How Confucian was Confucius?

A few weeks back I was reading Annping Chin's book, The Authentic Confucius, and an idea came to me (which only now am I blogging): Confucius may not as been as Confucian as we think.

This idea emerges when we think about the tension between the life that Confucius tells us we should live and the life he actually lived.  This is not to say that he was somehow a hypocrite but, rather, that he did not face in his life's experience the full range of demands that respecting elders and caring for the young entails.

Most notably, Confucius was never confronted with the need to care for his parents when he himself was an adult.  They both died when he was young, as Chin notes:

Confucius was only three when his father died.  Mother and son had a hard time scraping by, and she died when he was still a young man.  He married a woman from the Binguan family when he was eighteen.  His wife soon bore him a son, and sometime later a daughter.

No struggle to juggle work and children and the care of aging and dying parents.  No confrontation, as an adult, with a disagreeable father.

When he was about 54, he famously set off on his travels to several other states, leaving his family behind:

When Confucius left for his travels in 497, he was relatively free from family obligations and entanglements.  His parents had been in their graves for decades.  His marriage had ended.  His son was already thirty-five years old, and his daughter could not have been much younger.  Had his children been at a tenderer age or either of his parents still living, Confucius might have considered staying where he was...

A couple of things are notable here.  First, "his marriage had ended."  There is some mystery in this. There are some accounts (hard to know how reliable) that Confucius divorced his wife.  If that is the case, it would suggest that some family obligations solemnly entered into are revocable, a problematic possibility for "Confucians."  Perhaps she died.  Whatever the case, it is this sentence that stands out: "he was relatively free from family obligations and entanglements."  But he espouses a moral philosophy that emphasizes the centrality and importance of family obligations.  From his perspective, these are not "entanglements" but the fundamentals of moral life.  Even if his son and daughter were on their own, wouldn't he still have certain duties toward them?  Can you just pick up and leave like that?

One interpretation is that he traveled in order to develop his moral theory further and to find ways to influence state policy to have a broader effect.  Perhaps.  But this leaves the question of what is more important: public life that takes you away from your family and closest friends and community or the continuing obligations you have to maintaining your closest loving relationships?  The standard interpretation of what has come to be called Confucianism would, I believe, prioritize family life over broader public duties.  Now maybe Confucius really had his act together and his travels in no way limited or weakened his capacity to fulfill his family obligations (what if his son or daughter needed him during the fourteen years of his wanderings?), but, at the very least, a question is raised here.

And an even deeper question arises when we think about the absence of his own father.  Confucius himself had almost no personal experience managing the conflicts that can develop between son and father.  He did not experience those kinds of tensions from the position of a son.  Could he, then, truly understand the difficulties related to a son having to accept a father's command even when it runs against the son's interests and desires?  He might have been inspired by the story of Shun, the super-filial mythic sage king (aren't we all inspired by Shun?), but he did not have the personal familiarity of the father-son relationship, from the son's point of view, over time.  And without that, how could he truly understand what he was telling others that they must do?

Again, I raise this not to condemn Confucius as a hypocrite.  I have a good deal of sympathy for his moral theories.  But it is a curious thing that the philosopher most closely associated  the idea of the ethical centrality of family obligations could be considered, for significant periods of his adult life, "relatively free from family obligations and entanglements."  That is a relativity that sits uncomfortably with what is generally understood as "Confucianism."

Comments

[Leanne Ogasawara]

It is always a kind of disappointment to read that philosophers didn't live the way they wrote... I wonder what you think? I just ordered chin's book. Looks very interesting.

[Sam Crane]

It doesn't bother me too much. I don't live like they wrote either. And they do give us good ideas for how we should live.

[Leanne Ogasawara]

Yes, but you live the way You write, don't you?

[Sam Crane]

Yes, though it's probably better to say I write how I live. And I don't put myself up as an example for others. Just doing my thing here as best I can....

[little Alex]

Well, from what little I've learned of Confucius, I think his teachings more or less emphasize what familial obligations the younger family member has towards the older family member. As such, he supposedly didn't have much obligation towards his wife and offspring, though they should display total obedience, etc. towards him. Or at least that's how Mencius had passed on Confucius's teachings.

[JustSomeGuy]

I dunno. I always sorta figured that Confucius adopted the views he did because of his absentee father. It's all about the mean and his life was out of whack on that particular issue. If Confucius was a good Confucian, it makes sense he would focus on those areas where he himself was deficient. Plus, men raised in single parent households (or with stepfathers) tend towards the misogynistic and that fits the bill with good ol' Kong. Especially if he had all the older sisters he was supposed to have had.