norms whenever possible tended to win the race for leadership over the long term."  That is not empirically true.  While many dynasties from the Han forward invoked Confucianism as a moral justification, they all also relied upon Legalist means and powers to maintain state authority.  Never was Confucianism sufficient, in and of itself, to support a Chinese state.  Victoria Hui is helpful here (pdf!):

The problem is that the actual Chinese tradition is better characterized by Legalism than by Confucianism. Legalism is the nemesis of Confucianism, for it is single-mindedly concerned with the maximization of state power through strict regulations and cruel punishments in domestic rule and territorial expansion in external relations. But many Chinese mistake Confucianism as the single Chinese tradition because Chinese rulers ingeniously followed what Chinese scholar Hsiao Kung-chuan called “Legalism with a Confucian façade.”

In the second paragraph above Yan seems to recognize this.  But in his realist-idealist melange he leans more to idealism as a source of explanation (or should we accept his self-definition as a "realist" and suspect that he is simply creating a diversion to make us think that humaneness matters while the PRC amasses material power?... I don't think so.  I suspect he is simply historically un-moored in his idealism...) . 

Why did Chinese states "succeed" in their foreign policies?  Why did they become preeminent in the region and the pinnacle of a hierarchical tribute system?  Was it the attractive "soft power" of their Confucian ideals?  Or was it based on the power of Chinese militaries and the fear and prudence that power instilled in other peoples?  Yan does not focus much on the latter (so much for his "realism") but expects us to simply accept the former.

Don't get me wrong: I think Confucian ideals of humane rulership are great.  I wish leaders in China and the US and elsewhere would embrace them.  But I recognize the uncomfortable reality that those ideals have been honored much more in the breech historically, especially in China.  We cannot simply ignore the very large presence of military and coercive power in Chinese history (pdf!).  When the Han dynasty expanded westward, it did so through military means, as did every other imperial expansion in Chinese history.  Chinese states, like all states everywhere, have been founded on power and coercion, and we must kept that historical fact in mind when we are considering how the Chinese past might be relevant to the global present.

I worry here because there is a kind of Chinese exceptionalism to be found in certain intellectual circles. The idea is that China is unique historically because it did not rely upon military power in its relations with other states.  Nicola DiCosmo, in the introduction to his edited book (linked to above), writes about:

....the influential perception that Chinese culture was inherently indifferent to the gritty matter of battles and wars and consequently paid little or no heed to military topics.  This perception has been interpreted as a preeminently late imperial and twentieth- century product and linked to the concept of an “amilitary” or perhaps “demilitarized” culture (wu bing wenhua)....

It is this perception that Yan is, intentionally or not, bringing forward in his arguments.  And it is simply historically inaccurate.  If we are to take seriously his assertions about the contemporary utitliy of ancient Chinese thought (and I believe there is some utility there),  he needs to be more explicit about the realities of China's past, especially the power realities of state-building and empire-making.

I should add that I absolutely agree with Yan when he argues in the op-ed:

How, then, can China win people’s hearts across the world? According to ancient Chinese philosophers, it must start at home. Humane authority begins by creating a desirable model at home that inspires people abroad.

This means China must shift its priorities away from economic development to establishing a harmonious society free of today’s huge gaps between rich and poor. It needs to replace money worship with traditional morality and weed out political corruption in favor of social justice and fairness.

Unfortunately, I do not see any of this happening now.  The PRC regime is not addressing legal injustice (as depressingly made plain by the Chen Guangcheng situation), economic inequality or political corruption.  

I wonder, then, if Yan would agree that the PRC government should focus its attention on these very pressing internal problems and concern itself less with expanding its global power or pressuring Taiwan?  I suspect the realist in Yan would say "no."