One Corner of the Square: Essays on the Philosophy of Roger T. Ames 9780824888213

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One Corner of the Square

One Corner of the

Square Essays on the Philosophy of R oger T. A mes

edited by

Ian M. Sullivan and

Joshua Mason

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

© 2021 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 26 25 24 23 22 21    6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sullivan, Ian M., editor. | Mason, Joshua, editor. Title: One corner of the square : essays on the philosophy of Roger T. Ames / edited by Ian M. Sullivan and Joshua Mason. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021003491 | ISBN 9780824884628 (cloth) | ISBN 9780824888213 (pdf) | ISBN 9780824888237 (epub) | ISBN 9780824888220 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Chinese. | Philosophy, Comparative. | Ames, Roger T., Classification: LCC B5230 .O54 2021 | DDC 181/.11—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003491 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-­free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

To the myriad teacher-­student relationships that made this volume possible

Contents

Foreword   Peter D. Hershock

xi

Introduction   Joshua Mason and Ian M. Sullivan

xv

Abbreviations

xxiii

Part I  Comparative Methodologies 1  Sameness, Difference, and the Post-­Comparative Turn   Jim Behuniak

5

2  Mining the Emotions, Deepening Ars Contextualis: A Personal Reflection on the Power of Sensitive Reading   Kirill O. Thompson

15

3  Confucianism as a Tradition of Reconstruction: Returning to the “Way of Heaven”?   Kurtis Hagen

27

4  The Development of the Amesian Methodology for Comparative Philosophy   Haiming Wen and Joshua Mason

37

Part II  Issues in Translation 5  Philosophical Ames: On Teaching Chinese Thought as Philosophy   Thorian R. Harris

49

6  To Render Ren: Saving Authoritativeness   Brian Bruya

61

viii Contents

7  Philosophy as Hermeneutics: Reflections on Roger Ames, Translation, and Comparative Methodology   Steve Coutinho

69

8  The Attitude of the Junzi toward Wealth, Social Eminence, Poverty, and Humbleness in Light of Analects 4.5   Attilio Andreini

81

Part III  Process Cosmology 9  Reflections on David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames’s Understanding of Classical Confucian Cosmology   Jung-­Yeup Kim

99

10  Locating the “Numinous” in a Human-­Centered Religiousness   Peter Wong Yih Jiun

109

11  On the Demystification of the Numinous and Mystical in Classical Ruism: Contemporary Musings on the Zhongyong   Lauren F. Pfister

119

12  Many Confucianisms: From Roger Ames to Jiang Qing on the Interpretive Possibilities of Ruist Traditions   Sarah A. Mattice

131

13  Seeing Through the Aesthetic Worldview   Andrew Lambert

141

Part IV  Epistemological Considerations 14  How Do Teachers “Realize” Their Students? Reflections on Zhi in the Analects   Carine Defoort

153

15  Strategic Imagination in Chinese Philosophy   Daniel Coyle

162

16  Extending Ars Contextualis to Zhu Xi: Using Gewu as an Example   Eiho Baba

172

Contentsix

17  Truth Bound and Unbound: A Deeper Look at the Western and Chinese Paradigms   Marty H. Heitz

180

18  Exploring an Alternative Pre-­Qin Logic   Jinmei Yuan

190

Part V  Confucian Role Ethics 19  Role Modeling in Confucian Role Ethics: Appreciating an Amesian Education   Joseph E. Harroff

203

20  Who’s Afraid of Village Worthies?   Geir Sigurðsson

216

21  Doubts and Anxiety on a Way without Crossroads   Vytis Silius

226

22  Applying Amesian Ethics   Joshua Mason

235

Part VI  Classical Daoism 23  Making Way for Nothing   Meilin Chinn

247

24  Field, Focus, and Focused Field: A Classical Daoist Worldview   James D. Sellmann

256

25  The Temporality of Dao: Permanence and Transience   Jing Liu

267

26  Whence Do You Know the Fish Are Happy? Knowing Well and Living Well   Kuan-­Hung Chen

273

Part VII  Critical Social and Political Directions 27  Confucianism as Transformative Practice: Ethical Impact and Political Pitfalls   Sor-­hoon Tan

285

x Contents

28  The Promise and Problem of Creativity and Li   Amy Olberding

292

29  Men Tell Me Paternalism Is Good   Sydney Morrow

301

30  Confucianism Reimagined: A Feminist Project   Li-­Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee

309

Afterword: The Amesian Square in the Perfect Storm   Martin Schönfeld

318

Contributors

323

Index

327

Foreword Peter D. Hershock

Human becoming has long been the central concern of Roger Ames’s philosophical work. More specifically, his work has been committed to discerning in what ways (dao 道) we are best able to engage in practices of becoming consummately human (ren 仁), doing so from within the roles and relations that are constitutive of our presence as persons in resolute community with others. Entirely aptly, a good portion of his still-­growing corpus has been collaborative. While he has drawn creatively at times on various streams of Western philosophy, his steadfast focus has been on interpreting Confucian thought and practice in ways that respond to this concern, in ways appropriate for our times. It is somewhat surprising, then, that over the course of his forty-­year teaching career, Ames has not been a wholly consistent Confucian. Consider the famous passage in which Confucius summarizes his own teaching style: “I do not open the way for students who are not driven with eagerness; I do not supply a vocabulary for students who are not trying desperately to find the language for their ideas. If on showing students one corner they do not come back to me with the other three, I will not repeat myself” (Analects 7.8). As the translator of this passage, Ames has demonstrated hard-­to-­deny mastery. As a teacher, however, he has time and again refused to live up to the passage’s stated ideal. Rather than expecting students to arrive in class driven by eagerness, Ames has semester after semester labored to inspire eagerness. Faced with students who are content to accept the current state of the art in expressing Confucian ideas and ideals, he has been tireless in evoking their creative participation in crafting new Confucian vocabularies. Having given them one corner of the implicit Confucian square, he has been unwilling to accept just three corners and has asked instead xi

xii Foreword

for thirty or three hundred or three thousand—treating Confucianism as a polygon on the way to becoming a circle. Given this, if Ames has not been a “poor” Confucian teacher, he at least has been a “greedy” one. It is tempting to make excuses. After all, Ames spent his career at the University of Hawai‘i. While situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it is an American university with academic roots and ideals reaching back to ancient Greece. Yet if we consider the implications of the statement attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers that “the root of education is bitter, but the fruit is sweet,” Ames fares no better as a Western philosophy teacher. To begin with, he has always drawn students to the study of philosophy with self-­deprecating humor, enticing them into “tasting” their own life experiences and attending aesthetically as well as critically, not only to the bitter therein, but also to how it relates with the sweet, the sour, the salty, and the spicy. In each instance, the educational “fruit” eventually enjoyed by all has never been a cloying dessert confection. It has been a reflectively complex reengagement with daily life, taken up several notches in qualitative intensity. Having witnessed Ames enchant many dozens of groups of university and college professors at faculty- and curriculum-­development programs, I have often heard him riff imaginatively off Mencius’s claim that the difference between the animal and the human is infinitesimal. Animals and humans both eat, but human beings relate food with presentation and hospitality. Animals and humans both procreate, but humans add to the fact of procreation the values of romantic devotion and familial harmony. Animals grunt and cry in pleasure and warning, but humans rhapsodize and give voice to celestial possibilities. Humans are distinctive in their capacity to appreciate—to both value and add value to—the ordinary, at once evoking and illuminating new worlds of experience. One record of an academic life is a list of authored books and articles, keynote talks delivered, and awards and honors won. Ames’s list is suitably long for someone whose career has spanned four decades. But that would be a very low-­fidelity record of his life as a scholar. The “poor” Confucian teacher that he is, from 1978 to the present, Ames has been providing apparently tireless and almost fatherly support to one generation after another of students, doing everything in his power to enable each of them to add a distinctively enriching new angle to the Confucian polygon. The only faithful record of his academic life would have the open form of a live composition, an improvised chorus.



Forewordxiii

Having had the pleasure to work with Roger Ames over three-­ quarters of his career—first as a student and then as a colleague—I can attest that while his philosophical work has focused on offering clear interpretations of the Confucian meaning of becoming consummately human, his lifework has been to wander shoulder to shoulder with others, discovering and embodying the meaning of truly humane presence, making real the cultural ideal of resolutely inclusive and harmonious community. Happily, that choral labor is one to which the thirty-­one voices presented here are clearly and actively contributing. The composition is not over.

Introduction Joshua Mason and Ian M. Sullivan

In our rapidly globalizing world, our increasing interdependence demands advances in cross-­cultural communication and understanding, not just for everyday interactions and transactions, but also in the difficult work of deliberating the details of a flourishing future and of collaboratively making that future a reality. The stakes are particularly high, given the increasingly dire and immediate climate crisis and the reawakening of populist nationalism among many of the global powers. The need to appreciate our interdependence in our historical moment could hardly be more pressing. As we make our way together, we will have to interpret each other and our world across different linguistic frames and across different ­cultural perspectives and ways of life. The architectures of these c­ ultural perspectives are philosophical at their foundations. Our attempts to address the interrelated sociopolitical, economic, and environmental predicaments that confront humanity require attention to the philosophical assumptions underlying the distinctive perspectives among our interlocutors. In this context, comparative philosophy becomes vital and urgent. We will have to engage with each other’s foundational orientations toward what it means to be human, how we as humans are situated in the world, and how we can survive and thrive as we move into an uncertain future. While cross-­cultural comparison in some form has always been part of philosophy, comparative philosophy as we know it today took shape in the twentieth century. Through wars, commerce, travel, technology, large-­scale migration, and so on, people in the modern world have created connections across distant regions of the planet. To take one ­example, the People’s Republic of China has been deeply affected by these global affairs. After joining the United Nations in 1971 and hosting xv

xvi Introduction

President Richard Nixon in 1972, in 1978 the PRC opened China’s markets to foreign business. In parallel with increasing political and economic exchange, a new era of East-­West comparative philosophy began taking shape in the late 1970s and early 1980s at several institutions of higher education. One such institution, the University of Hawai‘i, had long been established as a hub for comparative philosophy, and in 1978 its Department of Philosophy hired Roger T. Ames. As the field has continued growing broader and deeper, Ames’s work on Chinese philosophy and comparative methodology has played a central role in the evolution of comparative and non-­Western philosophy. In interpretive works and translations, Ames and his collaborators, particularly D. C. Lau, David L. Hall, and Henry Rosemont Jr., began the task of revitalizing the language we use to understand Chinese thought. Bringing rigorous attention to the philosophical background implied by early translations of key Chinese ideas, these scholars sought to present Chinese philosophy “on its own terms.” With a reflective methodology that produced creative translations revealing new ways of conceiving the cosmos, knowledge, and ethics, Ames and his collaborators have brought Chinese philosophical traditions away from orientalist projections and into constructive cross-­cultural dialogue on critical issues of our time. This has meant rooting out the metaphysical and epistemological ideals that are part of mainstream Euro-­American philosophy’s very language, and self-­consciously employing a vocabulary with a bit less semantic baggage. All vocabularies carry such baggage—these sedimented meanings and associations. We cannot employ a neutral vocabulary, but we can be circumspect about the terms we use and their implications. While identifying the uncritical adoption of philosophically loaded terms, Ames and his collaborators also proposed new vocabulary for making sense of ancient Chinese texts. In parallel with Euro-­American philosophy’s own twentieth-­century internal critique of logical positivism and substance metaphysics, Ames saw Chinese philosophy in terms of an ontology of dynamic systems, a holistic and contextualizing epistemology, and an ethics and religiosity of intimate relationships. Some of this initial vocabulary drew upon thinkers in the tradition of process metaphysics, and Ames’s later reading of pragmatism supplemented and augmented his earlier interpretations. Though these traditions remain marginal in many contemporary philosophy departments, their focus on change, immanence, and practice provides an array of terms that, Ames claims,



Introductionxvii

more closely align with the assumptions undergirding the Chinese philosophical traditions. China’s philosophical inquiry takes heed from the Book of Changes (Yijing) and its emphasis on productively interpreting unfolding patterns rather than from speculations about ideal forms or pure essences of things. Ames argues that understanding Chinese philosophies requires us to develop an interpretive context that starts by acknowledging the deeply rooted philosophical assumptions that differ between Euro-­American and Chinese philosophies. This interpretive context must make sense of the “uncommon common sense” of ancient China, which is importantly different from the “common senses” we inherit from the Greek, biblical, and Enlightenment traditions. Ames has developed a vocabulary for expressing that interpretive context, but that vocabulary has not remained static. He has retooled some of his translations, responded to thoughtful critiques, and expanded the set of thinkers upon whom he draws. This is consistent with his insistence that no translations are the final word on a text. On one hand, the canon itself is changing: new archeological finds provide us with ancient sources that change our perspective on our favorite old texts. On the other, developments in scholarship, in society, and in individual lives ensure that the context of our interpretations is also dynamic. As the way winds on, we will discover new ways to communicate ideas from long ago and far away. This hermeneutic project is just getting under way, and in broad historical terms, we are still at the early stages of incorporating Asian thought into the westernized world. Much as when Buddhism entered China and sparked the emergence of Neo-­Confucianism, China’s entry into global systems will introduce conceptual resources that will have lasting and profound effects on our intellectual traditions. While our future philosophical vocabularies cannot be determined in advance, Ames has provided in this way a model of how to go about making sense of each other. The Amesian corpus developed concretely, through particular encounters with specific influences. Throughout these pages one will recognize the influence of Ames’s teachers, collaborators, colleagues, students, and friends. Ames has said that as he goes back over their coauthored works, he is not sure who wrote which lines. This kind of intimate engagement marks the Amesian method. As human becomings, we are all radically dependent on our intimate relations for our well-­being and for the construction of any meaningful identity. In ways mundane and profound, our lives are interdependent with those who

xviii Introduction

become familiar to us. Ames stands amidst a rich network of relations, becoming a distinctive focus in a lineage of scholarly production. From this position, he has inherited, transformed, and transmitted a dao—a method and a way of approaching Chinese philosophy—sharing his vision with the many students and scholars he has encountered. As an editor and organizer, Ames has facilitated the contributions of myriad other scholars to the field. He established high standards for publishing comparative philosophy as the editor of Philosophy East and West and of the SUNY Press’s Chinese Philosophy and Culture series. He cofounded the Asian Studies Development Program and ran several East-­West Philosophers’ Conferences, just a couple of examples of the numerous organizations and events he has led and coordinated. These efforts to organize scholars and promote their scholarship has propelled the growth of comparative philosophy. As an advocate for marginalized and frequently disparaged non-­Western traditions, Ames has built spaces for academic work that challenges the hegemony and chauvinism that too often attend Euro-­American philosophy’s universalizing thrust. Embodying myriad roles, he has been integral in the emergence of an academic environment in which other individuals and the field as a whole can advance creative, productive, and meaningful cross-­cultural projects. And on a more personal level, Ames has done much to inspire and develop those students who find themselves in UH Mānoa’s Sakamaki Hall. From a Confucian perspective, the parent-­child relationship provides the cornerstone of relational well-­being. It is in this relationship that we learn to communicate meaning to others and to generate value in our lived experiences. The teacher-­student relationship is analogous to the parent-­child relationship in many ways. For instance, the death of Yan Hui, Confucius’s favorite student, sets off a period of mourning for the Master akin to a parent mourning the loss of a child. The parental role of guiding and shaping a young person’s conceptual schemes, values, and behaviors is also part of the teacher’s role. A Confucian teacher does not just produce information for consumption but strives to serve as an example of a well-­lived life, standing alongside those close family and friends who also serve as role models. Ames has always been fond of pointing out that “teachers and students cocreate each other.” These are co-­ constitutive relationships, and neither students nor teachers can remain unchanged through their encounters. The contributors to this volume are not disinterested



Introductionxix

spectators or Ideal Observers. We are Ames’s students, mentees, colleagues, and friends, and we were often classmates with each other. The relationships we each have inevitably influence our contributions here. Confucius said, “Authoritative persons establish others in seeking to establish themselves” (Analects 6.30), and Ames has worked generously throughout his career to establish others. The contributors to this volume have all benefited immeasurably from his support, and stand as evidence that, having established so many others, Ames himself is well established. He assisted each of us in finding our own ways, and so as we return these corners, we act to make these lives together significant. The overwhelming tone of this volume is warm and appreciative, but our affection for Roger-­the-­person does not mean the chapters in this book avoid the sharp critique of Ames-­the-­scholar that the rigors of philosophical inquiry demand. He was never shy about telling us when we were off on a wrong track, and in this volume, in return, there is substantial critical analysis of Ames’s twists and turns along his scholarly path. Intellectual respect means pushing hard on an argument’s underbelly, and in this sense, many of these chapters are very respectful. Besides, if this book was meant to be a hagiography, we would have spent more pages discussing his Guinness World Record for demolishing a whole house with his bare hands. The title of this volume references Analects 7.8, in which Confucius says, “If on showing students one corner they do not come back to me with the other three, I will not repeat myself.” This suggests that education is not indoctrination but, rather, guidance and inspiration and that students will have to strive to realize their own progress. Core themes from Ames’s work line up with this conception of the teacher-­student dynamic. The emphasis on open systems and creativity suggests that the final word has not been written and that coming generations will have something novel to contribute. In a career marked by collaboration, Ames has consistently invited students to make meaningful contributions in the cooperative pursuit of education. Shifting our focus to the organization of the book at hand, seven themes are utilized here to organize the chapters into their respective parts, and generally speaking these themes illustrate an architecture of comparative philosophy broadly. Philosophy as a discipline and practice has long been about challenging the status quo, so it should come as no surprise that we find Ames at the beginning of his scholarly path (rudao 儒道) troubling the status quo of Chinese philosophical translations.

xx Introduction

Freighted with religious, ontological, epistemological, and moral implications that were not their own, most Chinese classics were accessible only through English-­language translations that were not doing justice to the original texts. This sort of translational and interpretive issue is common for philosophical projects drawing from non-­Western traditions; hence the greater concern with methodology and translation when attempting to do philosophy from these texts. This volume opens with two parts that share overlapping concerns with interpretation and translation of non-­ Western texts and traditions. Part I, “Comparative Methodologies,” addresses those interpretive problems that confront the scholar reading philosophy that has evolved in a different cultural ecology. Part II, “Issues in Translation,” more explicitly engages with the linguistic concerns arising for comparative work. Given the differing cultural ecologies, one must carefully attend to the implicit connotations of one’s terminology and the ways in which concepts derive meaning from larger concept clusters. Parts III and IV—“Process Cosmology” and “Epistemological Considerations”— mark the shift in comparative projects from the metaphilosophical and translational stage to the more traditionally philosophical stage. Questions over how best to understand social and relational ontologies in the Chinese traditions, and inquiries into the epistemological orientations of these texts, concern these authors. Parts V and VI—“Confucian Role Ethics” and “Classical Daoism”—might best be read as Chinese contributions to philosophical inquiry into living well or “ethics” broadly construed. Authors here take up questions of self-­constitution and cultivation, the assessment of potential moral exemplars, and happiness. Lastly, Part VII takes Amesian comparative philosophy in “Critical Social and Political Directions,” explicitly drawing out the broader dimensions of social constitution and the ideal of communal harmony. Several of these authors contribute to the timely and quickly growing body of literature on Confucian feminism and paths forward in overcoming gender oppression. Introductions to each topic and chapter are provided at the beginning of each part. This is not an exhaustive list of the directions Amesian comparative philosophy might take us, and many of the chapters take us in multiple directions at once. These headings, then, serve simply as suggestive signposts on the way to guide the conversation forward. This book is not quite an explication of Ames’s oeuvre, not quite a critique, not quite a Festschrift, and not quite a single sustained argument.



Introductionxxi

We could call it an “appreciation,” because in reflecting on Ames’s work and projecting new inquiries into the future, the chapters of this book are appreciative in both senses highlighted at the beginning of Confucian Role Ethics: first, in recognizing its value, and second, in growing that value for future generations.

Abbreviations

The following works are frequently cited in this book. AC

David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). ACPT Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine, 1998). CRE Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011). DDJ Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation; “Making This Life Significant” (New York: Ballantine Books, 2003). FF Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001). TH David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). TTC David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking Through Confucius (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987). ZHF Roger T. Ames and Takahiro Nakajima, Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015).

xxiii

part i

Comparative Methodologies Because of the challenges that attend doing philosophy cross-­ culturally, methodological issues come to the fore in comparative work. How are we going to understand subtle philosophical ideas from the ancient vocabulary of a foreign tradition? Formidable epistemological obstacles confront the practice of comparative philosophy. Critical reflection on our aims, approaches, and values paves the way for greater clarity and illumination in interpreting Chinese philosophy. Through translations of classic texts and sustained philosophical arguments, Roger Ames and his collaborators have contributed to the development of a general comparative methodology, as well as to more specific sinological studies. They have tried to frame an “interpretive context” to make sense of the basic assumptions that guide Chinese philosophy. Elaborating this context requires making generalizations. Setting up the general frameworks to establish the meaning of particular phrases and words is a considered methodological choice. It is a kind of hermeneutic circling, from our hazy anticipations of what C ­ hinese philosophy might be about, to particular examples, to a refined set of anticipations such as we find in Anticipating China. Advancing beyond the projection of Euro-­American ontologies written into nineteenth- and early twentieth-­century translations of ­Chinese texts, Ames and company have made a point of scrutinizing the philosophical connotations of the vocabulary they use to translate and characterize Chinese ideas. The following chapters explore the structure and implications of such an Amesian methodological approach to Chinese philosophy. 1

2

Comparative Methodologies

Jim Behuniak, in “Sameness, Difference, and the Post-­Comparative Turn,” provides a forward-­looking reflection on the impact of Ames’s work on comparative philosophy. Beginning with Thinking Through Confucius in 1987, David Hall and Roger Ames set up a broad program for reinterpreting Chinese philosophy. Hall and Ames argued that the present state of Anglophone comparative philosophy required a dedicated focus on difference in cross-­cultural comparisons. They claimed that texts from one cultural context could not be understood “on their own terms” without first understanding the cultural assumptions at work when these texts were composed and interpreted. In 1987 these “uncommon assumptions” were not well understood. Behuniak argues that we have perhaps come into the post-­comparative age in which a philosophical conversation can focus on addressing shared problems. He argues that focusing on difference across cultural boundaries was important at that time, when the project of comparative philosophy had too often sought out sameness. Today we share a hermeneutical community in which how we are the same or different is not as important as solving our common predicaments. Kirill O. Thompson, in “Mining the Emotions, Deepening Ars ­Contextualis,” illustrates how one might begin from a Chinese approach to philosophizing in order to perform Western-­Chinese comparative philosophy. Building upon Ames’s emphasis on “the art of contextualization,” Thompson argues for the importance of “sensitive reading,” as practiced in the Daoist and Confucian traditions. Applying this practice to a Wordsworth poem shifts our philosophical attention away from objective, truth-­oriented, detached engagements with texts and toward their resonance with the “flowing, feeling realms” of our lived experience. Kurtis Hagen, in “Confucianism as a Tradition of Reconstruction,” focuses on how best to interpret the “Way of Heaven” in classical Confucianism and explores the implications of interpretation for comparative projects. He speculates on how Confucianism can be a twenty-­first-­ century global philosophy, advancing the sort of perspective that Behuniak argues we should now be taking toward Confucian philosophy. Haiming Wen and Joshua Mason, in “The Development of the Amesian Methodology for Comparative Philosophy,” provide a general overview of Ames’s methodological evolution. In providing a partial philosophical biography, Wen and Mason focus on two correlated themes in Ames’s work: first, rooting out persistent misinterpretations of Chinese philosophy in Euro-­American philosophy, and second, appreciating the



Comparative Methodologies3

profundity of Chinese philosophy when taken on its own terms. They trace the emergence of Amesian Chinese philosophy from its roots in New Confucianism, Western sinology, American pragmatism, and contemporary Chinese-­Western comparative philosophy.

chapter 1

Sameness, Difference, and the Post-­Comparative Turn Jim Behuniak

In the “Apologia” to their 1987 work, Thinking Through Confucius, David Hall and Roger Ames described the state of Chinese-­Western comparative philosophy as follows: “The sort of commonality that eventually will allow thinkers to engage in important conversations grounded in shared values and concerns is yet to be realized between Chinese and Western societies.” This observation provided the basis for the following methodological proposal: “In the enterprise of comparative philosophy, difference is more interesting than similarity. That is, the contrasting presuppositions of the Chinese and Anglo-­European traditions are, for reasons soon to be rehearsed, a presently more fruitful subject of philosophic reflection than are the shared assumptions.”1 Thus began an oeuvre devoted to appreciating the differences between Chinese and Western philosophies. For more than three decades, in myriad areas of philosophical concern—self, truth, transcendence, cosmogony and cosmology, rights, role ethics, and more—the focus has been on identifying differences. It is easy to forget that this focus was meant to be provisional—an intermediary step between the world in 1987 and a future in which “important conversations grounded in shared values and concerns” could be had. Perhaps it is time to ask whether or not that future has arrived—that is, whether or not the “sort of commonality” that Hall and Ames envisioned at the beginning of their collaboration is now upon us. Their contributions in highlighting differences have largely succeeded in alerting most comparative philosophers to their own assumptions as historically situated inquirers, and it has helped to foreground 5

6

Jim Behuniak

the variability of cultural contexts in which philosophies operate—outcomes intended by their postulation of “uncommon assumptions.” Indeed, it is hard to imagine Chinese-­Western comparative philosophy ever going back to a pre-­Hall-­and-­Ames mind-­set. Even those who are critical of their work display a methodological conscientiousness practically unheard of prior to Thinking Through Confucius, Anticipating China, and Thinking from the Han. In terms of their specific findings, Hall and Ames have been broadly successful in shifting attitudes in the field. Brook Ziporyn is representative in holding that “[the notion] that process orientations are closer to what Chinese thinkers tend to have in mind than substance ontologies and vocabularies . . . [is] by now rather uncontroversial.”2 A demonstration of the opposite thesis—that is, that Chinese thinkers tend more toward substance ontologies—with evidence equal to that which Hall and Ames have marshaled together in their multiple volumes, is not likely to come along. So with such work now complete, has the exclusive focus on difference served its purpose? If so, what is the next turn for comparative philosophy? If the next turn is a re-­turn to appreciating sameness, with an eye toward moderating some of the more controversial claims that Hall and Ames have made, then I think the field is going in circles. The next turn, I believe, must be to rise above sameness and difference, to cycle beyond comparison altogether, and to embrace that “sort of commonality” that Hall and Ames promised at the outset—one that unites contemporary thinkers in a culturally complex but shared world. This, at least, is my hope. Overcoming sameness and difference will not be easy. This rubric has shaped comparative philosophy from the outset, and the field remains dominated by assessments made in its terms. At this juncture, sameness and difference have become the Scylla and Charybdis through which comparative philosophers must cross, and those attempting passage watchfully scrutinize one another. Steer too close to sameness and one risks what Martha Nussbaum calls “descriptive chauvinism,” the act of understanding what is unfamiliar by “recreating the other in the image of oneself.”3 Steer too close to difference and one risks what Edward Slingerland calls “neo-­Orientalism,” the claim of radical otherness.4 Either transgression sinks the comparative project. Descriptive chauvinism annuls one’s claim to have made a comparison, while neo-­Orientalism precludes one from actually making it. Naturally, given the nature of their work, Hall and Ames have most often been identified with transgressions of difference. Bryan Van Norden



Sameness, Difference, and the Post-­Comparative Turn 7

cites specific discussions in Anticipating China in support of his claim that, for Hall and Ames, “the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions are essentially incommensurable.”5 The discussion he cites, however, hardly supports this claim. It is part of a broader theoretical discussion in which pragmatism is identified with “[acceding] to the incommensurability of discourses whenever there is a lack of common conventions to which all parties of a dispute appeal,” but there is never any claim that Chinese and Western traditions constitute such a discourse tout court. The claim made, in fact, is that such incommensurability (were it to exist) would not really matter to cross-­cultural philosophy, since “inter-­theoretical engagements lead to real changes” nonetheless. The discussion is meant to distinguish Hall and Ames’s pragmatic approach from that of “transcendental monism,” which would stall in the face of incommensurable discourses were they encountered. The argument is actually an attempt to put the so-­called problem of incommensurability to rest. As the authors write, “One really does not quite know what to make of the arguments that demonstrate the impossibility of radical translation. They have a certain logical cogency. But their persuasiveness is of the type possessed by arguments to the effect that bumble bees cannot fly.”6 Hall and Ames thus come out against the position that China and the West are “essentially incommensurable.” Van Norden succeeds in getting the argument exactly backwards. Slingerland forwards the charge of neo-­Orientalism from another angle, citing claims in the oeuvre that suggest “radical difference” between China and the West. Specifically, he refers to Ames’s remark that the “Chinese perception of physicality can be shown to be so far removed from our own assumptions that an exploration of the differences can be an occasion to appreciate the degree to which the Chinese are truly a different order of humanity.”7 This is an unfortunate comment, the kind of overstatement that surfaces when the articulation of difference becomes the primary focus. In fairness to Ames, this remark is made in summarizing a collection of interdisciplinary essays not all his own. Included are essays in “anthropology and the history of art and literature [that are] inclined to focus on specific differences,” Ames explains.8 Slingerland is well acquainted with such disciplinary trends, and this revised context would not mitigate what he would still insist is Ames’s endorsement of such an approach. In any case, Ames’s comment falls short of positing incommensurability. In fact, in his own essay for the volume, Ames compares the Chinese view of the body to

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Nietzsche’s. The Chinese approach is thus importantly different from but not “incommensurable” with Western discourse. On his many voyages through the straits of comparison, Ames has taken criticism from both banks—difference and sameness. To cite only one example (and there are plenty to choose from), Jeffrey Richey argues that, by “[proposing] Deweyan process thought as an explanatory device,” Ames reads Dewey’s own predilections into the Mencius— amounting to the transgression of sameness.9 Erin Cline takes a unique approach and criticizes Ames from both banks, suggesting in separate discussions that he reads Dewey into Chinese philosophy (i.e., the Scylla of sameness) and renders Chinese philosophy “incommensurable” with Western thinking (i.e., the Charybdis of difference).10 At one point, she complains of a “tension” in Ames’s work that prevents her from resolving his position into one of either commensurability or incommensurability. She wishes to know “which side Ames ultimately comes down on.”11 Such a binary ultimatum puts Ames in a catch-­22. If he “comes down” on the side of sameness, he meets the Scylla. If he “comes down” on the side of difference, he meets the Charybdis. Readers can judge for themselves the cogency of Cline’s separate critiques. Taken together, they are self-­refuting. Since Hall and Ames’s oeuvre operates within the rubric of sameness and difference, such transgressions and critiques can be expected. In fact, they underscore a serious problem with comparative philosophy. The truth is that every comparison, without exception, violates the terms of sameness and difference. Zhang Xianglong 張祥龍 regards this predicament as one that is inherent to comparative philosophy, and he addresses it in terms of a “comparison paradox” that he traces back to Plato.12 For Plato, comparison involves detecting sameness and difference between two or more discrete objects. “A is the same size as B” expresses a comparison, and “A is larger than B” another. If one subscribes to a rigid understanding of formal properties, as Plato does, then such comparisons are paradoxical. In the first instance, the relation of “sameness” is not a relation at all. If two objects are the same, then we are not really talking about two objects but one. Accordingly, any relation of sameness requires relations of difference as well. The relation of “difference,” however, is attended by its own problems. If two things are really different, then under what category can they be held together for comparison? Zhang summarizes the resulting paradox as follows: “Any comparison will demand the simultaneous presence



Sameness, Difference, and the Post-­Comparative Turn 9

of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference.’ [But] this will negate the common measure [i.e., sameness] or the pivot of comparison [i.e., difference] . . . and thus make comparison impossible.”13 As Zhang sees it, the problem with Plato’s account of the comparison paradox is that it is negated by actual experience. Comparisons are possible. We make them all the time. Thus, something about how we think about “comparison” must be wrong. Zhang resolves the paradox by shifting attention away from the terms of comparison and focusing instead on what he calls the “comparative situation.” He introduces the notion with a concrete example: When I see some dates on a high tree and several bamboo rods lying at the foot of the tree, I take the longest rod to get the dates without any kind of idealized thinking. In such an act, I successfully accomplish a comparison. The so-­called “successful comparison” refers to those comparative acts that produce the meanings or have the effects that would not have appeared in unilateral or non-­comparative acts. I call the structure which makes the comparison successful a “comparative situation.”14 Zhang regards the successful comparison as one that occurs without the mediation of “idealized thinking.” Such thinking refers to the stipulation of a fixed measure, the kind of conceptual rigidity that invites the comparison paradox. Comparisons, Zhang argues, occur naturally enough without such interventions. When we actually compare things, we are not dealing with isolated terms in need of superordinate measures. Instead, we are simultaneously seeing “A, B, and . . .” As Zhang explains, “the ellipsis is indispensable and more important than what is explicitly said.”15 The ellipsis represents the situation itself, “the mechanism of meaning-­production that functions in a non-­universalistic and anonymous way.”16 Such a mechanism prompts the perception of meanings or connections that would not have surfaced had that particular situation not arisen. For Zhang, the normal comparative act is a function of such situations, such that situations themselves decide the terms for comparison. When terms are instead prefigured within a fixed paradigm, comparison easily succumbs to the “comparison paradox” and becomes something other than comparison. The key to moving beyond comparison is to focus, not on the “sameness” or “difference” between “China” and “the West,” but rather on the

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comparative situations in which scholars such as Hall and Ames feel that specific comparisons are important to make at a given time. Such arguments should be assessed according to how true and compelling their consequences really are. Again, Hall and Ames maintained in 1987 that by focusing broadly on differences we might inaugurate “the sort of commonality that will eventually allow thinkers to engage in important conversations grounded in shared values and concerns.” If focusing on such differences, and thus on our own unexamined assumptions about sameness, has enabled us to assume a “sort of commonality” as East-­West philosophers, then it has been worth the journey, even with the inevitable transgressions, overstatements, and critiques. We are left better able to appreciate cultural differences for what they are—local variations on a continuum rather than “block-­like” incommensurables that permit no intermediary consideration. We better understand ourselves as actors and interpreters in an intra-­cultural matrix of contingent histories, rather than as members of fixed cultural blocks. This, in fact, was the upshot of the discussion that Van Norden misunderstood. From where he stopped reading, Hall and Ames proceeded to describe a “productively vague model of cultures,” one in which cultural differences are not unbridgeable chasms (i.e., incommensurables) but “local distortions of a general field.”17 To philosophize post-­comparatively from within this field will allow us to retire some of the stronger defenses that Hall and Ames prepared for their most daring voyages through the straits of comparison. The first defense to go would be “the Principle of Mere Presence.” Hall and Ames stated this principle as follows: “The mere presence of an idea or doctrine in a particular cultural matrix does not permit us to claim that the doctrine or idea is importantly present—that is, present in such a way that it significantly qualifies, defines, or otherwise shapes the culture.”18 This principle, they explain, “allows the comparativist to remain focused upon what is truly important in shaping cultural sensibilities.”19 The problem with the Principle of Mere Presence is that it too easily invites what Whitehead calls “the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.” As Whitehead writes, “This fallacy consists in neglecting the degree of abstraction involved when an actual entity is considered merely so far as it exemplifies certain categories of thought.”20 This fallacy is also called “the Confusion of the Map with the Territory,” in that it involves mistaking abstractions—sometimes very useful abstractions—for the realities themselves.21 The manner in which the Principle of Mere Presence invites such



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fallacies is vividly portrayed in the Zhuangzi. Passing by the gravesite of Huizi 惠子, his philosophical opponent and friend, Zhuangzi tells the story of a carpenter who once knew a mason. Whenever the mason had a plaster chip stuck on his nose, the carpenter would slice it off with a hatchet, removing every bit of plaster while leaving the nose un­disturbed. The Lord of Song heard of this carpenter and called upon him to demonstrate his skill. The carpenter responds, “It’s true that I was once able to slice like that—but the material I worked on has been dead these many years.”22 Zhuangzi likens his relationship with Huizi to that of the carpenter and the mason. Zhuangzi cannot have done what he did without Huizi. Huizi was not “merely present” in Zhuangzi’s philosophical environment—he was importantly present as the embodiment of live options to which Zhuangzi responded. Of course, Ames appreciates the point of this story. As he observes, “Zhuangzi cannot carry the conversation on alone, and the quality of his experience in the world is diminished with the demise of this cherished interlocutor.”23 If our subsequent “map” of Chinese philosophy, however, displays Zhuangzi but not Huizi, then we are presupposing an isolated, independent Zhuangzi who does not reflect the reality of his conditions. Such omission, in fact, would commit an additional error in Whitehead’s view: “the Fallacy of Simple Location.”24 Ames has come around to appreciating this point. In the introduction to a recent volume on the Zhuangzi, he recognizes Huizi as vital to “establishing an interpretative context” for understanding Chinese thought, and then goes further to acknowledge by name “an international group of sinologists and comparative philosophers who have taken on the challenge of reinstating the Mozi as integral to the debates that flourished in the pre-­Qin period.”25 This is a noteworthy breakthrough in an oeuvre in which discussions of Mohism are almost completely absent, except for comments on how rapidly the school declines in importance.26 Reinstating Mohism, however, will have its effects on how we come to understand the Chinese difference. As Hall and Ames have argued, “strict transcendence” has had an enormous impact on the development of Western philosophy. They define “strict transcendence” as follows: “A is transcendent with respect to B if the existence, meaning, or import of B cannot be fully accounted for without recourse to A, but the reverse is not true.”27 Such thinking in the Chinese world, they have maintained, “has not been a part of the cultural narrative in its classical tradition.”28 Even a cursory reading of the “Heaven’s Intention” (tianzhi

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天志) chapters in the Mozi, however, reveals its proclivity for “strict transcendence.” Legalist (fajia 法家) and Huang-­Lao 黃老 texts are equally suggestive of “strict transcendence.” So such tendencies are “part of the narrative”—indeed an important part of the narrative—if one considers that without Mozi there would be no Zhuangzi and no Mencius, and without Legalism there would be a different Confucianism. Absent “strict transcendence” in early China, the more successful alternatives had nothing against which to galvanize themselves. Recent critical assessments hint at the fix needed to secure Hall and Ames’s most important insights. Robert Smid sees the exclusive focus on difference to be the “combined strength and weakness” of the Hall and Ames approach. While it succeeds in identifying important contrasting features, it also tends to “obscure the full richness and diversity” of the cultures being compared.29 Alexus McLeod similarly allows that Hall and Ames provide valuable insights into “truth” in the Chinese tradition (especially in the Zhuangzi), but the tendency to “deny the kind of intellectual diversity in early China that we see in every other culture and intellectual tradition” constitutes a shortcoming.30 There are resources within the oeuvre itself to address these problems. The “vague model of cultures” outlined in Anticipating China is just what is needed to correct Hall and Ames’s occasional slips into essentialism and omission, slips that are the inevitable by-­products of comparison. Post-­ comparative thinking might appreciate this very inevitability as emblematic of the “sort of commonality” that we all share as thinkers conditioned by our own contexts, experiences, and purposes. Aware of such conditions, we can more easily shift focus away from the block-­like “objects” of comparison toward the inter-­relations that give rise to postulations of sameness and difference in specific, comparative situations. Our purposes thus come into the foreground. This is the kind of self-­ awareness and dexterity that we need if we are to “engage in important conversations grounded in shared values and concerns” as genuinely intra-­cultural—rather than merely comparative—philosophers. Hall and Ames have, I believe, established the preliminary work for this turn to occur. Now it becomes our turn.



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Notes 1.  TTC, 5. 2.  Brook Ziporyn, Ironies of Oneness and Difference (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012), 21–22. 3.  Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 118. 4.  Edward Slingerland, “Body and Mind in Early China: An Integrated Humanities-­Science Approach,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, no. 1 (2013): 6–10. 5.  Bryan Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 16. The passages that Van Norden appeals to are AC, 153–154 and 171–175. 6.  AC, 174. 7.  See Slingerland, “Body and Mind in Early China,” 4. Presented here is the full quote, drawn from Roger T. Ames, “On Body as Ritual Practice,” in Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas P. Kasulis, Roger T. Ames, and Wimal Dissanayake (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 149. 8.  Ames, “On Body as Ritual Practice,” 152. 9.  Jeffrey L. Richey, review of Mencius: Contexts and Interpretations, by Alan K. L. Chan, Journal of Asian Studies 62, no. 2 (2003): 580–581. 10.  See Erin M. Cline, “Religious Thought and Practice in the Analects,” in Dao Companion to the Analects (Springer Netherlands, 2013), 289; and Erin M. Cline, Confucius, Rawls, and the Sense of Justice (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 52. 11.  Erin M. Cline, “Two Interpretations of De in the Daodejing,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 31, no. 2 (2004): 232n59. 12.  Xianglong Zhang, “Comparison Paradox, Comparative Situation and Interparadigmaticy: A Methodological Reflection on Cross-­Cultural Philosophical Comparison,” Comparative Philosophy 1, no. 1 (2010): 90–105. 13.  Ibid., 93 (emphasis mine). 14.  Ibid., 94. 15.  Ibid., 96. 16.  Ibid., 90. 17.  AC, 178. 18.  Ibid., xv. 19.  Ibid.

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20.  Donald W. Sherburne, ed., A Key to Whitehead’s “Process and Reality” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 195. 21.  David Ray Griffin, Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 111. 22.  Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Zhuangzi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 269. 23.  Roger T. Ames, “ ‘Knowing’ as the ‘Realizing of Happiness’ Here, on the Bridge, over the River Hao,” in ZHF, 287. 24.  Sherburne, Key to Whitehead’s “Process and Reality,” 142. 25.  ZHF, 7. 26.  AC, 210, and TH, 130–131. 27.  TH 190. 28.  TH, 193. 29.  Robert W. Smid, Methodologies of Comparative Philosophy: The Pragmatist and Process Traditions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 120. 30.  Alexus McLeod, Theories of Truth in Chinese Philosophy: A Comparative Approach (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 30.

chapter 2

Mining the Emotions, Deepening Ars Contextualis A Personal Reflection on the Power of Sensitive Reading Kirill O. Thompson

Increasingly aware of the irreducible contextuality of utterances in natural language, Western philosophers are no longer beholden to the gold standards of logical rigor, consistency, and generality advocated by earlier generations of thinkers. However, these standards remain potent ideals that continue to push philosophical discussions about reality, truth, and knowledge away from difference and particularity and toward similarity, commonality, and identity. In any case, sensitivity, whether in reading or in personal intuition, is not deemed a reliable measure in the traditional Western sort of epistemological setting, in which clear objective apprehension and inference are valorized and prioritized. A traditional Chinese perspective, however, would not admit that such uniform, regimented predispositions about an assumed singular world would have much purchase with humanity’s most basic experiences of life and world and the concomitant sorts of epistemology and ethics in play in common parlance. From a traditional Chinese perspective, our lifeworlds are essentially flowing, feeling realms, in which we experience everything as connected, responsive, interactive, and more or less resonant, yielding aesthetic fields constituted by distinctive arrays of particular foci, each manifesting a distinctive perspective on the field. There are no ultimate principles or privileged perspectives governing such flowing, feeling realms, just more or less harmonious orders and more or less resonant and encompassing perspectives. Situated in such lifeworlds, our flowing, feeling realms tend to be constituted by the given yet changing human forms of life played out in various life settings, be they simple or mixed, relaxed or vexed, happy 15

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or sad. Following the later Wittgenstein, I take such forms of life to be living inner and outer determinants of our interactive lives in context. The “inner” would include our instincts, impulses, and capacities, such as appropriate and effective use of language and interaction with others, and the outer would include the subtle, standard repertoire of interpersonal conduct, attitude, and thought that one learns and absorbs largely while growing up. Note how Confucian and Daoist “virtues” constitute facets of our personal forms of life as interfaces in such flowing, feeling realms; the former virtues are attuned to the human and yet sensitive to the natural, while the latter virtues tend to be attuned to the natural while yet staying sensitive to the human.1 These life settings start with self, family, and neighborhood and extend to friends, school, community, society, state, and the world. Indeed, these life settings could be extended indefinitely to include nature (heaven and earth) and the ecosystems that we cohabit with myriads of other species in a common living biosphere. Confucius expressed such sentiments while standing on a riverbank, musing, “Isn’t life’s passing just like this, never ceasing day or night!”2 It is no surprise that Confucius wished to devote his later years to the study of the Yi 易 (Classic of Change).3 Those intellectual pathfinders and waymakers par excellence—Roger Ames, David Hall, Henry Rosemont Jr., et al.—characterize this traditional Chinese notion of flowing, feeling life realms as composed of focus-­field spectra of aesthetic order.4 They regard the Confucian and Daoist projects of life-­cultivation as ars contextualis—that is, fine arts of contextualized “pathfinding,” culminating in efforts at way-­making to grasp, embrace, and interweave present arrays of particulars into freshly harmonized and propitiously correlated spectra constituting deepened and enriched aesthetic orders. In the view of these questing pathfinders, the project of traditional Chinese thinkers has always been to seek the basic loci of change and transformation in order to facilitate probing and fathoming the deep connections among present particulars in their emergent natural arrays, without appeal to any sort of transcendent ordering principle or explanation. Confucius understood our flowing, feeling life realms and forms of life as decisively stamped by our family relations, which constitute part and parcel of our natural endowments and patterns of facticity. It should come as no surprise that Confucius placed such a premium not just on the feelings, cultivations, and practices of filiality and fraternity but also on the reverential regard and deportment necessary in observances of ancestral sacrifices. He



Mining the Emotions, Deepening Ars Contextualis17

ascribed a special primacy to the feelings and expressions of reverential regard (jing 敬) operative in our sincere observances of ancestral rites and sacrifices, on the consideration that they purify our emotions and spirit and open our hearts so as to be resonant with ancestral spirits. I would argue that, for Confucius and Zhu Xi 朱熹 alike, it was this perceived catalyzing effect of reverential regard that made it crucial to their programs of cultivation, learning, and practice generally; for this opening resonance with the ancestral spirits would ground and vivify one’s affections for and interactions with one’s present relations against the living backdrop of a newly discerned fuller and richer tapestry of human connectedness. Noting how such reverential regard actuates one’s resonance with ancestral spirits and vivifies one’s interpersonal sensitivity and responsiveness, Zhu Xi broadened it into an attitude of mindfulness—with features of seriousness, concentration, humility, alertness, and responsiveness—to be maintained in daily cultivation, learning, and practice. He expected that cultivating oneself in this reverent, mindful spirit would stir one’s sensitive resonance with everything in one’s lifeworld and prime one to respond to affairs and interact with others appropriately (yi 義), and thus hit the mark in action (zhong 中) to achieve utmost propriety (zhongyong 中庸). This efficacy would be made possible, not merely by virtue of one’s resolve to achieve moral self-­realization, but more crucially by virtue of one’s heightened sensitivity and resonance with present phenomena, including kin and even “absent” ancestral spirits. For Zhu Xi, such sensitivity and resonance would make one ultimately percipient of, and responsive to, the formations, indications, and directions of the li 理 (pattern, inner patterning) connecting and shaping the world. In this light, such feelings of mindful reverential regard, if manifested and expressed sincerely in one’s life, would offer ways to mine unimagined depths of the emotions and kindle one’s resonance with absent ancestral spirits and precious others. In this way, such sensitivity and resonance would augur a deepening of one’s ars contextualis. In the following I attempt to show how the practice of “sensitive reading,” as opposed to programmatic methodical approaches to reading, would increasingly alert the reader to the evocative domains of certain philosophical, ethical, and literary writings and their tacit messages, allowing us as sensitive readers in turn to probe our own emotions and deepen our living art of contextualized pathfinding and way-­making.

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The Power of Sensitive Reading I recently reflected on Qian Mu’s stress on the conduct of “sensitive reading,” his insistence on the reader’s keeping a studied eye on ­textual and dialogical context—an alertness to not just what the ideas mean but how they would play out in the stream of life.5 Qian’s stress on sensitive reading resonates for me with Wittgenstein’s approach to reading and his later “dialogical” approach to presenting his reflections and insights. Notably, Wittgenstein read novels and stories out loud in an effort to identify with the characters in feeling and emotion as well as in sentiment and thought. He sought thereby to share more fully in their philosophical dilemmas and to enter into their existential and spiritual crises. His devotion to these works was so profound that in several instances he made efforts to learn to read them in the original language—so as to have not just a more authentic experience but a deeper resonance with the spirit of the writer as much as with his or her characters in novels. For example, he learned Russian to read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Danish to read Kierkegaard, and Norwegian to read Ibsen. Moreover, Wittgenstein adopted a dialogical approach to express his later thought more effectively, striving not only to remind readers of the play of language back in its home ground of living human speech contexts, but, ipso facto, to show how words, expressions, and meanings that are well understood in daily life language games and intercourse easily become peculiar, troubling, and false when ironed out as theoretical terms used in analytical propositions in monochrome, logo­centric treatises. Moreover, he sought to show the lack of human value or consequence associated with all sorts of philosophical theories, not to mention in those human sciences with pretenses to the status of natural science. He regarded such theorization and empty scientism as often potentially—and sometimes actually—dehumanizing. In my view, Qian Mu took a similarly oral approach to reading the Chinese classics and paid close attention to the dialogical dynamics of, say, Confucius’s discussions and Zhu Xi’s dialogues, which allowed him to bring out nuances and reflections that generally would not “occur” in theory-­driven, logocentric treatises and commentaries as conducted by his Western-­­ educated contemporaries. Generations of East Asian classical scholars read the classics aloud as the “normal oral way” and regarded silent reading as somehow devoid of life and spirit. As a modern student, I recall once hearing that, among twentieth-­century scholars of Song Neo-­Confucianism,



Mining the Emotions, Deepening Ars Contextualis19

Okada Takehiko 岡田 武彦 (1908–2004) of Kyushu University was known for reciting the Great Learning (Daxue 大學) and the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸) before rising and before retiring every day. At the time, I could not grasp the point of these daily recitation rituals, but gradually they came to make sense to me as an especially important practice in an age when human communications are largely mediated through electronic devices and thus increasingly silent and lacking in spirit. Let us return to the main point of this reflection by considering the lessons of some parallel approaches to sensitive reading. In a recent study, Magdalena Ostas compares Wittgenstein’s dialogical presentations of his philosophical investigations—a hallmark of his later work—with Wordsworth’s theory from the preface to Lyrical Ballads6 that for poetry to come alive it should reflect and express the basic emotions, feelings, and language of common humanity.7 In the course of her discussion, Ostas quotes a touching dialogical poem by Wordsworth, We Are Seven, which to her resonates with Wittgenstein’s dialogical approach and which to me resonates with Confucius’s and Zhu Xi’s discourses with friends and students on the human connectedness—vertical as well as horizontal—that underlies any properly sensitive conduct of human relationships, including those relationships enriched through ancestral rites.8 According to Ostas, Wordsworth’s poem “centers on a discrepancy between a young cottage girl and her adult interlocutor about what is to count in this world as a sibling, and thus a person, or a significant being.”9 The dialogue begins: “Sisters and brothers, little maid, “How many may you be?” “How many? Seven in all,” she said, And wondering looked at me. “And where are they, I pray you tell?” She answered, “Seven are we, “And two of us at Conway dwell, “And two are gone to sea. “Two of us in the church-­yard lie, “My sister and my brother, “And in the church-­yard cottage, I “Dwell near them with my mother.”

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“You say that two at Conway dwell, “And two are gone to sea, “Yet you are seven; I pray you tell “Sweet Maid, how this may be?” Then did the little Maid reply, “Seven boys and girls are we; “Two of us in the church-­yard lie, “Beneath the church-­yard tree.” “You run about, my little maid, “Your limbs they are alive; “If two are in the church-­yard laid, “Then ye are only five.”10 As Ostas points out, The young girl insists that, despite the death of two of her siblings . . . they still are seven in all, while her interlocutor asks . . . how many they be and reasonably insists that they are only five. . . . [T]he exchange takes place entirely around the central question of who will count at all as a brother or sister—that is, who can at all “be.”11 . . . The poem is entirely efficacious in making its “are” (we are seven) surprising and new.12 The adult in the poem holds the “realistic” view that the dead are dead and gone, whether to heaven or elsewhere. But the young girl is not deluded in that sense. As Ostas notes, “[She] does know death . . . as she . . . volunteers a factual narrative: her sister Jane ‘in bed . . . moaning lay’ (l. 50), and her brother John ‘was forced to go’ (l. 59) as well. Yet she insists that they are seven in all.”13 Interestingly, the adult thinks that “he has something to teach her”: “The rational education he attempts to give her surfaces in the final stanza: ‘But they are dead; those two are dead!’ (l. 65)”14 Utilizing a dialogical approach herself, Ostas provocatively continues: What, then, one might ask, doesn’t the young girl get? What is it that her interlocutor wants her to understand that she apparently willfully refuses to register or accept? That death is death? . . . [Certainly,] the disagreement between the cottage girl and the adult



Mining the Emotions, Deepening Ars Contextualis21

speaker has to do at once with questions about ontology (what counts as a person), ethics (the significance of one being for another), morality (how we do or we should think about death), and language (when we can say or do say that a person is). To divorce any of these c­ oncerns or questions from each other in their crucial interweave in this text, I think, is to reduce the . . . “enormity” . . . of what it is that this adult interlocutor actually might have to teach this particular child, . . . about . . . the significance of people in our world if he wanted to set her [use of the word] “are” straight. . . . [O]ne might say that what the speaker essentially objects to is the girl’s insistent refrain (“we are seven”), in other words, how she answers him and comes to talk about the living and the dead [alike] in our world.15 Incisively, Ostas concludes that the adult man objects to the cottage girl’s “basic noncanonical redescription of a state of affairs, to the liberty she takes with the most ordinary of words, and what that license bespeaks about her understanding”: She lives alone with her mother, and her dead siblings, lying just twelve steps from their door, are very much alive for her. Yet we don’t say they are after they have died; she does. We might say just that, that they are still alive for us, or we might confess that when tallying we are still inclined to count them too. But to insist that they “are” is to break a foundational rule of the [language] game—or to be a poet. What the young girl’s insistent “are” registers, then, is her ability to make language stretch and reach to the limits of meaning, her ability to see something surprising and new in what we ordinarily say. . . . [Thus,] it is essential to understanding the spirit of the poem to say that the two actually don’t share a world, and that we as readers are essentially drawn to the possibilities her world offers more than we are to his.16 To me, We Are Seven casts light on the mentality and sentiments that underlie Confucius’s discussions on, and sensitive conduct of, the ancestral rites, and his assertion that he practices ancestral rites as if his parents and ancestors are actually present (declarative).17 The poem reminds us, to my way of thinking, that Confucius’s “as if” approach is not a sort of urbane pretense or playacting “as if they were present”

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(subjunctive), but rather it is animated by the sincere feeling that they are present. Zhu Xi takes this attitude seriously enough to argue that the impulse to act as if the ancestors really are present has a biological basis, in that their blood is coursing through our veins. One’s feelings of reverential regard not only genuinely support one’s inner sense of sincerity and gravitas but somehow reverberate with a sort of inner sense of the presence of one’s departed ancestors. Ostas concludes: Wordsworth [like Wittgenstein] finds a deep link between the word and its localized unfolding, or the form of life, form of feeling, and form of moral relation that it is able to register and record. Words for both the poet and the philosopher are essentially saturated with the lives into which they are woven. They are revelatory of what we speakers, again, find interesting, significant, moving, important, unimportant, or utterly mundane. Insofar as they register these things, they offer a kind of record of what Wittgenstein called our natural history and Wordsworth the necessities of our nature, and insofar as philosophy too takes a consequential interest in that record, it is intimately bound to the poetic impulse. To reconstruct and reassemble that record in language in a way that renders it at once undamaged yet marvelous and surprising is one of Wordsworth’s aspirations in Lyrical Ballads. Again, Ostas shows that a proper understanding of the spirit of We Are Seven involves the deep realization “that the [girl and the man] actually don’t share a world, and that we as [sensitive] readers feel essentially drawn to the possibilities her world offers more than we are to his.”18 This reminds me of Wittgenstein’s remark: “If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts. . . . In short, the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole. The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.”19 He further observes, “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.”20 In Confucian parlance, good exercises of the will are essentially appropriate expressions of one’s cultivated humaneness and are fluent, responsive, and resonant with the others in context, whereas bad exercises of the will tend to be somehow stunted, self-­centered, and self-­serving,



Mining the Emotions, Deepening Ars Contextualis23

intent on protecting one’s share rather than sharing with others. The world of the humane person is broad, expansive, encompassing; that of the petty person is narrow, spiraling in, grasping. Their factually similar worlds are aesthetically and spiritually different: that of the humane man imbibes the living qi and resonates with the living presence of people, past as well as present, while that of the petty person tends to be stuffy, lacking in lively qi, and perceptive only of tangible presence as potential asset. Hence the one is happy, the other unhappy; they occupy different life realms. That much is clear, but we despair of articulating such matters in literal language. Confucius realized this and determined to “leave off speaking.” When his students asked, “If you do not speak, how will we, your followers, find the proper way?” the Master replied, “Does Nature speak? And yet the four seasons revolve and the myriad things are born and grow. Does Nature speak?”21 Confucius was aware that further explanations become empty rationalizations that detract from existential presence and sincere practice. As intimated, however, underlying meanings can be made manifest in human intercourse, as via Wittgenstein’s, Confucius’s, and Zhu Xi’s dialogic discourses and conduct. They thus can indicate and draw us toward the possibilities of their more expansive, encompassing worlds, not just through dialogical discourse and interactive conduct but through reflective poetry, like Wordsworth’s insistent We Are Seven and A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal. I contend that one would need to undertake the sort of careful, sensitive, essentially oral readings advocated and undertaken by Qian Mu—and surely practiced by Wittgenstein and Ostas—to evoke their significance and begin to mine one’s own deep emotions in appreciating, say, the sentiments and mentality involved in Confucius’s conduct of the ancestral rites. I am reminded of Zhuangzi’s story of “fish happiness.”22 While strolling across a bridge, Zhuangzi and Huizi see fish capering in the Hao River below. Resonating with the scene, Zhuangzi comments, “This is fish happiness,” to which Huizi—ever the detached objective observer and logic chopper—responds, “You are not a fish. How do you know they are happy?” Zhuangzi handily replies, “You are not me. How do you know that I do not know they are happy? Your very question intimates that you know I know it. I know it standing here by the water.” Dialogically, Huizi reflects his own lack of attunement with the situation. He lacks resonance, and his discourse is hobbled because of his

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philosophical commitments. Zhuangzi’s awareness of the fish happiness results from his openness and resonance, his rapport with the lively capering fish (which would have been evident to Huizi as well if he had not been so detached). Hence, Zhuangzi can reply that he knows it—because he is standing right there (resonating with the fish). He does not need to have direct access to the fish’s emotions or other corroborating testimony, such as would be officiously demanded by the skeptical empiricist. The Chinese text bears a clue to this resonance: The same term, you 游 (roam, ramble), is used to express Zhuangzi’s and Huizi’s lively jaunt in the country and the fish’s lively swimming.23 The life realm of the happy man differs from that of the unhappy man. The conclusion is robust and clear: Our conduct of sensitive, careful readings and reflections on prescient classics—such as Confucius’s Analects, Zhu Xi’s Classified Dialogues, Zhuangzi’s “Fish Happiness,” as well as Wordsworth’s We Are Seven and A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations—provoke us, as readers, not only to mine and probe our emotions to experience and explore new levels, but also to expand and deepen our ars contextualis such that our pathfinding and worldmaking become at once more expansive and also inclusive of relationships past and future as well as present. Certainly, this is what is missing from our present modern world, driven as it is by subtly self-­deceptive scientism and obsessed with shallow presence, now—ironically—virtual (and vacuous) online as much as veridical in life.

Notes 1.  See Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), chaps. 6 and 17. 2.  Analects 9.17; ACPT, 130. 3.  Analects 7.17; ACPT, 114f, 13f. 4.  See TTC; FF; and ACPT. 5.  Kirill O. Thompson, “Opposition and Complementarity in Zhu Xi’s Thought,” in Returning to Zhu Xi, ed. David Jones and Jinli He (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 149–176. 6.  William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads (London: J. & A. Arch, 1798). 7.  Magdalena Ostas, “Wordsworth, Wittgenstein, and the Reconstruction of the Everyday,” Nonsite.org, no. 3 (2011), http://nonsite.org/article /wordsworth-­wittgenstein-­and-­the-­reconstruction-­of-­the-­everyday.



Mining the Emotions, Deepening Ars Contextualis25

8.  Additionally, some people die yearning for continued contact, to be kept in the loop of memory, love, and care. In Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1749), Thomas Gray poeticizes, “On some fond breast the parting soul relies, / Some pious drops the closing eye requires; / Ev’n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, / Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires.” Eliot Deutsch, however, cautions: “Being a psychosomatic unity, a person vanishes on death. For if personal identity is as much body based as it is bound up with memory and the like, then on the loss of bodily being one’s consciousness could not involve that of an I or a me. It could, however, be of that which is unborn, eternal, abiding, and primeval—a nonpersonal, boundless consciousness, a state of being that is an ever-­present reality to be realized. With death the person game is over. Only various silences remain” (Eliot Deutsch, Creative Being: The Crafting of Person and World [Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1992], 231). 9.  Ostas, “Wordsworth, Wittgenstein.” 10.  William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven,” in Lyrical Ballads (London: J. & A. Arch, 1798) (emphasis added). 11.  Ostas sees Wordsworth making a similar point in a later poem, “one of Wordsworth’s most haunting mediations on death, ‘A slumber did my spirit seal.’ ” Ostas observes, “The enigmatic ‘she’ of the poem while still living to the speaker ‘seem’d a thing’ (l. 3)—that is, precisely not a living being rushing, like the rest, toward death, but something nearly inanimate; when alive, she ‘could not feel / The touch of earthly years’ (ll. 3–4). It is only when she dies and explicitly has ‘no motion’ or ‘force’ (l. 5) and cannot hear or see that her body begins to circulate and she comes into a sort of ‘life’: she is ‘Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course / With rocks and stones and trees!’ (ll. 7–8). Thus the question of ‘being’ in the world—counting— comes to Wordsworth in ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’ not as an abstract question about the mind or the body but specifically as an internal interrogation of what it means to conceive of a person as a ‘thing’—she seemed a ‘thing’: first an immortal thing, then a thing in the ground ” (Ostas, “Wordsworth, Wittgenstein” [emphasis added]). Ironically, while in life she had been a spirit, in death she became part and parcel of this living world. 12.  Ostas, “Wordsworth, Wittgenstein.” 13.  Ibid. 14.  Ibid. 15.  Ibid. (emphasis added). 16.  Ibid. (emphasis added). 17.  Analects 3.12. Some of Confucius’s followers began to treat the as if

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in the subjunctive sense without a sincere feeling that the ancestral spirits were present, which Mozi picked up on in his critique of Confucius’s followers’ observances of the rites. 18.  Ostas, “Wordsworth, Wittgenstein.” 19.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-­Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (New York: Routledge, 2001), 6.43. 20.  Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.522. 21.  Analects 17.19. Modified from ACPT. 22.  Watson, Chuang Tzu, chap. 17. 23.  Kirill O. Thompson, “Philosophical Reflections on the ‘Fish Happiness’ Anecdote,” Philosophy East and West 66, no. 4 (October 2016).

chapter 3

Confucianism as a Tradition of Reconstruction Returning to the “Way of Heaven”? Kurtis Hagen

Some scholars maintain that Confucius advocated a return to a particular Way already realized by ancient sage-­kings. For example, Arthur Waley writes, “[Confucius] believed that the one infallible method of rule had been practised by certain rulers of old, and that statecraft consisted in rediscovering this method.”1 More recently, Edward Slingerland has made a similar claim: “[Confucius] dedicated his life to both transmitting these cultural forms to his contemporaries and striving to embody them in his own person, hoping in this way to lead his fallen world back to the dao 道, ‘Way,’ of Heaven.”2 Likewise, Benjamin Schwartz maintains that Confucius believed that dao “had already been realized” in the past.3 According to him, dao is “the true order of civilization” with a “cosmic relation to Heaven”4—that is, “the patterns of the normative culture.”5 This is reminiscent of Michael Puett’s remark: “In the Lunyu [the Analects of Confucius], sages are those who bring patterns from Heaven to humanity.”6 Notice how this line of thought emphasizes the “Way of Heaven” (tiandao 天道), even though the only mention of tiandao in the Analects is in a passage that states that Confucius did not discuss it.7

Reconstruction of Confucianism David Hall and Roger Ames have expressed a contrasting view. They write, “Commentators upon the Confucian Analects often nominalize dao,8 explaining it as a preexisting ideal to which conformity is enjoined. . . . We shall argue that to realize the dao is to experience, to 27

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interpret, and to influence the world in such a way as to reinforce, and where appropriate extend, a way of life established by one’s cultural precursors.”9 Similarly, Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. write, “Full participation in a ritually-­constituted community requires the personalization of prevailing customs, institutions, and values. What makes ritual profoundly different from law or rule is this process of making the tradition one’s own.”10 This idea of “making the tradition one’s own” is central to Ames’s reconstruction of Confucianism. And in reconstructing the tradition in this way, Ames is truly making the tradition his own. But in doing so, he is at the same time faithful to the tradition and proceeding in a manner entirely consistent with that of Confucius. To construct is to put together elements at hand to produce something of value that coheres and will stand. To use the words of Hall and Ames, “The dao may be described in qualitative terms as a collocation of cultural vectors integrated and brought to a focus of intelligibility by successive perspectives.”11 These successive reconstructive perspectives, from those of Confucius and his early followers to those of Ames and his collaborators, re-­create and sustain the tradition by focusing on what they take to be the most productive threads of the tradition and creatively appropriating them to the present. To reconstruct, according to one meaning of the word, is to rebuild a duplicate, or a representation, true to the original. But at the same time, a reconstruction is always necessarily, in some way, different from the original. Creative reconstruction is certainly not creation ex nihilo. It is making the most out of the fragments and traces of tradition, reviving them in such a way as to make them applicable in the present. As Confucius himself says, “[Those who] rekindle the old with an understanding of the new can be taken as teachers.”12 In addition, Confucius also says: “People are able to broaden the way, it is not the way which broadens people.”13 And Confucius’s disciple Zixia explains: The various artisans reside in their workshops in order to fully develop their crafts [qi shi 其事]. Exemplary persons engage in learning in order to fine-­tune their way [qi dao 其道].14 In Confucius’s self-­description, as well as his description of exemplary persons, Confucius stresses flexibility and sensitivity to context, which in turn implies adaptability. With reference to several highly principled individuals, Confucius says: “I am different from these people. There



Confucianism as a Tradition of Reconstruction 29

is nothing that I have prejudged as permissible or impermissible.”15 In another passage, he explains, “In an exemplary person’s attitude toward the world, there is nothing that is [always] suitable, and there is nothing that is never [suitable], they [judge] the appropriateness [yi] according to the situation.”16 Further, in the second passage of the Analects, Master You says, “Exemplary persons devote themselves to the root. When the root is established, the dao will grow.”17 Filial piety and fraternal care (xiao di 孝弟) are the root from which ren 仁, the ultimate Confucian virtue of empathetic effort, will develop organically. This sounds a lot like Mencius’s view of human nature. But the passage also suggests that, for dao to grow, exemplary persons must devote themselves to the root in order to establish it. So while it is assumed that the way will grow and evolve, productive evolution of the way is not automatic. It requires the dedication of exemplary individuals, which seems more Xunzian than Mencian. In Analects 4.15, Confucius says, “My way is run through with a unifying [thread]” (吾道一以貫之). Master Zeng explains, “The master’s dao (夫子之道) is nothing more than doing one’s utmost with empathic consideration.” This tells us a couple things. First, Confucius has his own unique way, and second, the nature of this way, having a basis in empathic consideration, is necessarily open-­ended. Master Zeng elsewhere says, “Scholar-­officials must be strong and determined, for their burden [ren 任] is heavy and their way [dao 道] is long. They take ren 仁 [empathetic effort] as their own responsibility [ren 任]. Is this not heavy? And they carry it until their dying day. Is this not long?”18 The way described here is not some fixed order set out by the ancients but the path ahead still to be forged. This notion is reinforced in Analects 6.12, in which Ranyou says, “It is not that I do not delight in the master’s dao, it is that my strength is insufficient.” Confucius responds, “One whose strength is insufficient collapses along the way [dao]. But in this case, you have simply drawn a line.” Notice that both Ranyou and Confucius use the word dao. Ranyou explicitly refers to the way of Confucius, while Confucius uses it to refer to a process, a way stretching out in front of one. Also consider the following quotation, which, on my reading, suggests that dao does not have a single specific form of instantiation: “The state of Qi, with a single change, could achieve [the level of] Lu [至 於魯]. The state of Lu, with a single change, could achieve dao [至於 道].”19 Is this more adequately understood as suggesting that Lu is close

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to reproducing the rituals and norms of some golden age, or that it is close to succeeding in achieving a harmonious way with both traditional and novel elements? The first sentence of the quotation provides a hint. Presumably, the state of Qi is near to becoming the “equal” of Lu, without becoming the same (in the relevant respects). So too, the state of Lu could achieve dao without adopting precisely the same rituals and conventions of the early Zhou. Instead, it would be at the same level as previous admirable societies.

Was Confucius a Mere “Transmitter”? It may be objected that Confucius explicitly claimed to be a transmitter and not an innovator. For example, Slingerland writes, “Transmission is all that Confucius countenanced for people in his age, since the sagely Zhou kings established the ideal set of institutions that perfectly accord with human needs.”20 Indeed, in Analects 7.1, as it is typically translated, Confucius says, “I transmit rather than innovate [zuo 作].” The passage continues, “I am faithful to, and fond of, antiquity. I am like Old Peng.” It is important to keep in mind that this passage is autobiographical, not normative. Confucius is merely stating something about himself; there is no suggestion that to zuo would be a bad thing. Indeed, Hall and Ames suggest that Confucius is just being modest, since zuo is associated with being a sage-­king.21 However, it is not clear that “innovate” is the best way to understand zuo in this context. It may not be so much the lack of creativity but the lack of opportunity to put his philosophy to practice that Confucius is acknowledging here. That is, it may just be due to the propensities of circumstances (tianming 天命) that Confucius did not get an opportunity to zuo in the fullest sense. Confucius may be simply referring to his recognition that his role would be to teach (transmit) rather than to enact (zuo) his way from a position of political authority. Such an interpretation is not at all farfetched. It fits with Confucius’s biography, and it fits with the fact that that Confucius was a creative innovator. It is widely recognized that he used words in innovative ways. For example, Confucius’s use of the word ren was so unfamiliar to his followers that they asked him repeatedly for clarification, and although “ren” occurs 109 times in the Analects, they lamented that he did not discuss it enough.22 Ames and Rosemont also make this point: “The fact that Confucius is asked so often what he means by the expression ren would suggest that he is reinventing this term for his own purposes, and



Confucianism as a Tradition of Reconstruction 31

that those in conversation with him are not comfortable in their understanding of it.”23 Even Slingerland notes: In pre-­Confucian texts such as the Book of Odes, ren was an adjective referring to the appearance of a handsome, strong, aristocratic man, and the term is cognate with the word meaning “human being” (ren 人). In this context, ren would thus perhaps be best rendered as “manly.” One of Confucius’ innovations was to transform this aristocratic, martial ideal into an ethical one: ren in the Analects refers to a moral, rather than physical or martial ideal.24 It is also commonly pointed out that the word junzi originally referred to a hereditary, political category (prince), but Confucius used it as a moral one (exemplary person). It can be considered a matter of “the proper use of terms” (zhengming 正名) that only a person worthy of being taken as a model of virtue, not a mere prince by birth, deserves this honorific title. In addition to the meaning of junzi, Rosemont argues that Confucius altered the meaning of shi 士 from retainer, servant, or knight to moral apprentice, and sheng 聖 from wise person to sage. Rosemont explains, “Confucius appropriated all of these terms for his own use, giving them connotations and denotations that shifted their sense and reference away from position, rank, birth, or function toward what we (not he) would term aesthetic, moral, and spiritual characteristics.”25 Further, as Huang Chun-­chieh points out, “Confucius changed the meaning of [the word gong] from ‘rulership’ to ‘public,’ that is, people at large.”26

Further Criticisms and Clarifications Of course, as the quotations at the beginning of this chapter make clear, not all interpreters agree with this constructivist view of Confucius. I will here just briefly address two criticisms. Alluding to Analects 2.4, which says, “at fifteen, I aspired to learn” and “at seventy, I simply followed what my heart desired, and did not exceed what is proper,” Stephen A. Wilson comments, “It is ironic that Hall and Ames use these stages as the headings for the chapters in their book, because the image of Confucius undergoing rigorous training (in ritual and the classics) for fifty-­five years is fundamentally at odds with their conception of the sage as a creative innovator.”27 Frankly, I do not see the conflict. Hall and

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Ames never said the process was going to be quick or easy. After all, we all understand the pleasure one receives from helping others (which is what being ren is all about), and yet becoming the kind of person who consistently puts others first is, despite that pleasure, no easy task. In addition, in a review of Thinking Through Confucius, Philip J. Ivanhoe claims, “Confucius never originates a rite, composes new music, authors new classics, or institutes new names. In short, he never innovates.”28 However, I have just shown that he did institute a new moral vocabulary. Moreover, these words are precisely what define his philosophy, his dao. So this is no minor innovation. And while we know that he did endorse the modification of at least one specific rite,29 we certainly do not know that he never originated a rite and never composed music. He did seem to improvise in his conduct. More importantly, Ivanhoe’s critique misleads the reader by overstating what creative innovation involves. As I explained earlier, innovative construction is not creation ex nihilo, like making up an entirely new rite with no analogy to anything that has gone before. Rather, it is acting in the context of existing norms such that the norms are both reinforced but also potentially modified so as to make them conform to what is appropriate for the times and the occasion. It is analogous to a process that Anthony Giddens describes regarding language: When I utter a grammatical sentence, I draw upon various syntactical rules of the English language in order to do so. But the very drawing upon those rules helps reproduce them as structural properties of English as recursively involved with the linguistic practices of the community of English language speakers. The moment (not in a temporal sense) of the production of the speech act at the same time contributes to the reproduction of the structural qualities that generated it. It is very important to see that “reproduction” here does not imply homology: the potential for change is built into every moment of social reproduction (as a contingent phenomenon).30 Likewise, a ritual act reinforces the ritual but does so with all the potentially novel nuance that is called for by the particular circumstance, such as substituting silk for linen as a matter of frugality.31 In short, Confucius was in the business of reconstructing tradition even as he “transmitted” it.



Confucianism as a Tradition of Reconstruction 33

Looking at it this way, we can see that reconstruction of tradition is not just something that Confucius did. It is something that Confucians, as Confucians, necessarily do. Reconstruction of tradition has been the lifeblood of Confucianism from the beginning. We have seen that Confucius himself was engaged in creative reconstruction. And I would add that all significant Confucians after him have also engaged in such reconstruction, for if they did not, they would not have been significant.

Implications Interpretations have practical implications. What are some implications of the view that Confucius was speaking of some ideal way that was realized by the sages of old? First, it is exceedingly implausible from a twenty-­first-­century perspective that returning to these precise ways will provide a solution to modern problems. So the relevance of Confucianism would be limited. Second, Confucianism would tend to remain a regional philosophy, tied to a specific cultural tradition. Third, being an exclusivist view, such a form of Confucianism could only be, by its own standards, a rival to other ideologies rather than a way that can harmonize with them. On the other hand, the more “open” interpretation of Confucianism that Ames and others have advocated has distinct advantages over the glorification of some ancient realization of a perfect dao. It not only allows for evolution of norms as we accommodate to changing circumstances but also provides room for a productive pluralism. What we should strive for is not sameness of values, rules, or principles but, rather, cross-­cultural harmony, which assumes both differences between cultures and parity among them.32 Pluralism is not lazy or relativistic. It is not the view that you do it your way and I will do it my way, no questions asked. On the contrary, a pluralist can and should be just as rigorous in pursuit of quality and just as critical of moral and social failure as an exclusivist. The pluralist simply affirms the rather commonsense notion that there may be more than one more-­or-­less equally good way of doing things. It does not follow from this, of course, that my way of doing things must be as good as yours. But accepting pluralism allows us to ease up on the “quest for certainty” regarding who has the proper moral, social, political, or economic model. It suggests that there may be trade-­offs between models

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such that none can ever claim absolute supremacy. This, I must stress again, does not mean that competing models are beyond criticism. But it allows for the possibility, which I believe is largely the case, that the greater moral/social good can be done—at least when there are not clear and serious deficiencies in ideology—by working together on understanding the realities that impinge on our happiness and mutual harmony, while accepting reasonable differences in culture, values, and ideologies as neither a threat to our own nor somehow inferior. I want to end with a question about the future of Confucianism as a world philosophy. To be a world philosophy, Confucianism can no longer be roughly synonymous with “Chineseness.” Can we “broaden” Confucianism so that it can be viewed from a global perspective—or perhaps better, from any particular perspective—as an ennobling way of being human? I am not suggesting that Confucianism be foisted on the rest of the world. I am asking: What reconstructions or revisions of Confucianism would be necessary to make it appealing and applicable to various cultures, while still being “faithful to the ancients”? Is that possible? I suspect the answer to the last question is yes. To count as Confucian, significant attention would need to be paid to self-­cultivation facilitated through norms of proper conduct (li 禮), to integrity (yi 義), to public-­spirited effort (ren 仁), and to inspiring character (de 德) and model behavior exhibited by exemplary persons (junzi 君子) in the service of maintaining and improving harmonious (he 和) social conditions. Within the scope of Confucianism so conceived, there seems ample room for the evolution of a variety of social norms and practices that may be regarded as respectable even by those who have adopted somewhat different norms.

Notes 1.  Arthur Waley, The Analects of Confucius (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1938), 30. 2.  Edward Slingerland, “Kongzi (Confucius): ‘The Analects,’ ” in Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed., ed. Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2001), 2 (emphasis added). 3.  Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 64. 4.  Ibid., 65.



Confucianism as a Tradition of Reconstruction 35

5.  Ibid., 66. 6.  Michael J. Puett, The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 57. 7.  Analects 5.13. 8.  Non-­pinyin romanizations have been converted to pinyin. 9.  TTC, 227. See also Kurtis Hagen, The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2007), 139n70. 10.  ACPT, 51. 11.  TTC, 231. 12.  Analects 2.11. 13.  Analects 15.29. 14.  Analects 19.7. 15.  Analects 18.8. 16.  Analects 4.10; see also 2.14. 17.  Analects 1.2: 君子務本, 本立而道生. 18.  Analects 8.7. 19.  Analects 6.24. 20.  Edward Slingerland, trans., Confucius: Analects (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003), 64. 21.  TTC, 259. 22.  Analects 9.1. 23.  ACPT, 50. 24.  Slingerland, Confucius, 238. I understand ren as a combination of zhong and shu, using empathy as a guide in doing one’s utmost in the service of others. 25.  Henry Rosemont Jr., Rationality and Religious Experience (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2001), 83. 26.  Huang Chun-­chieh, “ ‘Rightness’ (i) versus ‘Profit’ (li) in Ancient China: The Polemics between Mencius and Yang Chu, Mo Tzu, and Hsün Tzu,” Proceedings of the National Science Council, Part C: Humanities and Social Sciences 3, no. 1 (1993): 62. 27.  Stephen A. Wilson, “Conformity, Individuality, and the Nature of Virtue: A Classical Confucian Contribution to Contemporary Ethical Reflection,” in Confucius and the “Analects”: New Essays, ed. Bryan W. Van Norden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 112n9. 28.  Philip J. Ivanhoe, review of Thinking Through Confucius, by David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Philosophy East and West 41, no. 2 (1991): 244 (emphasis in original).

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29.  Analects 9.3. 30.  Anthony Giddens, “Agency, Institution, and Time-­Space Analysis,” in Advances in Social Theory and Methodology, ed. K. Knorr-­Cetina and A. V. Cicourel (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 171–172. 31.  Analects 9.3. 32.  See Analects 13.23.

chapter 4

The Development of the Amesian Methodology for Comparative Philosophy Haiming Wen and Joshua Mason

In nearly four decades of translations and scholarship, Roger Ames and his coauthors have advanced sophisticated Chinese-­Western comparative philosophy and have pressed Western philosophy to recognize China’s philosophical achievements, thus allowing Chinese philosophy to achieve greater global significance. The primary thrust of Ames’s philosophy has been to correct Western misinterpretations of Chinese philosophy. Two themes are related to this central problem. One is a critique of the initial misunderstanding that traditional Western philosophy projected onto Chinese philosophy. The second is an appreciation of the profundity of Chinese philosophy. Ames’s work on these two themes appears primarily in three endeavors: philosophical translations, commentaries on Chinese philosophy, and creative cross-­cultural thinking. These three scholarly endeavors draw primarily on four theoretical frameworks: New Confucianism, Western sinology, pragmatist and process philosophies, and contemporary debates in comparative philosophy. This chapter discusses Ames’s methodology from these angles.1 Early on in his career, Ames found contemporary philosophers’ attitudes toward Chinese philosophy quite disturbing. Philosophy departments across the world were dominated by analytic and continental approaches, and these traditions generally failed to recognize the worth of Chinese philosophy. Ames attributed the marginalization of Chinese philosophy to the way that most translations were undertaken without sufficient reflection on the presuppositions that underlie Western thought. He saw that most Western authors unconsciously 37

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misinterpreted Chinese philosophy by using classical philosophical concepts and technical terms that had specific meanings in Western philosophy and religion. Thus, he advocated a method of translation and interpretation that would account for the philosophical connotations of key terms in Chinese, because reading through the lens of Western paradigms makes the Chinese tradition artificially religious, mystical, poetic, and supernatural and ends up overwriting and overdetermining the expression of the original texts. To help the English-­speaking readers of Chinese philosophy, Ames identified common misinterpretations and developed a method for reconstructing Chinese philosophy. He started with two basic goals in reinterpreting Chinese philosophy: to identify traditional Western misinterpretations, and to present authentic Chinese philosophy to a Western audience.

Identifying Misinterpretations and Reconstructing Chinese Philosophy The first translators of Chinese philosophy were Christian missionaries and were strongly influenced by their religious worldview. For example, James Legge was a young missionary who became fascinated by traditional Chinese culture and produced the first translations of most of the classics into English. In approaching the Chinese concepts of tian 天 and di 帝, which he translated as “Heaven” and “God,” respectively, he felt that these suggested a long-­standing Chinese recognition of the Christian God. Given Legge’s religious orientation, a Christian vocabulary filled his translations and interpretations of the Chinese classics. These translations made Chinese philosophy appear to be a branch of Christian culture, suggesting that the Chinese of the classical period believed in something akin to the God of the Bible. Through Legge’s monumental and influential work, Christian-­ influenced vocabulary entered the Western philosophical dialogue on Chinese philosophy. Likewise, the lasting influence of Greek philosophy throughout the history of European civilization persists in the English language. Even when being challenged by later thinkers, Plato, Aristotle, and their followers set the terms of debate, and their influence shapes our philosophical presuppositions. Translations that overlook the way philosophical assumptions are baked into our common vocabulary can import metaphysical foundations that are not necessarily native to Chinese thought.



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To address these subtle misunderstandings, Ames has sought ways to explain Chinese philosophy on its own terms and allow Westerners to recognize the profound nature of Chinese philosophy. For example, he claims that Chinese metaphysics does not rest on a notion of “substance,” such as we find in Western metaphysics. Nor does Chinese philosophy pursue “essences” that lie behind “appearances.” Given the lack of this identifying substance, it is not quite accurate to describe entities as discrete “things” (wu 物); they are more like enactive “events” (shi 事). “Things” are unique, substantial entities, but “events” are processes of flux with beginnings and ends. Ames believes that we should understand entities in Chinese metaphysics as processes or events, rather than as isolated and separated objects. This shift in metaphysical concepts is necessary for Chinese philosophy to speak on its own terms. For example, the language of substantial things cannot express the Chinese sense of creativity (chuang sheng 创生) and life in unending creative creation (sheng sheng bu xi 生生不息). Ames’s comparative methodology and his translation methodology are inseparable. While abandoning the older religiously and metaphysically biased vocabulary, he replaces key terms with new ones that draw upon process philosophy. This is a considered choice based on his understanding of Chinese metaphysics. For example, according to Ames, translating “Zhongyong” with Aristotle’s phrase, “Doctrine of the Mean,” can adequately express the intended meaning of “middle way,” but it does not express the emphasis that Confucianism places on experience. Instead, Ames translates it as “Focusing the Familiar,” which manages to convey the more specifically Chinese meaning of “focusing on familiar relations” (qie zhong lun chang 切中伦常). He further argues that other key terms—like tian 天, ming 命, xing 性, dao 道, and xiao 孝—should be retranslated to avoid Christian-­influenced vocabulary. This means avoiding commonly used translations such as “Heaven,” “mandate,” “inborn nature,” and “the Way,” which imply transcendental qualities that can mislead a Western audience. These English terms are mistakenly associated with corresponding concepts related to God and his divine revelation in Western theology. For example, in Ames’s translations ming is “to realize through effective communication,” not God’s “precept”; de 德 is “excellence” and “efficacy,” not “virtue”; ren 仁 is “consummate conduct” or “humanity,” not the religiously tinged “benevolence”; yi 義 is “appropriateness” or “fittingness,” not religious “righteousness.”2

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Just as Greek philosophy claims respect for its philosophical vocabulary of kosmos, logos, and nous, so the richly meaningful terms of Chinese philosophy deserve the same respect. When we cannot find a suitable English equivalent for a particular word, Ames advocates keeping it in pinyin with an explanation of the term rather than attempting to convert it directly into an English equivalent. Perhaps with this exposure, Westerners will come to respect the insistent particularities of Chinese philosophy. Emphasizing the processual character of Chinese philosophy, Ames retranslates and reinterprets many of its central concepts. Certain terms demand attention to their unique historical and cultural backgrounds. Applying this considered method, Ames translates xing as “natural tendencies,” rather than an unchanging “nature”; dao is “way-­making” in action, not reified as “the Way”; xin is not “mind” or “heart” or “heartmind” but, rather, a more dynamic “thinking-­and-­feeling.” These new translations are attempts to let Chinese philosophy speak in terms that are closer to its philosophical assumptions.

Intellectual Foundations Ames’s philosophical orientation draws from four main theoretical sources: New Confucian interpretations of Chinese philosophy, Western sinology, pragmatist and process thinking, and contemporary theoretical problems in comparative philosophy. While pursuing his education in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Ames encountered New Confucian interpretations of the tradition, such as those by Tang Junyi and Mou Zongsan. One example of their influence appears in Ames’s opposition to the use of the Western idea of “transcendence” to explain Chinese philosophy. Hall and Ames offer a very precise definition of strict transcendence: “A principle, A, is transcendent with respect to that, B, which it serves as principle if the meaning or import of B cannot be fully analyzed and explained without recourse to A, but the reverse is not true.”3 This conception of transcendence prompted many challenges. One set of challenges came from Confucian scholars, and another came from Western sinologists and philosophers. They believed that Hall and Ames denied the possibility of religious transcendence in the Chinese tradition. This critique is partly on the mark, since Hall and Ames’s point of view does depart from traditional ideas of “transcendence” (chaoyue 超越), but



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also partly askance, since Ames was thinking through the dialogue of Chinese New Confucianism. Mou Zongsan had focused on the concept of tiandao (天道) and the way that it was both overarching as the unity of heaven and earth and also present through humans. He borrowed the Kantian terms “transcendence” and “immanence” to explain how tiandao was both outer and inner without contradiction. Western philosophical notions of “transcendence” are tied to conceptions put forward by Christian theology and Immanuel Kant. In these traditions the term has become absolutized, and therefore our common expectation of transcendence is to be “absolutely transcendent” (chaojue 超绝). However, Confucianism maintains that external and internal are consistent with each other, and so, from this perspective, tiandao cannot consistently be both “absolutely transcendent” and immanent. The upshot is that tiandao may be transcendent in a less radical sense (chaoyue) while also immanent, but not “absolutely transcendent” (chaojue). The problems Ames confronts arise because Western scholars can misread Chinese thought due to their reliance on a subtly different Western context. Equipped with a perspective gained from the New Confucian movement, Ames was able to approach this issue, and others, in a new way. Ames’s work has been nourished by his reading of anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, medical experts, and others who cover the range of Western academic disciplines engaged in the broad field of sinology. His graduate training with D. C. Lau was foundational for his sinological perspective. Lau had wide influence in the West and translated many Chinese texts, including the Analects and the Daodejing. Lau’s own research orientations and analysis of the original Chinese texts helped shape Ames’s methodology, especially his sensitivity to Chinese language and a distinctive understanding of English. Ames’s attentiveness to the subtleties of English expression stems from Lau’s own attempts to remove Christian influences from his translations. Another strong influence during Ames’s education was A. C. Graham. Graham’s translations and his deep understanding of pre-­Qin thought4 and of the Cheng brothers’ philosophy5 gave Ames a broad survey of the Chinese philosophical vocabulary. Graham also developed the idea of “correlative thinking” in Chinese philosophy, which became a foundational part of Ames’s methodology for understanding the systematic relationships in Chinese conceptions of the cosmos. Ames’s use

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and development of this framework brings together many fields of Western sinology. Ames suggests that American pragmatist philosophy is rooted in American culture and has broken free from the metaphysical baggage of traditional Western philosophy. In this way, it can make a more fitting analog to Chinese philosophical assumptions. Ames argues that a pragmatic conception of truth can help us understand the dao of Chinese philosophy. He suggests that ancient Chinese thinkers were not in pursuit of a metaphysical or epistemological “truth” but, rather, in search of dao. In addition to its movement away from classical Greek notions of changeless forms and essential knowledge, John Dewey’s conceptions of community and democracy can express the more communitarian aspects of Confucian ethical and political thought, suggesting a social vision more in line with traditional Confucian assumptions. Through Hall, Ames came into greater contact with A. N. Whitehead’s process philosophy. Whitehead’s description of a process metaphysics provided Ames with an impressive example of how to explain Chinese cosmology without resorting to substance-­ based concepts. Given the foundational importance of the Yijing (Book of Changes) to the Chinese traditions, it makes sense to incorporate dynamic conceptions of the universe and human experience into the description of Chinese philosophies. Ames has suggested that we can take ideas from philosophers with broad projects in a manner that is retail rather than wholesale. This means we do not have to endorse everything a great philosopher proposed, but can draw on particular ideas that help us move forward on the philosophical path. Dewey’s pragmatism and Whitehead’s process philosophy supplied Ames with philosophical perspectives and vocabulary to help approach what is unique in Chinese thought. Ames’s translations have been molded by contemporary theories of comparative philosophy, with special attention to the views of Chinese philosophy among Western philosophers. He takes on topics that have become central issues in understanding similarities and differences across cultural frameworks. For instance, regarding “creativity” in the cosmos, he believes that Chinese philosophy stands in contrast with Western philosophy. Instead of the biblical God’s willful creation of nature and natural law or the Greek idea of creatio ex nihilo, in Chinese philosophy creativity is creatio in situ. This accords with Ames’s view on the relationship of the one and the many, since he believes that Chinese



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metaphysics does not generally pursue “the one behind the many” structure of much of Western philosophy. Rather, he has taken up Tang Junyi’s notion of the “wholeness of experience” and suggests that there is no metaphysically distinct realm of the dao that stands outside of the ten thousand processes and events. Concerning questions of the self,6 Ames uses the phrase “human becoming” as a more dynamic replacement for “human being” to translate ren 人. With this process-­oriented foundation, Hall and Ames suggest a focus-­field model to describe the self. Along with Rosemont, Ames continued to explore the notion of a “relational self” and the implications of this conception for ethics. On the question of personhood, Ames and Rosemont deny that there is an atomistic view of the person in Chinese philosophy.7 Rather, they argue that a person exists in relation to others and cannot be understood independently of his or her social context. Ames also carefully attends to the philosophy of the body within the Chinese tradition and opposes the importation of dualistic understandings of mind and body into Chinese philosophy.8 Concerning ethics, many comparative philosophers have argued that Confucianism is most akin to Western virtue ethics. However, Rosemont and Ames argue that Confucian ethics is best described as a “role ethics,” a sui generis approach that is distinct from the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics in the West. They believe that the Confucian person lives within a network of roles and relationships that gives shape and meaning to every life. The roles in which we find ourselves give us our identity and our sense of responsibility. In this way one of Confucianism’s paramount contributions to human experience is providing an alternative to Western traditions of individualistic ethics. A distinctive feature of Ames’s scholarship is his close cooperation and dialogue with his colleagues. His collaborative engagement with scholars from around the world is characteristic of his methodology, and exemplifies many of his ideas about relationality, cocreation, dynamic processes, and making the most out of one’s ingredients in life. Through careful scholarship, creative insights, and ongoing dialogue, Ames has developed a distinctive perspective and methodology that stand as a productive model of comparative philosophy.

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Notes 1.  An earlier version of this chapter in a different form appeared as Haiming Wen, “A Survey of Roger Ames’s Methodology on Comparative Philosophy,” trans. C. C. Huang, Contemporary Chinese Thought 41, no. 3 (2010): 52–63. 2.  For a critical challenge to this translational principle, see Lauren Pfister’s chapter in this volume, “On the Demystification of the Numinous and Mystical in Classical Ruism.” 3.  TTC, 13. 4.  A. C. Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986); A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (Chicago: Open Court, 1989). 5.  A. C. Graham, Two Chinese Philosophers: The Metaphysics of the Brothers Cheng (Chicago: Open Court, 1992). 6.  Roger T. Ames, Thomas P. Kasulis, and Wimal Dissanayake, eds., Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). 7.  Roger T. Ames, Wimal Dissanayake, and Thomas P. Kasulis, eds., Self as Person in Asian Theory and Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). 8.  Thomas P. Kasulis, Roger T. Ames, and Wimal Dissanayake, eds., Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).

part ii

Issues in Translation Comparative methodology and philosophical translation are intimately intertwined. In fact, many contributions in the first two parts of this volume could have easily fit in either category. These parts are divided to provide some analytical focus, but this should not imply that these two topics can be treated independently of each other. Together they enable the production of carefully considered cross-­ cultural philosophy. Part II of this volume turns to those issues that arise in translating across linguistic and cultural boundaries. When David Hall and Roger Ames set out to provide a novel interpretation of Confucianism, the problem they saw was not that Chinese was too difficult to translate syntactically but that, despite ever-­increasing understandings of classical Chinese grammar, Anglophone Chinese philosophers were hampered with inaccurate and philosophically loaded semantics. A lack of philosophical interpretation in the course of translating texts precluded any responsible interpretation of the texts by the larger Anglophone audience. The introductory material to each of Ames and his collaborators’ translations of classic texts presents a comprehensive statement of translation and the reasons for significant lexical choices. They call these works “philosophical translations,” drawing attention to the necessity of choosing our vocabulary with care. In lexicons of considerable length, key terms are not merely noted with alternative translations but given a broad exposition with textual support and philosophical argumentation. These introductions and lexicons lay out the general coherence 45

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of the core concepts and form for the reader a comprehensive worldview. This method of elaborating an interpretive context to situate one’s vocabulary choices is self-­reflective and critical, seeking out the distortions that traditional assumptions might project onto a foreign text. It claims that our terms of translation are not innocent, that they carry the weight of their technical and historical meanings in Euro-­American philosophy, and can be prejudicial in our comprehension of what Chinese authors were trying to say. Nonetheless, our current vocabularies are the only way we have to enter into dialog with others. In seeking a new English vocabulary for Chinese philosophy, Ames, Hall, D. C. Lau, and Henry Rosemont Jr. purposefully turned to gerundive language to present the process orientation of the classical Chinese interpretive context. Finding these terms to be closer in connotation to the meaning of Chinese terms than the Euro-­American substance-­ontological vocabulary of being or essences, they used them purposefully to reshape the foundational language used to understand Chinese philosophy. Interpretive context is crucial to translation in comparative projects. Thorian Harris, in “Philosophical Ames: On Teaching Chinese Thought as Philosophy,” sets up such an interpretive context for the following chapters. Harris debates the merits of categorizing classical Chinese traditions, such as Daoism and Confucianism, as “philosophy” or “thought”—a debate that today continues to divide faculty in departments and colleges across Europe and the United States. Choices about disciplinary designation in the target language can radically alter the available bridging concepts necessary for an accurate and meaningful translation of a text. Brian Bruya’s contribution, “To Render Ren: Saving Authoritativeness,” moves us from interpretive context squarely into translation with a thorough analysis of the Confucian concept of ren 仁 and the early Ames and Rosemont translation as “authoritative conduct.” Following the author’s own academic development, Bruya’s chapter offers a paradigmatic case study of what is at stake in the Amesian project of reinterpreting and retranslating classical Chinese texts for philosophical audiences. Steve Coutinho, in “Philosophy as Hermeneutics,” asks how translation issues entail recourse to philosophical methodological work. When translations from one language into another prove nearly impossible, Coutinho looks for those uncommon assumptions that are framing the



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source material. He argues that this hermeneutic process of analyzing semantic connections within concept clusters might be better conceived through the metaphor of indeterminate rhizomes rather than the metaphor of holographic foci. Attilio Andreini, in “The Attitude of the Junzi toward Wealth, Social Eminence, Poverty, and Humbleness,” analyzes English translations of Analects 4.5 to bring hermeneutics, philology, and translation studies to bear on the “simple” act of translating classical Chinese philosophy. Such work not only enables a translator to communicate philosophical content in a manner consistent with the original cultural ecology, but also helps one to identify those elements in the received text that may be corruptions of the original philosophical content.

chapter 5

Philosophical Ames On Teaching Chinese Thought as Philosophy Thorian R. Harris

There are several scholars who think it is inaccurate, or at least hermeneutically misleading, to describe early Chinese figures—such as Kongzi, Zhuangzi, and Mozi—as “philosophers” or to refer to the Analects, the Daodejing, and the Huainanzi as philosophical texts.1 For these scholars it is best not to speak of “Chinese philosophy.” In addition to affecting how we describe Chinese thought, this issue introduces the pressing professional questions of whether these thinkers and texts ought to be included as part of a philosophy department’s curriculum and whether anyone ought to teach a course on Chinese philosophy. Roger Ames has sought to defend the legitimacy of speaking of Chinese philosophy by drawing attention to the parallel between Chinese thought and the earliest sense of philosophy as the love of wisdom, where wisdom is understood to have “a practical dimension to it that knowledge does not.”2 Ames’s claim that philosophy was first understood to be a way of life is echoed in the work of historian Pierre Hadot, who tells us that during the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman eras “philosophia” was understood to denote a way of life, an art of living, a lifelong and uninterrupted practice that transformed how its practitioners lived their lives as a whole.3 With the exception, perhaps, of the Mingjia and the later Mohists, it is hard to deny that the texts attributed to the other schools of Chinese thought—particularly the Rujia, Daojia, and Yangjia—involve an articulation of a transformative, lifelong practice. It seems reasonable to think these texts involve “philosophy” in the sense of a way of life or an art of living. While we might accept the hermeneutic utility of this parallel between 49

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early Chinese thought and early Greek philosophy, the parallel raises a second professional issue. If to be philosophy Chinese thought needs to be appreciated as a way of life or an art of living, where does that leave those of us who attempt to teach Chinese philosophy at the university? Can we justify teaching an art of living or a way of life to our students? And supposing we can justify doing so, how might we succeed? In what follows I will adopt and extend the Amesian defense of speaking of “Chinese philosophy.” I will also seek to defend our right, as teachers, to challenge our students to live philosophically—to experiment with different ways of life and to thus cultivate their art of living. Finally, I will discuss an assignment I have adopted in my own classes for this purpose.

The Hermeneutic Risk of Speaking of “Chinese Philosophy” The question of whether it is accurate or inaccurate to speak of Chinese philosophy is often settled on the basis of cultural, national, or professional allegiances.4 G. W. F. Hegel, for instance, employs a certain conception of Chinese cultural history that reflects a commitment to the superiority of European culture. Thus, when he describes Kongzi as a moralist but not a moral philosopher and comments that the works associated with Kongzi are incapable of “rising above mediocrity” and that “for their reputation it would have been better had they never been translated,” it is difficult not to see these comments as the by-­product of the man’s Eurocentrism.5 Other forms of parochialism can also forestall the attribution of philosophy to Chinese history. In his book on Western philosophy, Anthony Flew writes, “Philosophy, as the word is understood here, is concerned first, last and all the time with argument. It is, incidentally, because most of what is labelled Eastern Philosophy is not so concerned—rather than any reason of European parochialism—that this book draws no materials from any source east of Suez.”6 Despite his attempt to defend his exclusive focus on Western philosophy from the charge of parochialism, Flew ironically confirms the charge by insisting on the universal applicability of a rather narrow—we might say, parochial—definition of philosophy. Nationalism can also motivate one to repudiate the legitimacy of speaking of “Chinese philosophy.” If Hu Shi and Feng Youlan were eager to vindicate Chinese culture by drawing parallels between Chinese thinkers and European philosophers, Min OuYang’s thesis that the Chinese tradition does not need to legitimate itself by borrowing the normative and conceptual connotations



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of “philosophy” might plausibly be understood as another attempt to satisfy the demands of cultural pride. Finally, whether it is accurate to speak of “Chinese philosophy” may be decided in advance by how one conceptualizes divisions in scholarly labor or whom one regards as having the authority to interpret and explain Chinese thinkers and texts. As Eske Møllgaard complains, some contemporary scholars and specialists “claim—with some fanfare—that philosophical expertise is necessary to explain Chinese thought.”7 In this way one’s professional identity can motivate one to take up a certain position on this question of whether it is accurate to speak of “Chinese philosophy.” But even if we set aside the question of accuracy, there is the danger that speaking of “Chinese philosophy” may prove to be hermeneutically inefficacious. That is to say, if we describe the early Chinese thinkers as philosophers, and the associated texts as philosophical, we may prevent genuine understanding of these thinkers and texts. OuYang, for example, argues that to describe Chinese thought as philosophy is to necessarily “philosophize it”—that is, to understand such thought in terms of the divisions or concepts associated with Western philosophy, such as the divisions among ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics, or the concepts of essence, existence, and so on.8 Such philosophizing is inevitable because, he claims, “philosophy” can refer only to Western philosophy. He holds this conclusion on the strength of two claims. First, until the 1980s “it was widely accepted in the West . . . that Western thought exhausted philosophy.”9 Second, without recourse to Western history and culture, the term “philosophy” may remain devoid of sense—“a meaningless noise or inscription.”10 It seems to be the second consideration that also prompts Carine Defoort to claim that anyone who would allow the “aphorisms of Laozi and the sayings of Confucius” to count as philosophy is necessarily involved in an “unchecked conceptual expansion” that will force the concept of philosophy to include almost everything and thus mean almost nothing.11 If “philosophy” derives its meaning from reference to Western philosophy, the term cannot but refer to a historically and culturally embedded practice—a practice Defoort colorfully describes as “a primarily Western cultural product, a strange and useless conversation in which European tribes have trained themselves, full of earnestness and sedulity.”12 One might counter that philosophy is a universal or cross-­cultural practice—either because it is something that is part of every culture, or because it is something that grew beyond the geographic confines of

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the West, much the way modern science has, to have Western roots but non-­Western branch tips. OuYang provides two objections to the apparent universality of philosophy. First, he says the thesis that philosophy is a cross-­cultural or universal activity “has not yet been persuasively justified.”13 Second, philosophy—in the basic sense of “loving wisdom”— seems an unlikely candidate for a universal disposition. As OuYang puts it, “loving wisdom (philo-­sophia) could not be, so coincidently, the common habit of all wise men [sic] in all respectable cultures.”14 To insist, in this light, that philosophy is a universal activity may be nothing more than what Robert Solomon refers to as “transcendental pretense.”15 It seems undeniable that if philosophy borrows its meaning from an exclusively Western enterprise and conceptual scheme, there is a certain hermeneutic cost to describing Chinese thinkers as philosophers, and Chinese thought as philosophy.16 As Hans-­Georg Gadamer points out, understanding often requires that we foreground the meanings we project upon texts and utterances—to remain constantly attentive to the potential alterity of what the other has to say. Often this means using any claim the other makes that appears to us to be either inconsistent or false as an opportunity to reflect on how our own expectations and assumptions might be responsible for the appearance of inconsistency or falsehood. In this fashion we can go about identifying our “prejudices”—that is, projected meanings—that distort what the other is saying.17 It is OuYang’s position that “philosophy” is just such a distorting prejudice; if we blithely attribute philosophy to Chinese thinkers and texts, the concepts associated with the term will only serve to distort the material we are seeking to understand. If nothing else, the term will serve to gloss over the very real difference between the purposes of (Western) philosophy and Chinese thought. While philosophy “prioritizes all sorts of human knowledge and enjoys the wonder with it,” Chinese thought is, he says, principally concerned with “human life itself, and how to achieve peacefulness, harmony and stability of body and mind (安身立命), [and] wisdom of virtues (德; 仁; 聖 . . .).”18 Thus, he concludes, Chinese thought does not “deserve” the name of philosophy in any sense: “It never has been philosophy and may never be, I hope.”19 Yet must we always choose between strict identity and distorting reductionism? While Gadamer acknowledges that some of our prejudices may distort a text or utterance, he maintains that without prejudices—that is, projected meanings—no understanding would be possible. We must use what is familiar to understand the unfamiliar. As Ames puts it, “We



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can only know what we don’t know by invoking what we do know. This means that cross-­cultural understanding must proceed analogically with each tradition having to find within its own resources a vocabulary that enables it to restate in some always imperfect way the . . . cultural assets of the tradition that it would understand better.”20 The question then becomes whether philosophy—however it might be conceived—is an apt analog for understanding Chinese thought. Surely if we are speaking analogically when we speak of “Chinese philosophy,” there is no need to think that we are somehow claiming that philosophy is universal; we need not be claiming anything more than that philosophy—or at least a particular conception of philosophy—is close enough to what we encounter in Chinese history to be able to foster understanding rather than misunderstanding. OuYang seeks to dismiss this orientation by claiming that “any possible similarity still needs to be claimed from a certain stance, and so it is difficult, without the possibility of a God’s-­eye-­point-­of-­view, to tell whether the similarity judged from a certain framework is a genuine sameness or is just an artificial assimilation.”21 A major issue facing OuYang’s position is his commitment to a particular conception of hermeneutics, one where we must be able to detect perfect parallels between the familiar and the unfamiliar before we can be assured of our interpretation of the unfamiliar. But as perfect parallels will themselves require interpretation, his hermeneutics assures us that between the familiar and the unfamiliar there stands a chasm of infinite regress. Ames recognizes the hermeneutic risk involved in using Western conceptual categories, such as those associated with Western philosophy. As he remarks, “[Chinese thought] does not parse comfortably into the standard Western philosophical categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and so on. Indeed, in a culture where there is a presumed continuity between knowing and a productive doing (知行合一), epistemology very quickly spills over into ethics and social and political philosophy.”22 To insist on these categories when seeking to understanding Chinese thought will produce “more loss than gain.”23 Yet, as Ames and his collaborators Tongqi Lin and Henry Rosemont Jr. remind us, “philosophy” is itself a rather ambiguous term: Alone among the academic disciplines of the modern West, philosophy takes the problem of defining its subject matter as an essential element of its subject matter. And different philosophers

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have put forth a variety of different and incompatible definitions—including definitions which deny a subject matter for philosophy altogether, and hence exclude it from the list of proper scholarly disciplines.24 As a result, it is simply impossible to distinguish philosophical and nonphilosophical texts or persons or to use or denounce the expression “Chinese philosophy” without “privileging one definition of ‘philosophy’ over the others.”25 This is a tremendously significant point as critics of the hermeneutic efficacy of using the expression “Chinese philosophy” share a particular conception of philosophy. They describe philosophy as “strange and useless”; as a “methodologism” that has “lost connection with the existential, spiritual and religious dimensions of ancient philosophy”; as something that “prioritizes all sorts of human knowledge and enjoys the wonder with it,” regardless of how such knowledge might contribute to everyday life.26 This is to conceive of philosophy as a fundamentally impractical enterprise. Even if some might argue that this is the dominant conception of philosophy among academics, it is only one conception among many. Philosophy, at least in its earliest sense, is not an abstract or impractical enterprise. As Ames reminds us, “If we look at the first person that is described as a philosopher, it is Herodotus describing Pythagoras . . . a person who loved wisdom, where we see wisdom is different from knowledge as the productive application of knowledge. Wisdom has a practical dimension to it that knowledge does not.”27 To be fair, even contemporary academic philosophy need not be useless. In addition to training students in the skills of analyzing and constructing arguments, a philosophy course can help students develop some of the skills necessary for informed citizenship.28 Still, the potential utility of academic philosophy does not deny the truth of Thoreau’s lament that “there are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.”29 Even if academic philosophy and the earliest notion of philosophy as a way of life are both capable of informing our actions, and thus both capable of having practical significance, there often remains a significant gulf between these two conceptions of philosophy. This is because only philosophy as a way of life transforms one’s life as a whole. There are also no philosophical holidays when philosophy is understood as a way of life. While academic philosophy might become a way of life for some (as it seems to be for some professors of philosophy), for



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many academic philosophy is not a way of life but is, at most, a discrete set of skills that are practiced from time to time. The problem is that those critical of speaking of “Chinese philosophy” ignore the earliest sense of philosophy as a way of life and thus confuse “philosophical discourse” for “philosophy.” Were we to avail ourselves of the earliest definition of the word, we might find it rather apt for describing Chinese thought. Philosophy, in this sense, is consistent with OuYang’s description of Chinese thought as “principally concerned with human life itself.”30 While the Western philosophical tradition has largely abandoned philosophical living and reduced itself to philosophical discourse or, as Ames puts it, philo-­episteme (the love of knowledge), the Chinese tradition has retained its focus on an art of living or ways of life. A surprising implication is that the Chinese tradition, rather than the Western tradition, may have a more sustained claim upon the ideal of philo-­sophia.31 Despite the merits of speaking of Chinese philosophy, we may wonder whether there might be a better way of speaking. Two possibilities are “Chinese thought” (an expression I have used above to avoid begging the question) and OuYang’s coinage, “sinosophy.” Concerning the latter expression, while it may allow us to think of the Chinese tradition in terms other than the concepts and practices associated with the modern, academic sense of philosophy, I am not sure this could not be accomplished simply by using “Zhongguo Zhexue” (中國哲學) and leaving the expression untranslated. Besides, if one refuses to use “philosophy” out of fear that it will unfairly universalize the love of wisdom, one should also avoid using a term that makes use of sophia out of fear of universalizing Western conceptions of wisdom. There is, however, much to commend the use of the phrase “Chinese thought.” When asked to provide the title to his new position at the Collège de France, Hadot—someone intimately familiar with the earliest notion of philosophy as a way of life—decided against using the term “philosophy” and instead used the title of “Hellenistic and Roman thought.” He used “thought” instead of “philosophy,” he said, “to reserve the right to follow this philosophia in its most varied manifestations and above all to eliminate the preconceptions the word philosophy may evoke in the modern mind.”32 While “philosophy” comes freighted with connotations, one is at liberty to define “thought.” Another advantage of speaking of “Chinese thought” is that there are no Departments of Thought at universities. There is, in other words, no professional

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ownership. As such, “Chinese thought” may foster interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations in a way that “Chinese philosophy” does not. Of course, “thought” is itself even more ambiguous than “philosophy”—what is one studying, or not studying, when one looks to Chinese thought? Speaking of “Chinese thought” rather than “Chinese philosophy” also runs the risk of condescension.33 This is because philosophy is itself an evaluative term: “a qualitative claim that speaks to the depth and quality” of a culture—its ability to think about “the most important issues that confront us as human beings.”34 Thus, to refuse to speak of Chinese philosophy may easily be interpreted as a slight of the Chinese tradition. Perhaps the best position is to have no fixed position but, rather, to follow Kongzi’s wisdom of adapting one’s words to whom one is speaking.35 When one is speaking with an academic philosopher, it might prove productive to use the expression “Chinese philosophy,” since it can serve to problematize the common conception of philosophy and challenge ethnocentric biases against the Chinese tradition. When one is speaking to someone outside the field of academic philosophy, however, “Chinese thought” may be apropos, given its ability to foster interdisciplinary collegiality and discussion.

Teaching Chinese Ways of Living I think teaching philosophy as a way of life demands that we provide our students with occasions to experiment with philosophy in their everyday lives. In the classroom we can certainly discuss the distinction between philosophical discourse and philosophy as a way of life; we can discuss normative and empirical support and objections to the practical commitments of a given philosophical school, just as we can discuss a school’s philosophical exercises as they were realized in the lives of past philosophers. But to think that this is all there is to teaching philosophy as a way of life is like thinking that a course in art history might supplant a course in studio art. The value of personal experience—in studio arts as well as the art of living—should not be ignored. There may be nothing more personal than one’s way of living, nor any art more utilized than one’s art of living. When students are asked to experiment with a philosophy, there is a risk of undermining the safety of the learning environment as well as the pluralism inherent to the university’s curriculum. I have found that students often think of their



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religions, if they are religious, as fulfilling the role of a way of life. To expect them to engage in a different way of life may be seen as a threat to their own identities and practical commitments. While I am cognizant of this risk, I do not think it necessarily precludes us from teaching the art of living. After all, as academics and as professors of philosophy, we may already be exemplifying a way of life. We also teach our students a particular set of skills that we regard, perhaps tacitly, as part of artful living. We endeavor to equip our students with the tools for argumentation and to cultivate in our students certain dispositions. Ideally, students come away from a course in philosophy better equipped to construct and criticize arguments. But they also develop—again, ideally— an ability to listen to another’s position even when they initially disagree with it, an ability to identify and challenge their own assumptions, and an ability to be at ease with confusion and doubt so that they are less driven to obfuscate such confusion and doubt with willful ignorance or dogmatism. Suppose, then, we were willing to teach ways of living; how might we go about teaching such ways? In an attempt to provide students in my courses on Chinese philosophy, Asian philosophy, and ethics with an opportunity to experiment with philosophy as a way of life, I have given the following assignment. After lecturing on a range of philosophical schools, I ask my students to select a tradition—Daoism or Ruism, Cynicism or Stoicism, and so on—and live it for five days.36 In preparation for this assignment I focus my lectures on the basic, practical commitments and philosophical exercises of each of the schools we discuss. By “philosophical exercise” I have in mind such things as Stoic praemeditatio malorum,37 the Ruist practice of remonstrating through allusion and other means of indirect communication,38 and the Zhuangzian use of perspectivist stories and correlativity to upset normative distinctions.39 Two weeks before the assignment is scheduled to take place I ask the students to identify their school and begin developing a philosophical regimen that stipulates which exercises they wish to experiment with and how they will translate the basic, practical commitments of their schools into contemporary life. During at least one class meeting, students are broken into their respective schools to workshop their proposed regimens. I also look over their proposals and provide feedback. Finally, the first day of the assignment arrives, and at the end of the class period we begin to engage in philosophical experimentation—keeping a journal for the duration of the assignment. Students turn in their

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journals, but they also write papers, based on both the assigned reading and their journals. This paper assignment allows them to reflect on what they learned about their philosophical schools—to assess the potential value and validity of the philosophical tradition. The paper also allows the students to reflect on what their experiments taught them about themselves. With this assignment students are no longer evaluating only philosophical discourse; they are now evaluating the truth of a particular way of life.40 I like to think of this assignment as one university teacher’s attempt to upset Friedrich Nietzsche’s charge that “the only critique of a philosophy that is possible and that proves something, namely trying to see whether one can live in accordance with it, has never been taught at universities: all that has ever been taught is a critique of words by means of other words.”41

Final Reflection It can be quite challenging to approach Chinese philosophy in general, and Ruist philosophy in particular, as a way of life. This is true not only for students but for teachers as well. If nothing else, to teach Ruist philosophy as a way of life is to strive to share Kongzi’s commitment to continuously learning, to in fact love learning (haoxue 好學)—something that stands out as one of the most vital aspects of the Ruist way of life. This implies that a good teacher ought to be the person in the classroom most capable of learning, that the best teacher is also the best student. Such an engagement with Ruist philosophy often involves blurring the line that might be drawn between the professional and the personal because it demands practical engagement—the bridging of text and life through continuous experimentation with the application of Ruist wisdom.

Notes 1.  On the inaccuracy of speaking of Chinese philosophy, see G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 1: Greek Philosophy to Plato (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995 [1840]); G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Willey Book Co., 1900 [1837]); Martin Heidegger, What Is Philosophy? (New Haven, CT: College and University Press, 1956); and Anthony Flew, An Introduction to Western Philosophy (London: Thames



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and Hudson, 1971). On the hermeneutic inefficacy of speaking of Chinese philosophy, see Eske Møllgaard, “Eclipse of Reading: On the ‘Philosophical Turn’ in American Sinology,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 4, no. 2 (2005): 321–340; Min OuYang, “There Is No Need for Zhongguo Zhexue to Be Philosophy,” Asian Philosophy 22, no. 3 (2012): 199–223; Carine Defoort, “Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate,” Philosophy East and West 51, no. 3 (2001): 393–413. 2.  Yih-­hsien Yu, “Dewey, Whitehead, and Comparative Philosophy: An Interview with Roger Ames,” Philosophy and Culture 哲學與文化 429 (2010): 98. 3.  Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995), 268, 273. 4.  See Defoort, “Is There Such a Thing?” 5.  Hegel, Lectures, 121; Hegel, Philosophy of History, 136; see also Young Kun Kim, “Hegel’s Criticism of Chinese Philosophy,” Philosophy East and West 28, no. 2 (1978): 173–180. 6.  Flew, Introduction to Western Philosophy, 36. 7.  Møllgaard, “Eclipse of Reading,” 321. See also Roger T. Ames, “Getting Past the Eclipse of Philosophy in World Sinology: A Response to Eske Møllgaard,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 4, no. 2 (2005): 350. 8.  OuYang, “There Is No Need,” 209. 9.  Ibid. 10.  Ibid., 210. 11.  Defoort, “Is There Such a Thing?,” 406. 12.  Ibid., 404. 13.  OuYang, “There Is No Need,” 209. 14.  Ibid. 15.  Robert Solomon, History and Human Nature: A Philosophical Review of European Philosophy and Culture, 1750–1850 (Brighton, UK: Harvester Press, 1980), 9, 148. 16.  See Roger T. Ames, “Getting Rid of God: A Prolegomenon to Dialogue between Chinese and Western Philosophy in an Era of Globalization,” in Dialogue of Philosophies, Religions and Civilizations in the Era of Globalization, ed. Zhao Dunhua (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2007), 34. 17.  Hans-­Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 1989), 265–271. 18.  OuYang, “There Is No Need,” 215 (ellipsis in original). 19.  Ibid., 220. 20.  Ames, “Getting Past the Eclipse,” 349.

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21.  OuYang, “There Is No Need,” 210. 22.  Ames, “Getting Rid of God,” 33. 23.  Ibid., 34. 24.  Tongqi Lin, Henry Rosemont Jr., and Roger T. Ames, “Chinese Philosophy: A Philosophical Essay on the ‘State-­of-­the-­Art,’ ” Journal of Asian Studies 54, no. 3 (1995): 745. 25.  Ibid. 26.  Defoort, “Is There Such a Thing?,” 404; Møllgaard, “Eclipse of Reading,” 332; OuYang, “There Is No Need,” 215; Hadot, Philosophy as a Way, 272. 27.  Yu, “Dewey, Whitehead,” 97–98. 28.  See Martha C. Nussbaum, Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 29.  Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, 1942 [1854]), 39. 30.  OuYang, “There Is No Need,” 215. 31.  Yu, “Dewey, Whitehead,” 98. 32.  Hadot, Philosophy as a Way, 53. 33.  Ames, “Getting Past the Eclipse,” 352. 34.  Ames, “Getting Rid of God,” 34. 35.  See Analects 11.22 and CRE, 194–200. 36.  I have learned that Steve Angle, Justin Tiwald, and Stephen Grimm give students a similar assignment. 37.  Or “premeditation of misfortunes.” See William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 65–84. 38.  François Jullien, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece (New York: Zone Books, 2000). 39.  A. C. Graham, “Chuang-­tzu’s Essay on Seeing Things as Equal,” in A Companion to Angus C. Graham’s “Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters,” ed. Harold D. Roth (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003 [1970]). 40.  Lin, Rosemont, and Ames, “State-­of-­the-­Art,” 746. 41.  Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” in Untimely Meditations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [1874]), 187.

chapter 6

To Render Ren Saving Authoritativeness Brian Bruya

When I applied for the University of Hawai‘i graduate program in philosophy, the writing sample I submitted was a grandiose project to establish a definitive translation of the central Confucian moral ideal of ren 仁. Before undertaking the task itself, I first catalogued existing translations and explained why each was inadequate. This was in 1996, two years before Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. published their groundbreaking translation of the Analects, in which they translate ren as “authoritative conduct.”1 Needless to say, “authoritative conduct” was not on my hit list.2 In this chapter, I revisit that question by extending my examination to Ames’s rendering of the word ren—not to criticize it but to support it. I now tend to prefer that ren not be translated at all and that instead it be explained so that eventually it will simply enter the English language as a technical term of moral philosophy. That, I think, is preferable to any translation, which itself would have to receive extensive explanation in order to give the full sense of the Chinese and to avoid reading-­in unintended connotations from the English history of whatever term is chosen for translation. In my early paper, I called such a position absurd, settling instead, after a long argument involving the writings of Thomas Reid and his contemporaries, on the term “benevolence”—arguably the standard translation at the time. I did not exactly go out on a limb. With his translation of “authoritativeness,” Ames did go out on a limb. In all the years that I studied with Ames, I was never convinced that it was the best translation. I do not think I am alone in that view, as 61

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few others have adopted the translation. Even Ames has moved past it in his recent analysis.3 But lately I have begun to reexamine Confucius’s basic understanding of political power, which has me, finally, gravitating back toward “authoritativeness” for ren.4 In what follows, I will give a brief defense of “authoritativeness”—not as a definitive translation of ren but as a plausible understanding of the term and as a helpful angle from which to approach Confucius’s philosophy more broadly. To make my point, I must first make a digression into the social science of authority and the history of pre-­Confucian China. After World War II, there was a flurry of activity among social scientists to account for the rise of fascism in Europe. Why had so many millions of people been willing to follow the destructive dictates of a handful of leaders? Stanley Milgram’s classic experiments on obedience to authority were just such an attempt at explanation. Another influential attempt came from psychologists John French and Bertram Raven (1959), who taxonomized power into five types. They understood power as fundamentally a relationship between agents. What would motivate person P to surrender autonomy to the influence of social agent O? According to French and Raven, the five motivating forces within an O/P relationship are reward, coercion, internalization of moral norms (“legitimate power”), common identity (“referent power”), and expertise. In early China, there were no social scientists, but there were keen observers of political processes, and we can find explicit mention in the texts of the day of all five of these kinds of power. The usual taxonomy was reward and coercion on one side and internalization of norms on the other. We see this dichotomy clearly in Analects 2.3, where Confucius says: Lead the people with administrative injunctions (zheng 政) and keep them orderly with penal law (xing 刑), and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence (de 德) and keep them orderly through observing ritual propriety (li 禮) and they will develop a sense of shame, and moreover, will order themselves.5 To French and Raven, power is legitimate when the follower acts from an internal moral basis, when there is a felt “oughtness” to it.6 We see a similar prioritization of the moral in Confucius. In Analects 13.6, Confucius says:



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If people are proper (zheng 正) in personal conduct, others will follow suit without need of command. But if they are not proper, even when they command, others will not obey. The “proper” here obviously has a moral valence to it. But Confucius was not a scholar trying to explain political power from a purely objective viewpoint. He wanted to understand it in order to exploit it for the social good. To this end, Confucius was a follower of Guan Zhong, arguably the world’s first major advocate for meritocracy—rule by the capable.7 It is not often noted in current philosophical writings on early China that something monumental occurred in the two centuries prior to Confucius. After the fall of the House of Zhou in 771 BCE, all pretense to brotherly loyalty among the various states fell away, and each realized it was potential prey for the others. One after another, the rulers of the states cleaned house, getting rid of the dead weight in the nobility. With many of the nobility deposed or killed outright, governments were open to restructuring. This occurred first in Qi, Lu’s neighbor to the northeast. The man responsible was Guan Zhong, himself a commoner. New administrative units were created, positions were given according to ability, the military was reformed along the same lines, and taxes were levied to raise funds, which also freed up peasants to undertake more commercial activity (instead of devoting all of their labor to the nobility). The result of Guan Zhong’s restructuring of the state was the ability to mobilize human resources with unprecedented efficiency, and soon Qi was swallowing up neighboring states or rescuing other states from their enemies, to the point that it dictated the terms of the first interstate truce. One provision of the peace treaty was the outlawing of hereditary offices and the insistence that offices be held only by men appropriate to the post. Soon other states followed suit. It was a long and halting process, more thorough in some states than in others, and by the time of Confucius’s death in 479 BCE, four states with successful reforms (Qi in the northeast, Jin in the central north, Qin in the West, and Chu in the south) had absorbed or dramatically reduced the vast majority of the original 150 or so Zhou states. This is where ren comes in for Confucius. For Confucius, ren was the pathway to legitimate authority. The funny thing is that there seemed to be an ongoing confusion between Confucius’s educational aims and

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those of his students. Where the students often emphasized getting a position in society, Confucius emphasized attaining the virtues and wisdom that would make them moral authorities, not the basic competencies that would make them good functionaries. We see a discussion of this issue in Analects 5.8: Meng Wubo asked: “Is Zilu ren?” Confucius said, “I’m not sure.” Meng persisted. Confucius said, “You could put him in charge of the military levy of a large state, but I’m not sure that means he is ren.” “What about Ranyou?” Confucius said, “You could put him in charge of a large city or a large estate, but I’m not sure that means he is ren.” “What about Zihua?” Confucius said, “Zihua is suitable for the royal court and can be trusted to diplomatic matters, but I’m not sure he is ren.”8 In the above cases, Confucius says that each of the men can be entrusted with a certain kind of authority, but the ability they have that qualifies them to be entrusted with that authority is not sufficient to qualify them as ren. There is a suggestion here—put forward and then undermined by Confucius—that the ability to earn authority may itself be sufficient to qualify as ren. But this kind of authority does not have a necessarily moral component. Because Confucius does not entirely deny this viewpoint on ren (and because other passages back it up—see below), we can conclude that one aspect of ren is some kind of useful social ability that confers relevant tacit authority. In French and Raven’s taxonomy, this would be called expert power—the kind of influence that a doctor, an attorney, or a teacher has by virtue of their knowledge and expertise. However, while Meng Wubo thinks that having the abilities to take on a position of military, administrative, or ritual authority counts as ren, Confucius says that there is more to ren than just that: A junzi is not a tool.9 In another passage, Zizhang pushes Meng Wubo’s question further by mentioning two important virtues and wondering if adding these to



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the mix will then qualify as ren.10 The virtues are zhong 忠 (which in this context can be understood as conscientiously doing one’s job for a superior) and incorruptibility. Confucius acknowledges that these are both important virtues, but, as above, he says he is “not sure” that they qualify as ren. So we have still not arrived at another major component of ren. Of the many passages that discuss ren, there are two that seem to settle the matter. In Analects 6.30, Zizhang asks: What about the person who is broadly generous with the people and is able to help the multitude—is this what we could call ren? Confucius responds: Why stop at ren? This is certainly a sage (sheng 聖). Even a Yao and a Shun would find such a task daunting. High praise, indeed. Zizhang hits on something here that the others had missed. Notice in Analects 5.19 that although two important virtues are mentioned, both of them are about how we relate to our superiors in a virtuous way. This is important, of course. Recall the fundamental role of xiao 孝 in Confucius’ philosophy. Xiao is important to Confucius as the basis of ren, but it is preliminary.11 One must be able to transition from serving people above to serving/leading people below. Who is able, once they have achieved a position of power and authority, to tenderly administer to those lower on the hierarchy, as a parent would to a child? But Confucius is not finished in Analects 6.30. He continues: Ren persons establish others in seeking to establish themselves and promote others in seeking to promote themselves. Correlating one’s conduct with those near at hand can be said to be the method of ren. A person in a position of authority must guide and mentor others—that is the heart of ren—but if we stop at outward behavior in any of Confucius’s virtues, we have missed a crucial emotional component. Analects 12.22 puts it most bluntly: Fan Chi inquired about ren, and the Master said, “Love others.”

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The key term in Chinese here is ai 愛, which in this period of history should probably be translated as “care for,” but “to care for someone” in contemporary English does not necessarily mean you actually feel for the other person. A caregiver at a nursing home does not necessarily really care about the residents. In contemporary Chinese, ai means “to love,” and that affective component was also present in the early sense of the term. Confucius’s response, then, by saying that ren is ai, is to say that in order to exercise the virtue of ren, one must be in a position to care for others and to do so lovingly. We see, then, that ren is a virtue that requires some level of expertise that confers authority—that will earn the person a place on a power hierarchy—and then exercising that expertise in a caring and nurturing way with regard to those below on the hierarchy. From this perspective, ren is inseparable from notions of authority. In fact, it encompasses two of French and Raven’s five kinds of power: expert power and legitimate power. I glossed “legitimate power” above as the internalization of moral norms. French and Raven explain this largely in terms of abstract social structures involving roles and offices but emphasize that “legitimate power also involves the perceived right of the person to hold the office.”12 This perceived right cannot be just in terms of expertise— since French and Raven have a separate category for that—and must depend on some closer relationship. Confucius’s view is notable for fleshing this out—for giving us a robust sense of moral authority based in the intimacy of caring human relations. This is why ren can be conceived as authoritativeness in a full and robust sense. Ames and Rosemont do not make exactly this case for rendering ren as “authoritative conduct.” In fact, their interpretation is importantly distinct. They interpret ren in two senses: authority as moral exemplar and authority as “ ‘authoring’ the culture for one’s own place and time.”13 The first dimension can be viewed as a kind of social or moral expertise, and the second as a kind of creativity. Although the interpretations of the basis of authority are different in Ames and Rosemont and in what I have ventured above, the role of ren in the power structure of Confucius’s day is the same. According to Ames and Rosemont: “Confucius is as explicit in expressing the same reservations about authoritative relations becoming authoritarian as he is about a deference-­driven ritualized community surrendering this noncoercive structure for the rule of law.”14 The main difference between my interpretation of ren as



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authoritativeness and that of Ames and Rosemont is that they emphasize the ritual and moral self-­development sides rather than the political and emotional sides. This emphasis leads Ames to eventually abandon “authoritative conduct” in favor of “consummate conduct”: We must allow that there is certainly a more “objective” dimension to ren. Ren entails the “authority” that persons come to occupy in community by embodying in themselves a particular interpretation of the values and institutions. . . . Certainly achieving a robust propriety in one’s roles is, by definition, a conservative process of appropriating and internalizing the tradition. . . . But li as the institutionalized horizon of moral conduct is also whence alternative possibilities begin. In this sense ren is profoundly creative. . . . I am inclined to use “consummate person or conduct” as a tentative translation for ren. . . . “Consummate” has the virtue of using the collective and intensive prefix “con-,” denoting the sense of “together, jointly” that does justice to the irreducible relationality and thus particularity of ren. In addition, summa is that form of “completion” that suggests disclosure more than closure, a transactional maturation and fruition more than the actualization of some given potential. Summa is the highest efficacy in some particular achievement and not merely a replication of something previously accomplished, and as such, is high praise by the community for someone’s particular attainment (summa cum laude).15 Although Ames abandons “authoritativeness” as a translation of ren, he does not abandon the connotation. I endeavor above to bolster this connotation and hope that I have done justice to both Ames and Confucius.

Notes 1.  ACPT. 2.  Already in 1987 Ames and David Hall had published Thinking Through Confucius, in which they translated ren as “authoritative humanity,” but with little elaboration. See TTC. 3.  CRE.

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4.  This chapter draws significantly from my Four Philosophies of Life, under review. 5.  Unless noted, translations of the Analects are taken from ACPT. 6.  John R. P. French Jr. and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Social Power,” in Studies in Social Power, ed. Dorwin Cartwright (Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, 1959), 159. 7.  Compare Confucius’s comments on Guan Zhong in 3.22, 14.12, and 14.13. In 3.22, Confucius criticizes Guan Zhong’s lack of ritual propriety. In 14.12 and 14.13, he heaps praise on Guan Zhong’s ren. 8.  Translation modified. 9.  Analects 2.12 (my translation). Ames and Rosemont give a more exact translation of the final word in the sentence—“vessel,” as in a bronze ritual drinking vessel—but the word “tool” in contemporary English more idiomatically conveys the meaning. 10.  Analects 5.19. 11.  Analects 1.2. 12.  French and Raven, “The Bases of Social Power,” 160. 13.  ACPT, 50 14.  ACPT, 51. 15.  CRE, 178–179.

chapter 7

Philosophy as Hermeneutics Reflections on Roger Ames, Translation, and Comparative Methodology Steve Coutinho

Roger Ames has a radical claim: The ancient Chinese cultural and philosophical traditions do not share what some might take to be our universal concepts and methodologies. If we insist on imposing them, we misread the texts altogether. We find only our familiar presuppositions reflected in them and fail to allow the texts to philosophize in their own distinctive voices. The problems become most pressing when attempting to engage with ancient texts through the medium of the English language. Even within a single language, synonyms are rarely, if ever, exact counterparts, so we should not expect to find terms that have identical meanings in languages and cultures that are historically, geographically, and linguistically distant. Most famously, Ames warns that when scholars insist on rendering “tian 天” as “Heaven,” they use a term heavily laden with Western monotheistic significances to understand texts that lack them. When we say, “The Dao is transcendent,” the terms (and even the grammar and typography) carry with them significances intrinsic to Western metaphysical discourse. If we insist on reading the texts through such terms (and thereby through their implicit presuppositions), we cover over their cultural significances with our own. Ames, then, proposes a radical methodology: we must refuse to rest satisfied with familiar dictionary equivalents but instead struggle to find vocabulary that does not surreptitiously impose what have become the dominant presuppositions of Western philosophy. Ames writes, 69

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In a sustained effort to allow Chinese philosophy to have its own voice, over the past century our best interpreters of Chinese ­ culture have been struggling to construct an interpretive context for reading the canons. This interpretive context begins by clarifying the cultural presuppositions we are likely to bring to the Chinese texts, and then continues by attempting to articulate those uncommon assumptions that make Chinese cosmology distinctive and different from our own philosophical narrative.1 As every translator knows, sometimes the process of restating a classical Chinese sentence in English is easy; at other times the difficulties seem insurmountable. The question arises: If language is the medium through which meaning is communicated, what could explain the cases of extreme difficulty? One hermeneutic hypothesis is that the greatest translation difficulties may be traceable to the deepest levels of difference in meaning and presupposition, perhaps even those that seem to be a priori. The hermeneutic question that subsequently arises is, How could we possibly discover what those uncommonly different assumptions are? How would we even know that there are different assumptions? While one might choose to maintain a resolute theoretical skepticism, in practice, contra W. V. O. Quine, one may make reasonable hypotheses about differences that could explain these kinds of translation difficulties. In this chapter, I reflect phenomenologically on my interpretation of Ames’s methodology. How, then, should an interpreter from one culture interpret the interpretations of an interpreter from another culture in another language? A culture interprets itself, in part, through its philosophical texts, which themselves must be interpreted within the context of their own cultural background. This circularity sets off a series of interweaving eddies: the task of a philosopher from within a single cultural tradition is to plunge into the hermeneutic currents of that tradition as they split and merge, weaving and reweaving ever more complex cycles of self-­interpretation. Consequently, the task of a comparative philosopher, the seemingly impossible task, is to attempt to dwell simultaneously in (at least) two discernible streams of hermeneutic turbulence with the goal of attempting to interpret the self-­interpretive flows of significance of one culture through those of another. This is, of course, the hermeneutic problem faced by the translator of any text, philosophical or



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nonphilosophical, and so the practice of comparative philosophy proves itself to be inseparable from the practice of translation. The problem of the hermeneutic circle, then, becomes significantly more complicated when applied across cultures. And the greater the cultural, historical, and linguistic distances between the two traditions, the more complex the semantic and semiotic problems become. The translator/interpreter is required to make claims of similarity and difference between the semiotic significances of different cultures. When those cultures are historically and culturally related, the justifications can be made in terms of a shared cultural heritage. But what could possibly justify claims of equivalence and difference between historically and culturally divergent semiotic streams? Some comparative philosophers presuppose (sometimes deliberately, sometimes naively) that their most fundamental concepts and methodologies are universal to all humans. But the very conditions of rationality and meaningfulness that one presupposes will by definition prevent any alternatives from even appearing rational and meaningful. Those who deliberately assert these presuppositions to be universal conditions of sense thereby deliberately (in an act of what Derrida would call logocentrism) exclude any proposed alternatives as meaningless, incoherent, or irrational. Their presuppositions render them unable to consider the possibility that what they reject as irrational and meaningless might well be revealed to be rational and meaningful with a different (perhaps even superior) set of presuppositions. On the other hand, we are limited, contextual beings. We must be situated at a “starting point” that we presuppose without prior justification. The question arises: Can one have a starting point that is provisional with presuppositions that are open to the possibility of justifiable alternatives? Or going further, can one have a starting point that is open to its own undermining and transformation? A positive answer to the first question yields pluralism (not to be confused with radical relativism). And pragmatism is the philosophical position characterized by a positive answer to the second question. Pragmatism proposes an open set of corrigible criteria of meaningfulness and rationality. Because the set is open, one may discover (or propose) new criteria one has hitherto been unaware of; and criteria within an accepted set may yield conflicting evaluations, prompting the possibility of mutual modification of the criteria themselves. These two forms of openness allow the possibility of rational evolution and also

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allow the possibility of the simultaneous evolution of equally plausible alternatives. Under what conditions, then, might it be rational to compromise the very criteria through which one interprets anything as rational in the first place? From the perspective of essentialism the very question must be deemed to be incoherent. And yet there are essentialists who do as a matter of fact change their minds and become pragmatists: they adopt a different set of presuppositions that no longer rule out the possibility of radical change.2 So the change is clearly possible; the pressing question is how it comes about. There are two ways in which such changes are made: piecemeal and holistically. Or perhaps these mark the two stages of a single process, which may be either gradual or swift. When gradual, the process seems piecemeal; when swift, it appears as a sudden and holistic transformation of insight, a gestalt shift or even a satori. The first condition of evaluating one’s own underlying conditions of evaluation is simply to resolve to be open to the possibility of the need for radical revision of presuppositions, however unlikely it might seem. Contra Donald Davidson, one should be open to the possibility that intransigent anomalies and difficulties might indicate, not just that some “beliefs” need to be revised, but that the very conditions of rationality to which one was previously committed might well be inadequate: perhaps there is more to understanding the world than one’s narrow conception of rationality will allow. One should therefore be willing to withhold an absolute rejection of what appears as nonsense on a first encounter. We then recognize that our most cherished universal self-­ evident presuppositions are in fact intuitions that ultimately have no noncircular justification. This is the attitude that Ludwig Wittgenstein attempts to inculcate in Philosophical Investigations by thinking up anomalous possibilities that do not sit easily with our presuppositions and therefore require us to modify them. The more one encounters anomalous cases that do not fit one’s presuppositions, the less certainty one has that one’s intuitions are infallible. For a while one floats in a space of crumbling uncertainty, no longer supremely confident in one’s former footing, but not yet certain of which alternatives will enable one to proceed or why. Occasionally, one glimpses ways of making partial sense of an alternative mode of discourse: new ways of allowing the fragments to cohere. If these moments of insight continue, eventually they build up and allow the possibility of



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a radical shift of understanding: one sees for the first time a cogent alternative begin to take shape, and perhaps how much deeper and more satisfactory it is as a system of presuppositions for interpretation. At that point, one is beginning to adopt what we might call a new “worldview,” previously ruled out as irrational or meaningless.3 In the practice of comparative philosophy, this hermeneutic process follows an “abductive” method of translation. One first notices distinctive differences, places where interpretation and translation become strained or difficult, sometimes almost to the point of unintelligibility. One attempts to identify what is common in places where these difficulties repeat and to formulate a hypothesis about this specific type of difference. Differences that are widespread might indicate deep levels of semiotic difference: difference in the “web” of meaning, to borrow Quine’s metaphor, that structures our understanding of the world. One then attempts to formulate different fundamental concepts and methodologies that might account for these deep difficulties. Of course, for this process to proceed, the differences must be describable in the target language, even though they cannot be deployed in the target language without straining intelligibility. In Wittgensteinian terminology: we can “say” what the differences are in the content of our sentences, but we cannot “show” those differences through the formal aspects of our own language. Our hypotheses may then be tested by how well they enable us to make sense of other aspects of the particular text or more generally of the language and culture in which the text is embedded. Wherever these provide challenges to our hypotheses, we must modify them. This process of self-­modifying interpretation of cultural and linguistic difference continues endlessly. This is, at any rate, one method of hermeneutically responsible comparative philosophy.

Methodology behind Ames’s Philosophy and Translation Even the briefest glimpse through Ames’s translations of ancient Chinese philosophical texts reveals a consistent concern for responsible translation. Ames takes seriously Hans-­Georg Gadamer’s insights regarding interpretive constitution of meaning and especially the meanings encoded in historical texts of ancient cultures. There are many goals in reading a text; one of them is to understand it on its own terms, “without overwriting it with cultural interests and importances that are not

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its own.” Ames argues, “It is only by becoming alert to the uncommon assumptions sedimented into Chinese ways of living and thinking that we can resist the gravitational force of cultural reductionism.”4 But to do this we must be aware of the traditional assumptions and implications sedimented into our own ways of thinking: so deeply sedimented, in fact, that they may appear to be necessary and universal conditions of understanding altogether. Playing with Wittgenstein’s duck-­rabbit gestalt, Ames writes: We must be self-­conscious of what we bring to the enterprise of exploring another cultural tradition. There is a failure of interpreters to be conscious of and to take fair account of their own Gadamerian “prejudices.” They offer the excuse that they are relying on some “objective” lexicon when the truth of the matter is that this lexicon is itself heavily colored with cultural biases, thereby betraying their readers not once, but twice. That is, not only do they fail to provide their readers with the actual meaning of the text, but further and with undeterred confidence they offer up a hasenpfeffer (German rabbit stew) rather than the promised char siu duck.5 Of course, neither “the” Chinese nor “the” Western tradition is singular, and Ames is fully aware of this: all traditions can be thought of as being multifaceted, with centers and peripheries. But this multiplicity does not mean that they may not each be characterized by their own family resemblances, with differences being notable between different families; and this in turn does not deny the degree of difference that may be discerned within the same family. Some of the ways of thinking, engaging, and living may become dominant and central and infuse much of the surrounding culture as an invisible medium. But there are also alternative discourses and ways of engaging with the world: these family rebels often critique the establishment. Some may be exiles on the peripheries that mark the limits of sense of the cultural tradition. In the West, the dissonant voices include those of Heraclitus, the Sophists, the “mystics,” the existentialists, the process philosophers, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Kierkegaard, Derrida, and so on. In China, if the center has been marked by Confucianism and Legalism, then it has been modified by and incorporated the alternative voices of Daoist thought, Xuan Xue, and Buddhism, with the Mohists and Logicians on the peripheries.



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Ames recommends that we immerse ourselves not just in a single discourse but in a variety of Western philosophical traditions—those that have become dominant as well as those that have remained in the margins or lost in the shadows—to become more aware of multiple resources. We will then be in a position to discover the best resources to approach the centers of the Chinese tradition. Only then may we choose actively and responsibly. Given all this, the criticism sometimes heard that Ames naively imposes contemporary Western philosophical concepts and methods onto ancient Chinese texts is amusing, exasperating, and breathtaking in its dramatic irony.

Translation Principles When translating ancient Chinese philosophical terms, their meanings, connotations, etymologies, histories, and cultural associations need to be considered carefully. Traditional “equivalents” make life easy but do not aid deep understanding. Dictionary definitions may be helpful for getting the gist of what is said, but they can be very misleading for philosophically significant terminology, for lexicographers tend not to be sufficiently aware of the deep philosophical subtleties and significances. The same is true of translators who lack extensive training in philosophy: they choose terms based on a rudimentary understanding (often, a misunderstanding) of their philosophical significance. This situation can make both the teaching and the practice of responsible comparative philosophy in translation at times almost impossible. And this, in turn, poses a serious challenge to the goal of globalizing the philosophical canon by bringing Western and Chinese philosophies into dialogue. For this reason, philosophically responsible translations and commentaries are of paramount importance. Ames has (at least) two consistent methodological admonitions for interpreting ancient Chinese philosophical texts and rendering them responsibly in English. The first is that we should avoid presupposing universalism; the second that we should avoid presupposing essentialism. Neither of them is reducible to the other. As we have seen above, Ames’s hermeneutic is precisely to avoid a naive imposition of familiar categories in the belief that they must be universal. After all, to paraphrase the Zhuangzi, if the concepts and methods really were universal, there would surely be no one who did not agree. The second methodological point challenges essentialist accounts of “meaning,” according

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to which the meaning of a term is constituted by a well-­defined essence, which is to be distinguished from accidental associations. The accidental associations may have pragmatic, emotional, and aesthetic implications, but these are not part of the essential core. Ames’s understanding of meaning is more organic. Meanings are not unchanging entities with well-­defined boundaries but living clusters of associations that vie with each other for significance in different contexts and that should have equal consideration when translating into other languages. Using Wittgensteinian terminology to elaborate: meanings are usages—multiple contextual usages (not necessarily unified)—perhaps based on family resemblances. This understanding of meaning certainly seems consistent with ancient Chinese attitudes toward meaning. There is no presupposition of a core essence to the meaning of a concept as one finds with Socrates and Plato. In philosophical discussions of the meanings of terms and in dictionaries, both ancient and modern, one finds glosses, puns (paronomasia), associations, and elaborations. No use is made of the dialectical method that is necessary to the process of refining precise definitions. Even the Confucian emphasis on correctness of terminology (zhengming 正名) remains thoroughly pragmatic, with brief glosses, and is contextually pluralistic and open, deliberately eschewing any attempt to refine precise definitions. In order to find translation candidates that are not overburdened with inappropriate presuppositions, Ames urges that we appeal to concepts from the nondominant discourses of the (Western) tradition. Indeed, given the degree of mismatch of significances between terms of different languages (in Saussurean terms, the “value” differences that arise from structural differences between the langues), it might well be that emphasizing unexpected associations that traditional equivalences of the target language lack will bring out deeper holistic connections that would otherwise be lost in translation. This, of course, results in Ames’s creative and in some cases more controversial translation choices. Moreover, because of the organic, living, pluralistic nature of meaning, Ames encourages us to be creative and flexible, experimental, and tentative. The process of translation is always unfinished because it is always alive: no interpretation can be the final one. It is perfectly acceptable to bring out new significances on each occurrence if necessary; we should not be hypnotized by the deceptive notion of a “perfect” translation.



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Crosscurrents within a Stream While following Ames’s dao, while interpreting his guiding recommendations, I have nevertheless found myself drifting along a different current. When it comes to translation methodology, I construe the consequences of this organic understanding of meaning differently. While I think that the best term to translate “仁” is “humanity” (divested of all essentialist implications), for example, Ames rejects this in favor of the unexpected phrase, “authoritative conduct”; while I would urge that “noble” lies among the closest matches for “君子,” Ames coins the phrase “exemplary personhood” to capture the significances of the term. This difference is not just a matter of personal preferences among translation possibilities but, I suspect, arises from a more fundamental divergence. A full justification of my translation preferences lies beyond the scope of this chapter, but that is not what is at issue right now. The question that is most pressing here is, How does following the same interpretive method result in a different interpretive outcome? How do currents in the same stream lead to different destinations? Reflexively applying the cross-­cultural hermeneutic methodology described above to our two currents within the same stream of hermeneutic methodology might allow me to abduce a deep difference that accounts for our drift in practice. I tentatively trace this shift to a difference in metaphor that structures our understandings of the very meaning of “meaning.” My tentative hypothesis is that Ames sees meanings as constituted by clusters of significances, equally juicy and ripe for the picking—or if not clusters, then holographic images viewable from multiple perspectives. Since meanings are not defined by an essential core, all aspects of meaning— semantic, pragmatic, aesthetic, etymological, historical, sociological, practical, cultural, metaphorical—can be appealed to when identifying candidates for translation. The fundamental guiding criterion is to avoid translation choices that might mislead, given the weight of their historically derived philosophical import. So long as that criterion is met, all fruitful translation possibilities have their value in appropriate contexts. This does not mean that they are all equally good, but they all stand as creative possibilities for translation candidates. My guiding metaphor is different. While I agree that meanings should not be presupposed to have an essential core, I do not see them as clusters but as indeterminate “rhizomes” of significances with

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gravitational “centers” (multiple centers for each concept, and not precisely located) and “peripheries” of movement. This complementary contrast between central and peripheral significances cannot be identified with the distinction between “literal” and “nonliteral,” since metaphorical meanings also have centers and peripheries and may themselves have central significance; nor can it be identified with the distinction between “essence” and “accident,” since accidental properties may also have central significance. What the contrast is intended to capture is that different significances have different degrees of prominence in the constitution of meaning: the greater the prominence, the more central the significance (with the possibility of more than one center); the lesser the prominence, the more peripheral. Centrality and peripherality are thus matters of degree, not dualistic dichotomies. Centers and peripheries of the semiotic ranges will “resonate” to a greater or lesser extent between terms of different languages. This means, in part, that they will share similarities to a greater or lesser extent. Translation candidates will therefore have different degrees of resonance with the terms of the source language. The most appropriate translation candidates will be those that have the greatest resonance between their central significances, wherever such terms can be found. Of course, this need not result in a single translation candidate. Indeed, there may be several possible words and phrases, each with different ranges of overlap, appropriate for different translational contexts. Even so, for some terms, resonances may be so weak that no translation candidate is able to capture a sufficient range of significances. The further apart two languages are, the less likely one will be able to find such close matches for culturally specific terms. They are perhaps more likely to be found for basic-­level common referential terms, but they are less likely to be found for philosophically significant terms. For such terms, the best practice would be to leave them untranslated and simply adopt them into the target language.6 On this recommendation, I know that Ames and I do not disagree. Another option is to “paraphrase”—that is, either to capture many significances with extended phrasing or to use different phrases that capture partial significances in different contexts. Applying this second option, I would use the phrases “authoritative conduct” and “exemplary personhood” in the paraphrases and explanations of 仁 and 君子, rather than as translations. Of course, since the difference between centers and peripheries is a matter of degree, it follows that many terms will reside in the penumbrae



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between translation and paraphrase. But without some gradational contrast between centers and peripheries, all associations would have equal weight and translation could never be distinguished from paraphrase. I anticipate that Ames would not find the gradational contrast between translation and paraphrase as compelling as I do. This, at any rate, is my tentative abductive hypothesis about what motivates the differences in our hermeneutic currents. I suspect that from Ames’s perspective, if he were to apply the same hermeneutic methodology, he might well abduce an entirely different explanation that accounts for the divergence in our practices. He sees one difference from one perspective; I see a different difference from another. Are the differences really different? Or are there no differences at all? How far apart currents within the same hermeneutic stream can drift when following the tendencies of different guiding metaphors! And yet, how far apart have master and student drifted really? I leave the final word to Zhuangzi’s Confucius: Looking at them from their differences, liver and gall are as far apart as the states of Chu and Yue. Looking at them from their similarities, the many varieties of things are undifferentiated. Now a person such as this does not distinguish whether something is appropriate for the eyes or for the ears, but wanders with the heartmind into the harmony of their potency. They look where all things are continuous and undifferentiated, and so do not see any place where they may be lost.7

Notes 1.  CRE, 24f. 2.  Wittgenstein’s transition from the Tractatus to his later philosophical practices, in The Blue and Brown Books and in the Investigations, may be understood as a similar kind of transformation. 3.  A difference in “worldview” is really a difference in kind that is made possible by, but not reducible to, accumulating differences in degree. Indeed, this sort of process is not unusual even within traditional Western philosophy: when a philosopher shifts from being a realist to an antirealist, or from metaphysician to pragmatist, for example. 4.  ACPT, x. 5.  CRE, 22.

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6.  The term would have to have its full range of significances explained in the target language before it could be adopted, but the explanatory paragraphs would not constitute “translations” of the term in any but a very loose sense. 7.  Zhuangzi, 德充符.

chapter 8

The Attitude of the Junzi toward Wealth, Social Eminence, Poverty, and Humbleness in Light of Analects 4.5 Attilio Andreini

Roger Ames’s scholarship h  as been built around translation since its inception. He has often challenged the traditional rendering of early Chinese philosophical terms by offering suggestive interpretive solutions. Ames—alone as well as in collaboration with D. C. Lau, David Hall, and Henry Rosemont Jr.—follows a unique approach: We have developed a structure that includes a philosophical introduction, an evolving glossary of key philosophical terms, a self-­consciously interpretive translation, and the inclusion of a critical Chinese text. In describing our translations as “self-­ consciously interpretive,” we are not allowing that we are given to license, or that we are any less “literal” than other translations. On the contrary, we would insist that any pretense to a literal translation is not only naïve, but is itself a cultural prejudice of the first order.1 This chapter sets out from the assumption that the interpretation emerging along the process of translation is enriched when hermeneutics, philology, and translation studies converge. I test such a methodological approach on a specific passage from an early Chinese text to see if it can shed light on problems that exegetes and translators have had in understanding Analects 論語 4.5. Given these premises, we are trying to understand what Confucius meant, and this requires us to ascertain whether there is anything to suggest the need to emend the text or remove any corruptions that might compromise its full understanding. 81

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The passage in question discusses the attitude of the exemplary person (junzi 君子) toward wealth (fu 富), social eminence/honor (gui 貴), poverty (pin 貧), and humbleness (jian 賤), as well as the way in which these conditions—as guiding principles to attain the goodness or virtuosity typical of those who manifest an authoritative conduct (ren 仁, also “human-­heartedness”)—contribute to defining the exemplary person’s degree of commitment to the dao 道. Ames and Rosemont’s translation of Analects 4.5 has much to commend it: The Master said, “Wealth and honor are what people want, but if they are the consequence of deviating from the way (dao 道), I would have no part in them. Poverty and disgrace are what people deplore, but if they are the consequence of staying on the way, I would not avoid them. Wherein do the exemplary persons (junzi 君子) who would abandon their authoritative conduct (ren 仁) warrant that name? Exemplary persons do not take leave of their authoritative conduct even for the space of a meal. When they are troubled, they certainly turn to it, as they do in facing difficulties.”2 This translation stands out for its clarity and linearity, even though it is far from easy to make out the meaning of the text in question. Other translations feature convoluted expressions, suggesting that their authors found it difficult to move beyond a prototext they had either poorly understood or—worse still—believed to be corrupt yet did not dare emend.3 Precisely for these reasons, it is crucial to unambiguously establish the starting text. A series of questions needs to be answered. Are emendations required? If so, the text must be corrected. If not, are we persuaded that the text has been faithfully transmitted? This would be best, but it does not guarantee that the text will be properly interpreted. In the task of translating, there is nothing worse than justifying the (alleged or genuine) incongruities of the source text and then transposing them into the target text on the grounds that “this is what the original text states.” “Monstrosities” are bound to arise from a similar combination of respect, devotion, and an incapacity to discern further translation possibilities between the folds of an original text whose intra- and extratextual semantic implications have not been fully grasped. In particular, this attitude fosters a dangerous form of laziness



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in the translator, who will feel free of all responsibility toward the text and the adaptation being undertaken. The effects of such an approach become evident in the production of texts that are incapable of conveying anything at all: texts written in an unnatural, clumsy metalanguage that has quite rightly been referred to as “translatorese.” The pitfalls of Analects 4.5 become even more evident when we consider the original text, which I quote here along with the translation by James Legge (1815–1897): 1. 子曰: 富與貴, 是人之所欲也; 不以其道得之, 不處也. 貧與賤, 是人 之所惡也; 不以其道得之, 不去也. 2. 君子去仁, 惡乎成名? 3. 君子無終食之間違仁, 造次必於是, 顛沛必於是. 1. The Master said, “Riches and honors are what men desire. If it cannot be obtained in the proper way, they should not be held. Poverty and meanness are what men dislike. If it cannot be avoided in the proper way, they should not be avoided. 2. “If a superior man abandon virtue, how can he fulfill the requirements of that name? 3. “The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.”4 Legge divides the text into three sections. It is clear from the faltering flow of the metatext that the critical-­philological analysis must focus on the first section, and in particular on this passage: “Poverty and meanness are what men dislike. If it cannot be avoided in the proper way, they should not be avoided.” The difficulty of Analects 4.5 seems already apparent in the first section, when Legge, in order to make sense of the text, translates de 得 as both “obtain” and then “avoid,” and then uses “avoid” for both de 得 and qu 去. Let us frame this first part of the passage into two parallel rows and attempt to establish some contrasts between the symmetrical structures: What we find is that “wealth” (fu 富) contrasts with “poverty” (pin 貧); “honor” or “social eminence” (gui 貴) with “humbleness” (jian 賤); and “dwell, reside, abide” (chu 處) with “avoid, get rid of” (qu 去). The two pericopes hold together and balance one another by virtue of a shared textual portion—here framed—that would appear to almost

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serve as a hinge to moderate the dominating oppositional tone. Within this ­textual space there is a perfect equivalence between the two parts, which nonetheless raises some doubts. I would like to focus on this portion of the passage and ask: Does this perfect symmetry stem from a conscious choice or from a corruption of the text? In both pericopes, this hinge section lays out the reasons that make it inappropriate to indulge—for example, in the enjoyment of riches and honors—even though these are the things that people desire the most. In the second pericope, this sequence justifies the fact that even though poverty and humbleness are what people despise the most, they are not necessarily to be avoided. Particularly noteworthy are qi 其, dao 道, and de 得. Let us proceed in order: What do the two occurrences of the word qi, which precedes dao, refer to? Does this word simply “precede” dao, or does it rather determine it as a possessive adjective (“his/their dao/ daos”)? Or are these two occurrences of qi used to cataphorically refer to that same range of principles that the junzi follows and that define the dao as the path of moral conduct, as explained in the second part of the passage?5 On the other hand, they might also refer to those conditions responsible for the emergence of wealth, poverty, humbleness, and honor—that is, those natural, congenial, or even forced processes by which these conditions come into being. In other words, “their dao” would refer to the modus operandi of wealth, poverty, humbleness, and honor. And what form does this dao take? Is it necessary that privileges or misfortunes only befall those who deserve them, or is it only uncertainty and chance, which might suggest that the mechanism of retribution is a faulty one and that virtue does not always pay? This might indeed be the case, judging from the text. Another problem is the rendition of the term de, which is usually translated as “to get, to achieve, to complete a difficult act,” as the attainment



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of a sought-­for goal. But how does this meaning fit with the idea that even poverty and humbleness are conditions that can be “achieved through a conscious effort,” since they are what everyone disdains? Would it not be more appropriate, then, to neutralize the voluntaristic quality of de and make it compatible with another meaning of the term, that of “encounter, happen to be,” as the effect of a contingent state of affairs that simply causes something to “happen”? In this sense, Ames and Rosemont’s solution seems most pertinent (“if they are the consequence of staying on the way”). Alternatively, we might wish to bring the two occurrences of de into accordance with the objects that follow the word and, taking a small liberty as translators, render the first occurrence of de zhi 得之 as “obtain this”—where zhi 之 would stand for riches and honors. The second occurrence of de zhi, referring to poverty and humbleness, might instead be assigned the meaning of “suffering” or “enduring.” It would therefore describe the junzi’s conscious acceptance of materially and psychologically unfavorable conditions that are nonetheless preferable to an undeserved attribution of honors and glory. With regard to emendation, an analysis of the Ru exegetical tradition devoted to Analects 4.5 provides no scope for alternative readings: The main critics do not suggest any emendations. As well, the evidence from the oldest Analects manuscript currently available, discovered at Dingzhou in 1973, appears to confirm that the text either did not undergo any corruption at all, or that, if it did, this occurred before 55 BCE, the year in which the Dingzhou tomb was sealed. The critical edition of the Analects by Yang Bojun 楊伯峻 (1909– 1992) offers one initial prospect of emendation by highlighting how in the pericope “Poverty and humbleness are what people deplore, but if they are the consequence of staying on the way, I would not avoid them” it is necessary to replace de zhi 得之 (“obtain this”) with qu zhi 去 之 (“avoid, dodge this”).6 Yang Bojun translates the passage in question as follows: “As the exemplary person would never resort to improper means to get rid of them (i.e., poverty and humbleness), he would not [necessarily] cast them off” (不用正當的方法去抛掉它, 君子不擺脱).7 We should note here the shift in emphasis relative to that of the previous reading. The received text stresses the need to accept misery and poverty whenever these conditions respond to a somehow “improper” logic (bu yi qi dao 不以其道 [“contrary to or not in keeping with their dao”] or even “not in keeping with his dao”—i.e., the dao of the junzi). The significant historical and contextual assumption here is that, from

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Confucius’s perspective, the world in his own day was indeed governed by an “inverted” logic, since on account of the widespread moral degradation it was no longer base people who suffered misery and humbleness, but virtuous men.8 Hence it would be preferable to live in poverty than to compromise one’s virtue. According to Yang Bojun’s emendation, by contrast, the junzi does not avoid misery and humbleness if to do so means transgressing a moral imperative. Yang Bojun does not point out, in support of his reading, that his interpretation is indebted to the far more ancient one put forward by Wang Chong 王充 (27?–100 CE): The meaning is that men must acquire riches in a just and proper way, and not take them indiscriminately, that they must keep within their bounds, patiently endure poverty, and not recklessly throw it off. My objections to Confucius are: To say that riches and honour must not be held, unless they are obtained in the proper way, is all right, but what is poverty and meanness not obtained in a proper way? Wealth and honour can, of course, be abandoned [可去], but what is the result of giving up poverty and meanness [去貧賤]? By giving up poverty and meanness one obtains wealth and honour. As long as one does not obtain wealth and honour, one does not get rid of poverty and meanness [去貧賤, 得富貴 也; 不得富貴, 不去貧賤]. If we say that, unless wealth and honour can be obtained in a proper way, poverty and meanness should not be shunned, then that which is obtained is wealth and honour, not poverty and meanness. How can the word(s) “obtaining (them)” [得之] be used with reference to poverty and meanness? Therefore the passage ought to read as follows: “Poverty and meanness are what people dislike. If they cannot be avoided in the proper way, they should not be avoided” [貧與賤, 是人 之所惡也, 不以其道去之, 則不去也]. “Avoiding” is the proper word, not “obtaining” [當言「去」, 不當言「得」]. “Obtaining” is used of obtaining. Now there is “avoiding,” how can it be called “obtaining”? Only in regard to riches and honour we can speak of “obtaining.” How so? By obtaining riches and honour one avoids poverty and meanness. My objections to Confucius are: Then how can poverty and meanness be avoided in the proper way?—By purifying themselves and keeping in the proper way officials acquire rank and emoluments, wealth and honour, and by obtaining these they avoid poverty and meanness. How are



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poverty and meanness avoided not in the proper way?—If anybody feels so vexed and annoyed with poverty and meanness, that he has recourse to brigandage and robbery for the purpose of amassing money and valuables, and usurps official emoluments, then he does not keep in the proper way. My objections to Confucius are: Since the Seventy Disciples did not ask any question regarding the passage under discussion, the literati of to-­day are likewise incapable of raising any objection. If the meaning of this utterance is not explained, nor the words made clear, we would have to say that Confucius could not speak properly. As long as the meaning continues unravelled, and the words unexplained, the admonition of Confucius remains uncomprehensible. Why did his disciples not ask, and people now say nothing?9 In fact, Wang Chong himself, on two separate occasions, employs very similar words to disprove the previous claim regarding the inappropriateness of using de 得 (“obtain”; or, rather, “encounter,” “come to experience”) in relation to poverty and humbleness: As regards the transmission of wealth and honour, it is like the vital force, viz. an effluence emanating from the stars. Their hosts are on heaven, which has their signs. Being born under a star pointing at wealth and honour, man obtains wealth and honour, whereas under a heavenly sign implying poverty and misery, he will become poor and miserable. . . . When in digging a creek or cutting firewood a special energy be shown, or great strength be displayed, then by dint of digging the creek will be deepened, and by dint of hewing much wood will be cut down. Even people without a fate would thus obtain their ends, how then would poverty and meanness, disasters and dangers come in?10 D. C. Lau highlights a form of textual corruption different from that of Wang Chong and Yang Bojun, arguing: “The negative [bu 不] is probably an interpolation and the sentence should read: Poverty and low station are what men dislike, but if I got them in the right way I would not try to escape from them [貧與賤, 是人之所惡也; 以其道 得之, 不去也].”11 The junzi’s complete adherence to the “right way,” from which poverty and low station derive, is what allows him to endure

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what ordinary people find unendurable. Sincere commitment to the dao and the acceptance of the distress that one will suffer by being faithful to that dao constitute the hallmark of moral exemplarity, insofar as both the virtuous and the wicked in the end get what they deserve as a consequence of their dedication to their own dao, regardless of the material success or failure they incur. “The right way” might be a moral way through which the virtuosity of the subject imposes itself over unfavorable circumstances: The junzi is firmly committed to following the moral path in spite of the poverty and low status he will suffer in a world in which ethical values do not prevail. Such a moral agent, therefore, is not trying to escape (qu 去) the fatal consequences that he encounters (de 得); conversely, he will stoically accept an inverted ethical system in which the smart and unscrupulous ones are rewarded while the virtuous must accept poverty and low status when the defense of virtue is called for. All philological questions aside, one unambiguous element that emerges from the text is that the exemplary person is devoted to the dao as an end in itself and does not pursue it for the sake of fame or external goods, as is confirmed by other passages of the Analects (1.14, 4.9, 7.12, 7.16, 7.19, 8.12, and 9.29). As a result, the exemplary person embodies the dao “unselfconsciously and effortlessly, and derives a constant joy” from such conduct.12 The Xunzi 荀子 agrees with this perspective when it states that “where there is Goodness there is no poverty or hardship, and where Goodness is lacking there is no wealth or honor” (Xunzi 23/117/7). Having reached this stage, what should we do regarding the text to be translated? And on what grounds? Or should we rather leave the text as it is and attempt to square the circle despite certain unresolved points? Let us proceed according to the first hypothesis. We may rule out Yang Bojun’s suggestion that it be accepted in full, since—as already noted—it is stylistically unlikely that the original reading to be restored is qu zhi 去之 and that the pericope ought to be read as 貧 與賤是人之所惡也, 不以其道去之, 不去也. What is likely, by contrast, is that the meaning assigned by Yang Bojun through his emendation is pertinent: If what is required is a more careful choice of words, substantiated by the actual text, then the meaning “avoid,” “discard,” “remove” may be better expressed by chu 除, a term that naturally stands in contrast to de 得 (“obtain”) as much as zhi 致 (“reach, succeed”). Evidence for this is provided by the passage from the Lunheng



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that reads, “The happiness of wealth and honour cannot be attracted by any efforts, nor can the unhappiness of poverty and humbleness be simply avoided” (富貴之福, 不可求致; 貧賤之禍, 不可苟除也)—a passage dealing with the same topics as Analects 4.5.13 One alternative to chu 除 as the original reading to be restored might also be bi 辟 (“avoid,” “remove,” “leave”), as is suggested by the following passage from the Mozi 墨子: When the unwise are charged with the government of the country, disorder in the country can be predicted. Now the gentlemen of the world like riches and honour, and dislike poverty and humility. But how can you obtain the former [得富貴] and avoid the latter [辟貧賤]?14 If we choose to follow the suggestions of Wang Chong and Yang Bojun, Analects 4.5 will therefore acquire an additional level of contrast, through the opposition between de 得 (“obtain”) and the range of values expressed by the hypothetical readings 去/除/辟, all of which may be traced back to the semantic field “avoid, refuse, discard”: Riches and honours are what each person desires the most, but do not indulge in them if, in order to obtain them, you must go against the dao. Poverty and humbleness are what each person despises the most, but do not reject/avoid them if, in order to do so, you must go against the dao.

 

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As D. C. Lau has noted, however, there is yet another possible way of emending the text: Wealth and high station are what men desire, but unless I got them in the right way I would not abide in them. Poverty and low station are what men dislike, but if I got them in the right way I would not try to take myself away from them. A reading of this sort, based on the expunging of the second occurrence of bu 不, could further be reinforced by assigning an additional contrastive value to the text, whereby the neutral expression de 得 (“happen, occur, take place, arrive”) would first acquire the meaning of “obtain” and then of “endure”: an “enduring” nonetheless based on the conscious acceptance of the burden one must bear on account of having remained faithful to one’s moral principles. Dao, instead, would preserve a certain degree of “indeterminateness,” whereby it would indicate both the appropriate course of action that ensures the emergence of riches, humbleness, and so on, and the normative path to which the junzi aspires. Still, there is one element that weighs against D. C. Lau’s intriguing interpretation, even in comparison with the alternative emendation suggested by Wang Chong and Yang Bojun—the breaking of the perfect symmetry between the various parts of the pericope, which is not just a semantic balance between the various elements but, first and foremost, a numerical and structural symmetry. This consideration points us in the direction of what initially appeared to be the most unlikely conclusion but ultimately turns out to be the safest. I believe that the text has been correctly transmitted



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and does not require any emendation. I doubt that any hermeneutic or philological argument is strong enough to justify the adoption of a lectio difficilior in absentia (a more difficult reading, which is not attested in any of the editions ever recorded) that would undermine the structural symmetry of the passage. If I am correct, how should we interpret Analects 4.5? The context in which the text was presumably developed in its original form would appear to suggest that in an ideal world riches, high standing, and honors are reserved for the virtuous, whereas wicked and base men must endure the scourge of humbleness and misery. However, the world (particularly the world portrayed by Confucius) does not really work like this at all, so much so that the natural and most congenial course (dao) followed by glory, on the one hand, and dishonor, on the other, is a tragically inverted one. A possible way of translating the text is by tweaking the overall balance so as to render the first occurrence of de 得 as the “enjoyment” of riches and honors (albeit undeserved ones, according to the text), while stressing the meaning of de 得 as “endure” in relation to its second occurrence, to emphasize the burden of misery. The sequence bu yi qi dao 不以其道 would be treated in a consciously “dry” and direct fashion, by translating it simply as “improperly.” This rendition suits both the appropriate ways in which wealth (fu 富), social eminence (gui 貴), poverty (pin 貧), and humbleness (jian 賤) ought to manifest themselves and the rightful standard of conduct to which the junzi keeps at all times, since—as the second part of Analects 4.5 reads—“exemplary persons do not take leave of their authoritative conduct even for the space of a meal.” Finally, the option “but it is not necessarily best to reject them, should you ever have to improperly endure them” gives a less restrictive meaning to the text, which reinforces—rather than downplays—the ethical basis of the junzi’s willingness to pay the price for his being untimely (in the Nietzschean sense15): Riches and honors are what each person desires the most, but do not indulge in them if this means you must improperly enjoy them. Poverty and humbleness are what each person despises the most, but it is not necessarily best to reject them, should you ever have to improperly endure them. The passage would become even more balanced if we played down the impact of de 得, leaving more room for the normative value of the

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dao as the appropriate means of retribution governing both wealth and disgrace: Riches and honors are what each person desires the most, but do not indulge in them if the course which both should have pursued [dao] has not been obeyed. Poverty and humbleness are what each person despises the most, but do not reject them if the course which both should have pursued [dao] has not been obeyed. The reading I prefer, however, is the following one, which not only assigns de 得 a more neutral meaning while—in the footsteps of D. C. Lau— restoring the fruitfully indeterminate quality of the normative value of the term dao, by extending it to encompass not just the proper courses of glory and misery but also the proper principles of junzi’s conduct: Riches and honors are what each person desires the most, but do not indulge in them if they come to you improperly. Poverty and humbleness are what each person despises the most, but do not reject them if they come to you improperly. If the exemplary person were to forgo human-­heartedness [ren 仁], how could he deserve the name he bears? Exemplary persons do not take leave of their human-­heartedness even for the space of a meal. When they are troubled, they certainly turn to it, as they do in facing difficulties. Quoting a translation of Analects 4.5 in full makes the degree of coherence between the first and the second part of the text even more evident. Glory and misfortune are two perspectives of no concern to the exemplary person, since the “authoritative conduct” he displays by drawing inspiration from ren makes slight of undeserved riches and honors, while lightening the burden of any poverty and humbleness that may befall him: “When one is not distressed in the face of poverty and suffers loss rather than profit himself, he will have exhausted the depths of ren.”16

Notes 1.  DDJ, xi–xii. 2.  See ACPT, 90.



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3.  See Bruno Osimo, Fundamentals of Translation (e-­book, 2014), 5, https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/49758517-­fundamentals-­of -­translation; and Anton Popovič, Teória umeleckého prekladu [Theory of literary translation] (Bratislava, Slovakia: Tatran, 1975). 4.  See James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1 (London: Trubner, 1861), 166–167. 5.  See E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 14. 6.  Yang Bojun’s emendation, while justified from a hermeneutic perspective, is untenable from a stylistic point of view, since the double occurrence of qu 去 proves rather sloppy within the overall structure of the sentence. It is preferable to find a synonym for qu. See Yang Bojun, ed., Lunyu yizhu 論語譯注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 38. 7.  For an interpretation similar to Yang Bojun’s, see Edward G. Slingerland, Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003), 31. 8.  See the Guodian manuscript labeled as Tang Yu zhi dao 唐虞之道 (The Way of Tang and Yu), strip 28: “At the height of order, the unworthy are nurtured; at the height of chaos, the short are destroyed. For this reason, the humane (renzhe 仁者) advance order.” The translation follows Scott Cook, The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Program, 2012), 1:558. 9.  Lunheng 28/123/10. The translation is based on Alfred Forke, trans., Lun-­hêng, part 1: Philosophical Essays of Wang Ch’ung (London: Luzac and Co., 1907), 395–397. 10.  Forke’s translation of Shuoyuan 8.1/63/18, in Forke, Lun-­hêng, part 1, 138, 145. 11.  Confucius, The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau (London: Penguin Books, 1979), 72. 12.  See Slingerland, Confucius, 29. 13.  Lunheng 3/9/11. See Forke, Lun-­hêng, part 1, 150. 14.  Mozi 14/10/35. See also Mozi 13/10/31. 15.  See Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 136–146. 16.  See Tang Yu zhi dao, strips 1–3. The translation follows Cook, Bamboo Texts, 1:545–547.

part iii

Process Cosmology While still thinking through comparative methodologies and particular vocabularies, in Part III we turn our attention to the broadest philosophical content of Chinese cosmology. Roger Ames has purposefully employed the term “cosmology” rather than “metaphysics” because of the connotations of transcendence and dualism that “metaphysics” carries. We might also employ the term “ontology” when reading classical Chinese texts and asking about the nature of the reality in which we find ourselves. This distinction stems from Ames’s conviction that the mainstream Western philosophical pursuit of a transcendent ideal is not reflected in Chinese philosophy. Instead, a closer parallel appears in American pragmatism and in process philosophy. Ames frequently cites John Dewey to emphasize the difference: There are, indeed, but two alternative courses. We must either find the appropriate objects and organs of knowledge in the mutual interactions of changing things; or else, to escape the infection of change, we must seek them in some transcendent and supernal region. The human mind, deliberately as it were, exhausted the logic of the changeless, the final, and the transcendent, before it essayed adventure on the pathless wastes of generation and transformation. (The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy) Convinced that classical Chinese philosophies did not share the Platonic and Christian assumptions about a realm of metaphysical perfection, Ames developed a vocabulary for expressing the Chinese framework of 95

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a cosmos in action, thus reflecting a philosophical lineage of dynamic processes and events. Though there is no predetermined path to discover, as Zhuangzi tells us, “the way is made in walking.” Dewey’s pathless wastes are not a swamp where we must wander endlessly lost. Ames and his collaborators have developed an ontology grounded in process and evolution that does not assume the existence of eternal objects with permanent identities or static essences. Instead, they describe dynamic systems of dao 道, moving qi 氣, interacting yin 陰 and yang 陽, transforming wuxing 五 行, and the generation and expiration of wanwu 萬物. This cosmology rooted in the Book of Changes (Yijing) reorients our thinking away from abstract and universal definitions and back toward the dynamic world of immanent experience. Jung-­Yeup Kim, in “Reflections on David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames’s Understanding of Classical Confucian Cosmology,” places Ames’s cosmological theories within the broader scope of his scholarship. Picking up on the “uncommon assumptions” of Chinese philosophy, Kim traces these to a qi 氣 cosmology, associating Ames with the long tradition of qi studies (qixue 氣學). Peter Wong Yih Jiun, in “Locating the ‘Numinous’ in a Human-­ Centered Religiousness,” pursues the meaning of “numinous” in the absence of a radical Other. In bringing conceptions of the divine down from on high to the everydayness of human life, he suggests a human-­ centered religiousness grounded in creativity and sincerity (cheng 誠). Lauren F. Pfister, in “On the Demystification of the Numinous and Mystical in Classical Ruism,” highlights passages in the Zhongyong and its commentaries that suggest a more important role for the numinous and spiritual than appears in Ames’s translation. He rejects a secular reading of the Zhongyong and argues for the multiplicity of religious views in the Chinese tradition. Sarah A. Mattice, in “Many Confucianisms: From Roger Ames to Jiang Qing on the Interpretive Possibilities of Ruist Traditions,” connects the question of secularity and transcendence to the contemporary political issue of installing Confucianism as a state religion. She notes that Ames and Jiang both develop interpretations meant to be faithful to traditional Confucianism, but that their interpretations lead to very different positions. Ames’s grounding of his interpretation in an immanent human-­centered religiousness, rather than a transcendent ideal, appears in this wide divergence. Given the challenges of “taking



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a tradition on its own terms,” Mattice calls for responsible scholarship that maintains space for the tradition to grow in new directions. Andrew Lambert, in “Seeing Through the Aesthetic Worldview,” takes on the meaning of “aesthetic” as Ames uses it in the wake of Whitehead’s distinction between aesthetic and logical orders. This notion of a dynamic cosmos expressing an aesthetic order, rather than a static ideal maintaining a logical order, gives us a unique take on ethics. After clearing up some misguided criticisms of the aesthetic/logic distinction, Lambert turns the focus from aesthetic judgment toward creation of aesthetic goods in everyday life, particularly the pursuit of joy (le 樂).

chapter 9

Reflections on David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames’s Understanding of Classical Confucian Cosmology Jung-­Yeup Kim

In this chapter on David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames’s understanding of classical Confucian cosmology, I focus on articulating the problem that they are trying to solve, their solution, and the contributions they have made to the discipline of philosophy. I also attempt to shed light on what I believe is the crux of their position.

The Problem: Uncommon Assumptions To understand the significance of Hall and Ames’s reconstruction of classical Confucian cosmology, we must first understand the problem that they are trying to solve. In Thinking Through Confucius, Hall and Ames argue: Current Western understandings of Confucius are the consequence of the mostly unconscious importation of philosophical and theological assumptions into primary translations that have served to introduce Confucius’ thinking to the West. These assumptions are associated with the mainstream of the Anglo-­ European classical tradition. . . . [T]hese assumptions have seriously distorted the thinking of Confucius. Our thinking through Confucius, therefore, must be in its initial phases an un-­thinking of certain of the interpretive categories that by now have come to be presupposed in understanding Confucius.1 It must be emphasized that these “assumptions” are “usually unannounced premises held by the members of an intellectual culture or 99

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tradition that make communication possible by constituting a ground from which philosophic discourse proceeds.”2 Thus, the problem related to these assumptions is serious for two reasons. First, the consequences of imposing these assumptions onto the classical Confucian worldview is not just an issue of getting the particular details of this worldview wrong; rather, it involves distorting the very foundation from which a proper understanding of the particular details can begin to be obtained. The second reason is that these assumptions are “unannounced.” That is, they are so commonsensical and foundational to a tradition that they are not considered as particular ways of viewing things but are unconsciously accepted as universal ones. Ames has been consistent about addressing this problem of imposing one’s cultural assumptions onto other cultures throughout his works. In his most recent book, Confucian Role Ethics, he argues: We must be self-­conscious of what we bring to the enterprise of exploring another cultural tradition. There is a failure of interpreters to be conscious of and to take fair account of their own Gadamerian “prejudices.” They offer the excuse that they are relying on some “objective” lexicon when the truth of the matter is that this lexicon is itself heavily colored with cultural biases, thereby betraying their readers not once, but twice.3 In an effort to avoid committing the above fallacy, Ames defines one aspect of his project as a continued attempt to let Chinese philosophy speak on its own terms by endeavoring to create an “interpretive context for reading the canons.”4 For him, constructing this interpretive context starts by spelling out the cultural presuppositions we are likely to bring to the texts of traditional China, “and then continues by attempting to articulate those uncommon assumptions that make Chinese cosmology distinctive and different from our own philosophical narrative.”5 Furthermore, he argues that “to identify and to articulate this cosmology as a prism of underlying, always-­protean cultural assumptions”6 functions effectively in avoiding cultural reductionism, which would assimilate and subsume the different fundamental assumptions of other cultures to those of one’s own culture. It can be seen here that, for Ames, an understanding of classical Confucian cosmology provides us with an interpretive framework that can help us understand the specific details about the classical Confucian



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position more properly. This is because he considers cosmology the epitome of the unconsciously assumed general framework in which the details of a culture are embedded. Thus, a proper understanding of a cosmology serves as an important heuristic when trying to understand the general worldview, as well as the details situated within this worldview, of a philosophical tradition of another culture. Thus far, the problematic issue that underlies Hall and Ames’s effort to obtain a more proper understanding of classical Confucian cosmology has been investigated. Through this we can see the important function that their understanding of classical Confucian cosmology has in their overall project. That is, through properly understanding the generic traits of classical Confucian cosmology, we can have access to the general characteristics of classical Confucian thought, which are otherwise hidden as uncommon assumptions. This is crucial because if we do not comprehend the general uncommon assumptions correctly, an understanding of all other details will be tainted by such a misunderstanding.

Solving the Problem: Thinking Through Classical Confucian Cosmology If one approaches the classical Confucian texts from the stance of the unannounced assumptions that underlie the mainstream Anglo-­ European philosophical tradition, this will result in misinterpretations of the texts, such as the following typical errors. One error is that the contents of the texts will seem simply incoherent. Another is that the contents of the texts will be seen as similar but underdeveloped versions of Anglo-­European philosophy. In both cases, they are made into what they are not—namely, incoherent texts that are not philosophical or texts containing primitive forms of Anglo-­European philosophical thought. Before inquiring into the details of Hall and Ames’s corrective argument concerning the second error, I inquire into their critique of the first mistake, which is similar to the second one, but is still a distinct issue and perhaps more serious. The first error assumes that since the major tropes of Anglo-­European metaphysics, ontology, and theology are not present in the classical Confucian text, Confucians have no coherent worldview at all. Interestingly, I note that, unlike the second error, this one is based upon an initially correct observation that the aforementioned Western tropes are not present. Yet from this accurate

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observation, it is wrongfully concluded that there is no consistency to the texts. In this rendering of the classical Confucian texts, they are just a collection of incoherent aphorisms and platitudes. To rectify this misunderstanding, Hall and Ames argue: “Although Confucius did not discuss speculative questions, there are tacit intuitions that underlie and serve as ground for his articulated philosophy. We may safely assume that the implicit cosmological vision of Confucius was equally tacit among his chief disciples.”7 Indeed, it is easy to assume that the Analects, for example, has no coherent worldview, that it is just a compilation of scattered assertions of Confucius, and that because of this, it should not be considered seriously as a philosophical text. Part of this assumption is due to the nature of the texts. As Hall and Ames explain: “The desire to characterize a cosmological dimension of Confucian thought presents us with serious difficulties. Unlike the personal, societal, and political levels of his philosophy, this stratum is not readily accessible from even the most careful reading of the available materials.”8 In light of this, Hall and Ames devote great effort to carefully drawing out the implicit intuitions and cosmological visions within the texts, which become more pronounced when viewed from a contemporary perspective. Let’s move on to thinking through the details of Hall and Ames’s correction of the second error mentioned above. Throughout their works, Hall and Ames argue that mainstream Anglo-­European metaphysics, ontology, and theology are pervaded with the notions of transcendence, substance ontology, rational order, creatio ex nihilo, and general ontology.9 In contrast to this, classical Confucian cosmology must be understood through the notions of immanence, event ontology, aesthetic order, creatio ab initio, and ars contextualis. Furthermore, the terms within each respective group are related in such a manner that they form a cohesive group of interconnected ideas.10 It must be noted that the notion of immanence here does not connote that a transcendent Being is in this world. Rather, the notion can be understood in the sense that the myriad things and dimensions of this world are internally related. The problem is that the above cluster of notions associated with the West has been inadvertently and uncritically imposed onto the classical Confucian texts, resulting in an assimilation of classical Chinese ideas to those of the West. For example, the cosmological notions of tian 天 and dao 道 have been misinterpreted as a transcendent Being and Principle. This is a result of tian and dao being understood through the notions of substance, rational order, creatio ex nihilo, and general ontology. Because



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such cosmological ideas (tian, dao) are defining of the framework itself, misinterpretations of them results in a misunderstanding of other terms within the framework. For instance, the notion of ming 命 has been understood as the command of God, rather than the conditions that nature spontaneously configures. It must be noted that not only are the ideas of classical Confucianism misrepresented, but they are made into second-­rate versions of the Western ideas to which they are being assimilated.11 Hall and Ames utilize the correlative concepts of focus and field to further organize the group of notions associated with traditional China into a conceptual framework that can be used to interpret classical Confucian cosmological notions such as tian and dao. For example, in this conceptual scheme, tian is an immanent, processual, relational field, and dao is an order that emerges from this field. They further articulate this interpretation of classical Confucian cosmology, which gets encapsulated in the concepts of focus and field, in terms of qi 氣 (vital energy). For example, in Focusing the Familiar, they argue that the notions of qi and correlative cosmology can serve as the interpretive context of the classical Confucian text Zhongyong 中庸.12 Also, in Confucian Role Ethics, Ames argues that “we might cautiously call this broad interpretive context a ‘correlative cosmology’ or a ‘correlative qi 氣 cosmology.’ ”13 In advancing the position above, Hall and Ames’s notion of qi complements the development of their conceptual framework, while their conceptual framework contributes to a corrective reconstruction of the notion of qi. That is, qi is yet another notion that has been misunderstood through the Western chain of concepts articulated above. Again, Hall and Ames rectify this misunderstanding by employing the Chinese concept cluster. Thus, qi is not a transcendent, monistic, unchanging substance but an immanent, correlative, dynamic field of energy. Indeed, as they show, if we look into the traditional understanding of qi, the notion emphasizes the motifs of emergent order, interrelatedness, and process.14 In light of the above, it can be argued that Hall and Ames’s position concerning classical Confucian cosmology falls under the lineage of the philosophy of qi (qixue) if it must be categorized.15 Also, Hall and Ames’s corrective understanding of the notion qi, again, shows us that the problem of cultural assimilation and reduction in contemporary scholarship on Chinese philosophy is still present.

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Contributions to the Field of Philosophy: East and West While it is not possible in this short chapter to articulate all the contributions that Hall and Ames’s work has made, Robert Cummings Neville in Boston Confucianism captures well the main points of the contributions. There he argues that the work of Hall and Ames brings to philosophers’ attention the general characteristics of Chinese and Western cultures, respectively, and by doing so provides “differing contexts of cultural assumptions.”16 According to Neville, “awareness of the difference reduces false familiarity, both about the other and about one’s sense of one’s own tradition.”17 Thus, Neville concludes: “After their work no philosopher in China or the West can innocently assume his or her own cultural assumptions. Rather, those assumptions relative to the others constitute a philosophic problem.”18 Furthermore, Hall and Ames’s work “is the first full-­blown philosophy of culture in the West to be undertaken primarily from a Chinese perspective.”19 This brings us to a couple of specific contributions. First, Hall and Ames’s reconstruction of classical Confucian cosmology provides us with the opportunity to critically and constructively examine the intercultural problem of imposing one’s cultural presuppositions onto another culture. It must be understood that the early interpreters of classical Confucianism did not necessarily intentionally impose their frameworks onto the texts. Rather, it was in general done inadvertently because their fundamental assumptions were hidden even to them. In light of this, we can say that Hall and Ames have uncovered a certain blindness in these early interpreters of classical Confucianism and Chinese philosophy. Through the works of Hall and Ames, we now see that Confucianism is not a position that is devoid of a coherent worldview, and also that classical Confucian cosmology is not a primitive, underdeveloped, inferior version of mainstream Anglo-­European metaphysics, ontology, and theology. Rather, in content, method, and standards of self-­evaluation, it constitutes a different paradigm. This argument prevents the imposition of the concepts, methods, and standards of self-­evaluation of mainstream Anglo-­European metaphysics, ontology, and theology onto those of the classical Confucian worldview. By doing so, it rectifies the relationship between the two cultural philosophical traditions, shifting from hierarchical absolutism to egalitarian pluralism. And after Hall and Ames’s works no one can simply assume that the two traditions are related in terms of the former relation.



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Second, Hall and Ames’s reconstruction of classical Confucian cosmology provides us with the opportunity to critically and constructively examine certain problems present within mainstream Western metaphysics, ontology, and theology through the lens of classical Confucianism. Also, it can help us uncover and productively engage with ignored themes in less prominent strands of philosophy in the West—for example, American pragmatism—which become central motifs when viewed from the standpoint of classical Confucian philosophy. Thus, Hall and Ames’s work ameliorates a myopia, in relation to both Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy, caused by being solely immersed in the dominant propensities of thought of the mainstream Western philosophical tradition. That is, not only does their work properly disclose to us a foreign philosophical tradition, but in doing so it provides us with a position from which to see the mainstream Western philosophical tradition in a new and critical light. I provide an instance of the second point made above in the following. In Confucianism, theory and practice have never been separated, and the inseparability of the two is taken as a basic presupposition in this philosophical tradition. Thus, classical Confucian cosmology is not a speculative theoretical position divorced from practice but a practical scheme that emerges from active engagement with this world, which in turn intelligently guides such engagement. From this Confucian perspective, the separation of theory and practice that pervades the Western philosophical tradition becomes puzzling and problematic. From the stance of Confucianism, we are in a better position to see the significance of John Dewey’s critique of a dominant propensity to divorce theory and practice present within the mainstream classical Western philosophy. According to Dewey, pure intellect and its activity were generally prized over practical affairs within the classical Western philosophical tradition, and this is intimately related with the “quest for certainty.”20 For him, the “quest for complete certainty can be fulfilled in pure knowing alone,” and “such is the verdict of our most enduring philosophic tradition.”21 Furthermore, Dewey argues that a belief that has greatly influenced philosophy since as early as ancient Greece is that the role of knowledge is to disclose “the antecedently real, rather than, as is the case with our practical judgments, to gain the kind of understanding which is necessary to deal with problems as they arise.”22 According to him, this conception of knowledge defined the particular task of philosophic inquiry. That is, as a kind of knowledge, philosophy should be preoccupied

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with the disclosure “of the Real in itself, of Being in and of itself.”23 Thus, philosophy “is an intellectual, a theoretical affair, constituted by a knowledge to be attained apart from practical activity.”24 Also, because ultimate Being or reality is fixed, permanent, and unchanging, in this conception of philosophy focused on a pure rational apprehension of Being, the quest for absolute certainty can reach its goal.25 In contrast, practical action, as distinct from “self-­revolving rational self-­activity, belongs in the realm of generation and decay, a realm inferior in value as in Being.”26 Through this line of thought, ontological justification was given to segregating knowledge and action into two domains and to devaluing practice.27 However, for Dewey, to divorce thought from action, and to attempt to secure absolute certainty concerning what the supreme good is via the former, makes no contribution to dealing with what he considers a central problem of philosophy—namely, the task of perfecting methods of effectively regulating action in order to concretely realize the goods that will actually enhance the human experience.28 Rather, according to him: “[The quest for certainty] depresses and deadens effort in that direction. That is the chief indictment to be brought against the classic philosophic tradition.”29 And it is here that classical Confucian philosophy, as understood by Hall and Ames, becomes relevant. Unlike many positions in the Western philosophical tradition, Confucianism is not interested in the quest for certainty, nor in understanding the nature of unchanging Being via pure rational exercise. Rather, Confucians focus on productively contextualizing themselves within this uncertain world of change, and thus their efforts, as Hall and Ames argue, can be understood as an art of contextualization (ars contextualis).30 Consequently, in Confucianism, there was no separation of thought and practice, nor was there a devaluing of the latter in relation to the former. Furthermore, Confucianism is an actually lived tradition of inquiry that can serve as a concrete case for study and a resource for accomplishing tasks that resonate with what Dewey had in mind. As such, it can serve as an alternative way of doing philosophy for those who are weary of the side effects that accompany the undue attention given to the quest for certainty. Perhaps one valuable result of this alternative line of thought, which Confucius and Dewey share, is that it can contribute to making philosophy relevant and beneficial to the everyday lives of ordinary people again.



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It must be recognized that Hall and Ames’s argument was initially presented in an era in which studies in Confucianism, even more so than now, were underdeveloped, marginalized, and influenced by mainstream Western metaphysics, ontology, and theology. Not only does their work shield Confucian philosophy from cultural imposition, but also it subverts the configuration of philosophical discourse in a manner that allows us to critically reflect on the West through the East. Indeed, this can be considered a Copernican shift for studies in Confucian philosophy and the field of philosophy in general. And it is in light of this that we can fully appreciate the significance of Hall and Ames’s reconstruction of classical Confucian cosmology as the interpretive context in which this revisionary movement sets forth. Thus, it can be argued that their contribution to reconstructing and rectifying the understanding of classical Confucian cosmology is one of the most important aspects of their multidimensional contributions.

Notes 1.  TTC, 7. 2.  Ibid., 11. 3.  CRE, 22. 4.  Ibid., 24. 5.  Ibid. 6.  Ibid., 41. 7.  TTC, 198. 8.  Ibid., 196. 9.  According to Hall and Ames, “In the Western tradition, cosmology has carried two principal connotations. First, ontologia generalis, general ontology, which is concerned with the question of the be-­ing of beings. The second sense is that associated with the term, scientia universalis, the science of principles” (ibid., 199). 10.  Ibid., 11–21. This line of argumentation is also presented in AC and TH. 11.  Ibid., 195–249. 12.  FF, 19–30. 13.  CRE, 49. 14.  FF, 5–11. 15.  For details of Ames’s extensive analysis of the various dimensions of classical Confucian cosmology in terms of qi, see CRE, 56–77, 79–80.

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16.  Robert Cummings Neville, Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late Modern-­World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 49. 17.  Ibid. 18.  Ibid., 50. 19.  Ibid., 47–48. 20.  John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (New York: Capricorn Books, 1960), 358. 21.  Ibid., 360. 22.  Ibid., 366. 23.  Ibid. 24.  Ibid. 25.  Ibid., 367. 26.  Ibid. 27.  Ibid. 28.  Ibid., 379. 29.  Ibid. 30.  TTC, 246–249.

chapter 10

Locating the “Numinous” in a Human-­Centered Religiousness Peter Wong Yih Jiun

A profound, numinous experience, even if it is not necessarily available to all adherents (or is limited to a small number of adepts), is often taken to be an important aspect of religious traditions; such experiences are often taken as proof of the authenticity of one’s practices or beliefs. Indeed, many religious traditions highlight and celebrate specific accounts of such experiences by their founders or key figures. We see this in theistic traditions, such as the experience of the transfiguration of Christ recounted in Christianity,1 and in nontheistic traditions, such as the Buddha’s enlightenment under the bodhi tree. In connection with the foregoing, Rudolf Otto’s well-­known formulation gave precision to the notion of numinous experience: “overwhelming, utterly engaging, and sacred mystery” (mysterium tremendum fascinans et augustum).2 This conveys an understanding of the mystical experience that involves the feeling of sheer insignificance in the presence of a reality that is utterly unknowable and in the face of whom—or which—inspires a response of awe-­filled worship or heartfelt reverence. While the articulation of the “numinous feeling” is only the opening move in Otto’s ambitious project of performing a Kantian transcendental analysis on religious experience, it is nevertheless a point for which he is remembered, especially for his claim that despite differences in understanding and expressions among the various religions, the numinous feeling is the core of religious experiences.3 This feeling becomes the empirical gateway through which Otto’s theoretical system gains entry. I take issue with Otto’s reliance upon the notion of a radical Other 109

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as the key feature of a religious experience—that is, as mysterium tremendum, which is understood as an encounter with something or someone so much vaster and more superior that dread or awe would be the “natural” response.4 It seems to me that this leaves out too much, especially when he accepts the plurality of religious experience and expressions. The notion of religious experience centered on a radical Other seems to exclude Confucianism, insofar as it is understood as a religious tradition that is resolutely human-­centered.5 That is to say, the meaning of a human life can be fully addressed without reference to, or having as its ground, a radically transcendent Other. The sober nature of Confucian religious sensibility is in contrast with certain spiritual paths that could be described as ecstatic. In Confucian religiousness, there is no entering into a trance, no out-­of-­body encounter, no esoteric knowledge, no abandonment of self. I am reminded of the “Announcement on Wine Drinking” (Jiugao 酒誥) in the Book of Documents. That the consumption of alcohol, while permitted, is to be done in moderation and only within the context of sacrificial rites seems to convey this nature very well. An alternative to discussing the religiousness of Confucianism would be to restrict the use of “numinous experience” to theistic traditions but retain the possibility of using the term “religious experience,” which does not involve an “acquaintance with non-­sensory realities or states of affairs.”6 However, given the tendency of Confucian literature to continue to use terms that are usually considered numinous—together with tian 天, one thinks of shen 神 and gui 鬼—and to even reinterpret them to suit the needs of their era and community, it would seem to be excising a vital part of the Confucian tradition if we adopt such a strategy. See, for example, the line from “Jiyi” 祭義 in the Book of Rites 禮記: “Qi 氣 is the abundance of shen; and po 魄 is the abundance of gui鬼; bringing together gui and shen is the utmost teaching.”7 To keep this chapter brief, I will limit the rest of the discussion to tian. Consider the following description of tian 天 and the earth in the Zhongyong 中庸, where they are both possible candidates for the numinous, due to their profound performance as the sustainers of life: Now the heavens (tian 天) begin with the accumulation of limited lights and culminate in being inexhaustible—hence enabling the suspension of sun, moon and stars, and the sheltering of the myriad things. As for the earth, it is the accumulation of pinches



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of soil and culminates in breadth and depth; it supports Mount Hua and feels not its weight, accommodates the Yellow River and the sea without losing a drop, and carries the myriad things. The mountain is the accumulation of fist-­sized stones and culminates in being sufficiently wide and large for the growth of grasses and trees; it is the home of animals and the storehouse of precious minerals. The accumulation of water by the ladleful culminates in unfathomable depth. It is the dwelling place of giant turtles and lizards, sea leviathans and dragons, fish and turtles; and it enables the growth of goods and wealth.8 The gulf between the mundane and the profound, as Otto understands it, is not evident in the passage above. The profound is none other than the accumulation of the ordinary. Another passage, in Zhongyong 20, speaks of a quality that is (or could be) shared by both human and tian: cheng 誠. It reads, “Cheng 誠 is the way of tian 天; realizing cheng is the way of humans.” Thus, while tian and the human remain distinct, there is no sense that the gap between the two is unbridgeable. This very feature was noted with disapproval by the nineteenth-­ century Christian missionary James Legge, who wrote in a footnote to his translation of the Zhongyong, “What is it but extravagance thus to file man with the supreme Power?”9 Not that we must share Legge’s identification of tian with the supreme deity, but we should note that as far as the Confucians are concerned, the human has the possibility to become an equal of tian, whatever we conceive tian to be. Not only does the Zhongyong compare the achievement of the sage with that of tian, but as we shall see, it culminates in a grand vision of how the achieved human can form a triad with tian and the earth, a vision that is also shared by Mencius and Xunzi. It is at this point that we might notice a gap between a theistic construal of Heaven and the more ordinary understanding of tian as the heavens or sky. Thus, an objection could be raised: In the Confucian case, however close the sage, or the human, might approach the heavens, it is really not comparable to the theistic experience of encountering the transcendent deity. Therefore, Legge is simply mistaken in thinking that the Zhongyong is referring to a theistic Heaven, and Confucian thought cannot be considered to be truly religious. It appears that one cannot have the cake and eat it too. And I would agree—at least insofar as Legge’s misunderstanding is

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concerned. If there is a sense of the numinous to be found in Confucianism, it cannot reside in the nature of tian per se. Rather, I would suggest that it is located in the realization of human possibility, as shown in the following passage: Only those in the world who are utterly cheng 誠 can fully realize their human tendencies. Being capable of fully realizing their particular tendencies, they are able to realize the tendencies of others. Being capable of fully realizing the tendencies of others, they are able to realize the tendencies of things. Being capable of fully realizing the tendencies of things, they are able to aid in the transformation and nurturance of the natural world (tiandi 天 地). Being capable of aiding the transformation and nurturance of the natural world, they are able to form a triad with tian and the earth.10 It would seem that Confucian religiousness could be better located in cheng 誠, as a sense of religiousness that is associated with the process of transformation, by paying attention to and being dedicated to an ordinary attitude of sincerity. Through gradual accumulation of practice and intensification in ever more diverse and expanding circumstances, a profound realization can be achieved. This process of cultivation is described as follows: For the less accomplished, one works on becoming adaptive (zhiqu 致曲). When adaptive then one can become cheng 誠. When cheng then one takes shape (xing 形). Having taken shape then one becomes distinctive (zhu 著). When distinctive then luminous (ming 明). When luminous then dynamic (dong 動). When dynamic then changing (bian 變). When effecting change then transforming (hua 化). Of the entire world, only the one who is utterly cheng 誠 is capable of effecting transformation.11 By now, it is quite apparent that the use of “sincerity” in rendering cheng is inadequate in fully accounting for the kind of work the term is put to. In fact, the use of the term in the foregoing passage points us closer to Roger Ames and David Hall’s rendering of cheng as “creativity,” however nonintuitive an interpretation it might first appear.12 Nevertheless, despite the advantage one gains by the use of “creativity” for rendering



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cheng, it seems to pay the price of missing the more dour aspect of cheng—namely, sincerity, which is just as important. Perhaps cheng is better rendered through poetic imagery. This would better convey the “ore-­like” character of key philosophical terms in Chinese thought, as noted by I. A. Richards.13 In fact, Confucian commentaries on the meaning of cheng clearly show that the term admits of multiple, and ever evolving, interpretations. Legge’s commentary on the Zhongyong lists a number of such interpretations: “without deception” (buqi 不欺), “ceaseless” (buxi 不息), “without presumption” (wuwang 無妄), and “authenticity” (zhenshi 真實).14 There is also the close association made between cheng and jing 敬 (respect or reverence) in the teachings of Cheng Yi 程頤 (aka Cheng Yichuan 程伊川); according to A. C. Graham, “In Yi-­ch’uan’s philosophy the original unity of the mind is called [cheng] 誠, while the process by which this unity is maintained in activity is called [jing] 敬.”15 Indeed, it is a challenge to find a suitable English rendering of cheng that could accommodate the range of interpretations. Thus far, we have seen that the Confucian religious sensibility is based, not on the worshiping of a theistic tian, but on a dedication to devoting oneself to certain affective qualities, such as cheng, which begins simply as sincerity. This sense of devotion that is not directed at a deity is similarly echoed by Mencius, who uses the term tian to describe the epitome of achievement. For Mencius, it lies in the utter devotion of one’s entire life to cultivation of the great self (dati 大體), achieved through the transformation of one’s feelings and tendencies and through ritual conduct. More specifically for Mencius, the process of cultivation begins with seeking one’s heart that has strayed (qiufangxin 求放心), followed by maintaining one’s heart (cunxin 存心) and nurturing one’s heart (yangxin 養心), and finally it is given full expression in being utterly wholehearted (jinxin 盡心). Jinxin is to be utterly engaged with all one’s heart, fully developing those interpersonal responses that are the four emergent shoots (siduan 四端)—namely, sympathy, shame, deference, and discrimination.16 Being wholehearted is to be fully devoted to tending the four shoots of one’s emergent self, which is experienced within our own unique circumstances, to its full relational maturity. The ability to engage wholeheartedly is an achievement that belongs to the consummate person. Petty persons, with their fragmented purposes and concerns, cannot fully engage. For Mencius, this cultivated self becomes

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the most profound of performances, and it is the performance that is both comparable and complementary to that other profound performance: the great tian 天, seen in the changing of seasons and the generation of all things.17 One finds his idea of wholehearted engagement (jinxin 盡心) expressed in the opening lines of Mencius 7A1: Mencius said, “Those who engage wholeheartedly (jinxin 盡心) realize their human tendencies. In realizing their human tendencies, they thus realize tian (zhitian 知天). It is in nurturing their human tendencies that tian is served. No matter a short or long life, one does not waver. Cultivating oneself, one awaits; that is how one establishes one’s destiny (liming 立命).” This can be read together with the opening lines of the Zhongyong: The destiny afforded by tian (tianming 天命) is called human tendencies (xing 性). The tending of human tendencies is called the way (dao 道). And improving the way is called teaching (jiao 教).18 The foregoing two passages serve well as prime articulations of the Confucian religious project. The sense of personal effort merges with a greater sensibility of devoting oneself to complementing tian. When viewed with theistic eyes, this then leads to the seemingly obvious conclusion that it is a form of protonatural theology. But when taken in ­context of what we have seen previously, the project ought to be understood as one of collaborating with the profound performance that is tian. It is through such a devotion that one discovers one’s destiny. In other words, noble persons draw their satisfaction from discovering the way by utterly engaging themselves in the project of becoming human (ren 仁). As Mencius says, “Ren 仁 is the most honorable rank of tian; it is a person’s abode of ease.”19 It is also important to note the comment that Zhu Xi 朱熹 made on this verse. He says that the four cardinal qualities of humanity, integrity, ritual propriety, and wisdom are “those in which the person must constantly remain and ought never depart from, not even for a moment.”20 Thus, Zhu Xi understands the abode of ease in an active sense; the four cardinal qualities require one’s constant vigilance in such a way that they come to permeate all aspects of one’s relationships. But I think there is also another aspect to the abode of ease, which is that of enjoyment.



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What Zhu Xi does not emphasize is the idea that dedication to the way of self-­cultivation brings comfort and satisfaction. It is by centering oneself upon engaging fully that allows one to be free from fear or anxiety. It is the peace of noble persons who have discovered their true abode. Having established their destiny, noble persons are no longer perturbed by circumstances beyond their control and they await what comes without fear or anxiety. Thus, we are reminded of Confucius’s praise of Yan Hui, seen in the following passage: The Master said, “How excellent is Yan Hui! A bamboo bowl of rice, a gourd of water, and a dwelling in a dingy alley. For others, this would have been a source of unbearable anxiety, but Hui has never allowed it to change his enjoyment. How excellent is Yan Hui!”21 Although still vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life, noble persons have nonetheless found a way of establishing their life such that enjoyment is always available. As Li Zehou notes, the Confucian’s equanimity regarding life’s changes is not derived from the sense of being taken care of (by a higher power), nor is it a sense of resignation or acceptance of what is preordained.22 Rather, it is dependent upon having discovered a stance by which all the unpredictable circumstances of life can be met with spirit and with creativity. It is within this “abode of ease” that the numinous is discovered. But what might a profound experience look like? Probably one of the more mystical-­sounding passages would be the following from the Mencius: Mencius said, “The myriad things are complete (bei 備) in me. There is no greater joy than, on self-­reflection, discovering that one has been cheng 誠.”23 An elucidation of the term “complete” (bei 備) can be found in the following passage from “Jitong” 祭統 in the Book of Rites: The excellent person in performing the sacrifices is certainly blessed. But it is not the blessing as the world understands it. To be blessed is to be complete (bei 備). To be complete is the term for being in accord with all (baishun 百順). To have nothing with which one is not in accord is called complete.24

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Having confirmed that one has been faithful to the way, that one has realized the meaning of cheng within the circumstances of one’s life, must be satisfying indeed. In some ways, this is a joy derived from reflection, which seems somewhat different from the kind of religious experience about which theists tend to speak. However, the phrase “The myriad things are complete (or, in accord) in me” seems more immediate and more mystical. While it is possible for a person to know that he or she is in accord with all, it is another matter to say that all is in accord with himself or herself. How does one know that? Mencius’s utterance cannot be ascertained by self-­reflection in the ordinary sense of the expression. His words seem comparable to those of Wittgenstein, when he remarked about the experience of “feeling absolutely safe” in his example of a religious expression.25 Finally, what might come closest to an ineffable sense of the numinous could be found in the notion of performance without leaving a trace. Tian that is utterly cheng can be understood from the description of its performance found at the end of the Zhongyong, which concludes with the following quotation from the Book of Songs: “The works of tian 天 above are without sound or scent.”26 The foregoing description of tian refers to its ability to imperceptibly exert powerful influence. The idea of tian as silent and unobtrusive is also similarly expressed by Confucius. As seen in the following passage from the Analects, although the context of the remarks made is probably more an expression of exasperation on the part of Confucius, it nevertheless offers a plausible elaboration on the performance that is “without sound or scent”: The Master said, “I wish to say no more.” Zigong 子貢 replied, “Master, if you say nothing, then what teachings would we, your disciples, transmit?” The Master said, “What has tian 天 said? Yet the four seasons continue to make progress, and the myriad things continue to regenerate. What has tian said?”27 The progress of the seasons and the ceaseless cycle of life—they are tian’s performance, such that the actor is completely undetectable. Whether tian has a separate existence is never discussed. What seems to be more important is the performance itself. In this notion of a performer who leaves no trace, what might first appear to be an intimation of a transcendent, divine Other is probably better understood as an appreciation for influence exerted that is noncoercive, subtle, and



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utterly appropriate to the situation. Later in Chinese culture, this finds expression in an aesthetic of blandness (dan 淡). As François Jullien puts it, it involves a transcendence that “does not open onto another world, but is lived as immanence itself”: “Blandness is this experience of transcendence reconciled with nature—and divested of faith.”28 In other words, the Confucian sensibility regarding the numinous— if one is permitted to use that term—is ultimately located not on high but in the center (zhong 中). This raises the stakes for the significance of “garden variety” religious experiences—praying quietly at a roadside shrine, chanting to invoke courage, meditating, attending a funeral, and so forth—but even more so for the significance of conduct that seems entirely mundane. One of the places that most exhibits the human-­centered religiousness that is without a radical Other would be right in the middle of conducting oneself with propriety: Lifting up the lower part of his skirt, he (Confucius) walked up the reception hall. He appeared respectful and cautious, breathed so shallowly as if he was holding his breath. Upon descending from the hall, he appeared relaxed and carefree.29 Simply divine!

Notes 1.  Mark 9:1–13. 2.  Literally, “awful (or fearful, dreadful), fascinating, and sacred mystery,” but the meaning of the first two sets of terms has become debased in the English after the nineteenth century. In today’s parlance, we might say, “overwhelming, utterly engaging, and sacred mystery.” See Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-­rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950). See also Philip C. Almond, Rudolf Otto: An Introduction to His Philosophical Theology (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), esp. 65. 3.  Otto, Idea of the Holy, 6. 4.  See ibid., 120, for a description of the response of awe with respect to the dead that could even be observed in other animals, such as Otto’s horse. 5.  See CRE, 211–255.

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6.  Jerome Gellman, “Mysticism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive (Spring 2014), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries /mysticism/. 7.  禮記, 祭義. 8.  Zhongyong 26. 9.  James Legge, The Doctrine of the Mean, in The Four Books (Shanghai: Chinese Book Co., 1930), 397n22. 10.  Zhongyong 22. 11.  Zhongyong 23. 12.  FF. 13.  I. A. Richards, Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition (Richmond, Surrey, England: Curzon Press, 1996 [1932]), 4. 14.  See Legge, Doctrine of the Mean, 397n22. Translations of terms are mostly mine. 15.  A. C. Graham, Two Chinese Philosophers: The Metaphysics of the Brothers Ch’eng, 2nd ed. (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1992), 67. 16.  Mencius 2A6. 17.  See Analects 17.19. Discussed further toward the end of this chapter. 18.  Adapted from FF, 89. 19.  Mencius 2A7. 20.  Zhu Xi, The Four Books: 朱熹,《四書集注, 孟子, 公孫丑上, 人之安宅 也注》. 21.  Analects 6.11. 22.  《論語今讀》(臺北: 允晨文化, 2000), 52–53, 444–445. 23.  Mencius 7A4. 24.  禮記, 祭統. 25.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics,” Philosophical Review 74, no. 1 (1965): 8. 26.  Zhongyong 33. The verse is from “Wenwang” in the Book of Songs. 27.  Analects 17.19. 28.  See François Jullien, In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics (New York: Zone Books, 2004), 143–144. 29.  Analects 10.4.

chapter 11

On the Demystification of the Numinous and Mystical in Classical Ruism Contemporary Musings on the Zhongyong Lauren F. Pfister

In their volume seeking to present a “translation and philosophical interpretation” of the Zhongyong 中庸, the most metaphysical text within the Four Books, Roger Ames and David Hall putatively translate the text in order to provide a philosophical interpretation of the whole.1 Though their methodological inspiration is drawn from selected process philosophical concepts found in the system of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947),2 they unabashedly oppose Whitehead’s own theism without ever mentioning that Whitehead was metaphysically theistic.3 They pursue this approach in order to oppose what they claim is a “ ‘Christianization’ of Chinese texts,”4 an orientation informed by “our Judeo-­Christian tradition,”5 replacing it with their own preferred secularized vocabulary and worldview. This principled secularism is read back into their particular account of “classical Chinese” settings (as seen, for example, in their glossary account of the concept of tian 天),6 claiming that they are reviving a particular approach to translation of key terms by respecting and responding to a consistent and singular “Chinese sensibility.”7 What intrigues a reader of this text is that all this is done by Ames and Hall while claiming, at the same time, that the propriety involved with ritual actions, specifically associated with the term li 禮, is “at once cognitive and aesthetic, moral and religious, physical and spiritual.”8 How can such a secularist approach handle the “moral,” “religious,” and even “spiritual” dimensions of ritual propriety and its “process of personalization” in these realms that are not necessarily as secular as they prefer? These kinds of questions are all the more suitable in the 119

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context of contemporary Chinese philosophical circles in Mainland China, where a principled Marxist rejection of religious claims is no longer applied, and a new search for cultural understandings that include religious claims and experiences is being pursued by some Chinese philosophers and other Chinese intellectuals.9 One of the ways Ames and Hall do so is that they also adopt a critical form of modern textual selectivity reminiscent of Formgeschichte skepticism, applying it to the Zhongyong in ways that do not appear at all to be rooted in classical Chinese textual hermeneutics. This significant point will be explored near the end of this chapter after two specific passages from the English version of the Zhongyong are reviewed—passages directly appealing to “spiritual beings,” ritual propriety, and “religious activities.” Though the understanding I affirm for these terms will be based on sources in Chinese, English, and other European languages, the most significant assertion about the metaphysical, religious, and ethical nature of these terms found in the latter portion of this chapter will rely on commentaries to the Four Books prepared by Zhang Juzheng 张 居正, the tutor of the Wanli 万历 emperor in the Ming dynasty. Zhang was a sixteenth-­century figure who wrote about these matters without ever having come into contact with Christian missionaries or other foreign expressions of a theistic worldview.

Focusing on Classical Chinese Textual Hermeneutics: Conundrums of Focusing the Familiar in Zhongyong 16 and 19 Having unreservedly expressed their concern about ritual propriety and its “process of personalization,” Ames and Hall nevertheless appear to apply a principled avoidance in identifying any philosophical significance to religious and spiritual dimensions found in the Zhongyong. Thoroughly rejecting any transcendent referent for terms such as tian or shangdi 上帝10 and avoiding any clarification or explicit reference to rituals that may involve those and other spiritual realities (as seen below in Zhongyong 19), Ames and Hall eschew obvious references to the importance of “ghosts and spirits” (guishen 鬼神) in Zhongyong 16. Here let us start reconsidering these matters by analyzing and reflecting on their rendering of two paragraphs found in Zhongyong 19.11 Taking up the places of their forebearers, carrying out their ritual observances (li), playing their music (yue 樂), showing respect to



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those whom they esteemed, extending their affections to those of whom they were fond, serving their dead as though they were still living, and serving those who are long departed as though they were still here—this then is filial piety at its utmost. The sacrificial observances to tian 天 at the winter solstice in the southern suburbs of the capital and to the earth (di 地) at the summer solstice in the northern suburbs are ways of serving the high ancestors. Ritual observances performed in the ancestral temple are ways of making sacrifices to one’s forebearers. For one who has a clear understanding of the sacrificial observances to tian and the earth, and the various ceremonies such as the Grand di sacrifice and the autumnal chang sacrifice performed in the ancestral temple, the governing of the empire is as easy as placing something in the palm of one’s hand. Certainly, the phrases that deal with “serving the dead as if they are living” above suggest a form of “familiar life” with one’s departed ancestors that has ritual, ethical, and metaphysical implications. Ames and Hall want to make the whole of this passage be involved with “high ancestors” (their unexplained rendering for shangdi 上帝) and “forebearers.” On what I take to be a normal reading of their claim in the first sentence of that passage, sacrifices to tian and earth (notably, whether this is a proper portrayal of the objects of those sacrifices is controversial and is not elaborated at all in this manner in the Chinese standard text) are ways of “serving the high ancestors.” Are both tian and earth related to anyone’s (or everyone’s) high ancestors? How is that the case? If that is so, should there not be a philosophical elaboration of these important ritual expressions, adding insight to how one “serves the dead as if they are living”? Ironically, the passage is left unaddressed in any philosophical way. If these latter sacrifices are performed for the sake of ancestors in addition to those sacrifices to tian and earth mentioned earlier, they must be important ritual ways of expressing filial piety. Why, then, are we not given any “philosophical interpretations”? What is being asked here is not extraordinary for a book whose subtitle is “A Translation and Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong.” Though we could cite in contrast the study of Julia Ching 秦家懿 (1934– 2001), entitled The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi,12 I choose to focus here on one passage about “Confucian religion” quoted affirmatively

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by Ames in another volume published in 2011, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. There John Major is cited as writing: I translate di [帝] as “thearch”—a felicitous word first used, I believe, by Edward Schafer—when it refers to specific personage such as the Supreme Thearch (shangdi [上帝]) or the Yellow Thearch (huangdi [黄帝]), or to idealized rulers (“emperors”). Thearch captures well the character of ancient Chinese thought wherein divinities might be (simultaneously and without internal contradiction) high gods, mythical/divine rulers, or deified royal ancestors: beings of enormous import, straddling the numinous and the mundane.13 This passage from Major’s book on “early Han thought,” published in 1993, is interesting for several reasons. First, it offers an alternative rendering for the term di and then elaborates it to include a wide range of metaphysical, mythical, and ancestral denotations. Among those possible meanings—denotations that he claims can be held “simultaneously and without internal contradiction”—Major cites “high gods,” something that Ames and Hall have denied could be applied to tian or shangdi where it appears in the Zhongyong. Major is offering an alternative metaphysical account of “ancient Chinese thought” that includes these beings as part of the whole worldview of ancient Chinese writers. To see, in addition, that such terms refer to “beings of enormous import, straddling the numinous and the mundane” suggests that they must be important enough to require a “philosophical interpretation.” Why, then, do we not have such an interpretation about these beings in Ames and Hall’s volume? To explain this obvious lacuna within their work, it is necessary to further elucidate the hermeneutic gymnastics Ames and Hall employ in relationship to Zhongyong 16, a hermeneutic manifest in their translation, explanation, and rejection of that section. The passage in their rendering, initiated by the Chinese text and then followed by their English translation, goes as follows: The Master said, “The efficacy (de 德) of the gods and spirits is profound. Looking, we do not see them; listening, we do not hear them. And yet they inform events (wu 物) to the extent that nothing can be what it is without them. Because of them, the people of the world fast, purify themselves, and put on their finest



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clothes in carrying out the sacrifices to them. It is as though the air above our heads is suffused with them, and as though they are all around. The Book of Songs says: The descent of the gods Cannot be fathomed— How much less can it be ignored. Such is the way that the inchoate becomes manifest and creativity (cheng 誠) is irrepressible.14 What makes this passage so noticeable is that it presents a vision of the communion of the spirits and humans that addresses the “social” (shehui 社會) activity of participating in sacrifices to the spirits, where they “straddle the numinous and the mundane” to the point that “nothing can be what it is without” the spirits “inform[ing]” them. This statement seems emphatic enough to require a philosophical interpretation, one consistent with other passages in the Zhongyong that refer to such beings as well (such as Zhongyong 19). Nevertheless, this is not provided, and its absence is justified by other means. From the textual comments presented by Ames and Hall to this translated passage, readers face some initially contrasting interpretations that deserve further reflection. Commenting on how “gods [ghosts] and spirits” make things “what they are,” the endnote simply cites the Han-­dynasty Ruist (“Confucian”) scholar Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200) and his affirmative explanation of the meaning of the sentence.15 Obviously, then, this Han-­dynasty scholar treated this passage (as well as the whole text) with intellectual respect and sought to make it understandable within his own explanatory notes. Nevertheless, in the third endnote found at the very end of the North American translators’ text, a very different attitude toward the whole chapter is expressed. Here I quote the full content of that endnote: Takeuchi Yoshio (1979):37 relocates this passage, arguing that [chapters] 15 and 17 are continuous, and the overt reference to gods and spirits is not consistent with the Confucius of the Analects. In relocating it, he is able to attribute it to Zisi who, unlike Confucius, makes frequent use of cheng 誠. There is an allusion in this passage to a similar notion of “the inchoate being manifest” in Zhongyong [chap.] 1.16

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Notably, Ames and Hall do not relocate this passage in the same way that Takeuchi did but instead use his claims to argue that the canonical text is “composite” and therefore corrupted in particular places—especially in this chapter—in order to justify that it is also philosophically unimportant. Nevertheless, contrary to claims made above in Takeuchi’s name, Master Kong did in fact make overt reference to “ghosts” in the Analects and was concerned with how properly cultivated persons dealt with them. He expected filial children to sacrifice to the departed spirits of their parents and asserted that if a person sacrificed to a spirit that was not identified with their ancestry, it was a morally reprehensible act.17 These claims drawn from the Analects stand in stark contrast to the claim that any “overt reference to gods [ghosts] and spirits” is “not consistent with” the teachings of Master Kong. This being so, further questions about just who was this Japanese scholar, Takeuchi Yoshio 武內義雄 (1886–1966), ought to be pursued.18 From a more recent Chinese source we learn that he was a radical post-­traditional Japanese scholar of classical Chinese texts not well known outside Japan, one promoting critical reconstructions of various ancient texts19 as was also done by his Chinese contemporaries in post-­traditional China, Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) and Gu Jiegang 顧頡 剛 (1893–1980). To take such a radical hermeneutic approach to support a post-­traditional secularist reading of the Zhongyong, and yet claim it to be supportive of a “classical Chinese” philosophical interpretation of that Ruist scripture, provokes a number of philosophical suspicions.

A Non-­Demythified Ruist Account of the Mystical in the Zhongyong: Zhang Juzheng’s Alternative Ruist Theism and Polypneumatism Ames and Hall employ a strategy of promoting the “composite nature” of the Zhongyong to justify their philosophical avoidance of Ruist theism, but it is made questionable by their reliance on the radical textual claims of Takeuchi.20 This is so because, first of all, those claims fly in the face of a number of other mystical (or “numinous”) elements that appear elsewhere in the canonical work (such as Zhongyong 19 and 33) that they unusually hide by offering alternative translations without any commentarial explanation.21 In addition, by “blaming” Zisi for this pro-­spiritual Ruist interpretation, they must admit that Zisi (according to Takeuchi himself, as seen above) is offering another



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understanding of a Ruist worldview that does include “gods and spirits” within the classical Chinese period. Very significantly, this suggests that—in contrast to Ames and Hall’s fundamental assertion—there is no singular “classical Chinese sensibility” that is strictly nontheistic, because there are classical Ruists who also support some form of theism or a dynamic polytheism (including at least Master Kong, Zisi, and Master Meng). Intriguingly, there are theistic Ruists who made their way into the interpretive history of the Zhongyong, vying with this early twenty-­first-­ century nontheistic secularist reading of the text produced by Ames and Hall. A notable case is that of Zhang Juzheng 张居正 (1525–1582), another Ming-­dynasty scholar who tutored the Wanli emperor, preparing his theistic commentary to the Four Books without ever encountering any Christian form of theism. Zhang published his commentaries to the Four Books in the early 1570s, a full decade before the first major Jesuit missionaries who came to live and die in China began to make their presence known in the southeastern part of the empire. Notably for Zhang, tian and shangdi are both terms for the “highest spiritual being,” ruling over a hierarchy of beings noted also in his commentary to the Zhongyong 16. There he describes three levels of spiritual beings: heavenly spirits (tianshen 天神), terrestrial deities (diqi 地祇), and spirits of departed humans (rengui 人鬼).22 The fact that all these spiritual beings, unlike everything else in reality, have no physical form that is visible and make no noise that is audible—as is stated clearly in the canonical text and elaborated by Zhang23—puts them in a category of metaphysics that is difficult for humans to comprehend. Nevertheless, they are able to move humans to perform acts of reverence as they participate in appropriate sacrificial rituals: [They] cause [all] people under the heavens to experience sober respect and reverent awe, solemnly performing [the rites] as if they are visibly present among them.24 The last phrase is a gloss of a famous phrase found in the Analects, where Master Kong encourages his disciples to participate in sacrifices to the spirits “as if the spirits are [visibly] present.”25 In the context of that passage within his commentaries to the Analects, Zhang Juzheng elaborates on this phrase by reference to the passage quoted above in Zhongyong 16:

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Spiritual beings [guishen 鬼神] have no physical form or audible expression, so how could one truly see them?! Still, because the heartmind [of the sage] expresses its virtuous commitments to the uttermost [xin ji qi cheng 心極其誠], then it is as if [the spirits] are seen [gu ru you suo jian er 故如有所見耳].26 All this is to say, then, that Zhang Juzheng takes these metaphysical encounters as realities that are part and parcel of the vision of reality any informed Ruist scholar should consider. The phrase “as if the spirits are [visibly] present” is not the expression of a skeptical doubt but reflects the state of mind of a sagely person who acts reverently within the sacrificial rites before imperceptible spiritual powers. This being the case, one should ask, “What is the status of tian for Zhang Juzheng?” Zhang offers his clarification in a passage from the Analects, where Master Kong explains that when one “sins against tian,” there is no use in seeking to pray (Analects 3.13), because (it is intimated) there will be no means to rectify the situation. Zhang Juzheng’s commentary confirms this intimation by means of a definition of tian in this immediate context: That which has no partner and is most esteemed under all the heavens is only tian.27 This definition offers a particularly strong statement in claiming that tian has no equal or “partner”; it is “matchless” precisely in the sense of being a supreme deity. Though more details could be added, here is a form of Ruist theism that “places” its supreme deity within the scope of the phenomenal world. It is not a “Judeo-­Christian” theism, or a European deism, and definitely not a Christian Trinitarianism. It is a Ruist expression of hierarchically discernible and dynamically engaged “polypneumatism” with a supreme being at its apex.28 This was Zhang Juzheng’s metaphysical vision integrated into his interpretation of the classical Ruist texts within all the Four Books. Notably, he also believed that Master Kong in his own day supported that worldview. Significantly, it was Zhang’s commentaries to the Four Books that influenced the first Latin translations and interpretations produced in the late seventeenth century by Jesuit scholars,29 so one can legitimately argue that their “Heaven”/“Coelum” was inspired by a pre-­Christian Ruist theism.



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Concluding Assessments of the Secularism Promoted in Focusing the Familiar My argument, therefore, offers the following counters to the translations and interpretations found in Focusing the Familiar. First, there is no single “classical Chinese” worldview and ontology that prevailed among Ruist scholars, and so to make any claim about “the” position that was held among those various scholars is historically questionable and interpretively unjustifiable. Second, Master Kong was neither an anti-­theist nor a nontheist but was responsive ritually to various deities and spirits and particularly emphasized the ritual obligations any cultivated person had to her or his departed parents. He himself spoke of tian as a high god, as did Master Meng, though Master Xun denied that such a supreme deity existed. What Masters Kong and Meng offer as a form of Ruist theism is not as developed or articulate as that of the Ming-­dynasty Ruist scholar Zhang Juzheng, but the worldviews the three of them promote should be generally still classifiable as “Ruist theisms.” These Ruist theisms are distinct from any Christian understanding of deity as a Trinity and do not include any theology of incarnation, which is distinctive of Christian theism. Therefore, referring to the Ruist deity tian as “Heaven” need not be a form of Christianization, but it is certainly an expression of a theistic worldview. Third, if Ames and Hall were to offer a thoroughly consistent interpretation of the numinous or mystical elements within the Zhongyong, they should first demythologize both tian and shangdi as well as the ghosts and spirits. There would then be good reasons, as already mentioned above and illustrated in Zhang Juzheng’s own Ruist theism, to offer some philosophically insightful account of all of these terms, since they are intimately linked to the ritual propriety that sagely persons adopt to embody their worldview. A “philosophical interpretation” should explain why the comments on Zhongyong 16 by the Han-­dynasty Ruist scholar Zheng Xuan were incorrect. That would be philosophically appreciated and would be more justified than arguments relying on Takeuchi’s problematic post-­traditional textual criticisms. Ames and Hall’s anti-­ theistic bias in interpreting this “classical Chinese” canonical text is ultimately not essentially anti-­Christian or even anti-­Judeo-­Christian but simply against any form of “high god” in whatever traditional perspective, even if it is Ruist historically and

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culturally. It is notable that the Christian source they cite directly, as already mentioned above, is from the translations and interpretations of the Scottish missionary-­scholar James Legge. Yet one could include renderings of the Zhongyong by Séraphin Couvreur (1835–1919, in French and Latin), Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930, in German), Joaquin Guerra (1908–1993, in Portuguese), and Iakinf (secular name, Nikita Y. Bichurin, 1777–1853, in Russian), since they all agree with Legge’s rendering. The fact that these renderings are consonant with the general metaphysical understandings of key terms found in the commentaries to the Four Books written by Zhang Juzheng ten years before any lasting Christian presence was known in the Chinese mainland suggests that those Christian translators are not “merely Christianizing” their texts but may have much more hermeneutic justification for offering those renderings than Ames and Hall want to admit. In fact, two more recent English renderings by Andrew Plaks, a Jewish sinologist who published the Penguin version of the Daxue and the Zhongyong in 2003, and the thorough textual and interpretive study by Ian Johnston and Wang Ping (with no religious affiliation espoused in their work) published in 2012, provide further affirmations that the adoption of a subtle theism is manifestly feasible and philosophically justifiable from within the traditions of early Ruist teachings and commentaries. These all suggest that this secularist reading of the Zhongyong should be very carefully reconsidered, especially when its textual hermeneutics takes such a radical step as rejecting a whole chapter within that canonical work as “anomalous.”30

Notes 1.  FF, 5–8. 2.  FF, 14–16. 3.  See the works of Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), especially A Natural Theology for Our Time (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1967). See also Dennis Hurtubise, “God and Time in Whitehead’s Metaphysics: Revisiting the Question,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 24, no. 2 (2003): 109– 128; and Daniel A. Dombrowski, “The Process Concept of God and Pacifism,” Sophia 52, no. 3 (2013): 483–501. 4.  FF, 5. The complaint is laid against missionary-­scholars in general but also against James Legge (1815–1897) specifically, without any differentiation between a “theistic” worldview and an explicitly “Christian” worldview.



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5.  FF, 79. Who the “our” refers to is worthy of further elaboration, since it is manifest that it is not shared by Ames and Hall themselves. 6.  FF, 80. 7.  FF, 7. 8.  Quoting from FF, 41. 9.  See Lauren Pfister, “Post-­Secularity within Contemporary Chinese Philosophical Contexts,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39, no. 1 (2012): 121–138. 10.  In the latter case this rejection occurs by simply not even including it as a glossary item in the interpretive portion of their text. In contrast, Andrew Plaks includes an informed account of the term shang-­ti (“The Supreme Lord of Heaven”) in “Ta Hsüeh” and “Chung Yung” (“The Highest Order of Cultivation” and “On the Practice of the Mean”), trans. Andrew Plaks (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 111–112. 11.  FF, 99. 12.  Julia Ching, The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), particularly her third chapter, entitled “Spiritual Beings (Kuei-­shen).” 13.  CRE, the quotation appearing on 223, and the citation (endnote 31) on 304. 14.  FF, 16. There are three endnotes cited in this text, and two are referred to below. 15.  FF, 124n38. 16.  FF, 124n40. 17.  See Analects 2.5 and 2.24. 18.  A citation of his Japanese article on the Yijing and the Zhongyong, found within the third volume of his collected works, appears in FF, 159. No other information about this scholar is offered in Focusing the Familiar. 19.  Consult Wu Peng 吳鵬, “The Erudite Methodology of Takeuchi Yoshio” 武內義雄的學問方法論, in Collected Essays from the 2009 National Research Students Academic Symposium 道南論衡: 2009 年全國研究生議學學 術研討詢問集 (Taipei: 2010), 173–188. 20.  For the claim that the text is “composite,” see FF, 143–145. 21.  Ames and Hall should offer philosophically justified interpretations of several other passages that link the “gods [ghosts] and spirits” with descriptions of the Ruist sage in the Zhongyong. For example, the phrase describing the sage to be “like a spirit,” is rendered as “numinous” (chap. 24) without any explanation. The term shangdi in chapter 19 is rendered without explanation as “high ancestors.” Neither are explanations offered

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for other specific sacrificial rituals to various deities and spirits also found in chapter 19. All these examples suggest a willful eisegetical reading of those classical Ruist scriptural passages based on their secularist assumptions. 22.  Chen Shengxi 陈生玺 et al., eds., Zhang Juzheng’s Elaborations and Evaluations of the “Daxue” and “Zhongyong”: The Authorized Imperial Reader 张 居正讲评 大学 中庸 皇家读本 (Shanghai: Shanghai Cishu Publisher 上海 辞书出版社, 2007), [Zhongyong 16], 80. All English renderings are my own. 23.  Ibid., [Zhongyong 16], 80. 24.  Ibid., [Zhongyong 16], 81. 25.  Analects 3.12. 26.  Chen Shengxi et al., Zhang Juzheng’s Elaborations, [Analects 3.12], 33. 27.  Chen Shengxi et al., Zhang Juzheng’s Elaborations, [Analects 3.13], 34. 28.  For “polypneumatism,” see Zhong Xinzi, “A Reconstruction of Zhū Xī’s Religious Philosophy Inspired by Leibniz: The Natural Theology of Heaven” (PhD dissertation, Hong Kong Baptist University, 2014), 235. 29.  See Thierry Meynard, The Jesuit Reading of Confucius: The First Complete Translation of the Lunyu (1687) Published in the West (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 30.  FF, 144.

chapter 12

Many Confucianisms From Roger Ames to Jiang Qing on the Interpretive Possibilities of Ruist Traditions Sarah A. Mattice

Is Confucianism secular? T  he very idea of the “secular” was developed first in Britain and the United States in the mid-­nineteenth century and was used to describe things that are separate from religion: non-­ supernatural, nontheistic, and nontheological. In its early usage, “secular” connoted a concern for ethics based solely on human reason and experience, as well as a concern for the separation of the authorities of the government and the (Christian) church. What is at stake with the question of secularity for Confucianism? This question is a useful entry point into a variety of interpretive controversies concerning precisely what Confucianism is and how it might be relevant in contemporary contexts—what it means to take the tradition on its own terms. In this chapter, I draw on the work of contemporary Confucian interpreters Roger Ames and Jiang Qing 蔣慶 in order to suggest that the category of the “secular” can be used as a heuristic that illustrates something important about how a given interpretation is positioned with respect to certain contemporary Western concerns. What would we need to understand in order to answer this question of secularity for Confucianism? In order to consider answers as to whether or not it is best understood as a secular tradition, I think it is important to complicate the application of predominantly Western categories to this non-­Western tradition, given the context of colonial history, religion, and politics. Richard King discusses some of the difficulties with the very idea of the “secular,” arguing: The modern study of religion is not unaffected by the Christian heritage of Western culture and by the development of theology 131

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as an academic discipline in the West, nor is the apparently secular nature of religious studies a “position from nowhere.” Indeed, as scholars such as John Milbank have argued, humanistic and atheistic forms of secularism in the post-­Enlightenment West continue to define themselves in opposition to the Christian theological categories that they claim to have superseded. . . . One of the central methodological concerns of the study of religions is the issue of those Christian and post-­Christian presuppositions that continue to condition the discipline and limit our understanding of non-­Christian cultures in their own terms.1 In other words, while “secular” is often taken to mean “nonreligious,” the “religion” recognized in its absence is Christianity, and it is often features of Christian religions that are used to define the very category of “religion,” and so also the “secular.” In asking, then, about whether or not a particular tradition is “secular,” we are not asking a question about that tradition itself so much as how an account of that tradition may or may not line up with concerns set by Western categories. The question of secularity, then, is at its heart a question about the definition of religion, and this is a question with relation to Confucianism that does not have an easy answer. One common feature in the controversy over whether or not Confucianism is “religion” is transcendence. The question of transcendence is deeply rooted in the history of encounters between Europeans and others, in particular the ways in which early Christian missionaries tried to understand non-­Christian peoples. The missionaries were inheritors of a complex philosophical system that had synthesized elements from both Aristotelian metaphysics and medieval Christian theology, which understood the height of human civilization to be exemplified in reason turned toward a transcendent God. In other words, to be fully human was to have religion, in the sense that religion was understood to position human beings toward transcendence. This attitude was seen in most of the colonial and imperial encounters between European powers and others, from the fifteenth century onward. This issue was at the heart of the famous Valladolid debates (1550–1551) between Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda on whether or not the Native Americans could be enslaved—were they a “civilized” people (i.e., did they have religion?), or were they in need of compulsory Christianization?



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Historically, one of the forms that the question about Confucianism, religion, and transcendence took in China was the Rites Controversy. This was a controversy primarily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between Jesuits and others within the Catholic Church about the precise nature of Confucian ritual activity (li 禮)—were rituals involving veneration of Kongzi 孔子 (Confucius) and other ancestor-­heroes aimed at the transcendent? If yes, then from some Catholic perspectives those involved were in need of conversion, because they were aiming at the wrong transcendence, and they needed to immediately stop participating in Confucian ritual activity. If no, then those involved were in need of conversion, because they had not yet understood how to reach the height of human potential, which requires not only a concept of a transcendent deity but also his veneration, but in this case they could continue to participate in Confucian ritual activity as civic philosophy. Part of this controversy also had to do with the question of what concepts were present in China, prior to Jesuit activity. Was there a concept of transcendence? Was there a concept of a creator deity? How do you translate “God” into Chinese, and what does a native speaker understand by that translation? This historical moment is relevant to the current issue, I think, because it demonstrates that the issue is not just about a text or a term or the “right” way to understand the Classics. The very issue of transcendence, and along with it religion, is unavoidably mediated through a missionizing colonial agenda that should not remain invisible in current conversations. In this case, transcendence is not a neutral concept. Contemporary accounts of Confucianism often unknowingly parallel these debates about transcendence, with some scholars arguing for a secular, primarily philosophical or humanist account, while others insist that Confucianism is not a secular tradition but one steeped in religious activity. Both of these positions are attempting to take the tradition on its own terms and avoid problematic Eurocentric impositions—to say that China has transcendence is often to resist the idea that the West has special access to religio-­philosophical insights like transcendence, and to say no is to resist the idea that Western categories should be privileged over indigenous categories.2 Interestingly enough, one of the building blocks during the Enlightenment period in Europe for the very idea of secularity was a particular account of Confucius and Confucianism brought back to Europe by Jesuits who were on the “not religion” side of the Rites Controversy and picked up by Enlightenment figures like Voltaire.

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Questions of whether or not Confucianism is best understood as a secular tradition can be represented in contemporary scholarship by a range of possibilities. On the secular side of things, in Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary and other works, Roger Ames argues that Confucianism is a kind of cultural philosophy that has important contributions to make to world culture; he also argues that it is deeply problematic to understand Confucianism as a transcendent tradition, where transcendence is understood in its formal sense.3 In explaining Confucianism as philosophy, Ames is positioning his interpretation as an intervention in the discipline of philosophy, which has tended to be narrowly Eurocentric. Although he does discuss a kind of Confucian “religiosity” and repeatedly refers to China as being “profoundly religious,” his descriptions of Confucian ethics fall well within a more or less secular framework, in particular if “secular” is understood as a rejection of a broadly Abrahamic paradigm.4 If Confucian ethics, for instance, can be understood as a vision of living well, focused on growth and flourishing in one’s roles and relationships and without reference to any transcendent standard or source, then it would seem to fit rather well into the category of secular ethics. I take this to be a relatively common position within the contemporary academic community, even among those who disagree about the details of what Confucian ethics is and how it should best be understood. As I expect most readers are aware, over the course of his long (and still ongoing) career, Ames and his collaborators have argued against the view that there is a formal concept of transcendence operative in early Chinese philosophy: “One of the most striking features of Chinese intellectual culture from the perspective of the Western interpreter is the absence in any important sense of transcendence in the articulation of its spiritual, moral, and political sensibilities.”5 In describing the formative conditions of early Confucianism, Ames writes: High expectations of the human experience have produced what might be called an “a-­theistic” human-­centered religiousness— a religiousness without appeal to an independent, transcendent Deity as the source of order. Human beings, without reference to limiting assumptions about religious transcendentalism and supernaturalism, have become a source of profound meaning in their own world—indeed, the only world.6



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That is, even in describing a “religiousness” about early Confucianism, Ames sets up his interpretation as against the grain of the more common religious/secular paradigm; however, the outcome of this is effectively to have questioned one of the basic features of common definitions of religion, and so, for many readers of his work, this ends up as a secularizing perspective. Ames tends to draw on the work of twentieth-­century Chinese figures such as Zhang Dongsun 張東蓀 (1886–1973) and Tang Junyi 唐君 毅 (1909–1978). In particular, he often references Tang’s articulation of tianrenheyi 天人合一 (continuity between humans and the heavens) to set the stage for a non-­transcendent account of early Chinese philosophy in general and Confucian philosophy in particular. He consistently argues that early Confucianism had no place for a Creator Deity (God) and no significant role for predetermined, external principles. His account of Confucianism tends to focus on self-­cultivation through roles and relationships, and the importance of family as the concrete source for not only ethical development but also political and cosmic order. For Ames, Confucianism is rujia 儒家, the (philosophical) lineage of the ru 儒 (ritual or scholarly masters). Along with a number of other Western and Chinese scholars, Ames has argued for and situated his work on Confucianism as “philosophy,” and while he maintains that there are religious elements—a certain religiosity to it, so to speak—his focus tends to be on the philosophical significance and import of the tradition. For Ames, part of what this means is that Confucianism can flourish in and contribute to a contemporary, pluralistic, democratic, and broadly secular contemporary society. On the other hand, in A Confucian Constitutional Order, contemporary public figure Jiang Qing argues against a secular reading of Confucianism, advocating not only that Confucianism be adopted as China’s state religion but also that the Chinese government reorganize itself as a Confucian constitutional government, with Confucianism explicitly understood as a transcendent religion: “Confucianism is a comprehensive traditional system of thought, in which there is a transcendent, sacred metaphysics of the way of heaven.”7 While he does make room in his account of the three houses of government for representatives of other religions traditions, he is straightforward in his vision for a non-­ secular Confucianism. Ames and Jiang share a number of concerns, such as wanting the tradition to speak for itself, arguing for the value of Confucianism for contemporary world culture, critiquing certain

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“Western” ideas, discussing the value and power of ritual activity, supporting the move for finding Chinese sources to Chinese problems, and seeing Confucianism as a lived and living tradition. Given these shared concerns, the dramatic divergence in their interpretations is striking. In contrast to Ames, Jiang argues that Confucianism is a religion (rujiao 儒教) rather than a philosophy (rujia 儒家) and that most recent scholars are mistaken in their interpretations of Confucianism. He categorizes them as scholars of what he calls the Mind-­Confucianism school and argues that we should pay attention to what he calls the Political Confucianism school, which locates its authority in the Han-­dynasty Gongyang Commentary 公羊傳 and the heaven-­earth-­human triad. Jiang’s views on transcendence and Confucianism directly oppose those of Ames, and since I suspect readers may be less familiar with Jiang’s work, I will spend some time here elaborating it. Jiang locates China’s current problems with a lack of genuine political legitimacy. He argues that the only true source of political legitimacy stems from Heaven (tian 天), or the Way of Heaven (tiandao 天道), which he sees as transcendent and sovereign: “The basic feature of Confucian constitutionalism can be summed up in the phrase ‘the sovereignty of heaven.’ Sovereignty refers to an authority that is sacred, absolute, exclusive, and supreme. Such authority can belong only to heaven, not to the people.”8 Here he seems to draw a sharp line between Heaven and human beings and situates real authority not with human beings but with Heaven. He further elaborates this idea when he suggests, “The legitimacy of ‘heaven’ refers to transcendent, sacred legitimacy. In Chinese culture ‘heaven’ has both the character of a ruling will, personal yet hidden, and a transcendent, sacred sense of natural morality.”9 Jiang’s claims about Heaven are extremely controversial, not only for interpreting Confucianism or Chinese philosophy, but also in a broader sense, as when he writes that “any metaphysical thought must be founded on one transcendent, absolute, supreme, eternal, and universal being.”10 In other words, for Jiang there is no “real” metaphysics that is not based in transcendence. Jiang locates his interpretation of Confucianism as Political Confucianism with the Way of Humane Authority (wangdao 王道) that comes out of the Gongyang Commentary and also with Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (179–104 BCE) and the Five Classics (over and against the Four Books). He also does not see this as one possible interpretive position but suggests that “inasmuch as Confucianism is Confucianism, there can be no



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basic disagreement about fundamental ideas, or else it would not be Confucianism.”11 In discussing certain criticisms that have been raised against his position, Jiang repeatedly returns to the idea that although some kind of debate is a key feature of Confucian discourse, some things cannot be understood or explicated with reason but must be grasped through faith: It has already been noted . . . that Confucian metaphysics is a religious metaphysics. The highest essence and ultimate reality of a religious metaphysics is not something that reason can understand, but only something that can be grasped in faith. . . . This faith must rely on a mystical intuition that transcends reason and a dark-­seeing and mystical understanding in the depths of the heart before it can be known or grasped.12 Jiang sees no interpretive problem in borrowing certain “Western” categories, like religion and faith, in explicating his account of Confucianism. Unlike a number of contemporary scholars who have argued that Confucianism is compatible with some version of pluralist democracy, Jiang frequently states that pluralism is not desirable and that conditions that seem to be plural—like those in Western liberal democracies—are in fact not. He writes that in order to avoid moral anarchy, “[a] society must establish one comprehensive, systematic, leading, orthodox set of values for human and social betterment and by means of these values bring society to basic consensus and overcome moral relativism and moral anarchy, and the eternal social conflict they entail.”13 For Jiang, Confucianism provides this single comprehensive set of values that can take on the status of orthodox and exclusionary social constraints. Jiang sees this critique of pluralism as directly tied to the question of democracy. He has a variety of critical perspectives on democracy, most of which stem from his view that democracy locates its legitimacy solely with the will of the people. He sees this as leading to a “politics of desire” where the immediate interests of individuals dominate and where concerns for history, culture, the environment, morality, and future generations—concerns central to his vision of Confucianism— are lost. As Jiang writes, “The democratic system has no place for the restraint provided by sacred values. It makes a secularized popular will its only center. But since a secularized popular will is deeply rooted in

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worldly desires, democratic politics amounts to a politics of desire.”14 In other words, for Jiang, not only is Confucianism not a secular tradition, but the very idea of a secular society or a secular government is disastrous. A lack of religious value, on his account, is a lack of value, period. As should be clear at this point, Ames and Jiang occupy very different places in their interpretations of Confucianism. While both argue passionately for the importance and place of Confucianism in the contemporary world, their visions of what that would look like, and their evidence and reasoning for their interpretations, are very different. In figuring out whether or not Confucianism is “secular,” then, we are plagued not only by the central issue of religious studies—how to define religion—but by the question of what we mean by “Confucianism.” For any given definitions, then, the question could be answered as yes, no, or maybe, depending on factors like those that influence the interpretive differences for Ames and Jiang, as well as geography. Is this Chinese (PRC) Confucianism? Taiwanese? Korean? Japanese? Is it contemporary Confucianism, or in a particular historical period, or on a specific theoretical account? When we say “Confucianism,” are we prioritizing pre-­ Qin texts and thinkers over others? What would it mean to categorize Confucianism as “religion,” “philosophy,” both, or neither? We really have not one Confucianism but many Confucianisms, and attempts like Jiang’s to suggest otherwise fly in the face of extensive evidence. This does not mean that the question of secularity is unanswerable; rather, it means that its value is as a heuristic category, one not to be taken as identifying something “essential” about Confucianism(s), but rather something potentially helpful about positioning a given interpretation with respect to specific contemporary Western concerns. We also have the trouble with calling this tradition “Confucian” and not “Ruist.” While there is a more-­than-­150-­year practice in English-­ language scholarship of calling this tradition “Confucian,” this convention arose from a context in which the naming conventions of traditions were governed by assumptions about traditions and founders (e.g., Christ and Christianity, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, Confucius and Confucianism). However, in Chinese there is a much longer tradition of referring to the same sorts of things as Ruist (historically usually rujia), with reference to the ru as the class of ritual or scholarly masters and rujia as the lineage or tradition of the ru. For those, like both Ames and Jiang, who are concerned to let the tradition speak for itself, then, Ruism seems a more apt English name than Confucianism.15



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One way to think about the implications of this is to see Ruism(s) as deeply underdetermined and polycentric, where the identification of a given “center”—pre-­Qin texts, the Gongyang Commentary, Zhu Xi, Mou Zongsan, the Four Books, the Five Classics, Tang Junyi, Xunzi, and so on—provides a determination and so an interpretive frame on the ideas in question. Looking at Ames and Jiang as examples of interpretive divergence, then, gives a sense of just how differently these traditions can be (re)constructed or made sense of and how important it is for us as contemporary scholars to pay attention to, not only the kinds of evidence provided by a given interpretation, but also its political context of concern and its pragmatic implications for living well. Taking things on their own terms requires continual attention to change, revision, and refinement—it may be easy to say that one is going to “take the tradition on its own terms,” but one of the things that Ames has consistently demonstrated in his lengthy body of work is just how arduous and demanding this task really is, how many disciplines and scholarly voices are relevant, and how challenging this is with a tradition that can admit of such variance. While his account of Confucianism is often understood as secular, in that it rejects common features of religion (when defined using Christianity as the standard), Ames gives a robust account of a Ruist philosophical strand that opens up the space for Ruisms to be living, dynamic, and meaningful, when viewed both historically and for future generations.

Notes 1.  Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and “The Mythic East” (New York: Routledge, 1999), 42. 2.  See Leah Kalmanson, “If You Show Me Yours: Reading All ‘Difference’ as ‘Colonial Difference’ in Comparative Philosophy,” Comparative and Continental Philosophy 7, no. 2 (2015): 206. 3.  “A is transcendent with respect to B if the existence, meaning, or import of B cannot be fully accounted for without recourse to A, but the reverse is not true.” TH, 190. 4.  See TH, 233. 5.  TH, 189. 6.  CRE, 55. 7.  Jiang Qing, A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future, trans. Edmund Ryden, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 173.

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8.  Ibid., 48. 9.  Ibid., 28. 10.  Ibid., 188. 11.  Ibid., 182. 12.  Ibid., 191. Many reading this account of Confucianism might find that it sounds more reminiscent of other religious traditions than more standard accounts of Confucianism, and indeed earlier in his life Jiang was first a devout Marxist and later a Christian convert. 13.  Ibid., 164. 14.  Ibid., 33. 15.  For a contrary view, see Philip J. Ivanhoe, Three Streams: Confucian Reflections on Learning and the Moral Heart-­Mind in China, Korea, and Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

chapter 13

Seeing Through the Aesthetic Worldview Andrew Lambert

When assessing David Hall and Roger Ames’s claim that the classical Confucian tradition is an aesthetic tradition, comprising an aesthetic order,1 a comment by the philosopher J. L. Austin on the relationship between language and truth is insightful. Austin asks whether the claim “France is hexagonal” is true or false.2 When teaching children to recognize countries on a map, for example, it might be considered true; but to the professional geographer it might be false. Austin, however, suggests that it is neither true nor false, but a meaningful and suggestive “rough description.” A similar defense could be made for Hall and Ames’s claim that the classical Confucian tradition be understood as constituting an aesthetic order. Some have argued that this claim is simply false.3 However, following Austin, this claim should be understood, not in terms of its literal truth or falsity, but in terms of its usefulness and suggestiveness. It is a general description that can guide inquiry into early Chinese thought. In what follows, I locate Hall and Ames’s “aesthetic order” within a broader interpretive lineage that understands the Chinese tradition as an aesthetic tradition. I show how conceptions of “aesthetic” evolve within that lineage, how Hall and Ames built upon earlier New Confucians, and how their work might be extended further. Postimperial China sought a Chinese modernity true to China’s classical tradition while adjusting to Western influence. This led several modern Chinese thinkers to articulate how some notion of the aesthetic has been central to Chinese culture and society. Cai Yuanpei, for example, called for aesthetic education (meiyu 美育) to replace religion. 141

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While religion crudely incited the emotions, aesthetic education would instead cultivate more refined feelings and gradually eliminate selfishness.4 Xu Fuguan noted how, historically, aesthetic vocabulary applied in the realms of music, art, and painting evolved into descriptions of the characteristics of outstanding men.5 Others identified the aesthetic qualities that characterize the Chinese humanistic tradition as a whole. Zong Baihua developed shengming meixue, roughly “life aesthetics,” which stressed the centrality of art and an aesthetic attitude toward life and, more broadly, the cosmos.6 Similarly, some accounts of tianren heyi (the unity of humanity and the cosmos) stress the centrality of beauty. Li Zehou argues that humanity is evolving toward a final higher state, in which human psychology evolves to recognize beauty as the highest value.7 The view that aesthetics is central to human conduct and social order derives from the cosmology articulated in the classical corpus. As New Confucian thinker Tang Junyi notes, “The spirit of Chinese literature and art is closely related to Chinese philosophers’ natural cosmology.”8 This cosmology has traditionally been described as “ceaseless generation” (shengsheng buxi). The Great Treatise on the Book of Changes reads: The successive movement between yin and yang forces is what is called “dao” and that which follows from this movement is good (shan). . . . The benevolent see it and call it benevolence. The wise see it and call it wisdom. The common people act according to it in everyday life but do not recognize it. . . . [D]aily renewal is known as abundant potency, ceaseless generation is what is known as “change.”9 In this view, the world is a site of ceaseless transformation. Such transformation is found at many levels, from the movement between night and day, to the cyclical rotation of the seasons, through to the ongoing biological processes that sustain every living cell. Furthermore, as expressed by tianren heyi and Tang’s notion of yiduo bufenguan (the inseparability of the singular and the multiplicity),10 humanity is embedded at the center of this vibrant and organically structured cosmos. Such a view has implications for aesthetics and its role in shaping human conduct, which the New Confucians in particular explored. The simplest connection is that the unified world, with its harmony and vitality, is the paradigm of beauty. Closely related to this is the effect of this integrated



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whole on human sensibility and affective response. For Tang Junyi, the beauty of this “vital, rich, and continuous process of transformation” leads subjects to a reverence for all life that influences thought and action.11 Such thinking hints at a quasi-­causal account linking this processual world to human action. There is a confidence that the inherent vitality of the living natural world can directly evoke human emotions.12 A person with the appropriately cultivated sensibilities will feel emotions present, in some sense, in reality itself. Such a causal connection might be understood as the energies, or qi, that circulate in the putatively external world but also permeate the body and produce emotions; it might also be captured in ideas such as resonance, where the human mind becomes attuned to a wider field of patterns. Regardless of mechanism, this link between the world and the emotions is seen in Chinese art, especially painting, which Fang Dongmei notes is “nothing more nor less than the expression of exuberant vitality,” adding, “I take this to be foundation of all forms of Chinese art.”13

The Tradition of Theorizing the Aesthetic and Thinking Through Confucius Hall and Ames’s work might be considered a continuation of this New Confucian project, since their account of the classic Chinese tradition as an aesthetic tradition also starts from recognition of some kind of comprehensive unity between humans and the world. Their approach, however, holds out the promise of avoiding metaphysical or causal problems facing these earlier accounts, in which attempts to link a world of processual transformation directly with human emotion struggled to find a causal explanation of how such correlation could arise. Hall and Ames, however, emphasize a different conception of aesthetic. In their account, this unity is understood, not in terms of metaphysical or causal connection, but through aesthetic judgment. This conception utilizes a Whiteheadian metaphysical framework, whereby the holistic cosmology is now understood as giving rise not to emotions but to an aesthetic order. The starting point in theories of aesthetic order is the claim that reality cannot be understood as a rule-­governed or principled order, which Hall and Ames call a “rational order.”14 Reflecting the traditional cosmology, this view denies that the multiplicity can be explained by any theory or set of final principles. Instead, the most complete order possible in such a world is understood in aesthetic terms. At its simplest

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such order can be understood by analogy with the arts, such as painting, where particular elements (e.g., line, form, color, and so on) are brought together to create an aesthetically pleasing effect. “Aesthetic” is used “to name the sort of order comprised by particulars construed precisely in terms of their particularity.”15 The same applies to the creation of an ideal social order. Each element of society is to be optimally arranged, where attainment is marked by such phenomena as a sense of appropriateness or ease, the integration of different social roles, and the lack of social conflict.16 In avoiding appeal to foundational principles, this account also avoids the problem of providing epistemological justification for such principles. This notion of the aesthetic generates a practical task, the creation of social order, which is taken up by exemplary persons (junzi). Through judgment and action, exemplary persons influence other elements in the field, such as the common people (min), inducing them into an order formed around exemplary persons.17 The Pole Star reference in Analects 2.1 and the references to modeling or setting an example express this ideal. This ongoing and subtle reordering of the community distinguishes the Confucian tradition from a reactionary social order mired in inflexible social convention. Here the meaning of “aesthetic” shifts from passive response to active intuitive judgment. Although this aesthetic order can be described objectively or impersonally, its foundation resides in individual aesthetic judgments of “rightness”18 or “appropriateness” (yi).19 The exemplary person senses the optimal way of ordering the various elements involved: “The direct entertainment of one’s environs entails no conceptual or ideational mediation. The environing world as in some sense ‘felt’ rather than cognitively entertained consists in ungeneralized particulars.”20 Such aesthetic order thus provides an iteration of Confucian harmony. This account of an aesthetic order has encountered several familiar objections. These include the claim that classical China does have transcendence and thus a higher ordering force, while others have criticized the allegedly reductive dichotomy of the rational and the aesthetic, particularly where it suggests an essentializing East-­West dichotomy. I will not repeat these concerns here, nor possible replies to them.21 Instead, I will focus on one specific challenge, which also serves as a stepping-­ stone to a further conception of the aesthetic that might extend Hall and Ames’s insights.



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This concern is that the kinds of human response that follow from the account of a processual and transforming world might be broader than the “aesthetic order” paradigm suggests. Stated another way, the practical wisdom of the exemplary person is not grounded solely in felt aesthetic response. The practical rationality of the exemplary person featured in the Analects is more diverse than a sensing of the optimal order of particulars. Other aspects of Confucian psychology and practical judgment seem equally important to creating social order. One such example is the cultivated sense of obligation. This is most clear in certain human bonds, such as father and son. The Analects frequently portrays commitments to kin in terms of a “categorical” quality of experience (the felt duty to uphold one’s father’s way for three years, to cover for his sheep-­stealing, not to cause undue worry to parents, and so on). Unlike an aesthetic sensitivity to the whole, certain concerns seem qualitatively more important and, in some cases, overriding. Xu Fuguan’s alternative gloss on the Chinese tradition as a culture of “anxious concern” (youhuan yishi) captures such dispositions.22 Another point of contrast is the Analects’ concern with deliberative reflection about conduct. The three kinds of daily reflection demanded in Analects 1.4 suggest a role for self-­conscious deliberation in good conduct. Similarly, Mencius 4A17’s approval of a man touching the hand of a drowning sister in order to save her is an endorsement of the deliberative weighing of options and recognition of reasonable exceptions to a rule (quan). Here practical reasoning does not take the form of felt or sensed response but is deliberate and structured in its thought patterns. Finally, the classical texts’ composite account of practical wisdom incorporates habitual responses—responses that are automatic and fitting but involve no affective state. Ritual responses, for example, can be fluent and appropriate without reliance on any obvious sensed feeling of rightness. In summary, then, what makes the exemplary person exemplary seems to be not solely action or judgment grounded in the felt experience of particulars and a sensed order among them. Confucian social order seems to involve more than aesthetic order. Building on Hall and Ames’s creative reinvigoration of Confucian thought through an appreciation of the role of the aesthetic in the Confucian tradition, we might consider an additional Confucian sense of “aesthetic” that also contributes to social order: the practical concern to create aesthetic goods within everyday social life. This account also

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draws on Whitehead for relevant conceptual resources, while incorporating the Deweyan instrumentalism of Ames’s later work.

Thinking Through Ames This alternative account of the aesthetic does not focus on aesthetic awareness as the basis of intuitive judgments of appropriateness; instead, the creation of certain kinds of shared affective experiences becomes the aim or goal of practical judgment and action. This creative adaptation draws on Whitehead’s notions of an event. Whitehead explains events as the “final real things of which the world is made up . . . drops of experience, complex and interdependent.”23 For Whitehead, such events are the significant phases of concrete experience and the points at which interpenetrating forces merge. Here I focus on events that arise in first-­person experiences and the quality of experience attained when constitutive elements or possibilities are brought together in the right way, producing “satisfaction.”24 In this way the notion of event is given a narrower, explicitly interpersonal and social gloss more directly applicable to classical Confucian thought. The latter also values events, understood as social interactions that are distinguished by their affective qualities. This concern with the quality of experience and its aesthetic dimension is manifested in the texts’ concern with musicality (yue) and its correlate, joy or delight (le). The affective experiences to which such terms point can be thought of as “events” or “occasions,” which arise not simply in music but in appropriately ordered social life. The importance of 樂 (yue/le) to action in the classical texts appears in various guises.25 The Analects does not accord 樂 (yue/le) the same coverage as general moral terms such as ren or de, but it is often attributed high value or even priority.26 In 6.20, for example, delight is placed above knowledge (zhi) and even liking (hao). More importantly, in 11.26 when Confucius asks his followers what they would most like to do, he identifies most strongly with Zengxi’s answer about taking delight in shared company—bathing with friends in the River Yi and singing together while strolling home. Similarly, in 7.32 Confucius delights in singing harmonies with his students. Furthermore, the importance of delight as a general state of mind is expressed in two ways. First, a state of delight can resist the vicissitudes of life. Yan Hui is the paradigm of residing in such delight,27 but the ideal of having reliable access to such



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a state over time appears elsewhere.28 In general, the Analects’ valuing of music and its effects on the subject’s conscious life reinforces the value of aesthetic experience, as well as indicating how it is analogous to musical experience. Passage 7.14 indicates the intensity of the states that music produces—listening to the Shao music obliterates Confucius’s sensitivity to lesser experiences, such as hunger.29 Perhaps the most explicitly social gloss on le is found in the Mencius. Here it is described as the fruit of well-­ordered human relationships: The greatest fruit [shi] of humaneness [ren] is serving one’s parents. The greatest fruit of rightness [yi] is going along with one’s elder brother. . . . The greatest fruit of music is taking joy [le] in these two. When there is joy, they grow. When they grow, how can they be stopped? When they come to the point where they cannot be stopped, then, without realizing it, one’s feet begin to step in time and one’s hands begin to dance.30 Significantly, le here is not simply a pleasant feeling but emerges from social interaction and confirms when it has gone well. In addition, Mencius also articulates the metaphysical and political dimensions of delight. Several dialogues in Book 1 explain how delight is increased by sharing (by rulers with the people),31 how the right character is needed to appreciate appropriate delight,32 and that it is the ruler’s duty to create and share delight with the people.33 Confucian delight is thus more than mere hedonism or private pleasure; it has social and political dimensions. Delight also has cosmological significance in the Mencius.34 Further research is needed to fully articulate the importance of musical or delightful events to Confucian thought.35 Here I can offer just two further comments. The first is the importance to this account of ordered social relationships and roles, which are themselves so central to Confucian thought. Indeed, these relationships might be the main context within which events arise, with interactions within them being the primary source of delight; at least, the prominence of social and personal attachment in the early Confucian texts invites further exploration of this claim. Second, the creation of such delight-­based events is an ethical task. Focusing on the Kong-­Zisi-­Meng lineage, the Zhongyong hints that the good life consists in the skillful creation of a certain quality of interaction with others. It describes the junzi’s task as bringing focus to everyday

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affairs (zhong yong), and the text’s opening passage suggests this focus be understood affectively—as a dynamic balancing of emotions in the course of daily activity. Strikingly, the text distinguishes the practical task of bringing focus to everyday affairs from the more overtly political tasks of rulership.36 Zhongyong 20 points out that becoming a junzi requires a focus on one’s kin (shiqin) and that this in turn requires zhiren 知人—an understanding of people or an ability to interact with them, to bring to fruition what exists only in incipient form. Here what is brought to fruition might include shared affective experiences indicated by terms such as le. To achieve this across the multiple social and interpersonal interactions that make up the course of the day is to realize a form of human flourishing constituted by events or occasions. In this way the natural cadence and flow of the day, understood as an ongoing series of social interactions with multiple people, mirrors Whitehead’s more metaphysical picture of events. There are challenges to approaching the classical Confucian tradition in this way. Clearly, delight is not a simple good in the texts,37 nor is it the only important affective state—le is only one of several affective states emphasized in Zhongyong 1. There are limits to the guidance provided by music and affective states in Confucian society. On the other hand, perhaps le 樂 is best understood not as a single emotion but as a range of related states, such as delight, ease, and contentment, which might collectively constitute a mood or state of mind. Ultimately, perhaps the creation of affect-­laden social events is best understood as merely one ethical task within a broader Confucian ethical vision. Indeed, perhaps there is no single Confucian goal or paradigm but merely a cluster of related values and approaches. Roger Ames and his collaborators David Hall and Henry Rosemont Jr., building on earlier New Confucians like Tang Junyi, have excelled in articulating the place of the aesthetic in classical Confucian ethical and social thought. If we look forward, it is possible to extend this approach by reconsidering the meaning of “aesthetic,” shifting the focus from intuitively sensed judgment of particulars to the practical goal of shared affective experiences realized in everyday social life.

Notes 1.  See TTC, 16, which describes order that is “fundamentally aesthetic”: “Aesthetic order is achieved by creation of novel patterns.”



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2.  J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 143. 3.  See Philip J. Ivanhoe, review of Thinking Through Confucius, by David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Philosophy East and West 41, no. 2 (1991): 248. 4.  Cai Yuanpei, “Replacing Religion with Aesthetic Education,” trans. Julia Andrews, in Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945, ed. Kirk A. Denton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 182–189. 5.  Xu Fuguan, Zhongguo yishu jingshen [The Spirit of Chinese Arts] (Taichung: Tunghai University, 1966), 150–157. See also Tu Weiming, “Embodied Knowledge: Body, Heart/Mind, and Spirit in Confucian Aesthetics,” Asian and Asian-­American Philosophers and Philosophies Newsletter 5 (2006): 2. 6.  See Chen Wangheng, “Zong Baihuade shengming meixueguan” [Zong Baihua’s life aesthetics], in Jianghai Xuekan 1 (2001): 101–107. 7.  Li Zehou and Jane Cauvel, Four Essays on Aesthetics: Toward a Global View (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006). See also Li Zehou, “A Few Questions concerning the History of Chinese Aesthetics (Excerpts),” Contemporary Chinese Thought 31, no. 2 (1999): 66–76, 74. 8.  Tang Junyi, Zhongguo wenhua zhi jingshenjiazhi [The Value of the Spirit of Chinese Culture] (Taipei: Zhengzhong Bookstore, 1979), 291. 9.  The Great Treatise, trans. James Legge, http://ctext.org/book-­ of -­changes/xi-­ci-­shang (modified for clarity). 10.  Tang Junyi, Tang Junyi Quanji [Collected Works of Tang Junyi], vol. 11 (Taipei: Xuesheng Publishing, 1988), 16–17. 11.  Tang, Zhongguo, 107, 189. 12.  Ibid., 188. 13.  Thomé H. Fang, The Chinese View of Life: The Philosophy of Comprehensive Harmony (Taipei: Linking Publishing, 1980), 131–132. 14.  TTC, 16. 15.  TTC, 351n3. Note also: “Aesthetic order is achieved by the creation of novel patterns,” (16) without “the imposition of antecedently existing patterns upon events” (105). 16.  See TTC, 131–192. See also CRE, chap. 4, for a discussion of social roles within this worldview. 17.  CRE, 138–145. 18.  TTC, 105. 19.  For a discussion of yi, see TTC, 89–110. See also David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, “Getting It Right: On Saving Confucius from the Confucians,” Philosophy East and West 34, no. 1 (1984): 3–23. 20.  TTC, 351n3.

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21.  For an overview of objections, see Ivanhoe’s review of Thinking Through Confucius. See also Michael Martin, review of Thinking Through Confucius, by David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 17, no. 4 (1990): 495–503. 22.  Xu Fuguan, Zhongguo Renxinglunshi [The History of Human Nature in China] (Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press, 2005). 23.  Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 27. On events, see also Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Pelican Mentor, 1948), 74. 24.  See Whitehead, Process and Reality, 24–26. 25.  See Andrew Lambert, “What Friendship Tells Us about Morality: A Confucian Ethics of Personal Relationships” (PhD dissertation, University of Hawai‘i, 2012). 26.  See the textual study of 樂 in the Analects in Ni Liu, “Lunyu zhong de xi yu le” [Xi 喜 and yue 樂 in the Analects], Zhexue yu Wenhua 哲學與文 化 44, no. 11 (2017): 167–182. The importance of 樂 in Neo-­Confucian thought also suggests that le is a technical term. See Yong Huang, “Why Be Moral? The Cheng Brothers’ Neo-­Confucian Answer,” Journal of Religious Ethics 36, no. 2 (2008). 27.  Analects 6.11. See also Analects 1.15. 28.  Analects 4.2 and 7.16. 29.  See also Analects 7.19: this delight-­filled state also banishes worry. 30.  Mencius 4A27. 31.  Mencius 1B2, 1B11. See also Andrew Lambert, “Pleasure in Mencius 1,” Warring States Papers: Studies in Chinese and Comparative Philology 2, no. 26 (2017): 149–155. 32.  Mencius 1B2. See also the second section of the Wuxingpian: “The junzi . . . without a sense of repose [an] will not reside in delight, not residing in delight he will not have potency [de].” 33.  Mencius 1B8. 34.  In Mencius 7A4, delight is an indicator of successful integration with broader cosmic processes: “The ten thousand things are complete within me. There is no greater delight [樂] than examining one’s person and finding oneself to be fully integrated [cheng].” 35.  See Andrew Lambert, “Determinism and the Problem of Individual Freedom in Li Zehou’s Thought,” in Li Zehou and Confucian Philosophy, ed. Roger T. Ames and Jinhua Jia (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017). 36.  See Zhongyong 11 and 9. 37.  See Analects 16.5 and 13.25.

part iv

Epistemological Considerations A. C. Graham made a distinction between Western philosophers as “truth seekers” and Chinese philosophers as “way seekers.” This is not to say that the cognitive machinery of Chinese and Western philosophers have different capabilities; rather, the differences are cultural, a matter of emphasis and evolution through transmission of a philosophical tradition with immemorial roots. The implications of this epistemological difference are profound, and Hall and Ames worked to elaborate them in Thinking Through Confucius; Thinking from the Han; and Anticipating China. Thinking and anticipating from these standpoints requires a shift in attention and attunement. Instead of knowing through accurate representation or justification of beliefs, Ames suggests that the way to know is to be in the midst of the action, an embodied person who stands in particular relationships to others and to the environment. To know is to realize the way, maintaining harmony in relation to dynamic circumstances to get the most out of one’s surroundings. This is a kind of pragmatic knowing, a knowing-­how, and a realization of truth and value in a human life. In a thematic microcosm of the entire volume, Carine Defoort structures her chapter, “How Do Teachers ‘Realize’ Their Students? Reflections on Zhi in the Analects,” around Confucius’s statement about students returning three corners after the teacher has revealed the first corner. Her chapter analyzes the conception of zhi 知 in the Analects, critically engaging with Ames’s translation of zhi as “realizing.” In addition to linguistic considerations, Defoort analyzes this notion within the teacher-­student relationship, where zhi also entails “recognition.” 151

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Daniel Coyle, in “Strategic Imagination in Chinese Philosophy,” bridges both Confucian and Daoist studies in his analysis of “strategic imagination” in classical Chinese philosophical discourse. Through a focus on the notion of quan 權 (expediently weighing-­and-­balancing powers-­and-­circumstances), Coyle argues that strategic imagination is vital to achieving appropriate conduct in the world. Eiho Baba, in “Extending Ars Contextualis to Zhu Xi: Using Gewu as an Example,” extends Hall and Ames’s emphasis on the art of contextualization in classical Confucian epistemology to the work of Neo-­ Confucian Zhu Xi. Baba’s analytical focus is on the notion of gewu 格 物 (investigation of things) and, in particular, on how this practice of gewu revitalizes ritual propriety and puts such revitalized ritual propriety into action. In the larger frame, Baba’s essay serves as a justification for extending much of the foundational work of Ames and Hall in classical Chinese philosophy to new grounds in the Neo-­Confucian corpus. Marty H. Heitz, in “Truth Bound and Unbound: A Deeper Look at the Western and Chinese Paradigms,” returns to the Amesian axiom that differences are more interesting than similarities. Heitz reframes the Hall and Ames interpretive context for Chinese-­Western comparative philosophy in terms of paradigms, each of which has four primary features. The first three—substance/process, external/internal relatedness, and binary logic/holistic correlations—are augmented with Heitz’s own addition to these paradigms: truth/goodness. Jinmei Yuan, in “Exploring an Alternative Pre-­Qin Logic,” returns to Ames’s notion of transcendence and unpacks for the reader an alternative logic developed by pre-­Qin Chinese philosophers. Echoing Heitz’s analysis of the relationship between truth and goodness in Western and Chinese paradigms and Baba’s focus on the importance of practice to epistemology, Yuan concludes that logic gains purchase when it matches lived experience and that ethical values become persuasive when they appear logical, thus further entwining the ethical and the epistemological in Chinese thought.

chapter 14

How Do Teachers “Realize” Their Students? Reflections on Zhi in the Analects Carine Defoort

The Liezi contains a story about the friendship between Guan Zhong 管仲 (ca. 720–645 BCE) and Bao Shuya 鮑叔牙 (ca. 720–644 BCE) in which Guan reflects upon his immense indebtedness to Bao. When Guan had been on the verge of being executed by Duke Huan of Qi (r. 685–643 BCE) because of his failed attempt to murder the duke, Bao had intervened for him by persuading his lord to pardon Guan, treat him respectfully, and install him as prime minister. Duke Huan had followed his advice, and as a result of Guan’s service, he had become the most powerful lord of his era. Guan Zhong also recalls how Bao had always stood by him: when Guan had taken more than his due share in a business deal, Bao had realized that Guan had been driven by poverty; when Guan had miscarried a plan, Bao had attributed this to bad timing; when Guan had repeatedly been discharged from office, Bao had been convinced that his friend’s time was yet to come; when Guan had fled in war, Bao had understood that he was no coward but had a mother to care for; and when Guan had not followed his lord in death, Bao had realized that his sense of honor was not limited to one state but reached to the whole world. Guan Zhong therefore concludes his reflections by saying that “those who gave me life were my parents, but the one who knew [知] me was Bao Shuya.”1 Despite flagrant signs of greed, disloyalty, opportunism, cowardice, shamelessness, and attempted murder, Bao Shuya’s appreciation for Guan Zhong never wavered. In Guan’s eyes, this was because Bao zhi 知 (knew, understood, appreciated, recognized) him. Bao had such a deep trust and intuitive empathy toward his friend that, despite all apparent 153

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flaws, he “realized” Guan Zhong’s potential. Did Bao discover something in his friend that ultimately was present on a hardly visible level waiting to come forth? Or did Bao’s unwavering trust contribute to the success and creation of this Guan Zhong? And how do these two meanings—to discover and to create value—found in the verbs “to appreciate” and “to realize” relate to each other? What precisely was this zhi, the capacity that fascinated so many early Chinese masters, including Confucius and his followers? This chapter focuses on the notion of zhi 知 in the Lunyu 論語 (Analects), the collection of sayings attributed to or closely associated with Confucius 孔子 (ca. 551–497 BCE).2 The notion of zhi happens to occur in the first as well as the last sayings (Analects 1.1, 20.3) of the received text, which indicates a certain interest in the topic by Confucius, his followers, or the Analects’ Han-­dynasty editors. The character 知 is also the very first appearing in the influential monograph that Roger Ames, together with David Hall, dedicated to Confucius’s thought, Thinking Through Confucius.3 My focus on this notion is meant as a small entrance into the larger field of early Chinese philosophy, which was profoundly stimulated by this book. My reading of Thinking Through Confucius has evolved over the decades, with pencil marks added and erased whenever I thought that I had finally understood or realized something. But as in the case of Bao Shuya, I wonder who or what will determine the accurateness of my understanding of this book—and, consequently, of my rendering of Hall and Ames’s Analects interpretation. My chapter is structured according to the well-­known Analects passage mentioning four corners. Confucius is portrayed as a teacher treating his disciples as follows: “If I give out one corner and they don’t return with three corners, then I don’t go over it again.”4 Only when disciples come up with many novel insights is Confucius willing to teach them. The first section of this chapter is the corner that was given to me when studying with Roger Ames and reading Thinking Through Confucius. The second corner is a reflection on possible translations for zhi in the Analects. The third one leaves the Analects behind and explores the nature of knowing in the teacher-­student relationship. While these two returned corners of the square may (or may not) fit the one corner that I set out with in Hawai‘i (1988–1990), the fourth and last one remains to be searched for. There always is—and has to be—at least one missing corner. Fruitful teaching inevitably remains an open-­ended enterprise allowing for disagreement, novelty, and surprise.



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The First Corner: Hall and Ames on the Meaning of Zhi In Thinking Through Confucius, Hall and Ames worked with clusters of terms in an attempt to restore the terms’ original context and avoid inappropriate associations from foreign frames of thought. The first cluster discussed in the book is a set of interrelated processes associated with “learning” (xue 學), “reflecting” (si 思), “realizing” (zhi 知), and “living up to one’s word” (xin 信).5 The authors’ interest in this topic was not limited to Confucius or early Confucianism but was motivated by the opportunity to avoid dichotomies that are so ingrained in Western thought that we have taken them for granted when translating and interpreting Chinese texts. Thus, by trying to unravel the intellectual (including metaphorical, etymological, and commentarial) coherence of Chinese terms before discussing their correspondence with English—to the extent that this division is possible—the analysis of early Chinese concepts provided an opportunity to reconceptualize Anglo-­European philosophy. Like many other early Confucian notions, zhi was such an opportunity for Hall and Ames to reflect upon a refreshingly different way of thinking, which seemed to avoid the familiar disjunctions between theory and practice, fact and value, normativity and spontaneity, and so on. Usually translated as “know” or “understand,” the notion of zhi incorporates such activities as appreciation, evaluation, participation, and even creation. Aside from the obvious meanings (“know that/how/to,” “understand”) and those highlighted in the story quoted above (“appreciate,” “recognize”), the term can also be translated as “wise,” “able,” “aware,” “intelligent,” or “well-­ known” or as “predict,” “administer,” “perceive,” “discern,” “conceive,” “grasp,” and so on. To these terms, Hall and Ames added and emphasized one more: “to realize,” containing a fruitful combination of two relatively distinct meanings—namely, discovering reality by coming to understand it, and the more creative, performative, or dynamic meaning of making something real.6 Hall and Ames insisted on the latter, “a process of articulating and determining the world rather than a passive cognizance of a predetermined reality.”7 In the English verb “to realize,” the discovery of reality is usually expressed in terms of “realizing that” or “realizing how” (e.g., “I did not realize that you were sick” or “how sick you were”) but also appears in a simple verb-­object construction (e.g., “I did not realize his pain” or “what she was trying to say”). The creation of reality is usually expressed

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in a verb-­object construction, as in “she realized her dream” or “her ambition.” In the latter sense, she achieved, accomplished, or caused something to become or seem “real.” The occasional ambiguity of the verb keeps the interpretive space open and provided an occasion for Hall and Ames to challenge the unquestioned preference for what they considered the “passive cognizance of a predetermined reality.” In what follows, I will exclusively focus upon this distinction, since it is crucial in Hall and Ames’s interpretation, and it has always intrigued me. The second corner of this chapter is a reading of the Analects in which this “creative” interpretation of zhi will be singled out; the third corner argues that in the case of recognition and appreciation, the line between the two meanings of zhi is difficult to draw.

The Second Corner: Zhi in the Analects Of the 500 sections that constitute the Analects, 73 contain the term zhi 知, sometimes used casually and sometimes explicitly discussed or defined. Of this collection, 21 are at least partly translated in Thinking Through Confucius. I first turn to these translated sections and then, in a second step, take the untranslated sayings into consideration.8 Together those two sets provide the context in which an interpretation of zhi in the Analects is explored. Hall and Ames’s various translations of zhi can be relatively evenly divided into three groups: expressing a discovery, expressing a creation, and a possible combination of both. The first seems to predominate when the Master “did not even notice the taste of meat” (不知肉味) because of the emotions caused by music;9 when he chided Jilu for trying to “understand death” (知死) before even “understanding life” (知 生);10 when he admired Yan Hui for “understanding ten” (知十) when hearing of one;11 or when he praised Zigong for being “aware of what is to come” (知來者).12 The creative interpretation of zhi dominates most explicitly when—in Hall and Ames’s translation—the Master criticizes those who “undertake trivial things” (小知).13 In other instances, they unambiguously use the verb “realize” to express this performative interpretation of zhi: for example, when those who “realize the world” (知者) are said to be active14 and not of two minds;15 when “those who realize their de” (知德者) are considered rare;16 and when the Master states that to “realize others” (知人) is the core of “realization” (知).17 According to Hall and Ames, these quotes underscore the fact that “realizing



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(zhi) is . . . something achieved rather than recognized.”18 A third set of sayings seems ambiguous enough to go both ways: The statement that at fifty I “realized the ming of tian” (知天命)19 may be understood as an act of creation or could be explained more descriptively in line with Analects 20.3, where, in Hall and Ames’s translation, a “person who does not understand the causal conditions governing life” (不知命) is criticized.20 Equally ambiguous are the statements about people who “realize something” (知及之) but may not always have the authoritative humanity (仁) to sustain it.21 While Hall and Ames’s translations expressing a discovery are straightforward and easy to grasp, those highlighting the act of creation are more awkward or, at least, more challenging. But an intellectual challenge is exactly what the two authors set out to offer their readers. I for one have always learned more for the questions they pose than from their answers. Moreover, their own understanding of the Analects may be meant as fulfilling the criteria of a Confucian “realization,” thus being aesthetic, personal, and contextual. In that case, it would quite naturally differ from mine. Ultimately, whether or not Hall and Ames’s alternative to the standard interpretation stands would also depend on the coherence of the larger interpretive frame, which cannot be easily decided within the scope of this short chapter. But in order to check the coherence, we can take a look at the 52 sections containing zhi that the authors have not translated in Thinking Through Confucius. Whenever the distinction between discovery and creation can possibly be made, it seems to me that the former always allows for a more convincing interpretation. But that may, of course, be due to my traditional Western frame of mind. Many cases, however, can hardly be interpreted differently, as when Confucius insists on the duty to “know” one’s parents’ age22 or the value of “understanding” the difficulties involved in being a ruler.23 In one instance the Master explicitly takes the initiative to teach Zilu the meaning of zhi: “When you know something, consider that you know it; when you do not know something, consider that you do not know it. This is knowing” (知之為知之, 不知為不知. 是知也).24 A more “creative” interpretation may be possible but seems at least less plausible. And finally, there are some sayings that explicitly identify zhi as knowing distinguished from acting. One is the sarcastic and yet moving portrayal of Confucius by the gatekeeper of Shimen as “one who realizes that something is impossible but goes ahead doing it” (知其不 可而為之者).25 A second example is when Zhonggong asks advice about

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how to “know worthiness and talent so as to promote” people (焉知賢 才而舉之).26 These sayings are not translated in Thinking Through Confucius and further support the coherence of a translation of zhi as discovering or understanding the state of affairs. Of course, we can infer from Hall and Ames’s translations that they do not always object to its descriptive meaning. Nor do I deny the importance of an authoritative person who, like an artist in a concrete situation, is able to move and inspire others. But I do not see how this depends on the translation of zhi as creating something. That translation seems to me excessively burdened by one interpretation, thus diminishing our attention to other equally appealing characteristics of the act of knowing or understanding. One of them is the power of not knowing. It is remarkable how often in the Analects the Master claims that he “lacks knowledge” (無知) or “does not know something” (不知). Aside from some cases where this amounts to a rejection of a claim (e.g., “I do not quite know that he is good,” meaning “I see no reason to consider him good”27), there is also a wide array of instances in which Confucius is portrayed as an exemplary person able to accept, admit, enjoy, taste, and even perform his absence of knowledge.28 In these cases, it is precisely by not zhi that the Master is acting. A second important aspect of zhi that risks Hall and Ames’s disdain for a mere “passive cognizance of a predetermined reality” are the many sayings touching upon the sensitive topic of recognizing somebody’s capacities or being recognized by others,29 which are hardly mentioned by Hall and Ames.30 This negligence is all the more surprising because of Ames’s own undeniably performative contribution in the field of Chinese philosophy as an effective and powerful “knower of others.”

The Third Corner: The Recognition of a Teacher Leaving the Analects behind, I now turn to the intricacies of zhi as “recognition.” The two meanings of the verb “to realize” are most intrinsically connected in the case of recognition or appreciation. A friend, parent, or teacher can contribute to the realization (the bringing about) of somebody’s potential by realizing (noticing) something that nobody else had seen, including the person him- or herself. The connection between knowing that there is some potential in the narrow, corresponding sense of the term, and the act of bringing it to life, is difficult to unravel.



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On the one hand, the performative or creative aspect of recognition is indeed miraculous. If parents talk in full sentences to their baby several years before the child is able to join the conversation, it is because they know that this little creature will one day be able to speak. And this holds for most other achievements of the child. As Eric Henry puts it, “No one can live, except in the literal and miserable biological sense, until known by another.”31 Even though parents’ expectations may be supported by facts that they discovered about the human species and about their child’s capacities, there is also a major impact of hope and trust. Likewise, the potential that Bao Shuya, against all odds, had noticed in Guan Zhong was indeed indiscernible for a neutral observer. The facts of Guan’s behavior visible to all others bore witness of opportunism and cowardice. Bao’s trust in him could just as well be considered no more than a blind infatuation and stubborn unwillingness to consider the obvious facts. As Hall and Ames have argued, artistic sensitivity and performance are much better metaphors for conceptualizing this type of “realizing” than the metaphor of discovering a scientific truth. But discovery is also a crucial part of it. Artists may sometimes have the impression that their creation is a mere discovery of what was already somehow present, like a sculpture waiting in a block of timber to be liberated. In the case of recognition or appreciation, reality is even more crucial. In order to “believe in” somebody, one at least has to “believe that” some facts are true—namely, those that give reason to predict a bright future for that person. Even though one might be mistaken, this very belief is a necessary condition for the “realization” to happen. The strength of Bao Shuya’s friendship is that he was convinced of what he had seen in Guan Zhong, although he may have imagined it. The fact that this story (along with similar ones) was invented and repeated by a group of unemployed knights in search of a position does not diminish the psychological insight that it conveys. More crucial than creating reality is believing in its actual existence. But believing is itself also a complex ingredient in realizing someone’s potential. On the positive side, parents’ expectations, even when mistaken, can have an energizing impact—little is lost and much gained by giving the child the benefit of the doubt. However, such authentic belief cannot be replaced by professional expertise, as in those manuals convincing parents, managers, or teachers that expressions of trust and positive feedback lead to miraculous results. On the negative side,

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an unrestricted authentic enthusiasm for one’s child’s capacities— much like the uncurbed expectations of an infatuated fan—can also be oppressive. Both cases, whether lacking authentic trust, on the one hand, or missing a sense of reality on the other, lead to failure. The disconnection with reality makes the interference unconvincing and ineffective, which is only exasperated by the enthusiasm and power of those who try to realize something.32 Thus, in our appreciation of a person, the creative aspect of realization needs the discovery of reality in a variety of ways. Underlying the creative power of believing in others remains our interest in the question of whether or not what we have seen in that person is, after all, there as a given. But how is that to be determined? The story of Bao and Guan suggests that the future outcome or popular consensus may be the ultimate judge, but where does that end? Ongoing posthumous discoveries of, respectively, unrecognized geniuses or war criminals may endlessly lead to new evaluations of, respectively, heroes and culprits. Another poor judge is the person him- or herself, who often wavers between an overdose of self-­certainty and self-­depreciation. Despite their indispensable stimulation at a certain stage of life, parents also lose much of their influence when the child has grown up. And this is where teachers, later joined by colleagues, come in: they are less biased than the parents, but neither are they unbiased. The pure reality of one’s capacities can never be ascertained once and for all. Those who persuasively see potential in others do this not as neutral scientists but rather in a personal, aesthetic, and performative fashion. It is an immense and undeserved gift to be “realized” by someone.

Notes 1.  Liezi, “Li ming” 立命. See Eric Henry, “The Motif of Recognition in Early China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47, no. 1 (1987): 5–30, esp. 7–8. 2.  In the Analects, Confucius comments upon Guan Zhong (Analects 3.22, 14.10, 14.17, 14.18). 3.  TTC, 1. Further references are to this book, with Wade-­Giles turned into pinyin. 4.  Analects 7.8; TTC, 146. 5.  TTC, 43. 6.  Ibid., 50–54. 7.  Ibid., 55.



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8.  Except when citing Thinking Through Confucius, translations of the Lunyu are my own, but I have benefited from Christoph Harbsmeier’s online Thesaurus Linguae Sericae. 9.  Analects 7.14; TTC, 279. 10.  Analects 11.12; TTC, 197. 11.  Analects 5.9; TTC, 339. 12.  Analects 1.15; TTC, 66. 13.  Analects 15.34; TTC, 52. 14.  Analects 6.23; TTC, 53, 114, 281. 15.  Analects 9.29; TTC, 281. 16.  Analects 15.4; TTC, 52. 17.  Analects 12.22; TTC, 55. 18.  TTC, 56. 19.  Analects 2.4; TTC, 280. 20.  TTC, 94, 197, 261. 21.  Analects 15.33; TTC, 52. 22.  Analects 4.21. 23.  Analects 13.15. 24.  Analects 2.17. 25.  Analects 14.38. 26.  Analects 13.2. 27.  Analects 2.22, 5.19, 14.1, 8.16; TTC, 60–61. 28.  Analects 5.8, 9.8, 3.11, 3.15, 5.12, 7.19, 7.14; TTC, 279. 29.  Analects 1.1, 1.16, 4.14, 11.26, 14.30, 14.35, 14.39, 15.14, 15.19. 30.  Analects 9.6; TTC, 191. 31.  Henry, “Motif of Recognition,” 9. 32.  To complicate matters, sometimes a teacher’s honest conviction that the student lacks capacities can function as a red flag to the bull that stimulates the most impressive realizations.

chapter 15

Strategic Imagination in Chinese Philosophy Daniel Coyle

Those who fail to honor their teachers and to be sparing with their raw materials Have gotten themselves utterly lost. This is what is called being subtle and getting to the essentials. —Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, Dao De Jing

A fundamental idea  of strategic imagination underlies both the moral exemplarism found in mainstream Confucian traditions and the seemingly countercurrent strategic core of the so-­called Daoist philosophies. In this chapter, I examine key philosophical texts to show that there is a continuous strategic thread woven through the various prescriptive aspects of Chinese philosophy. Specifically, strategic imagination, articulated in terms of calibrating, discerning, adapting, and responding, is crucial to achieving optimally appropriate conduct in the world. The Chinese notion upon which my argument turns is the underexplored idea of quan 權 (expediently weighing-­and-­balancing powers-­and-­circumstances). The primary inspiration for this interpretation derives from Roger Ames’s work on Chinese strategic philosophy, especially The Art of Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought (1983); Sun-­tzu: The Art of Warfare (1993); Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (1996, with D. C. Lau); and Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation (2003, with David L. Hall). I also include his Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (2011) in this list, since it is a work that ultimately makes a uniquely strategic argument. 162



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Ames’s insight is that, not only do discussions of strategic and military affairs pervade the classical Chinese canon, but the bingshu 兵書 (military texts) of the Warring States are in fact a vital form of philosophical literature. Moreover, “philosophy” in the prevailing Chinese traditions is “resolutely pragmatic,” and as such, it “resists” severe distinctions between theory and practice, means and ends, and other familiar dualisms of Indo-­European philosophizing.1 Qian Mu 錢穆 elegantly supports this understanding from within the tradition itself: “In Chinese thought there exists only one world, not two as Westerners have imagined.”2 Thus, Ames’s “central contention” in the above texts is that he 和, the “achieved harmony . . . identified as the goal of personal, social, and political cultivation in classical Confucianism” is not limited to the mainstream Confucian schools of thought or the Warring States period but is “a signatory feature of the Chinese tradition more broadly construed.”3 The cultivation of optimally productive harmony lies at the core of the classical Chinese worldview, and it is present in the elusive countercurrent “Daoist” sensibilities of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, which see “harmonizing” (he 和) as cosmic propensity itself, and in the Laozi-­derivative strategic lineages of bingfa 兵法 (military models) and zongheng 縱橫 (comprehensive strategy), which perceive it as crucial to genuine efficacy. He 和, as Ames interprets it, is “center-­seeking” or “centripetal”—it is “making the most of any situation.”4 Thus, in this construal, the cultivation of harmony requires a strategic approach, since fundamentally “strategy,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the “art or practice of planning the future direction or outcome of something.”5 In Chinese sensibilities, harmony is an achieved yet processional outcome. For this reason the designation “strategic” needs clarification, because specific tensions and cultural assumptions exist within the English term. “Strategy” most generally refers to a long-­term “plan,” yet it may also indicate a “devious or dishonest scheme, trick, or ploy.” In addition, the Indo-­European root meaning of the term is grounded in the idea of “fighting”: the Sanskrit stṛṇoti base of the Greek stratos (στρατός) denotes a general who “overthrows an army.” Strategiko (strategic art) derives from agein (ἄγειν), “leading” or “driving” an army. Today these connotations carry on through the twentieth-­century English context of “aerial bombing” as a strategy. Yet the concept still reflects the face-­to-­face public contest for a prize—the Greek agon in the agora (from the Indo-­European aj base6). These deep agonistic cultural roots contrast starkly with traditional

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Chinese strategic sensibilities. Confucians, Daoists, and zongheng comprehensive strategists alike recommend “not contending” (bu zheng 不 爭) as the preferred mode of engagement. This strategy for harmonious living defers to the uniqueness of each situation as the model of efficacy. Sunzi’s Art of Warfare (Sunzi Bingfa, aka Sun-­Tzu’s Art of War) exemplifies this with the concise formula of winning by “not fighting” (bu zhan 不戰). We are to achieve genuine harmony through the indirect conditioning of a situation, not through confrontational argument or armed conflict. François Jullien argues persuasively and at length across multiple texts that the distinguishing common feature of Chinese strategy is that it is conceived in terms of getting a situation to evolve naturally, which contrasts with the traditional Western modes of choosing between “means” or agonistically struggling to an “end.” He maintains that whether we are looking at instances of Confucian moral exemplarism or at the propensities of cosmopolitical and tactical power relations, “efficacy” always operates “indirectly, through the situation, and replaces confrontation.” The Chinese sage-­strategist aspires to “transform” (hua 化) “just as nature does.”7 Aspiration in this sense is a return requiring imagination. The common dao 道 is shared by the mainstream and countercurrents within the diverse Chinese traditions that celebrate the process and experience of spontaneity effected by “returning to the roots” (fan qi ben 反其本).8 Early Confucians understand this process in terms of returning to the practices of “family reverence” (xiao 孝) and “fraternal deference” (ti 弟). Analects 1.2 reads, “Exemplary persons [junzi 君子] devote their efforts to the roots [wu ben 務本], for once the roots are established, dao 道 will grow therefrom.” A Confucian dao thus emerges from the organic roots that produce natural family hierarchy. Practitioners of family reverence and fraternal deference in their responsibility to the ancestors and to social relations are said to “comprise the roots of humane and benevolent conduct [ren 仁].” By returning to the primal organic love of family and first cultivating emerging harmony there, Confucians assert that “appropriate behavior” (yi 義) becomes spontaneous and irresistible. This dao is ultimately grounded on shu 恕 (imagining what it is like to be in another’s “shoes”).9 Daoists broaden the perspective, yet are focused similarly on return. For example, Daodejing chapter 16 maintains: “Returning to the root [gui gen 歸根] is what we call equilibrium [jing 靜]. Equilibrium is what we call the cycling of life-­and-­order (ming 命).” The syncretic Wuzi 吳子 strategic text is no



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less clear: “Dao 道 is that which returns to the roots and retraces to the fetal beginnings.”10 Our roots constitute our natural continuity with the rest of the world. Thus, “returning to the roots” constitutes our highest responsibility as significant and beneficent human beings. Ames and Hall’s comment on Daodejing chapter 27 acutely draws the link between efficacy and imagination: “Evil” is the opposite of efficacy. It is a failure of imagination, the inability to make the most of things, a missed opportunity. It is the failure to recognize and appreciate the worth of both people and things, and as a consequence, to misuse them. There is no need either to pick and choose, or to squander anything. For those who are truly proficient at what they do, there is no wastage—nothing left over, no loose ends. And there is nothing beyond their own proficiency that they are dependent upon to be successful in what they do.11 Efficacious imagination aspires to transform “just as nature does.” Both the moral sage and the realist strategist require imagination to overcome the inertia within the human desire for permanence. The desire for permanence is most developed in Indo-­European philosophical traditions. A Western thinker who had one of the most profound insights into this longing, and yet who understood genuine creativity similarly to the Chinese—that is, as a return to the organic flux of experience—is Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s writings highlight “imagination” (Einbildung) as a way of seeing that is central to the experiences of memory, interpretation, generalization, metaphor, psychology, history, and especially morality. Importantly, the “eye of imagination” is integral to morality as a kind of empathetic creativity. Yet this is problematic in that the experimental and theoretical powers of imagination easily lend themselves to aberrant flights of fantasy.12 Nietzsche also shares the “Daoist” view that permanent substances are fictions and that the highest good is “the creative.”13 Imagination is required to apprehend true novelty, and if it is to be genuinely efficacious, it must accord and connect with concrete particulars, with historical realities and possible futures—which is to say that it must be strategic. Confucius is keenly aware of the need for strategic imagination, as we see in one of the most terse and abstruse passages of the Analects, 9.30:

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The Master said: “We may be able to learn together, and yet not be able to agree about dao. We may be able to agree about dao, and yet not be able to take a stand together. We may be able to take a stand together, and yet not be able to quan 權 together.” The difficulty in this key section lies in the controversial ability to “quan,” which I understand as to “expediently weigh-­and-­balance powers-­and-­ circumstances.” Interestingly, this is considered by many to be not only the “most advanced and subtle doctrine” in the entire Confucian program but also the very consummation of the ethical life.14 Yet despite the prominence of quan in Confucian philosophy, there is no discussion of the idea in the text of the Analects.15 The concept itself is elusive. In its verbal form quan means “weighing and balancing with the lever scales”; in its nominal extension it is the “sliding weight of a steelyard.” The traditional glosses for 9.30 cite Mencius 4A17 as an example of quan. In this passage Mencius suggests that in perilous situations it may be necessary to disregard li 禮 (ritual propriety) and exercise quan in order to save a human life. An instruction to defy li—regardless of the situation—instigates ongoing confusion among certain Confucian factions and teachings. Cheng Yi 程 頤 (1033–1107) concludes that after a millennium of Neo-­Confucian discussion, “from the Han on, no one understands the term quan,” and that “from the ancient past to the present, the term quan is often misused.”16 The Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals (ca. 200 BCE) makes the controversy over quan explicit: “Quan is achieving excellence by turning away from the classical norms and standards.”17 Confucians who would identify themselves as transmitters of the “lineage of ritual masters” (rujia 儒家) are faced with the prospect of acting against the tradition for which they are responsible. Huang Chichung draws our attention to one striking intertextual example within the Analects that sheds light on the issue. In Book 3, Confucius censures Guan Zhong, the great statesman, strategist, and hegemon, for violating the li, yet in Book 14 he praises him multiple times as a practitioner of ren 仁 (humane and benevolent conduct) and as someone who brought order to the world. Though the term quan is not used in these particular books of the Analects, we can see Confucius as resolving the dilemma in terms of the ability to “expediently weigh-­and-­balance powers-­and-­ circumstances.” On the continuum of value, Guan Zhong’s enormous historical accomplishments greatly outweigh his narrow arrogance and violations of li.18



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If this interpretation of Confucius’s quan is correct, it brings it dangerously close to the strategists’ understanding of the term. In fact, quan finds its most explicit articulation in the strategic literature of the bingfa 兵法 (military arts and methods) and the realpolitik extension of zongheng (comprehensive strategy) texts. Here quan immediately associates with the various ideas that tie into “war” (zhan 戰), especially “deception” (in terms of gui 詭 and zha 詐) and the strategies of “oblique-­ surprise” (qi 奇), which oscillatively slip away from the “straightforward” (zheng 正). In the Sunzi lineage, quan both assumes and exploits a correlative continuum: it means strategic levering as well as leveraging. Sun Bin Bingfa chapter 3 states that “quan is a means of gathering masses,” and chapter 9 states that “the long-­handled weapon exemplifies quan.” This construal of quan in terms of leverage also associates with the key strategic idea of shi 勢 (the propensity of a cultivated situation). According to Sunzi Bingfa chapter 5, “That the rush of torrential waters can roll boulders is shi”; likewise, “shi means making the most of favorable conditions and tilting the scales in our favor.”19 In these passages we can see the efficacy of Ames’s choosing the phrase “strategic advantage” to translate shi. And since shi is a continuous process, it always entails a correlative xing 形, which is its determining “configuration.”20 So if shi is “strategic advantage” (in terms of “propensity”), then xing is “positional advantage” (in terms of “configuration”). Shi and xing are the fundamentally correlative and mutually entailing notions at the heart of Chinese strategy. Sun Bin chapter 31 brings them together: “That some things have a surplus, and some things have deficiency, is just what we mean by the propensity of configuration.” In light of this, we can think of quan as expediently assessing configurational trends (xingshi 形勢) and then adapting to changing circumstances in a way that best suits the situation. The real difficulty in all this lies in what Ames identifies as the central tenet of the strategists: “There are no fixed strategic advantages (shi) or positions (xing).”21 Guiguzi 鬼谷子 chapter 6 expands the observation even further to what might be termed a cosmo-­axiological dimension: “The world has no constant values; affairs and events have no constant models.”22 Still, there are seasonal and cosmological regularities, which can ensure the effectiveness of strategy. Efficacy then, whether moral or strategic, demands that we quan, “expediently weigh-­and-­balance powers-­and-­circumstances.” In other words, we must use strategic imagination to accord with propensities and anticipate results.23 Confucius

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actually transmits the same strategic wisdom of the Sunzi, which states that there is nothing to which one should “cling to at all costs”:24 The Master said, “As exemplary persons proceed in the world they are neither invariably for nor invariably against anything; their alignment is toward what is optimally appropriate.”25 This is in fact the thread of quan 權. By the middle of the Han dynasty, Yang Xiong 楊雄 insists that Confucian sages “despise” the strategists who practice quan, whereas Liu Xiang 劉向 considers the quan practitioners to possess “distinguished wisdom that transforms danger into peace.”26 The dilemma is not unlike what Confucius faces with the case of Guan Zhong. At one end of the spectrum, quan epitomizes the dangerous precipitousness of power, yet at the other it exemplifies the summit of ethical practice. This tension continues today. Quan is the coherent oscillation between flexibility and stability that fuels the sustainability of Chinese culture. Confucius understands the importance of novelty, situation, and flexibility in the presence of both continuous tradition and changing circumstances. However, the need for strategic creativity, for continuous revaluing and rebalancing, is often neglected in philosophical treatments of Confucianism. This is ironic, since the great work of ethical practice might best be construed as actualizing interdependence, which is quan again (“weighing and balancing with the lever scales”); in its nominal extension it is the “sliding weight of a steelyard.” Efficacy in terms of strategic imagination means according with the spontaneous emergence of the world. Roger Ames articulates the strategic-­Confucian task clearly in Confucian Role Ethics: We begin from the moral uncertainty that attends all of the human experience. There is truly a “momentousness” to the vision of a consummate life both in the sense of the need for an unrelenting awareness in every moment of experience, and of the transformative significance that such an awareness engenders. . . . Each actual situation presents its own configuration of relations and conditions that need to be inventoried and assessed with discernment. But beyond the given facticity of any state of affairs, the actual situation also offers a range of possibilities for further



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growth, the scope of which is dependent upon the degree of imagination available to conjure forth what might be optimally appropriate, and upon our quality of responsiveness. Each encounter is unique, and requires a quantum of moral intelligence to be brought to bear in order to maximize its possibilities. The centrality of moral imagination is vital because some responses are always going to be better than others. This graduated differential among possibilities means that, as a counterweight to merely habituated responses, every moment requires keen attention to alternative possibilities, the exercise of an informed judgment that secures the best among them, and sufficient moral motivation to realize this optimum possibility. Confucius’s holistic vision of the consummate life requires unremitting attention in all of our concrete situations in order to find the most productive way forward.27 Confucian knowing is ultimately “an attempt to achieve optimal effect through the application of a cultivated imagination,” and this is ultimately a strategic task.28

Notes 1.  Roger T. Ames, Sun-­tzu: The Art of Warfare (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 41; DDJ, 58. See also Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966), sec. 20. 2.  Qian Mu 錢穆, Zhongguo Sixiang Shi 中國思想史 [A History of Chinese Thought] (Taipei: Zhonghua wen hua 中華文化, 1952), 7. All translations from the Chinese are my own, unless otherwise noted. 3.  Ames, Sun-­tzu, 67. 4.  Ibid., 39–40, 63; D. C. Lau and Roger Ames, Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), 62–63; DDJ, 35; CRE, 255. 5.  Oxford English Dictionary, ed. John Simpson and Edmund Weiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), s.v. “strategy.” 6.  Ibid., s.v. “strategic.” 7.  François Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking, trans. Janet Lloyd (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004), 40; François Jullien, The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1995), 68; François Jullien, The Silent Transformations, trans. Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson (New York: Seagull Books, 2011), 8–9.

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8.  The specific formulation occurs in Mencius 1A7. All Chinese texts in this chapter are from Donald Sturgeon’s Chinese Text Project, http://ctext .org/ (2020), unless otherwise noted. 9.  Analects 4.15. 10.  Wuzi 3.1. 11.  DDJ, 119. 12.  See Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), secs. 58, 59, 135, and 221; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), sec. 345; and Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Redemption,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody, trans. Graham Parkes (New York: Oxford University Press). 13.  Laurence Lampert, Nietzsche’s Teaching (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 117. 14.  See Chichung Huang, The Analects of Confucius (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 27; Jinfen Yan, “Between the Good and the Right: The Middle Way in Neo-­Confucian and Mahāyāna Moral Philosophy,” in Confucian Ethics in Retrospect and Prospect, ed. Vincent Shen and Kwong-­loi Shun (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2008), 196; and Peimin Ni, On Confucius (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002), 30. See also Analects 2.4. 15.  Quan 權 occurs three times in the Analects (9.30, 18.8, and 20.1), yet with no discussion at all. 16.  Er Cheng quanshu 二程全書, Chinese Text Project, http://ctext.org/ (2020). 17.  Chunqiu Gongyang Zhuan 春秋公羊傳, “The Eleventh Year of the Duke of Heng,” Chinese Text Project, http://ctext.org/ (2020). 18.  Huang, Analects of Confucius, 26–28. See Analects 3.22, 14.9, 14.16, and 14.17. 19.  Ames, Sun-­tzu, 104. 20.  Cf. ibid., 82. 21.  Ames, Sun-­tzu, 27 (changed to pinyin). Cf. Lau and Ames, Sun Pin, 52, 129. 22.  D. C. Lau and Chen Fong Ching, eds., Concordances to the Heguanzi, Guiguzi, Wenshizhenjing [鶡冠子逐字索引; 文始眞經逐字索引; 鬼谷子逐字索 引], ICS Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1997), 6/5/21. 23.  Compare Ames’s discussion of shu in CRE, 196. 24.  Sunzi 8, from Jullien, Treatise on Efficacy, 180.



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25.  Analects 4.10. 26.  Yang Xiong, Fayan Yuanqian pian [法言 淵騫篇], sec. 8; Liu Xiang, Zhanguoce Shulu [戰國策書錄]. 27.  CRE, 193–194. 28.  CRE, 258.

chapter 16

Extending Ars Contextualis to Zhu Xi Using Gewu as an Example Eiho Baba

Gewu 格物 (investigation of things), as it is interpreted by Zhu Xi, involves what Roger Ames refers to as ars contextualis, or “the art of finding optimal contextualization within one’s roles and relations,”1 which he and his collaborator David Hall maintain is “most characteristic of Chinese intellectual endeavors.”2 In this chapter, I begin with wu 物 of gewu and show that wu are not discrete “things” but transactional events or “thing-­ events of everyday activities” (riyong shiwu 日用事物). We engage with wu through embodied understanding of ritual propriety acquired through a cumulative practice and repeated applications of learning. What gewu investigates, I contend, is our transactions or ways of conducting everyday activities to evaluate whether or not our understanding of ritual propriety is appropriate and efficacious in its application to novel circumstances. Gewu further requires an attunement of that understanding to make ritual proprieties appropriate and efficacious in their applications to those circumstances. I read gewu as a practical learning process that examines the appropriateness of our transactions with thing-­events to become consummate in (a) making ritual propriety appropriate and (b) acting with appropriated ritual propriety in response to ever-­changing circumstances. To conclude, I align gewu with ars contextualis and discuss the value of extending Ames’s work on classical Confucian philosophy to the study of Zhu Xi. Zhu Xi explains that “what we are transacting [yingjie 應接] with at the present are all wu”3 and that “there is no human who is not purposively involved [jie 接] with wu.”4 He also says that “all events [shi 事] of this world are called ‘wu,’ ”5 and that “wu are just like events.”6 Elsewhere, he simply states that “wu are thing-­events [shiwu 事物].”7 Furthermore, 172

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wu is regularly associated with ordinary “thing-­events of everyday activities [riyong shiwu].” For instance, in Zhongyong huowen, Zhu Xi lists the following as examples of thing-­events: wearing clothes and eating food, working on and resting from something, seeing and listening to something, and carrying out or undertaking something.8 He also cites doing daily activities at home, eating and drinking something, and talking and conversing with someone as examples of such thing-­events.9 Ryūtarō Tomoeda writes, “This ‘shiwu’ includes both events [koto 事] of human affairs [jinji 人事] and things [mono 物] of ten thousand things [banbutsu 萬物]. Therefore, the ‘wu’ of ‘gewu’ in Daxue zhangju must also include what Mencius refers to as ‘human relations’ [renlun 人倫] and ‘the multitude of things’ [shuwu 庶物].”10 Yasushi Ichikawa similarly argues that “events [koto] are occurrences [jishō 事象]” that “include within them human conducts applied onto them.”11 I agree with their reading that wu are not just discrete objects in a “multitude of things” but are “events” or “thing-­events” that cannot be considered in abstraction from our involvement or transaction with them. Ames and Hall point out that wu “are not objects, but foci within a continuous field of changing processes and events . . . [where] all relations are transactional in the sense that they are reciprocal and mutually determinative.”12 From this standpoint, wu are “transactional” in that we have a determinative influence over their unfolding through our involvement. Zhu Xi maintains that we are transacting with thing-­events with an “understanding” (zhi知) or “pre-­understanding” (yizhizhe 已知者) that we already “have” (you有) about them. For instance, he writes in his ninth letter to Yi Wu that gewu is a process by which we extend “what we already understand” about thing-­events to other thing-­events that “we do not yet understand.”13 He also states, “We already have an understanding. When we try to comprehend something, this understanding will sprout forth and reveal itself.”14 He indicates in Daxue huowen 1 that this understanding is acquired through a lifetime of Confucian learning. The process begins, he says, with childhood education (xiaoxue 小 學)—from everyday housekeeping to proper reception of and attendance to guests and senior members of one’s family—and continues with training in rituals, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and computation.15 Zhu Xi writes in his first letter to Hu Shi: People of old progressed from childhood education to adult education. Through continuous daily practice, from housekeeping

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to proper reception of and attendance to guests and senior members of their families, they have firmly developed proper bearings and are thoroughly trained in their cultivations. As such, the learning process of adult education begins with gewu and zhizhi 致知 [reaching understanding], and they must be based on what is successfully acquired through their childhood education.16 He explains that the process of learning is just like “how babies learn how to walk”: “As they learn how to step forward today, they will step farther tomorrow. It is through persistent cumulative practice [jixi 積 習] that babies learn how to walk for the first time.”17 In his commentary on Analects 1.1, Zhu Xi writes that “to do practice [xi 習] is just like fledglings [practicing] how to fly over and over again.”18 He takes the practical dimension of learning and its cumulative nature seriously. Zhu Xi considers the saying “Having studied, to then repeatedly apply [shixi 時習] what you have learned” to be the heart of Confucian philosophy.19 He states, People of old already understood [propriety] from their childhood. For example, propriety of serving one’s parents and superiors, procedures of striking gongs and drums, and proper bearings in deferential greetings and leave takings; they were intimately familiar with these affairs and were already comporting themselves according to ritual propriety [li 禮].20 According to Zhu Xi, people in the ideal past were thoroughly trained in their xiaoxue education to such an extent that proper conduct or proper ways of transacting with thing-­events were metaphorically burnt into their eyes, or had “penetrated into their bones.”21 The special way in which ritual propriety is properly learned through “cumulative practice” and “repeated application” is worth noting. Hall and Ames observe that “the notion of formal li [禮] action overlaps with ti [體], body, in that li actions are embodiments or formalizations of meaning and value that accumulate to constitute a cultural tradition.”22 Jirō Yasuda explains how meanings and values invested in ritual propriety are also “embodied” by us. Alluding to Zhu Xi’s commentary on Analects 1.1, where he defines “learning” (xue 學) as “emulation” (xiao 效),23 Yasuda argues that “repeated application” is a process of “habituation through repetition of what is emulated” and that “learning is an acquisition of habits [shūkan

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習慣].”24 In other words, proprieties and procedures are embodied (ti) as habits (jixi) through “cumulative practice” and “repeated applications” of ritual propriety to and through everyday activities. Early lexicons such as the Shuowen Jiezi define 禮 (li) in terms of its homophone 履 (lü), which means “to enact” or “to carry out” something. Since wu implicate our involvement, we have a “pre-­understanding” only insofar that our lived bodies “already understand” how to “comport ourselves” in accordance to ritual propriety—that is, our embodied dispositional habits that condition our transactions with thing-­events. What then is a “proper” transaction? Zhu Xi indicates that the process of practical learning (xiaxue 下學) “is inseparable from thing-­events of everyday activities through which we differentiate thing-­events that are proper [shi 是] from those that are improper [fei 非].”25 In his commentary on Mencius 2A6, he explains that “ ‘shi’ is to realize what is efficacious [shan 善] and regard it as being proper.”26 He further associates this efficaciousness with “appropriateness” (yi 宜) in his commentary on the Great Learning.27 He accordingly writes, “What ‘義’ [yi] is referring to is only ‘appropriateness’ [yi 宜].”28 In other words, a “proper” transaction is a transaction that is “efficacious” and “appropriate” to the thing-­ events transacted. In his second letter to Yong Jiang, Zhu Xi appeals to Appended Remarks 2.5 and writes that the process of practical learning begins with gewu that “does not depart” (buli 不離) from “thing-­events of everyday activities” and its goal is “to achieve an inscrutable depth in examining their appropriateness [jingyirushen 精義入神] in order to make the most of them in their practical applications [yizhiqiyong 以致 其用].” He explains: As for the two characters composing [“精義” jingyi], according to senior scholars, “義” [yi] is only referring to “appropriateness” [yi 宜]. There are appropriate and inappropriate things. There are permissible and impermissible events. What is referred to as “appropriateness” [yi 義] is to realize that when our heartmind is dealing [chu處] with them, each of them has its own fitting procedure that is hard to be replaced. “精義” [jingyi] is to become consummate [jing 精] in this. What is meant by “精” [jing] is the same as conducting a thorough examination [cha 察].29 When it is consummated [jing] until its inscrutable depth is reached [rushen 入神], the appropriateness [yi 宜] of thing-­events in their minute and subtle details will be thoroughly understood and it

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will have a remarkable applicability that is indescribable. This is why whenever it is applied, it does not fail to be effective [li 利].30 Taken together, gewu is a practical learning process through which we become consummate (a) in conducting examinations to determine whether or not our transactions with thing-­events are appropriate (jing­ yirushen) and (b) in carrying out or effectively applying the appropriate ways of transacting with thing-­events evaluated by the examination (yizhiqiyong). Zhu Xi continues: “There are different procedures [cixu 次序] for each and every minute detail, yet they are bound with one continuous strand; they do not have a determinate step (fenduan 分段), they do not have a determinate timing [shijie 時節], and they do not have a determinate location [fangsuo 方所].”31 Similarly, in his discussion on Xie Shangcai’s interpretation of “repeated practice” from Analects 1.1, Zhu Xi states that “for each [event], there is a particular way to do practice [xi].”32 Yasuda explains in his commentary on this passage that “contents of learning and practice [shū 習] must change and transform [henka 變化] each and every time according to circumstances [jitai 事 態].”33 In other words, gewu is ideally conducted with a recognition that an application of ritual propriety “cannot be the same” (butong) for all circumstances; it does not have an invariant procedure (fenduan) for all times (shijie) and for all places (fangsuo). Gewu requires us to “change and transform” our understanding of ritual propriety to make it “appropriate” to ever-­changing circumstances. I showed that wu investigated by gewu are transactional thing-­ events of everyday activities in which we are purposively involved with an understanding of ritual propriety embodied through a cumulative practice and repeated applications of learning. This understanding or pre-­understanding ideally habituates or disposes us to transact with thing-­events in a proper manner that is both efficacious and appropriate. Since wu implicate our involvement and our involvement is conditioned by our understanding, this understanding is an integral part of wu. As Zhu Xi says, our “understanding and thing-­events are intimately related to each other.”34 What gewu examines, I contended, are not mind-­ independent objects but our transactions or ways of conducting affairs or “thing-­events of everyday activities” to evaluate whether or not our understanding of ritual propriety is appropriate to and efficacious in its application to novel circumstances. I further showed that gewu requires

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us to properly attune, as it were, ritual propriety to changing circumstances to make them appropriate to and efficacious in their applications to novel thing-­events. In this sense, gewu for Zhu Xi is a practical learning process that examines the appropriateness of our learning to become consummate in (a) making ritual propriety appropriate (jing­ yirushen) and (b) acting with appropriate ritual propriety (yizhiqiyong) in response to ever-­changing circumstances that are ever new. I suggest that gewu is an example of ars contextualis, which Ames defines as “the art of effectively contextualizing and coordinating the experience of the human being with the processes of nature in an effort to optimize the creative possibilities of the cosmos.”35 Elsewhere, Hall and Ames write that it is “the art of contextualizing [that] seeks to understand and appreciate the manner in which particular things present-­to-­hand are, or may be, most harmoniously correlated.”36 Ames also explains that “each actual situation presents its own configuration of relations and conditions that need to be inventoried and assessed with discernment” and that “the actual situation also offers a range of possibilities for further growth, the scope of which is dependent upon the degree of imagination available to conjure forth what might be optimally appropriate, and upon our quality of responsiveness.”37 I read gewu as an ars contextualis that “involves appreciation of harmonious correlations of the myriad unique details.”38 It is conducted with an appreciation that all wu or transactional events involved are unique in that they each present their own “configuration of relations and conditions.” Gewu requires our understanding of ritual propriety and the “myriad details” of particular wu or transactional events involved to be “inventoried” and “assessed with discernment” to examine the appropriateness of our understanding (jingyirushen) and to make it appropriate when it is practically applied to unique circumstances (yizhiqiyong). Gewu from this standpoint is an “artful deposition of things”39 that seeks to optimize the creative possibilities of learning in its application to and through transactions with thing-­events. Its success or efficaciousness is largely dependent upon the “quality of responsiveness” or the depth of cultivation, if not gongfu, of cumulative practice and repeated applications of gewu in learning and understanding, appreciating the uniqueness of circumstances, examining the appropriateness of the understanding to them, and creatively appropriating that understanding to novel thing-­events transacted to achieve an “extensive application” of learning. Resonance between gewu and the “art of contextualization” is

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evident. The brief exposition provided in this chapter does not exhaust the concept of gewu, but it does present an argument for reading gewu as an ars contextualis. Ames and his longtime collaborator Hall once said that they are “inclined to examine, in greater detail than [they] have until now, the shape and cultural importance of neo-­Confucian China.”40 My interpretation of gewu suggests that if Ames extends his investigation to “neo-­Confucian China,” he will find a meaningful continuity between his reading of the classical Confucian philosophical tradition and Zhu Xi. Such an extension of his work beyond pre-­Qin China is a real possibility for scholarship. This chapter is an invitation to examine or to reexamine Zhu Xi in light of this possibility. Not only does it contribute to the study of Zhu Xi, but it also introduces a new way of evaluating the relationship between Zhu Xi and the larger Confucian philosophical tradition.

Notes 1.  CRE, 70. 2.  TH, 40. 3.  Jieren Zhu, Zuozhi Yan, and Yongxiang Liu, eds., Zhuzi quanshu 朱 子全書 [The Complete Works of Master Zhu], 1st ed., 27 vols. (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe and Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), [14] 461. 4.  Zhu, Yan, and Liu, Complete Works, [22] 2038. Zhu Xi states in the same letter that jiewu 接物 “are not just about places where our bodies are in contact [chu 觸], but are also places where our intention [zhi 志] reaches into.” Thus, jie 接 is not a passive “contact” (jiechu 接觸) with things but an active “reaching” into or purposive “involvement” (xiangjie 相接) with wu. 5.  Ibid., [14] 477. 6.  Ibid., [6] 358. 7.  Ibid., [6] 358. 8.  Ibid., [6] 577. 9.  Ibid., [14] 467. 10.  Ryūtarō Tomoeda, Shushi no shisō keisei 朱子の思想形成 [The Formation of Master Zhu’s Thoughts] (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1969), 356. 11.  Yasushi Ichikawa, Shushi tetsugaku ronkō 朱子哲學論考 [Thinking Through Master Zhu’s Philosophy] (Tokyo: Kyūkoshoyin, 1985), 19. 12.  FF, 11–12. 13.  Zhu, Yan, and Liu, Complete Works, [22] 1914. 14.  Ibid., [14] 512.

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15.  Ibid., [6] 505. 16.  Ibid., [22] 1894–1895. 17.  Ibid., [14] 475. 18.  Ibid., [6] 67. 19.  Ibid., [14] 669. 20.  Ibid., [14] 466. 21.  Ibid., [14] 462. 22.  TTC, 88. 23.  Zhu, Yan, and Liu, Complete Works, [6] 67. 24.  Jirō Yasuda, Chūgoku kinse shisō kenkyū 中国近世思想研究 [Research on Modern Chinese Thoughts] (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1976), 104. 25.  Zhu, Yan, and Liu, Complete Works, [21] 1702. 26.  Ibid., [6] 289. 27.  Ibid., [6] 23. 28.  Ibid., [21] 1702–1703. 29.  In his commentary on Xici 2.5, Zhu Xi defines “精” (jing) as “thorough investigation” (jingyan 精研) (Zhu, Yan, and Liu, Complete Works, [1] 140). I accordingly read “察” (cha) as “thorough examination” (dongcha 洞 察). 30.  Zhu, Yan, and Liu, Complete Works, [21] 1702–1703. 31.  Ibid., [21] 1702. 32.  Ibid., [14] 673. 33.  Yasuda, Research on Modern Chinese Thoughts, 106. 34.  Zhu, Yan, and Liu, Complete Works, [14] 493. 35.  CRE, 53. 36.  David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, “Chinese Philosophy,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy CD-­ROM, ed. Edward Craig (New York: Routledge, 1998). 37.  CRE, 193–194. 38.  AC, 275. 39.  Hall and Ames, “Chinese Philosophy.” 40.  AC, 281.

chapter 17

Truth Bound and Unbound A Deeper Look at the Western and Chinese Paradigms Marty H. Heitz

Anyone wishing to learn about Chinese philosophy would, if familiar with the works of Roger Ames and David Hall, need first and foremost realize that it is not as easy as learning about another branch of Western philosophy. It is also not so simple a matter as using a dictionary to translate the Chinese terms that constitute the body of Chinese philosophical literature. Instead, one first needs to realize what one brings to the study of Chinese philosophy, for it operates from a set of presuppositions that is fundamentally different from those of Western philosophy. And it is precisely the differences between the ways of thinking in China and the West that are the really interesting bit, not their similarities. These philosophical differences, of course, reflect deeper cultural as well as linguistic differences, or differing sets of presuppositions that underlie the ways of understanding the world and ourselves, as well as how we express that understanding. We must make ourselves aware of these lest we misinterpret the Chinese philosophers because of our own cultural and linguistic prejudices. As Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. express it: Proceeding from an awareness that the only thing more dangerous than making cultural generalizations is the reductionism that results from not doing so, we need to identify and elaborate some of these presuppositions. To establish some initial terms for comparison, we want to claim that English (and other Indo-­European languages) is basically substantive and essentialistic, whereas classical Chinese should be seen more as an eventful language. If this 180



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be so, then experiencing a world of events, seen as persistently episodic, will perhaps be different from experiencing a world of things, seen interactively.1 These terms, “essentialistic” and “eventful,” are but the beginning points to a much broader—and at the same time deeper—elaboration of what literally frames our ways of making sense of reality. My own way of elaboration begins by naming these cultural sets of presuppositions “paradigms,” with “thing-­like” versus “event-­like” constituting the first feature of the Western and Chinese paradigms, respectively. In all, I identify four features of each paradigm, where the first three of the Western paradigm follow along lines laid out by both Ames and Hall— namely, substantiveness, external relatedness, and either/or logic. However, it is the fourth that—by way of coming back with another corner of the square—I humbly wish to add to this set of presuppositions, and that is the elevation of truth over good. I will discuss this one at the end of this chapter, following an examination of these paradigms from a neurological perspective. But first, allow me to present the paradigms as I understand them.

The Western and Chinese Paradigms A paradigm, philosophically considered, is an overarching, culture-­wide perspective or theoretical framework through which we make unified sense of a wide range of phenomena (though usually natural phenomena). Thus, one could liken a paradigm to a pair of “goggles” one might wear that both colors and refracts all incoming light according to a particular pattern. Such a framework acts as a set of presuppositions that is usually unrecognized and the use of which mostly goes unnoticed by the user. It is thus also usually the case that this perspective is discovered only when its limitations become evident, either when it no longer unifies or explains the relevant phenomena or when it is opposed by a competing paradigm. The superseding of Newtonian mechanics by quantum mechanics is one well-­known example of the first case, while for our purposes the ancient Chinese worldview is an example of the second. As Ames points out, seen through “Chinese goggles” the world is primarily eventful in that the phenomena that are highlighted are events or processes. Additionally, as the second major feature of the paradigm, these events are internally relational and contextual. The world

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as seen through “Western goggles,” on the other hand, is primarily substantive, such that the phenomena highlighted are things. Furthermore, these things are externally related one to another, where each has independent status. This means that the ancient Chinese primarily understood all processes to be correlatively interrelated, in just the same way in which an eddy in a stream is interrelated to the movement of the stream, of which it is but one aspect, and apart from which it simply is not. Seen this way, the entire cosmos is but one organism, each aspect of which has literally grown with all the others, there being no hard-­and-­fast boundaries between these processual aspects. For teaching purposes, the yin/yang—or taiji (太極)—symbol works well to re-­present these primary features of the Chinese paradigm, especially when contrasted with a circle having only one straight line down the middle to depict the Western paradigm, dividing the black half from the white half. For whereas the taiji symbol suggests a flow of movement with its curvy line, the other seems quite static, and whereas the taiji locates yin within yang and yang within yin through the use of the two dots, the other seems to emphasize separation and mere opposition (or external relation as opposed to internal). The internal relatedness depicted in the taiji symbol reflects the fact that all that exists can only be characterized in correlative terms with what else exists, and so, as I like to say to my students, nothing is anything absolutely, which is also to say that everything is something relatively, such that what we say of any one aspect of a phenomenon is contextually dependent, and so in this way of thinking there are no fixed or bounded essences or substances. Building on these two main features of the paradigms, it can also be seen that the taiji depicts, through its correlative nature, an affinity for a “both/and” way of thinking as opposed to the “either/or” way we typically see exhibited in the West. Indeed, the law of the excluded middle establishes this as a rule of logical thinking, yet it was just such a “rule” that had to be broken by physicists with regard to the nature of fundamental particles as both particles and waves. From the correlative perspective, no thing or event can be what it is, not just without something else, but without everything else, for the ties that bind reality are internal, knitting the whole of existence as one. This is why traditional Chinese medicine (henceforth, TCM) does not use the language of causality, for to say that one thing—say, a virus—causes illness is to isolate both the virus and the infected organism so that they stand in a one-­to-­ one relationship, where the causal factor acts as the relational bridge



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between—and so external to—the two. There is no theory of viruses or bacteria in TCM, for it looks first and foremost at the overall organism as it exhibits relative balance or imbalance among all of its aspects, such that “illness” is itself a multidimensional relationship, not a “state” brought about by a single, isolatable cause. Consider, for example, the common cold, which through Western medicine we know to be predominantly caused by a rhinovirus. From the perspective of TCM, however, the pattern of disharmony associated with a cold arises through the interaction of our defensive qi (called weiqi) with the pathogenic factor “Wind” and is classified as either “Wind-­Cold” or “Wind-­Heat,” depending on the particular symptoms. “Wind” alone does not induce a cold, nor does a deficiency of our weiqi; the cold comes from the relative imbalance that then influences other bodily organs to become imbalanced. Treatment consists of expelling the pathogenic factor while simultaneously fortifying the defensive qi, as well as any other existing imbalances that might worsen the patient’s health. It is also important to see that while the taiji symbol, and so the Chinese paradigm, does reflect a kind of balance, this cannot be understood in static terms, as one might imagine a perfectly balanced scale. It is, rather, an interdependent kind of balance more like musical harmony, where no single voice can be said to be harmonious, for harmony is something that arises, or does not arise, only in the relationship among voices. So too the idea of balance or imbalance in TCM is to be understood as a dynamic harmony or disharmony, where the relations are to be treated in the way in which they are happening, as harmony arises only when singers are singing. While this is only a brief sketch and Ames—together with Henry Rosemont Jr. and David Hall—has elaborated how these basic features reveal themselves in both Chinese and Western thought in far greater detail and breadth, it serves to portray the basic set of presuppositions. But before introducing the fourth feature of the Western paradigm—in addition to and as an extension of the features of substantiveness, external relatedness, and either/or logic—I have found it both fascinating and compelling that the two paradigms can be seen as deeply connected to the differing ways in which our cognition arises from the functioning of the right and left hemispheres of our brain, and thereby to the ways in which we understand the world and ourselves. I am not making the claim that we can explain the paradigms through neuroscience or find

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their cause as arising from any brain state. Instead, my purpose here is only to show how closely they fit, so as to make manifest the fourth feature I would like to add—namely, that truth is “bound” in the Western paradigm and “unbound” in the Chinese, a notion that also expresses the relation of the true and the good within each paradigm.

The Paradigms as Reflective of the Lateralization of the Brain and Cognition The two paradigms outlined above are not to be understood as completely alien to each other, of course, but rather are complementary, in just the same way that TCM is a holistic, complementary form of medicine to Western, allopathic medicine. They are, if you will, two different forms of emphasis, for while “things” predominate in the Western paradigm, this does not at all mean that Westerners have no understanding of process, nor that the Chinese cannot understand or speak of things. This also means that one can eventually come to move from one paradigm to another or even “shift” paradigms in such a way that both are available and utilized, though perhaps in differing contexts. And this implies that the paradigm is operative in how we attend to what is, be that a situation or a person or a natural phenomenon. From the Western side, we primarily attend to the static nature of something, whereas from the Chinese side we primarily attend to the present, ongoing process, but nothing prevents one, with understanding and a bit of practice, from attending in both ways, albeit not at the same time. This reveals something quite interesting: that attention is an integral aspect in the use of a paradigm. And it turns out that how we attend to what is happening in the present moment can be in one of two, correlative ways: focal attention, whereby we select one particular aspect of the whole, present moment, or peripheral attention, whereby we sense the whole of what is happening. These are the poles between which our attention operates, such that both are always present. Indeed, I can only focus from a more peripheral awareness and only attend peripherally from a more focused awareness, such that the poles correlatively constitute each other. This distinction between two dominant modes of giving attention in the present moment likewise reflects the correlative, or polar, nature of human cognition, and that in turn is specifically rooted in the lateralization of the brain. Thanks to Iain McGilchrist’s work, outlined in The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World,



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this issue is receiving renewed interest and research, and the results are quite interesting.2 While I will present only the directly relevant aspects, his work reaches far beyond what I can depict here. Although the majority of brain activity occurs in both hemispheres, some 7–9% of cognitive activity is centered in one or the other hemisphere. Such functional differentiation is known as lateralization, and this phenomenon is explored in depth in his book. Besides playing a role in the differing ways we give attention, this hemispheric specialization is further enhanced by increased inhibition of communication between the hemispheres via the corpus callosum, which, while connecting the two, also acts to inhibit cross-­communication, and this combined with asymmetrical growth in the frontal cortex has led to huge advances in our cognitive abilities. Briefly, research shows that the two hemispheres have quite different “personalities,” meaning that while they work together to yield a unitary consciousness, they each add unique qualities that are not found in the other. Thus, whereas the functioning of the left hemisphere is similar to a computer’s serial processor, the right hemisphere acts as a parallel processor. This means that the left is used chiefly for understanding events in series, like causality, while the right is used chiefly for understanding (and importantly, for perceiving) the given, contextualized whole. Whereas the left is mechanically adroit, able to make useful associations and execute fine manipulation through the right hand (and, if left-­handed, the coding for such manipulation arises from the left hemisphere and passes through the right to operate the left hand), the right is more sensitive to the organic, living, immediately present reality. In fact, the left not only literally grasps things through the hands but also metaphorically “grasps” things conceptually, because it is responsible for “lifting out” relevant features of the given, perceptual whole and identifying them. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, presents the given, holistic moment to the left, such that without this presentation the left would not be able to execute its more familiar cognitive functions, such as concept formation and a rational, sequential thought process. Of special importance here is that attention literally spans the two on a continuum from the fine, detailed, grasping “focus” of the left hemisphere to the broadly open, holistic, and contextualized “peripheral” awareness of the right hemisphere. This means, for example, that as I write these words, attending to my computer screen, my left hemisphere is chiefly in play as I think about these issues and focus on the

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keyboard and screen, while my right hemisphere is chiefly responsible for the “peripheral awareness” of my surroundings. Given our tendency, especially in this contemporary culture, to operate through the “subject-­object” mode—a mode that is essentially centered in the left hemisphere—we most often neglect what is provided by the right hemisphere to such an extent that, at one time, scientists even thought that the right hemisphere was largely redundant. In fact, however, we perceive our situation and orient our understanding through this “silent” hemisphere and could not even begin to think without it. To put all this another way and make the connections to the paradigms clearer, the right hemisphere (or recognizing that phenomenologically these functions are mutually physical and mental, what I shall henceforth call the “right mind”) presents the immediate, holistic reality, while the left hemisphere (henceforth, “left mind”) re-­presents this reality. This means that in our actual experience we fluidly and fluently shift our attention from the specific and focal to the broad and peripheral, thereby activating lateralized functions as the present situation calls for, such that the “presented” arises mutually with the “re-­ presented.” Only in the dualistic mind-­set of subject-­object is this idea depicted as if the left mind were a “controller” and the right mind the “input” of sensory information, a model strongly reminiscent of the Cartesian and thoroughly Western “ghost in the machine.” There is thus an operant polarity present in giving attention, a polarity that can be balanced, such that one mode does not predominate over the other, but a polarity that in fact often arises as imbalanced, such that one mode of understanding dominates the other. The suggestion here is that the Chinese paradigm reflects a more right-­minded way of understanding while the Western paradigm a more left-­minded way and, furthermore, that the West—and with it much of the contemporary world’s culture— is becoming ever more left-­minded. To enumerate some more of the ways the paradigms can be seen reflected in the lateralized functions of the left and right minds, consider the following correlative pairs, where the first depicts the left mind and the second the right: what something is versus how it is; to grasp versus to release; fixed versus fluid; dualistic versus non-­dualistic; intra-­ subjective versus inter-­subjective; part versus whole; conceptual versus perceptual; abstract versus concrete; past and future versus presence; mechanical versus organic; decontextualized versus contextualized; controlling versus allowing; willful versus spontaneous; goal-­oriented activity



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versus engagement in the process; explicit versus implicit; virtual versus real; denotative versus connotative; literal versus metaphorical; and general versus unique. While I cannot elucidate the many ways in which these correlative features of our cognition map onto the paradigms, the alignment of the left mind with a graspable thing, with boundaries that fix the nature of that thing, and with an either/or logic is striking; likewise, the way the right mind aligns with the dynamism of the present moment in its inherent complexity, whereby boundaries blur and nothing is strictly any one thing, is equally striking. So we might say that through the Western paradigm one is attentive to the abstracted and re-­ presented nature of things, while through the Chinese paradigm one is attentive to the actual and directly presented nature of the given whole, which is constantly shifting, changing, and transforming. And, of course, these paradigms are themselves complementary and correlative, in just the same way as the lateralized features of cognition and attention.

Truth Bound and Unbound Ever since ancient Greece, the notion of truth in the West has been inextricably tied up with language; truth is something that adheres to propositions. Propositions specify what is the case by selecting pertinent features from out of a given whole; that is, propositions are re-­ presentations, and so they belong primarily to the domain of the left mind. Thus, one could say that truth is a way in which the mind grasps a given situation or phenomenon, and such grasping must de-­fine and de-­limit as part of the process of re-­presenting. Conversely, it is generally known that, from the Chinese perspective, truth goes beyond words, that the ultimate truth is, and so it must be perceived as a whole and cannot be parsed (as is also true for other Eastern traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism). However, this feature of truth is not generally accorded to the cultural paradigms and is often overlooked even by philosophers who study Eastern thought generally. Consider Zhuangzi, who makes it abundantly clear that the “truth” of dao 道 is beyond the ken of the mind, and who displays a flamboyant disregard for boundaries and limitations, preferring a life of free and easy wandering. But this life of living dao, one I see as richly good, is difficult indeed to live if one prioritizes a bounded sense of truth, which is to say, if one lives predominantly within the left mind’s way of grasping cognition and so only comes to “know of” dao.

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Certainly, to live and act according to what reason tells us is the “right” or “true” way to live and act has its place, but within the Western paradigm the place of conscious control is exaggerated, extending into areas where its use is misplaced. For example, we may know that loving others is something that is right to do, but to make willful efforts to love because we think it right to do so reflects a deep misunderstanding of the nature of love, which is spontaneous and holistic, is something felt, not thought or parsed. Western ethics is rife with ideas about how to “apply” the rational dictates for moral behavior, which clearly prioritizes the right principles. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but if my efforts to control my life in accordance with what is right or true are making me miserable, such efforts have been in vain. On the other hand, if a deep sense of love is found and shared, it is done so outside the bounds of rational truth, though others might say (and often do) that my love is wrong or bad because it does not fit with their ideas about what is true and right. Love is not only blind; it is also outside the bounds of truth. Thus, in addition to an emphasis on substantiveness, external relatedness, and either/or logic, I would say that the Western paradigm likewise operates with a bounded sense of truth that subjugates the good by placing truth above the good. In terms of our neurological analysis above, this is reflected in the excessive use of the left mind over the right mind. In addition to moral systems, this is clearly evident in many forms of Western religion, where one is often required to believe certain written truths, truths that cannot admit of any contradictory notions, truths that are exclusive and . . . bound. In fact, the Latin root of the term “religion,” religare, means “to bind.” But the good is not bound, for genuine, spontaneous love recognizes no boundaries and so is free. To philosophize about dao is not to live dao, and to think about dao is not to perceive the truth that is dao. That the Western paradigm both bounds the truth and relegates the good to subservience is to say that, correlatively, the Chinese paradigm leaves it unbound and recognizes as superior the good that can be lived with perceptive insight (as, e.g., through ming 明, “illumination”). So if we are indeed lovers of wisdom, lovers of a wisdom that lives beyond the thinking mind, then let’s release ourselves into the wisdom of love.



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Notes 1.  ACPT, 20–21. 2.  Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012).

chapter 18

Exploring an Alternative Pre-­Qin Logic Jinmei Yuan

One of Roger Ames’s important contributions is his inquiry into the lack of transcendence in Chinese philosophy. Ames’s encouragement sparked my own interest in discovering an alternative logic in Chinese ways of thinking, and my work, in turn, supports Ames’s argument on the lack of transcendence in Chinese philosophy. There are four sections in this chapter. First, based on Ames’s comparative study of transcendence in ancient Greece and pre-­Qin China, I discuss how pre-­ Qin scholars have shaped the traditional Chinese way of thinking and formed the unique characteristics of Chinese logical reasoning. Second, having explored the lack of transcendence in Chinese philosophy, I offer a few reasons for this lack by looking into Chinese characters from the perspective of etymology. Third, I demonstrate how an alternative logic works in ancient Chinese philosophers’ reasoning. The structure of this alternative logic and the reasoning done by ancient Chinese philosophers, such as Confucius and Mencius, offer evidence that supports Ames’s claims about the lack of transcendence. Fourth, I briefly introduce my argument for how an alternative logic works without the requirement of abstract logic forms. I conclude that the rule “Pointing Out” in Chinese logic overrides the need for such forms.

The Transformations, Not Transcendence, of Wu Diviners David Hall and Roger Ames start their book Anticipating China with this question: Karl Jaspers believed that the period between 800 and 200 BCE was an age in which individuals in all the major cultures began to 190



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experience the absolute through the heights of transcendence and the depths of subjectivity, but could China during that time have been different? The book offers an extended argument that God, Plato’s Forms, and absolute and transcendent principles do not appear in ancient China.1 My research pursues this line of inquiry. First, I think that it is necessary to examine how a unique way of reasoning formed during the period of early civilization in China. Looking at the scripts on oracle bones (from over three thousand years ago), we find that these are mainly the records of ritual activities or the results of divinations. A group of people, wu 巫 (diviners), was very active during the Shang dynasty (1766–1027 BCE). The wu were missionary people, and their job was to communicate with deities on behalf of humans and make connections between human beings and life, reality, and divinity. In other words, wu were concerned with relations. Images of wu and ritual dances were recorded on pottery and earthenware during that time. Those images often depicted ways of transformation. For example, human faces could be mixed with fish, or human bodies could be transformed into birds.2 The performance of a wu presents an attempt at going beyond the limitation of human form and connecting with the unknowing world. When human beings feel that they are limited and see that uncertainties exist everywhere, some might respond by holding onto a faith in God or reckoning that good has a higher probability than evil. In the process of seeking knowledge, as C. S. Lewis points out, “All men are alike, on questions which interest them, they escape from the region of belief into that of knowledge when they can, and if they succeed in knowing, they no longer say they believe.”3 The early Chinese also shared a similar feeling of the limitation of human capacity and knowledge. Having a wu to perform a divination could be a primary way to deal with the uncertainties at the border between knowing and believing. Knowing and accepting change in the way of the world, early Chinese chose to attend to probabilities. For the uncertain elements involved in probabilities, they chose to believe in the results of divination. During the Shang dynasty, the wu’s main job was dealing with uncertainty by performing divinations. Rather than seeking a transcendent source of certainty, the wu engaged in transformations to better recognize probabilities. This period could have been a chance for the Chinese to posit a transcendent God—a God who might have shared some major similarities with the Christian God. But history did not go in that direction. Wu did not

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end up introducing the almighty God; instead, they confirmed there were patterns of changes.

Reasoning among Pre-­Qin Philosophers Ultimately, the wu’s influence was limited and questioned, because of the mistakes in the results of their divinations. By the pre-­Qin era (before 221 BCE), Confucianism, Daoism, and Mohism had replaced the important role of the wu and had become the leading ideologies; they have shaped Chinese culture ever since.4 But none of these schools is a purely faith-­based system in the same sense as the Abrahamic religions. Instead, they are interested in worldly wisdom derived from the studies of xin 心 (heartmind) and dao 道 (way). Pre-­Qin thinkers lost interest in questioning the relation between human beings and deities. For instance, Confucius refuses to talk about deities and spirits: “Zilu asked how to serve the spirits and the gods. The master replied, ‘Not yet being able to serve other people, how would you be able to serve the spirits?’ ”5 Greek logic also eschews the human-­ deity relation and opts instead to rely on a relation of transcendence and a rational order. Chinese logic appeared during the pre-­Qin period, when Chinese thinkers shifted their interests from performing divination to reasoning. Although Chinese logic (for reasons I discuss later) is very different from Western traditional logic, the role that Chinese logic plays is still similar to that of Aristotelian logic in the knowledge system. Logic, in Greek, is λογική, which has four basic meanings: reasoning, science, language, and relation. These are also among the concerns of Chinese logic. Despite a similar role for logic in regulating the discourse, Ames suggests that this Greek notion of transcendence does not influence the Chinese tradition. His arguments for the lack of transcendence in Chinese philosophy start from a definition of strict transcendence: “Strict transcendence may be understood as follows: a principle, A, is transcendent with respect to that, B, which it serves as principle if the meaning or import of B cannot be fully analyzed and explained without recourse to A, but the reverse is not true.”6 Beginning with this definition of transcendence, I have examined traditional Chinese logic. I argue that Chinese traditional logic was formed during the pre-­Qin period and was meant to offer rules for dealing with an uncertain world. Chinese philosophers were seriously interested in how to use language effectively



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when seeking stability in a constantly changing world. Almost all the scholars during that time were practicing this alternative logic when laying out their arguments. Of all the groups, Mohists studied logic most seriously and summarized the rules.7 My research has revealed further evidence for Ames’s claims. I found that there are no universal affirmative and negative propositions in Chinese traditional logic. As a consequence, logos, universal principles, a single-­ordered world, perfection, and absolute truth are alien concepts to ancient Chinese thinkers. Additionally, the law of identity is lacking as well. Instead, particular assertions and denials are seen from changing and relative perspectives. Associations are the primary focus of Chinese logic. These associations provide some structure for understanding relations. There is no desire to seek logos, Form, or absolute truth. Most of my research has tried to clarify that there is no Aristotelian deduction in Chinese logic. The two logics cannot be matched even at the level of offering basic syllogistic arguments.

A Study from the Perspective of Etymology My research aims to reveal why the Chinese way of thought focused on material, secular, and everlasting changes. Ames’s etymological challenge to direct correspondence between Chinese and English terms is exemplified by his argument for how to properly translate the Chinese concept of tian 天 into English. Using Chinese etymology to seek explanations of the Chinese way of thinking is one way to approach the workings of an alternative Chinese logic. From the perspective of etymology, the pictographic language offers advantages for a certain type of logical thinking, such as associative thinking. It could be experience-­related and imaginative, but it is limited in expressing abstract concepts like “Form,” “logos,” or “God.” Chinese characters, according to philologists, are divided into six categories (liushu 六書). The first category is pictographs or imitative drafts. According to L. Wieger, they are “rough sketches representing the object; 畫成其物, 隨體詰詘.” The ancient Shuo Wen dictionary contains 364 of these.8 These basic pictographic characters are building blocks or indicators among the five thousand to seven thousand most useful Chinese characters. The second category is indicative symbols, which are generally called ideographs. According to Henry Rosemont Jr., although “supposedly representing more abstract ideas incapable

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of being pictured directly . . . they do have much illustrative content.”9 Rosemont uses a famous example, ming 明 (brightness), to illuminate this category. The left radical of ming is the sun; the right is the moon. Rosemont writes, “Many pictures might represent a word, or concept, and consequently, to some extent at least, using sun and moon together for ‘bright’ is arbitrary, the signified cannot be determined unambiguously from the signifier alone; it must become conventional.”10 According to Rosemont, these two categories make up about 10% of all Chinese characters. The other four categories make up 90%. For example, phonetic compounds use similar-­sounding words to generate new meanings and to make the majority of Chinese characters, a meaning-­making process that Ames refers to as “paronomasia.” Those phonetic compounds imply pictographic radicals. For example, almost all names for insects have an insect radical, chong 虫, and almost all the objects associated with water contain a water radical, 氵. Chinese characters are limited in number and hard to write. Written classical Chinese and spoken Chinese were not the same at all. Meanings carried out by this pictographic written language made the ancient Chinese natural artists. To master Chinese characters without imagination is almost impossible. Having a good imagination is necessary, since most written forms of characters are indeed like drawings. They naturally fall into a genre of art, calligraphy. It is very hard to use drawn images to express abstract concepts, such as Plato’s Form, but it could be very easy for one who thinks in such a language to create the images of a man with a snake’s body (Fu Xi 伏羲, Father of the Chinese), a bird with two heads (Banman or Biyiniao 比翼鳥), or a dragon (long 龍) that never existed. Constantly transforming from one species into the other in a changing world could be symbolic of a dream of immortality, in which the ancient Chinese believed. The Classic of Mountains and Seas (third century BCE to second century CE) records many transformed creatures along with other real animals. While Westerners recorded their transcendent religious experiences and scientific facts, Chinese recorded their imagined transformations. Transcendence does not seem to interest the pre-­Qin thinkers, but transformations are found everywhere. In early Chinese myths, Pangu, a semidivine being and the creator of the universe, transformed into mountains, rivers, and plants after he died. He traveled from God’s world to humans’ world and then merged into a physical world. The Classic of Mountains and Seas recorded 204 mythical figures, like Pangu.



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Almost all of them were able to transform from one species to another, either physically or spiritually changing their identities in different worlds. When ancient Chinese imagined hundreds of mythical figures who could transform into other species or objects, and they recorded those figures’ biographies and pictures in the Classic of Mountains and Seas as if recording real historical characters, it demonstrates that the ancient Chinese were pervasively interested in transformations. Transformation, as a philosophical approach to understand and demonstrate dao, was seriously introduced by Zhuangzi (fourth century BCE), a Daoist philosopher in pre-­Qin. His first chapter of Zhuangzi, “Going Rambling without a Destination,” starts with the transformation of a big fish, Kun, into a big bird, Peng. His second chapter, “The Sorting Which Evens Things Out,” starts with a man, Ziqi of Nanguo, transforming his frame into withered wood, his heart into dead ashes, and his self into no-­self. According to Daoism, changing identity is an approach to grasp dao from different perspectives and to be with dao finally. At the end of chapter 2, Zhuangzi further demonstrates how his own transformation was naturally and spontaneously carried out in a dream. Zhuang Zhou dreamed himself transforming into a butterfly, and he was a butterfly without knowing about Zhou. But all a sudden he woke up as a human, Zhou. He was Zhou! Zhuangzi does not know whether he is Zhou who dreams he is a butterfly or a butterfly who dreams he is Zhou. He claims that between Zhou and the butterfly there was necessarily a dividing, but the boundary between the worlds of two species could be crossed—just this is what is meant by transformations of things.11 While transcendence needs spiritual power or enlightenment, transformation deals with associations. A single ordered world is a reasonable presumption if God creates the world and brings order from chaos. But in Chinese culture, creatures transform from one world to the other. Rereading the Daoist texts and the early Chinese myths and legends collected in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, from the perspectives of Chinese logic and etymology one can clarify the transcendence-­versus-­ transformation issue in pre-­Qin ideology. The way that transformations fill the role of transcendence in pre-­Qin texts is documented there.

Discovering an Alternative Logic I argue that the fundamental Aristotelian logical principle, the Law of Identity, can hardly be found in the Chinese traditional logic. Instead,

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the most important logical relations are associations. This is the deep structure that might cause misunderstanding by Westerners if they overlook the existence of the alternative logic in Chinese traditions, which studies the rules of making associations in a changing world. Thus, I claim that Chinese logic is an alternative logic, which deals with more than one possible world and where the strict sense of transcendence might be lacking, but Chinese logicians do teach the rules of making associations in different circumstances and relations. In a system where truth is always unfolded in time and associations are the most important elements, changing perspectives to look at an issue is normal. The conception of one single-­ordered world does not work in the pre-­Qin philosophers’ map of the universe. Instead, many possible worlds are presupposed. Having shown that Chinese logic is different from Aristotelian logic, my last task in this chapter is to demonstrate how this alternative logic works in ancient Chinese philosophers’ reasoning. I have suggested elsewhere that the rule “Pointing Out” in pre-­Qin philosophy could be a starting point for us to recognize this alternative logic and that this rule demonstrates the lack of transcendence in Chinese philosophy.12 Recognizing this unique aspect of Chinese logic will enable us to appreciate a different culture. When Confucius claimed to have no interest in those things that human beings are incapable of knowing, he attempted to focus his studies within one sphere—human affairs. With this move, he sets up a man-­made social order, li 禮, for bringing order to complicated human relations. When he claims that this order is a ritual order that brings harmony to society, he in fact seriously challenges the necessity of having the wu in the human decision-­making process. Confucius is practical, and his main concern is how to practice virtues with other human beings. He sets up the founding ethical values of Chinese society without any need for a metaphysical or theological foundation. Although Confucius does not discuss transcendence or God, he discusses tian 天 (literally, “sky” or “heavens,” but as Ames points out the word has richer meanings than the literal translation) and believes that he himself is used by tian as a wooden bell-­clapper to warn people in order to restore order to human society.13 For this task, he teaches people “self-­transformation” into virtuous beings. In her article “Religious Dimensions of Confucianism: Cosmology and Cultivation,” Mary Evelyn Tucker writes, “In these general terms,



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Confucianism can certainly be regarded as religious in the sense that the primary activity of Confucians is the establishing of moral reflection and spiritual awareness within the changes of cosmological processes.”14 I agree with her claim, but I think that an analysis at the logical level is also necessary. As with the study of logical structures in early myths, doing a comparison at the logical level should illustrate the real commonalities and differences between Western and Chinese philosophical insights. Without this, it would be difficult to see Confucius’s other great contributions, besides replacing the role of the wu. My research on Confucius goes beyond his ethics. I am interested in a study of how an alternative logic was practiced in Confucius’s ethical reasoning, without an understanding of absolute Forms. This study proceeds by thinking through the Chinese vision of a moral life by looking, not only at how Chinese and Western moral reasoning differs in content and approach, but also at the different underlying logics. Part of this underlying difference appears in the Chinese use of associative definition, in contrast to analytic definition pursued in Western philosophy. The practice of associative definition can be found in ancient Chinese philosophers’ reasoning, such as Confucius’s moral reasoning. When Confucius is asked what filial piety is, instead of offering a generally applicable definition of the term, he gives a number of examples: (a) “Give your mother and father nothing to worry about beyond your health”; (b) “Do not act contrary”; (c) “Respect your parents”; and (d) Youth, defer to your “elders when there is wine and food to be had” (Analects, Book 2). These definitions of filial piety, as well as the methods of defining them, are very different from what one finds in the West, where, for example, Euthyphro eventually says that piety is “what all the gods love” (Euthyphro, 9e). Confucius defines moral terms according to the patterns of Chinese logic. A definition is always given according to situations and associations. Without understanding this alternative logic, Confucius’s wisdom might be overlooked. If one expects to see deductive arguments in Confucius’s moral reasoning, the way Confucius defines moral terms may appear strange. A common problem in the current discussion is that comparative studies are restricted from the beginning. Some interpretations of Chinese moral thought proceed from a Western framework. Some interpreters simply plug in Western terms for Chinese terms. This confuses or misleads readers. If misunderstanding happens, true communication—true mutual understanding—will not occur. We must then

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understand that we have to look for ways to deal with the mismatch that avoid the commonly imposed assumptions. I have developed an account of how Chinese logic structures Chinese ethical statements. Based on the logic rules listed in the classical text Later Mohist Canon, I argue that Chinese ways of thinking presume that everything is changing all the time and there is no fixed order in this world—a very different presumption from the Aristotelian one. The latter presumes that there is a fixed order in the world and that the function of reason is to represent this order. Following the presumption of Chinese thought, the rule “Pointing Out” (ostensive definition) becomes the only way of identifying things in the changing world. According to the later Mohist logicians, “Pointing Out” is zhi 指.15 As A. C. Graham summarized, the word zhi has three main functions: (1) noun, “finger”; (2) verb, “point out one form from another”; and (3) noun, “meaning,” indicating the direction in which a discourse points, its meaning or drift, or the main point in contrast with details or side issues.16 Chinese philosophers used the “Pointing Out” rule repeatedly in their dialogues and debates.17 They used this rule to separate one event from the other and one relation from the other. The way that Confucius defines “filial piety” and other ethical terms, such as ren (being benevolent in associations), de (virtue), and li (ritual order), is by “pointing out” a name in a field or net of connections, or, in my understanding, a set. Following this Chinese logic rule, truth unfolds in time. For instance, Mencius says that a man and a woman cannot touch one another’s hands (it is not appropriate, or li), and then he says that it is acceptable for a man to touch the woman’s hands if she is drowning. First, Aristotelian logicians would not appreciate using a negative proposition to define a definiendum, because there are far too many things that a definiendum—in this case, li—does not mean or allow for. Listing all of them is not possible. Second, it seems that Mencius made contradictory claims—for Aristotelian logic never means never. But changing definitions over time for a practical reason is legitimate in Chinese logic. Pointing out that one case is absent in one situation at one time but appears in another situation at another time represents a changing process. In other words, according to Aristotelian logic, if li excludes hand touching between different sexes (h), then no counterexamples should be allowed (because h does not exist in li). But Mencius



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introduces time into the discussion. In a drowning case, the discussion on the definition of li changes the definition of humanity. In the drowning case, the discussion, indeed, is no longer about what an appropriate behavior is according to li; rather, it is about what a humanitarian action is according to humanity. Therefore, hand touching between different sexes is allowed in the latter case (h, in this case, can be pointed out to demonstrate the definition of humanity). In addition to “Pointing Out,” I have examined other relevant Chinese logical rules, such as the rule of “kinds” and the rule of “analogy” in Chinese logic. None of these rules are limited by the principle of transcendence (strict definition). These rules entail different logical structures for thinking with reason. Aware of these significant logical differences between Chinese and Western thought, one can reexamine statements and arguments by Confucius and other Chinese philosophers concerning goodness, duty, happiness, harmony, exemplary persons, and so on. This kind of work makes productive use of Ames’s ideas on transcendence by applying them in new fields. In this case, we see that they are helpful in understanding an alternative logic that offers a more accurate picture of philosophical reasoning in Chinese culture.

Notes 1.  See AC, xiii. 2.  See Li Zehou, The Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics (Beijing: Morning Glory,1998), 28–31. 3.  C. S. Lewis, “On Obstinacy in Belief,” in They Asked for a Paper (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962), 169–183. 4.  In the conflicts between the wu 巫 and intellectual scholars, the shi 士 in pre-­Qin, the former lost their superior positions. See Yu Yingshi, A Speech on Experiences in Doing Research in History 史學研究經驗談 (Shanghai: Shanghai Art Press, 2005), 63–64. 5.  Analects 11.12; ACPT, 144. 6.  See TTC, 13. 7.  See A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (London: SOAS, 1978). 8.  L. Wieger, S.J., Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification (New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp. and Dover, 1965), 10.

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9.  Henry Rosemont Jr., “Translating and Interpreting Chinese Philosophy,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (October 27, 2015), https://plato .stanford.edu/entries/chinese-­translate-­interpret/. 10.  Ibid. 11.  See A. C. Graham, Chuang-­Tzu: The Inner Chapters (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), 61. 12.  See my “An Alternative Logic in Confucianism: A Study of Ostensive Definition in Confucius’ and Mencius’ Statements,” presented at the Second World Logic and Religion Conference, Warsaw, Poland, June 21, 2017. 13.  Analects 3.24. 14.  Mary Evelyn Tucker, “Religious Dimensions of Confucianism: Cosmology and Cultivation,” Philosophy East and West, 48, no. 1 (1998): 14. 15.  The Later Mohist Canons say: “Pointing out something is in two things. Explained by: using the two to align. If you know Xs, try to point them out.” See A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (Hong Kong: SOAS, 1978), 405–406. 16.  See Graham, Later Mohist Logic, 458. 17.  See Jinmei Yuan, “The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic,” Philosophy East and West 56, no. 1 (2006), for examples of Chinese scholars discussing zhi, “pointing out.”

part v

Confucian Role Ethics Given Ames’s ontological claims about process cosmology, relational selfhood, and insistent particularity, the ethical vision he calls role ethics embodies the broader interpretive framework informing his earlier work. He and Rosemont argue that role ethics is a sui generis vision of the good life and is a more apt description of Confucian ethics than those offered by virtue ethicists or deontologists. The role-­ethical perspective suggests that our fundamental relationality has implications for how we understand the self and how we should live well together. Our lives take shape and gain meaning in social roles—roles that give us a context for self-­realization, define norms for interactions among people, and organize the broader society. This normative push proceeds, not from autonomous individuals with inherent rights, but from the mutually engaged ritual propriety (li 禮) of acting—for instance, friendly, motherly, or scholarly. Just as we cannot breathe by ourselves but need the air, and cannot walk by ourselves but need the ground, so too we cannot achieve consummate conduct (ren 仁), optimal appropriateness (yi 義), or harmony (he 和) by ourselves but need others. This conception of ethical life offers a dramatic alternative to the individualistic and rationalistic theories that have held sway in Euro-­American philosophy. Joseph E. Harroff, in “Role Modeling in Confucian Role Ethics,” considers how growth in relationships is central to a refined ideal of education. He develops the connection between “resolute personal uniqueness” (shendu 慎獨) and the influence of role models and then considers the proper balance between the transmission of an ethical tradition and personal creativity. 201

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Geir Sigurðsson, in “Who’s Afraid of Village Worthies?,” reevaluates those people described as village worthies (xiang yuan 鄉原)—people who put on a good show of Confucian virtue but lack the inner motivation or understanding of a junzi. He encourages us not to give up on such characters who, with the help of good teachers, may still make moral progress. Vytis Silius, in “Doubts and Anxiety on a Way without Crossroads,” looks at the problems that cause doubts (huo 惑) and anxiety (you 憂) for Confucius, contrasting them with the kind of anxiety prominent among existentialist philosophers. He suggests that cultivating ethical relationships is the Confucian remedy for these discomforts. Joshua Mason, in “Applying Amesian Ethics,” wonders how role ethics shows up in applied ethics and asks: What difference can we make by trying to live according to the role-­ethical vision of the moral life? Reviewing an incident of filial impiety, Mason identifies some practical limitations but also finds an impactful model for developing ethical relationships throughout a significant life.

chapter 19

Role Modeling in Confucian Role Ethics Appreciating an Amesian Education Joseph E. Harroff

The opening stanza o  f Focusing the Familiar (Zhongyong 中庸) begins with an inspirational presentation of the vital importance of moral education in advancing anthropocosmic creativity (tianren heyi 天人合一) in the world: What tian 天 commands (ming 命) is called natural tendencies (xing 性); drawing out natural tendencies is called proper way-­ making (dao 道); improving upon this way-­making is called education (jiao 教). As for proper way-­making, we cannot quit it even for an instant. Were it even possible to quit it, then it would not be proper way-­making. It is for this reason that exemplary persons (junzi 君子) are so concerned about what is not seen, and ever so anxious about what is not heard. There is nothing more present than what is imminent, and nothing more manifest than what is inchoate. Thus, exemplary persons are ever concerned about their resolute uniqueness (shenqidu 慎其獨).1 Roger Ames and David Hall have helpfully employed an etymological distinction to make sense of a distinctively Confucian notion of creative education (jiao 教). The English word “education” derives from two principal Latin roots—educere and educare—the first meaning “to evoke, lead forth, draw out” and the second meaning “to cultivate, rear, bring up.” Ames and Hall argue: Educare resonates with the sense of education as rationally ordered guidance; it is the logical and rationally ordered mode 203

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of education. On the other hand, educere suggests the creative side of education that is complicit with aesthetic understanding. Education construed primarily as educere suggests that one “extends” one’s inner tendencies through a mode of self-­cultivation that is, in fact, self-­creation.2 In this chapter, I argue that this creative concept of ethical education, understood as ameliorative growth in the context of our embodied roles and relationships, is paramount to the ethical vision and religious ideals of personal cultivation adumbrated in the Confucian role-­ethical project. This essay will flow through two entangled movements. First, I explore vital connections between “resolute personal becoming” (shendu 慎獨) and ethical role modeling within a Confucian ethical education. Second, I make a case that the ethical tasks and responsibilities associated with intergenerational transmission (shu 述) are always weightier than projects more directly related to individual innovation or self-­creation (zuo 作) when it comes to optimizing way-­ making (daotong 道統) in the world. However, I aim to show that by accepting the primacy of role-­bearing persons-­in-­relationships over discrete, individual agency we are not put in the intolerable position of passively accepting authoritarian tradition in a dogmatically conservative or subordinate manner. Rather, by rethinking the foundations of morality, politics, family, and religion, we are invited to imagine ourselves as creative intergenerational collaborators within a living tradition.

Resolute Uniqueness and a Focus-­Field Model of Education as Relational Growth The concept of cultivating a dynamic resolution regarding our unique personal becoming, here understood as a relational process of bringing into focus a field of our socially stipulated roles and embodied relationships, is central to the tradition of Confucian role ethics. The phrase “resolute focus upon personal becoming” (shenqiduye 慎其獨也) figures prominently in the Expansive Learning (Daxue 大學), where it references the ethical task of fully appreciating the insistent particularity of our natural and social embeddedness while pointing out the moral emotions we express and experience in the process of wholeheartedly engaging in ethical self-­cultivation:



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Creatively integrating intentionality (chengqiyi 誠其意) is a matter of having no self-­delusion (wuziqi 毋自欺). This is like despising noxious odors and loving beautiful phenomena. This is called self-­appreciation. Thus, the authoritative person must be ever so resolute about their uniqueness (gu junzi bi shenqidu ye 故君子必 慎其獨也). When petty persons are dwelling at ease, there is no limit to their iniquity. But when they see an authoritative person, they straighten up their act and make appearances of being attached to the good. In considering how other persons see you, there is great benefit in thinking that it is akin to looking at your most intimate sense of self. This is called “creative integrity within manifesting as appearance without.” Thus, authoritative persons must be ever so resolute in their personal becoming (慎其獨). Zengzi said: “Ten eyes upon me, ten hands pointing me out, how serious this is!” Wealth adorns rooms, and virtuosity adorns persons. If resolute heartminding is broadly cultivated, the body will be luxuriant. Thus, authoritative persons must creatively integrate their intentionality.3 Because du 獨 is etymologically related to canine creatures living in isolation from their social pack4 and the second instance of the phrase in the above passage follows a discussion of what petty persons are capable of when dwelling alone in a solitary space, many traditional commentators, following the lead of Zheng Xuan and Zhu Xi, have taken shendu 慎獨 to refer to some sort of radical inwardness, to existential aloneness, or to an ontopsychological sense of privacy in the world. However, if we understand the phrase as referring merely to a discrete notion of psychological privacy or an existential experience of pure inwardness—a kind of individualized spiritual exercise of being “cautious in one’s aloneness”—this would unfortunately diminish the semantic and ethical potentials of the very concept. Instead, I propose that we understand shendu 慎獨 as unique personal becoming. Such a reading could bring greater degrees of attentiveness and appreciation to the insistent particularity of role ethical agency as conceptualized in light of an ars contextualis correlative cosmology—an approach that strives to always recognize persons as more or less flourishing patterns of dynamic and vital relationality. This transactional and relationally entangled sense of shendu is acknowledged by Tu Wei-­ming as an “ordinary process of self-­education,”5

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and Tu recommends “the art and science of ‘vigilant solitariness’ . . . as the authentic method of self-­cultivation”: The conventional practice of rendering shendu as “watchful when one is alone” may lead us to think that the emphasis is on behaving properly in private as well as in public. This interpretation makes sense, but it only scratches the surface of the Problematik that shendu addresses. In Zhongyong, the term du, which may mean “being alone,” seems to refer to the self in terms of its singularity, uniqueness and innermost core.6 Absent the notion of ontologically discrete and ethically foundational individuals, what sense can we make of this “singularity” of persons or any other similar conceptions of a kind of radically existential or religious sense of reverential awe when approaching thinking through the casting of unique persons in their embodied and family-­embedded vessels as a truly disclosive experience of ultimate significance? Ames argues that within the pervasively collateral and cocreative cosmological presuppositions of so much classical Chinese thinking it is requisite that “one resort to a focus/field rather than a part/whole explanatory model in understanding the intrinsic relationship that obtains among insistent particulars and their contextualizing world” and that “in the absence of discrete, externally related ‘objects’ or ‘things,’ causal interpretations must be replaced by the intuition of situated, interdependent, synergistic, and mutually creative processes.”7 The entanglement here of disclosive processes and consummatory eventful becoming in thinking through the casting of unique persons and their realization of transactional agency is a particularly complex iteration of the focus-­field dynamic as an alternative metaphysical vocabulary for thinking through the principium individuationis. This dynamic model of self-­becoming as a process of individuation ecstatically punctuating the rhythm of natural experience by “becoming one” (or even better “becoming plurisingular”) can serve as an alternative paradigm to the self-­given or transcendental model of being a discrete human being. For any manifold “thing” in a correlative cosmology, it is always already marked by the insistently particular “patterning” (li 理) and endless transformations of “vital stuff” (qi 氣). Drawing inspiration and interpretive fodder from the recently unearthed Five Modes of Proper Conduct (Wuxing 五行) Guodian



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manuscripts, a text traditionally attributed to Zisizi, Ames situates relational thinking about the notion of shendu 慎獨 within a correlative cosmology of creatio in situ.8 In the context of discussing the “unity” of virtuosities in a tian 天–completed agency or “sagacity” (sheng 聖), the Wuxing text poetically alludes to the conduct of nesting birds: The wujiu nesting in the willow tree has seven fledglings. Refined authoritative persons (junzi 君子) have a singularly unique comportment. Being capable of such uniqueness, they can be said to be authoritative persons. Authoritative persons thus must remain ever so resolute about their personal becoming (junzi shen qi du ye 君子慎其獨也).9 The text also makes poetic reference to the behavior of birds in a highly affectively charged situation of seeing off a loved one for an indefinite duration: “The swallows go flying about, with their disheveled wings displayed. The lady was returning [to her native state], and I escorted her far into the country. I looked until I could no longer see her, and my tears fell down like raindrops.” Only when you are able to display your wings disheveled do you understand the utmost sadness. Profound persons then act to “resolutely become themselves” (shenqidu 慎其獨).10 This passage highlights the sense in which the inward comportment of the authoritative person is so singularly focused on the immediate affective situation (qing 情) so as to attempt to optimally realize its potentials for relational amelioration near at hand. The Wuxing text is not offering a celebration of some ontologically discrete sense of psychological inwardness or of a transcendent and unencumbered sense of free will or characterological agency but, rather, is presenting us with a profound and subtle appreciation for the relational potentials of persons in their concrete situations that they encounter in the lifelong project of striving to resolutely integrate their diffuse field of embodied roles and transactional relationships into a vibrant and socially transformative aesthetic-­narrative continuity. The Wuxing text also suggests that only by abandoning (she 舍) the five modes of virtuosic conduct—consummate conduct (ren 仁), optimal

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appropriateness (yi 義), ritual propriety (li 禮), pragmatic wisdom (zhi 智), and sagacity (sheng 聖)—as mere external trappings of behavior, then and only then can one be truly experiencing “resolute concern over their focal-­heartminding” (shenqixin 慎其心).11 The Wuxing text similarly claims that by “abandoning the body [as an object of mere subjective perception]” (sheti 舍體), we can come instead to view our richly somaesthetic experience12 as a fecund reservoir for realizing our transactional potential. With such an appreciative attention paid to embodied experience, a sort of “utmost interiorization” (zhinei 至內)13 can be realized via shendu ethical practice. Ames has consistently maintained that the focal resolution of an always situationally located and provisionally constituted person is a profoundly transactional, dynamic, and correlatively significant affair—the very site of all aesthetic, ethical, and religious meaning: The always-­unique persons in this collateral sense—this daughter to this mother—do not “have” relationships, or “come into” relationships, but rather are constituted as irreducibly relational by those bonds that locate them as foci within the field of the big family. They begin as “we” rather than “I.” As Mencius claims, “all things are here in me,” and most immediately and importantly among all things are one’s family relations. Indeed, any putative “individuality” must be understood as either an abstraction from these concrete, native, and primarily acquired conditions, or as an achieved distinctiveness cultivated in one’s relations with others that makes one an identifiable object of deference. Similarly, any notion of “family” is an abstraction from these specific, particular persons who collectively and organically constitute a human nexus. Both particular persons and particular families are concrete configurations of particular relationships, and stand in a dynamic focus-­field relationship with one another.14 Resolute focusing in the context of our familial and social relationships is always a product of transactional and virtuosic achievements of persons within their concrete configurations of shifting life rhythms and prospects in a resolutely embodied personal narrative. We might do well to consider here the teacher-­student relationship in light of a dynamic focus-­field model of persons. A good liberal arts or ethical education is not simply a matter of handing down some set



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of dogmatic catechisms to be internalized and recited by rote. Rather, truly ameliorative education is always a transactional affair wherein both teacher and student are transforming together in the shared processes of learning how to become more flourishing persons. Such mutual transformation is always understood in the context of this particular relationship unfolding within a narrative horizon of a life encompassed by an always provisional nexus of entangled webs of vital plurisingularity and somaesthetic agency. I propose that we can do much better by avoiding interpretive presuppositions that would view the educational or ethically transformative potentials of shendu experience as a fixed method for cultivating some ethically discrete sense of psychological identity or purportedly innate essences claiming to determine what an idealized idea of the “human” would be in a normative framework of a transcendentally perfectionist ontology. Instead, a good place to start would be casting more appreciative attention upon the transactional potentials of role-­encumbered persons in families and societies acting under the influence of more or less clearly stipulated role expectations and responsibilities. This is what it means for shendu 慎獨 as unique human becomings to be the very possibility of persons acting in the world with an ethically realist sense of agency. Confucian role ethics offers a realist account of ethical agency without having to posit the ontological fiction of wholly discrete agents. In this interpretive light of a transactionally relational ontology of personal becoming, the importance of ethical role modeling should be readily obvious. By “ethical role modeling” here I do not wish to indicate a paradigmatic characterological instantiation of certain preestablished normative expectations but, rather, wish to point to the concrete somaesthetic embodiment of relational virtuosity, optimal appropriateness, ritual practice, and wisdom (ren 仁, yi 義, li 禮, and zhi 智)—the performative iteration of these virtuosities does not permit of ontological abstraction and every authoritative repetition is part of an intergenerational reservoir of value (tian 天). Ethical role modeling always entails a multilateral and transactional process of resolution aimed at achieving exemplary personal consummation (chengzhizhe 誠 之者) from within a given field of personal becoming (sichengzhe 思誠 者).15 Such a radically transactional sense of ethical role modeling gets away from the classically virtue-­theoretic orientation in which authoritative characters (paradigmata) are paramount and invites us into a more

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robustly correlative world of entangled processes of becoming flourishingly human together.

Ethical Role Modeling and the Creative Transmission of Tradition In a memorable passage of the Zhongyong, the transactional dynamic of effective role modeling is likened to the hewing of axe handles: The Master said, “Proper way-­making (dao 道) is not at all remote from people. If someone takes as way-­making that which distances them from others, it should not be considered proper way-­ making. In the Book of Songs it says: In hewing an axe handle, in hewing an axe handle— The model is not far away. But in grasping one axe handle to hew another, if one never looks directly at the axe handle in one’s hand, the handles can still seem far apart. Thus, the exemplary person (junzi 君子) uses one person to style others properly, and having thus improved upon them, goes no further. Putting oneself in the place of others (shu 恕) and doing one’s best on their behalf (zhong 忠) does not stray far from proper way-­making. ‘Do not treat others as you yourself would not wish to be treated.’ ”16 The analogy of hewing an axe handle is meant to highlight the insistent particularity of any process of becoming resolutely unique in an irreducibly correlative cosmology. Any block of wood will have its own grain and natural potentials. Taking this metaphor seriously then, any creative “looking” or exemplary pointing will have to take into account the insistent particularity of the very real processes of becoming “akin”—an ethical category different from ontological similarity, sameness, or identity—to the reverentially appreciated exemplary axe handle handed down from ancestral realms. Such role modeling is not fixing one’s eyes upon a predetermined Form in some self- and world-­transcending act of Platonic mimesis but, rather, always alludes to an irreducibly transactional and resolutely embodied process of creative transmission of an evaluative tradition persisting intergenerationally. Juxtaposed to factory



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production of isomorphic plastic axe handles, a handcrafting process cannot rely upon a one-­size-­fits-­all universally applicable template to realize each and every handle as a homogeneous model of production. A much better place to start in theorizing Confucian role ethics is with a process of wholly immanent and transactional value transmission. Every unique handle is modeled after its exemplary predecessor while remaining true to its own unique grain of wood patterning (cai 才). In such a correlative cosmology and somaesthetic ethical-­ecology of persons, the inherent growth potentials of insistently unique particularities always reflect upon the trajectory and potentials of the disclosive dynamics of ars contextualis shaping any situation. In terms of learning to be ever more flourishingly human—or learning how to become a resolutely unique person by realizing ameliorative ethical-­agency-­in-­the-­world—“proper way-­making” (dao 道) is never far from us as uniquely contextualized persons (bu yuan ren 不遠人). In the correlative cosmology and processual ontology of Confucian role ethics, the ethically exemplary paradigmata—the sages and worthies (sheng­ xian 聖賢) are not instantiations of some otherworldly, abstract form of being or of some reified notion of character. Rather, such exemplary persons are best approached as living embodiments of working virtuosities and relationally achieved values that command our reverential and appreciative respect while inspiring emulation in our personal ethical projects. In admonishing us not to “look askance” (ni 睨) at each other, the Zhongyong can be read as a deeply religious invitation into the everyday potentials we come across in family and society to creatively and imaginatively make the most of (zhongshu 忠恕) our lived roles and relationships together. Reflecting on matters close at hand (jinsi 近思) is a central part of the Confucian role-­ethical project of becoming resolutely flourishing human persons together. We do not start with ontological abstractions or theoretical models of pure idealization but, rather, always already begin ethical reflection in the midst of our embodied and role-­ethically enacted relationships. Thus, it is urgent as resolutely agential persons aspiring with creative imagination to integrate (si cheng 思誠) our transactional potentials as internalized (xingzhiyunei 形之於內) habitus of virtuosic conduct and dynamically transformative ethical agency. As intimated in this brief exploration of “resolute human becoming” (shendu 慎獨), such processes of realizing creative ethical agency do not imply a purely inward space of introspection; nor does Confucian role ethics

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presuppose a reductively ontotheological model of subjectivizing interiorization. What we are offered instead is this transactional and dynamic conception of creative ethical agency that itself entails a wholehearted participation in the life of the community, with family relationships providing the nurturing ground, emotional support, and continuing narrative basis for realizing meaningful lives forged in solidarity and empathic belonging within an ethical community of interpretation. Absent this kind of robust relational support, persons will surely fail to flourish. Insofar as “empathic imagination” (shu 恕) and “concerted ethical attention” (zhong 忠) serve as the “guiding threads” of Confucian role ethics,17 it is clear that moral imagination has to be appreciated as an essential component of self-­cultivation. This stands in stark contrast to any purported faculties of foundationally rational and autonomous individuals who would attempt to base their moral judgments upon preestablished principles by which they ought to direct their lives as moral subjects. For example, for those of us who strive to embrace pluralistic ideals of creative democracy and intercultural comparative philosophy, what sorts of changes can we make to further the project of reconstructing Confucian role ethics as a viable philosophy of the future? Having grasped the urgency of using nuanced philosophical translations of classical and contemporary Confucian texts to affect a paradigm shift away from the “will-­o’-the-­wisp” of the foundational individual as autonomous subject toward a more robust conception of persons as role-­ encumbered collaborators, what should we do with this new role-­ethical vocabulary? The problem of creativity, along with the felt burdens of a potentially overly demanding set of ethical responsibilities in aspiring to emulate exemplary persons, can be addressed if we consider more carefully the axiological priority that “transmission” (shu 述) has over mere “innovation” (zuo 作) in Confucian thinking. In Analects 7.1, Confucius claims that he is engaged primarily in the transmission and not the innovation of the best that authoritative culture (liyue 禮樂) and exemplary sagehood (shengren 聖人) have to offer his contemporaries. Similarly, in Zhongyong 27 we are informed that exemplary persons (junzi 君子) are to “prize their natural dispositions of virtuosic conduct” (zun de xing 尊德性) and to “engage in way-­making through both empirical inquiry and traditional learning” (dao wenxue 道問學).18 Moreover, in appreciating the legacies of achieved ritual propriety and exemplary cultural-­ethical performativity, sages and worthies



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(i.e., ethically exemplary persons) are called upon to “refresh the past in order to realize [ethical-­cultural] renovation” (wengu er zhixin 溫故 而知新).19 What we have here is an aesthetic ordering of experience that valorizes collateral and transactional creativity, as opposed to any foundationally individualistic notion of unilateral and autonomous innovation. In a radically relational cosmology, as presented in this living Confucian role-­ethical vision, personal creativity is construed as a matter of harmoniously realizing many diverse strands of transactional influence. Confucian creativity then is not an isolatable faculty of individual (or even “tortured”) genius but is, rather, always an open-­ended process taking shape within the entangled contexts of our family-­focused relational becoming and the role-­based recognition of our immediately felt ethical responsibilities. In Confucian role ethics, exemplary persons “conduct themselves according to their lived experience [i.e., their concrete relationships and socially stipulated roles] and do not speculate outside of this” (junzi su qi wei er xing, bu gu hu qi wai 君子素其位而行, 不顧乎 其外).20 I read this passage as advertising a kind of ethical internalism. We are not expected to take up externally imposed standards of value for our lives but are called to be “self-­realizing” (zide 自得) in the very creation of experientially internal standards of excellence. Just as any hewers of axe handles are destined to work with the materials they have at hand in carefully “looking at” previous models of excellence, we can only do the best with what we have received through shared experience. I wish to conclude with an analogy drawn from the sphere of musical performance. The kind of flexible and transactional personal creativity appreciated so much within Confucian role ethics is not suited for abstract, idealized moral or political theorizing, nor is it an attempt to bring rationally determined and externally imposed ethical standards to bear on our nonideal lives. When we think of the creativity involved in the imaginative “transmission” of the Confucian role-­ethical tradition, we do better to think more in terms of the dynamic call-­and-­ response model of an improvisationally concerted jazz ensemble rather than some centrally organized conducting of a predetermined or set score. Of course there are many existing ethical and religious “scores” or “standards” that we might take up for the sampling, and exemplary performances of becoming more flourishingly human together are always inspirational, provisional, and captivating. However, persons and cultures might fare much better if they gave up looking for a static

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model or set of scripted roles to be “played” out in a preordained fashion in order to better fit in with a larger symphonic whole or to satisfy some ontoteleological world-­historical purpose. Perhaps the process of learning how to be more flourishingly human together is all we need. Realizing optimizing ethical agency and unique personal creativity in situ is far too complicated and relationally entangled a process to allow for any definitive scripting or the reliance upon a conception of foundationally centered agency. After all, we could do a lot worse than striving with creative theoretical and practical imagination to improvise our own uniquely cast dynamics of concerted ethical agency together in the disclosive dramas of living shared narratives on this very earth and under this very heaven.

Notes 1.  This translation draws on FF, 89. 2.  Ibid., 51. 3.  Translation is my own from the “Expansive Learning” (Daxue 大 學) chapter of the Liji 禮記 found in Zhu Xi, The Annotated Four Books with Gathered Commentaries (四書章句集注) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2012), 7. 4.  See Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (Hunan: Yuelu Press, 2005), 205. 5.  See Tu Wei-­ming, Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 23. 6.  Ibid., 109. 7.  CRE, 71. 8.  See Roger T. Ames, “Collaterality in Early Chinese Cosmology: An Argument for Confucian Harmony (he 和) as Creatio in Situ,” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 2, no. 1 (2005): 43–70. 9.  All translations are my own, but I consulted Scott Cook’s translations of the Guodian corpus. See The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, vols. 1 and 2 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University East Asia Program, 2012), Five Modes of Proper Conduct (Wuxing), passage 16, 496. 10.  Ibid., passage 17, 497–498. 11.  Ibid., translating from the Mawangdui (MWD) version, 498. 12.  Regarding “somaesthetic,” see Richard Schusterman, Thinking Through the Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 13.  Ibid., MWD passage 227, 498. This passage is ambiguous in that the literal “housing” (she 舍) could also mean “to abandon.” 14.  CRE, 144.



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15.  See FF, stanza 20: 99–104. 16.  FF, stanza 13: 94. 17.  Analects 4.15. 18.  FF, stanza 27: 36. 19.  Ibid. 20.  Ibid., stanza 14: 95.

chapter 20

Who’s Afraid of Village Worthies? Geir Sigurðsson

In September 2014, the International Confucian Association held its fifth congress in Beijing. The opening ceremony took place in the Great Hall of the People, where, as one might expect, several high-­level political dignitaries were present. Most participants were taken by surprise, however, when China’s number one, Xi Jinping, suddenly appeared to give the welcome speech. Xi’s presence at the congress was taken by many as a decisive sign that Confucianism is being officially endorsed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, there have been other such signs in recent years, some more overt than others. The erection of the thirty-­foot bronze statue of Confucius in front of the National Museum of China on Tiananmen Square in January 2011 was one. The removal of the statue just three months later, however, demonstrated that the rapport between the CCP and Confucius was still uneasy. A decisive “Confucianization” of China may not be taking place in the immediate future. Yet it seems clear enough that Confucianism, along with other traditional streams of thought, is enjoying some kind of revival or re-­legitimation in China. Hence, exciting times are ahead for those of us who take an interest in Confucianism. However, the potential prospect of a “Confucianized” China also poses a number of questions that problematize our philosophical engagement with Confucianism. One of them is the perennial question of what Confucianism is. A decisive answer to this question is not required, nor, I argue, can such an answer be provided; but any attempt to tackle the question reveals, among other things, that the pre-­ Qin Confucianism with which most of us engage philosophically and 216



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the Confucianism that may be in a process of revival are rather distinct. In any case, it is doubtful that the pre-­Qin Confucian philosophy is the kind of Confucianism enjoying increasing support by the Chinese authorities. A brief comparison with Western philosophy may be helpful in understanding this. There is not much ambiguity about what Aristotelianism or Kantianism is. We would immediately understand both as philosophical movements or particular interpretations based on the philosophy of Aristotle or Kant. When institutionalized as a religion or ideology, however, the danger arises that they may lose their philosophical character. Platonism is a good case in point. Apart from the specific theories of Plato himself, Platonism is also associated with metaphysical realism, which postulates the actual and absolute existence of qualities and values. Platonism had a direct influence on Christianity by providing it with a metaphysical framework, and in this particular sense Christianity is a version—or at least partly an outgrowth or product—of Platonism. The same applies to a number of ideologies that similarly take for granted the existence of absolute truth. In fact, it can even be justified to associate almost the entire philosophical tradition in Euro-­America with Platonism, as has been done, for instance, by Alfred North Whitehead and Martin Heidegger. The crucial matter here, though, is that we do not normally call these ideologies or philosophies Platonism. We call them Christianity or Cartesianism or Marxism or utilitarianism and might then add that they are influenced by the Platonic philosophy or those aspects of it that tend to characterize Western thinking. It is rather different with Confucianism. In Chinese history and culture, Confucianism is literally all over the place. It was so pervasive in bygone Chinese societies that an equivalent type of entity can hardly be found in other parts of the world. With regard to its social and cultural omnipresence as the dominant ideology, the closest we have to Confucianism is probably Islam or medieval Christianity. When dominant in China, Confucianism was socially ubiquitous. It dictated values of life, the structures of interpersonal relationships, and the general direction of life. It was more appropriately described as customs for living than as a religion, although it certainly entailed religious components, such as ceremonies, rituals, and a constant effort at self-­transformation.1 Such a pervasive ideology in any society will cause problems of demarcation. Practices, beliefs, customs, and values originating elsewhere but

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gaining ascendancy or popularity in a society dominated by a single ideology will tend to be absorbed by that very ideology. Thus, just as Islam is associated with—and blamed for—condemned practices such as female circumcision that are nowhere mentioned in the Koran, the originally Legalist Three Bond Doctrine (san gang 三纲), according to which women were subjected to absolute obedience to men, has been considered a Confucian dogma. Even the curious custom of foot-­binding is sometimes attributed to Confucianism.2 This may seem unfair to those who see Confucianism as a potential vehicle of modernization, but during the Tang and Song dynasties foot-­binding accorded with the general Confucian view of the ideal woman as obedient, moral, and both respectable and respectful. Furthermore, although pre-­ Qin writings are not unambiguously chauvinist and misogynist, the clear subjugation of women during the imperial period is largely traceable to Confucian visions of the status of women. While much effort has been made to reinterpret Confucianism in such a way that it approaches contemporary equal rights views, it is certainly no coincidence that Confucianism does not appear particularly attractive to women. The dominance of male representation is evident in discussions of Confucianism. This was quite conspicuous at the above-­mentioned congress of the International Confucian Association, where probably over 80% of the participants happened to be men. Philosophies that turn into dominant ideologies rarely, if ever, remain open-­ended. Alfred North Whitehead addresses this problem when he says that “in the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine.”3 They will tend to be codified, reified, and even become dogmatic. This happened to Platonism in its absorption into Christianity, and this happened to Marxism in its adoption by the socialist states established in the twentieth century. The case of Confucianism is somewhat more complex due to its long history as imperial ideology in China and elsewhere in East Asia. Whereas a single and putatively infallible interpretation during its long reign cannot be identified, moves toward a stringent orthodoxy were made in certain periods, most conspicuously during the late Ming and the Qing dynasties.4 Such moves are always unfortunate, and perhaps especially in the case of philosophical Confucianism, which requires open-­ended creativity and constant renegotiations with current circumstances. Considering the long and



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multifaceted history of Confucianism, its political proponents have a plethora of “Confucianisms” to choose from, but unfortunately the flexible open-­ended kind is unlikely to be selected. It is in many ways understandable that moves toward codification were made before and that such moves are likely to be made again should Confucianism become an important ideological factor in the future. The primary reason is that the constant effort and persistence demanded by the Confucian teachings, when understood philosophically, may be too demanding for most of us. Confucius expected his disciples to be continuously interpreting and reinterpreting the circumstances in which they happened to find themselves in every moment of their mundane lives. Since each experience is potentially a learning experience, it should be thoroughly studied and reflected upon. Confucius was reluctant to provide his disciples with concrete advice, for he took it to be their responsibility to cultivate their abilities to creatively apply the insights gained from their cultural legacy in new situations and thus to carry the tradition forward. For a Confucian, as Roger Ames has remarked, “there is no respite.” Ames goes on to explain that li 禮, the ritualized customs of (mostly) interpersonal behavior, requires the utmost and unrelenting attention in every detail of what one does at every moment that one is doing it, from the drama of the high court to the posture one assumes in going to sleep, from the reception of honored guests to the proper way to comport oneself when alone, from how one behaves in formal dining situations to appropriate extemporaneous gestures.5 Confucius emphasized persistence in learning and exemplified this through his own conduct and attitude.6 He also seems to have been rather selective in his choice of disciples: I do not open the way for students who are not driven with eagerness; I do not supply a vocabulary for students who are not trying desperately to find the language for their ideas. If, when showing students one corner and they do not return with the other three, I do not repeat myself. There is nothing I can do for those who are not constantly asking themselves: “What to do? What to do?”7

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How many people have the persistence to constantly ask themselves, “What to do? What to do?” Confucius’s own disciples, while eager in their effort to learn, appear mostly to fall short. After all, Confucius is reluctant to concede that anyone can be said to have obtained the high moral status of ren 仁,8 and he explicitly denies that he will ever meet a sage, a sheng ren 聖人.9 Yet Confucius seems to have cultivated himself to such an extent that he was able to enjoy a spontaneous and rather carefree relationship with his surroundings: The Master said: “When I was fifteen, my heart was set on learning; at thirty, I took my stance; at forty, I was no longer perplexed; at fifty, I had realized the heavenly forces of circumstance; at sixty, my ear was attuned; at seventy, I could give my thoughts and feelings free rein without overstepping the boundaries.”10 By seventy, then, the Master had apparently acquired such a profound sense for his social environment and circumstances that this sense had become, as it were, his second nature, and no deliberation, no conscious thought, was required any more. While reaching such a state seems very desirable, it took a long time and undoubtedly much persistence. After all, he was seventy! And yet, he still refuses to acknowledge his own sagacity or ren-­hood.11 How many of us have the endurance to strive in every moment of our lives toward a goal known to be short of the stated ideals? Confucius himself is fully aware of just how demanding his teachings are, and that there will always be those who pretend to follow them, while actually only imitating external, mechanized forms that simulate genuine sophistication.12 He criticizes two kinds of people for being incapable of following his way: the “petty persons” (xiao ren 小人) and the “village worthies” (xiang yuan 鄉原). Both resort to some kind of pretense, but in quite different ways and for different reasons. Pretense is common practice. We often find ourselves in roles where we are not always confident or certain about our own genuineness or ability. Thus, we play our part as well as we can. Friedrich Nietzsche took the ability to simulate to be a hallmark of the human intellect: The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its main powers in simulation [Verstellung]; for it is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve



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themselves, since they cannot wage the struggle for existence with horns or sharp predatory teeth. This art of simulation reaches its peak in the human being: this is where there is deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself.13 The motives behind pretense may be quite diverse. It can obviously be done in order to profit from someone else or gain some concrete benefit. Such pretense would be hypocrisy or dissimulation. In some circumstances, however, it may be necessary to pretend to be different from what or how one is. In totalitarian societies with repressive ideologies such as Nazism, Stalinism, or Maoism, the ability to simulate, to pretend, may have saved many ordinary persons’ lives. Such simulation would hardly count as hypocrisy. For Nietzsche, moreover, simulation is a means for self-­preservation also in the sense of constructing a positive image of self: one acts not only “before others” but also “before oneself.” As Graham Parkes has argued, “the task of composing one’s existence into an aesthetically satisfying phenomenon demands conscientious work as well as refined judgment.”14 The intellect may resort to producing fictitious self-­images as long as it serves the purpose of preserving or enhancing the individual in question. Some level of deception may therefore turn out to be necessary for human life. The petty person features prominently in the Analects and other Confucian writings as the sheer antipode to the junzi 君子, the exemplary person: “Exemplary persons understand what is appropriate; petty persons understand what is of personal advantage.”15 The more alarming cases of petty persons seem to match what we nowadays understand as psychopaths or sociopaths—people who are quite unable to feel empathy with others or put themselves in other people’s shoes. That is, they lack shu 恕. All they can think about is how to advance themselves, irrespective of the consequences for others. While they may not necessarily resort to pretense, they seem to be willing to do whatever might advance their own narrow interests.16 The early Confucians seem to have considered such people beyond salvation, as being helplessly lost in their own self-­centeredness. This Confucian assessment of petty persons is undeniably convincing. They indeed come across as utterly defunct, although it is conceivable that modern medicine may have some means to “cure” them. However, the early Confucians and later interpreters

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also dismiss the village worthies in a similar manner, and here I would like to take issue with this dismissal. There is only one direct reference to village worthies in the Analects, where they are termed the “thieves of excellence” (de 德) or “excellence under false pretenses.”17 Mencius provides us with slightly more content where he says that one cannot find any faults with a village worthy, for his external appearance is flawless, and that he seems to be conscientious and to live up to his word. In short, the village worthy does everything right from a Confucian point of view. Nonetheless, Mencius warns that the village worthy should not “be confused with excellence” and concludes that the way of Yao or Shun cannot be pursued with such a person.18 Ames associates village worthies with hypocrisy, primarily because they lack the creativity required by a Confucian exemplary person: Such a village worthy is overdetermined in the sense of form and regularity so that he is plausible to those who would look to him as a model, yet the creative element necessary for his personalization and renewal of the exemplary role is absent. He has no blood. He is a hypocrite because he has nothing of quality to contribute on his own; there is a failure of self-­sufficiency.19 Winnie Sung has argued that village worthies are not necessarily insincere. She suggests that they lack “lower-­order states” that could be inconsistent with their “higher-­order states,” as in this example: “When the village worthy says that he adheres to certain ritual practices, one cannot expose his deep-­down inconsistent views about these ritual practices because he does not have any at all. It is in this sense that the village worthy does not have any concrete faults that can be unveiled.”20 A likely consequence of the imminent institutionalization of Confucianism in China, hoped for by some but feared by others, is a collapse of the vital complementarity of the inner and the outer: in such a case the “inner sage” (neisheng 內聖), the creative social virtuoso, will eventually be sacrificed for the “outer ruler” (waiwang 外王), the ruling busybody, while the waiwang still pretends to be neisheng on the basis of seemingly impeccable external appearance. Confucius criticizes this harshly: “When speaking time and again of ritual propriety, how could I just be talking about jade and silk?”21 Village worthies lack the inner potency (de 德) emanating from authentic moral worth that would



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enable them to creatively engage with tradition and make it adaptable to the always new circumstances.22 This is presumably the reason why Confucius laments, “Formerly, those who studied did so for the sake of themselves, but nowadays, those who study do so for the sake of others.”23 To study for the sake of others means to try to display oneself positively in the eyes of others, a kind of behavior typical for village worthies, who are thus likely to contribute to the ossification of an institutionalized philosophy or ideology. But there may still be hope for at least some village worthies. As Sung points out, the village worthy is not necessarily guilty of being an “inner-­ outer inconsistent type of hypocrite”: “[This] type of hypocrite would present herself as holding moral value y when she in fact holds x, where x is inconsistent with y. By contrast, the ‘appearance-­only’ hypocrite presents herself as holding y when she in fact lacks y.”24 On this interpretation, village worthies have indeed, as Ames says, “no blood,” or are, as Sung says, “hollow inside.”25 They are ignorant or are at least in need of much more training or education. Contrary to petty persons, village worthies do not necessarily have an agenda, perhaps not even a strong opinion; they just play along in order to be accepted. Their problem may be their lack of creativity and ability to learn from their experiences. Using John Dewey’s celebrated formulation, they may be capable of doing but not of undergoing, because they do not have sufficient talent or ability to “bring the subject matter of prior experience to bear to perceive the significance of the subject matter of a new experience.”26 Still, I suggest that Confucius was too dismissive of them. After all, aren’t they still “doing their (feeble) utmost” by enacting their roles? Instead, then, of dismissing them, they can perhaps be helped along the way. In any case, simulation is the first step toward learning. I must observe other fathers in order to understand how to be a father. We must first play our roles in order to be able to live them. In all probability, most of us are village worthies of a sort, and the more rigid and codified the social ideology becomes in which we live, chances are that there will be even more of us, because almost everyone desires social acceptance. We do not have the capacity to become a Confucius or an Ames, even though we may enjoy the fortune to live beyond seventy. Hence, we, the village worthies, are perhaps neither correctly nor fairly described as hypocrites—we are simply lacking in ability. But we live with the hope that our insipid efforts may trigger some improvement—that as we become

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more skillful in our art of simulation, we may at some distant point actually not be simulating much anymore.

Notes 1.  Cf. Rodney L. Taylor, “The Religious Character of the Confucian Tradition,” Philosophy East and West 48, no. 1 (1998): 80–107. 2.  Cf., e.g., Sung Hyun Yun, “An Analysis of Confucianism’s Yin-­Yang Harmony with Nature and the Traditional Oppression of Women: Implications for Social Work Practice,” Journal of Social Work 13, no. 6 (2012): 582–598. 3.  Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York: Free Press, 1967), 1. 4.  Cf. Kai-­Wing Chow, The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 184ff. 5.  CRE, 174. 6.  For example, Analects 7.2 and 7.20. 7.  Analects 7.8 and 15.16, respectively. 8.  For example, Analects 5.5, 5.8, and 5.19. 9.  Analects 7.26. 10.  Analects 2.4. 11.  Analects 7.34. 12.  Cf., e.g., Analects 2.24, 3.12, and 3.18. 13.  Friedrich Nietzsche, “Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne,” Kritische Studienausgabe 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 876. 14.  Graham Parkes, Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 162. 15.  Analects 4.16. 16.  See Analects 13.4. 17.  Analects 17.13. 18.  Mencius 7B37. 19.  Roger T. Ames, “The Classical Chinese Self and Hypocrisy,” in Self and Deception: A Cross-­cultural Philosophical Enquiry, ed. Roger T. Ames and Wimal Dissanayake (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 236–237. 20.  Winnie Sung, “Xiang Yuan (Village Worthies): The Appearance-­ Only Hypocrite,” Dao 15 (2016): 178. 21.  Analects 17.11.



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22.  Cf. Geir Sigurðsson, Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 123ff. 23.  Analects,14.24. 24.  Sung, “Xiang Yuan,” 182. 25.  Ibid. 26.  John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: Free Press, 1944), 343.

chapter 21

Doubts and Anxiety on a Way without Crossroads Vytis Silius

In explicating Confucian role ethics, Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. emphasized contrasts between early Confucian thought and modern moral philosophy. One of the contrasts is the idea that in Kongzi’s thought there are no genuine moral dilemmas. The origin of this idea can be traced to Herbert Fingarette who noticed that early Confucians do not employ the metaphor of a crossroads, even though they have a well-­elaborated metaphor of the way (dao 道).1 Once on the way, the path and the direction seem to be unambiguous for early Confucians, and following it is a question of determination, zhi 志, and courage, yong 勇.2 This idea seems to be well supported in early texts—for example, in Analects where Kongzi says that he is following his heart’s desires without transgressing what is appropriate.3 This might give the impression that there is only one road to walk, only one way (dao) to go on with living in the world. At the same time, all things then appear to be smooth and easy for sages (shengren 聖人) and for exemplary persons (junzi 君子), like Kongzi. There is noticeable joy and grace in a junzi’s actions and her or his appearance, and it is a pleasure for those around a junzi to watch and to learn from her or him. That is why junzi are characterized as being free of any troubles and worries.4 This seems to be quite different from the way many modern philosophers and psychologists—at least since the rise of existentialism— portray the prevailing human condition,5 which is said to be burdened with doubts and anxieties. Paul Tillich, for example, distinguishes three different grounds for existential anxiety: death, meaninglessness, and ethical shortcomings. It seems that a lot of people—past and 226



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present—constantly find themselves in difficult and perplexing situations or confusing life conditions. Sometimes people perceive their various roles as contradictory and mutually exclusive and do not feel at all comfortable in navigating the multitude of roles and relationships they happen to live (not merely play6). Sometimes people feel overwhelmed by the perceived inability to meet the expectations set by themselves or by others. Yet other times, they feel uncertain of what their heartmind’s desires are and what would it mean to give it a “free rein.”7 Even if the situation of perceiving oneself as standing at a crossroads is alien to early Confucians, it is very familiar to us today. The question of what to do when finding oneself “in times of trouble” is an important problem for any ethical system that would speak to the contemporary world. Can Kongzi come to our aid, speaking his words of wisdom, if he does not know the troubled state in which humans today often find themselves? On the other hand, reading early Confucian texts, we see that this state of easiness in walking the road as if without crossroads is not an unproblematic condition into which a junzi is born. It rather appears to be a lifelong process and an achieved state. Even for a sage like Kongzi it took seventy years of his life. As Amy Olberding rightly notices, the Analects has many instances where Kongzi talks about his frustration or despair.8 In Analects 2.4, Kongzi reveals to us that he himself moved away from doubts (huo 惑) only at the age of forty, which means only after at least twenty-­five years of personal cultivation. What interests me in this chapter are the situations of doubt, uneasiness, trouble, perplexity, and anxiety that we can find in the Analects. I intend to make a short analysis of the relevant passages so we can understand what Confucius’s contemporaries might have been confused and anxious about. At the end, I will raise several questions about Confucian role ethics as promoted by Ames and ask if and how it can be helpful for a contemporary person who finds herself or himself in a perplexing situation in life. There are several different Chinese words that can express at least some of the connotations of the concept cluster that interests us here. For the sake of brevity, I will concentrate only on huo 惑 as the most salient expression of the state of doubt and on you 憂 as the most salient expression of the state of anxiety in the Analects. For the same considerations of brevity, I limit my analysis here only to the Analects. For a richer analysis that I cannot provide here, we would also have to take into account such terms as yi 疑 (doubt, disbelief), huan 患 (anxiety, worry),

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ji 急 (anxious, worry, irritated), and probably even terms like ju 懼 (fear, dread), shen 慎 (cautious), or lü 慮 (consider, concern, worry) and si 思 (think, consider), which refer to a wide range of natural responses people develop when they find themselves in troubling situations or conditions.

I Several scholars have noticed that being “at ease” with joy and happiness in one’s attitudes and actions is an important quality for early Confucians.9 Kongzi extols Yan Hui, one of his favorite students, as a “person of character” (xian 賢) for not falling out of his enjoyment (bu gai qi le 不改其樂) even in difficult times when others would succumb to the state of you 憂, anxiety.10 But Kongzi’s own account of the history of his personal cultivation reveals that even the great Master had had times of uncertainty and that this observed easiness is an achieved state that requires not only many years of learning but also having one’s place where one can stand firmly on one’s feet (li 立).11 However, Kongzi does not explain what caused his doubts in the first place. James Legge suggests that “no doubt” refers to the state when one is sure about “what was proper in all circumstances and events.”12 A similar explanation is provided by Qian Mu, who claims that a bu huo 不惑 state is one of knowing clearly all theories and discussions (yanlun 言論), as well as all changes in world affairs (bianshi 變事) that allow one to meet resistance and hardships.13 In both interpretations we see a clear emphasis on knowing as being synonymous with having “no doubt.” However, we read in Analects 2.4 that the state of knowing (zhi tianming 知天命) comes only after ten years of achieving bu huo 不惑 in Kongzi’s life. A possible explanation would be that bu huo 不惑 is a special type or special domain of knowledge. Two important passages to understand an early Confucian view on what causes perplexity (huo 惑) are Analects 12.10 and 12.21. In Analects 12.10, Kongzi describes a person who at first cares for someone and therefore wishes that other person to live, but later hates that person and therefore wishes him dead.14 This situation then is defined by Kongzi as being huo 惑. E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks translate this term here as “contradiction,” and claim that “the contradiction is purely a matter of inconsistency within oneself.”15 According to such a reading, huo 惑 can be interpreted as describing a cognitive failure.



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Qian Mu also explains huo 惑 here in more epistemological terms. Having doubt here is a state of being “stupid”—that is, in the dark and not clear (hunmei buming 昏昧不明). Qian Mu is saying that doubts arise in us because of feelings of favor and disdain in our heartmind.16 However, it seems that Kongzi is criticizing not an “inner” state but rather a changed behavior, which was changed without an apparent change of the surrounding circumstances. The person at whom the acts of wishing life and wishing death are directed in this passage stays the same, yet the attitudes toward him shifts from one to its opposite. We find a similar situation in Analects 12.21. According to Kongzi, succumbing to a moment’s emotion and forgetting what kind of person one is—how one is and lives—and also forgetting one’s own extended person in terms of one’s family and close friends is the huo 惑 state of perplexity.17 Once again we have a situation where our own negative emotions change our ways of dealing with ourselves and our surroundings. Brooks and Brooks point out that in both of these passages the passions (love, hate, and anger) are seen as enemies of the faculty of judgment.18 Brooks and Brooks are right in pointing out the central role of emotions in these considerations, but what I think Kongzi is aiming at are not simply the judgments but more so the interactions with other humans. What we call emotions here involve not only a psychological state but also a pattern of action and conduct. Kongzi gives these comments as responses to his students who ask for practical advice in the context of personal cultivation. Thus, huo 惑 is a cognitive condition and at the same time a practical inadequacy. This more practical reading of huo 惑 is supported by Ames’s interpretation of “knowing” (zhi 知) in the early Confucian context. The notion of zhi 知 is central here, for it is a natural contrast with huo 惑, as is shown in two passages in the Analects where it is stated that “the wise (zhi 知) are not in quandary (huo 惑).”19 Ames and Rosemont translate zhi 知 as “to realize,” with the intention to highlight practical implications of any theoretical knowledge for early Confucians. According to Ames and Rosemont, such a rendition “underscores the performative, perlocutionary meaning of zhi: the need to author a situation and ‘make it real.’ ”20 A question remains about the content of the knowledge that is able to prevent doubts. When we look back at Analects 2.4 and read it together with Analects 9.29, we must conclude that Kongzi was knowledgeable (zhizhe 知者) and therefore bu huo 不惑—“no longer doubtful”—at the age of forty. However, he says that he “realized the propensities of tian

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(tianming 天命)” only at the age of fifty—that is, in the next stage of his personal development.21 This means that knowledge (zhi 知) of some lesser scope or degree than knowledge about the conditioning of the surroundings (tianming 天命) is able to free us from huo 惑 (doubts and concerns). Here it is helpful to look at other descriptions where Kongzi expresses some kind of uneasiness about himself. In Analects 1.16 we have Kongzi saying that he only worries (huan 患) “about failing to acknowledge others.”22 A pattern can be grasped here showing that for Kongzi the knowledge of humans—zhiren 知人—is that type of knowledge that frees one from doubts and seemingly also from self-­doubts.

II Analects 9.29 and 14.28 are interesting because here we have more terms that express the uneasiness and perplexity that in early Confucian thought seem to be so alien to the ideal person, junzi 君子: “The wise (zhi 知) are not in a quandary; the authoritative (ren 仁) are not ­anxious; the courageous are not timid.”23 The term translated here as “anxious” is you 憂, and it appears several times in the Analects. Fingarette addresses this notion of you 憂 and notes that the common denominator in all of its uses is the implication of “a troubled condition.”24 In his analysis, Fingarette warns against the tendency of the modern reader to locate that “trouble” in the internal psychic condition. In Fingarette’s words, you 憂 denotes troubles, inadequate responses, or misconduct and not exclusively an inner psychological state.25 In Analects 6.11, you 憂, or the state of distress, is associated with the humble material conditions one lives in. In another famous passage, Kongzi associates you 憂 with the concern that parents have about the physical well-­being of their children.26 And in Analects 12.5, Sima Niu is worrying (you 憂) about not having brothers and thus lacking in human connection. The main concern here once again seems to be human relations and their possible prospects. Probably the most important passage where we have Kongzi’s own account of what he is worried about is Analects 7.3. The sensibility expressed here seems to be very close to experience of a contemporary person, expressed by Tillich, when anxiety results from one’s perceived failure to meet one’s own requirements and criteria: “To fail to cultivate excellence (de 德), to fail to practice what I learn, on coming to understand what is appropriate (yi 義) in the circumstances to fail to attend to it, and to be unable to reform



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conduct that is not productive—these things I worry over.”27 Indeed, the observed easiness and carefree nature of a Confucian junzi 君子 when compared with one’s own experienced struggles to achieve that ideal may even enhance one’s sense of failure and strengthen feelings of doubt and anxiety. Recent publications report empirical evidence suggesting that Confucian culture is responsible for high rates of self-­doubt and achievement anxiety among contemporary East Asian students.28 Is then the early Confucian notion of you 憂 “anxiety” after all—contrary to Fingarette’s position—different from huo 惑 “doubt,” and is it less related to one’s interactions with other human beings and more centered on psychological self-­representation? According to Qian Mu, in Analects 7.3 we have a description of the most important practice (gongfu 功夫) of Kongzi’s school.29 Two points of Kongzi’s worries are about doing something, while another two are about having abilities to do something, and all these are again related to interactions with other humans. The way to free oneself from “worries” in the Analects is directly associated with morally appropriate conduct—that is, ren 仁. If one will cultivate and decorate one’s excellence (de 德), if one will put into practice what has been learned, and if one will be able to follow what is appropriate and reform what is abhorrent, one will be a consummate person (renzhe 仁者) and thus free of troubled psychological states and troubled actions. If we understand ren 仁 as something like an ultimate attentiveness to other humans, then any anxiety must arise as a result of being ignorant and inattentive toward others and acting in an isolated, autonomous manner. This explains Sima Niu’s “worries” about not having brothers, and it also explains recurrent warnings in early Confucian texts about being extremely cautious (shen 慎) in situations when one is in solitude.30

III When thinking about doubt and anxiety in a contemporary context, what comes to mind is the feeling of self-­doubt that is experienced as a strong existential threat. It is a self-­doubt where the very “self” is questioned and challenged. It is a question of meaning in one’s life. Such existential self-­doubt is usually accompanied with the sense of anxiety, uneasiness, and insecurity and can be likened to what Karl Jaspers called “limit situations” (Grenzsituationen), which he believed to be sources of philosophical thought. We do not detect such existential concerns in the Analects. Here

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doubts and anxieties appear to be very practically oriented and stemming from the perceived fractured nature of one’s interactions. And in the early Confucian case, huo 惑 and you 憂 seem to initiate practical personal self-­ cultivation rather than theoretical inquiry into the nature of one’s “self.” It seems that for early Confucians the state of perplexity and anxiety is foremost an interpersonal phenomenon of moral relevance. It is a person’s state of inconsistent and inadequate interactions with her or his environment. Ames shows that for early Confucians a way out of moral perplexity is the embodiment of a shu 恕 ideal—that is, the ideal of “putting oneself in the other’s place.”31 As Ames shows, shu 恕 denotes a creative response to moral perplexity, a response that ideally results in ren 仁, a consummate way of interaction. Following Ames’s reading of shu 恕, we could say that acting in a creative and harmonious correlation with others is a way of dissolving uneasiness and perplexity. The suggestion from early Confucians and contemporary role ethics seems to be this: “Be more attentive to your human surroundings.” This should not be understood as a suggestion to ignore one’s own psychological setup or emotional state. It is a position that these seemingly private, “inner” qualities of a person are really shared qualities of interaction between a person and her or his environment. Similar inversion of the direction of one’s searching gaze is found in Analects 1.4, where Kongzi’s student describes his daily practice of “self-­observation” (xing wu shen 省吾身). In this passage we see that, wanting to observe himself, Zengzi is not looking at his emotional states, his own “nature,” but that his gaze is directed outward to his interactions with others.32 However, through this detour to what is commonly shared, one achieves a realization (zhi 知) of what is the most private—one’s own person (wushen 吾 身)—thus breaking through the states of doubt and anxiety. Although early Confucian doubts and anxieties were less existential and more practical, we barely find any practical instructions in the Analects for what exactly to do and how to do it when “in times of troubles.” This should not be seen as problematic if we take the whole corpus of early Confucian texts into account. Such early Confucian classics as the Book of Songs 詩經 and the Book of Rites 禮記 are fully devoted to—among other things—providing readers with models of appropriate relations and actions, with ideal examples of various lived roles and relationships, and with forms of appropriate conduct in various life situations. One of the better-­known examples could be the instructions in the Daxue 大學 chapter in the Book of Rites 禮記, where those who wish to order their



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states, for example, are recommended to first regulate their families. The bottom line of the whole chain of prescriptions is the idea that, from emperor to a commoner, everyone should take personal cultivation for the foundation of all actions. In comparison, the Confucian role ethics of Ames and Rosemont is consistent with the Analects in stressing the importance and significance of interpersonality for the flourishing and enjoyable human life that is free of a debilitating sense of perplexity and anxiety. Should we then also expect from Confucian role ethics more explicit and detailed descriptions of exemplary roles and relationships in our contemporary societies? Should Confucian role ethics develop educational instructions on the ways our contemporary roles could be fulfilled and lived? What foundational roles and relations do we have today that do the work of the early Confucian five foundational relationships (wulun 五 倫)? Can Confucian role ethics provide us with ways to flourish our contemporary roles and relationships? Should Confucian role ethics explicate the normative content by which we could assess the quality and appropriateness of one’s roles and interactions? What is the psychological setup of a person who understands herself or himself as a relational self? These seem to be important and problematic issues and challenges for Confucian role ethics in today’s world, with its rapidly disintegrating nets of deep, engaging, and lasting interpersonal relations and with significant transformations in our lived social roles.

Notes 1.  Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), 20. 2.  Analects 14.4 (仁者, 必有勇). Also see Analects 4.4 (苟志於仁矣, 無惡 也); and Analects 4.9. 3.  Analects 2.4, in ACPT, 76. 4.  Analects 12.4. 5.  See, e.g., Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957); and Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952). 6.  See Henry Rosemont Jr. and Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics: A Moral Vision for the 21st Century? (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2016), esp. 50–54. 7.  Analects 2.4.

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8.  Amy Olberding, “Confucius’ Complaints and the Analects’ Account of the Good Life,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 12 (2013): 424. 9.  See Edward Slingerland, “Crafts and Virtues: The Paradox of Wu-­wei in the Analects,” in Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the “Analects,” ed. David Jones (Chicago: Open Court, 2008); and Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Happiness in Early Chinese Thought,” Oxford Handbook of Happiness, ed. Ilona Boniwell and Susan David (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 10.  See Analects 6.11. 11.  See Analects 2.4. 12.  James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes by James Legge, vol. 1, Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Mean; vol. 2, The Works of Mencius (Taipei: SMC, 2001 [vol. 1, 1893; vol. 2, 1895]), 1:146. 13.  Qian Mu 钱穆, Lunyu xinjie 论语新解 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2006), 27. 14.  ACPT, 156. 15.  E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 92. 16.  Qian Mu, Lunyu xinjie, 314. 17.  ACPT, 159. 18.  Brooks and Brooks, Original Analects, 95. 19.  See Analects 9.29 and 14.28. 20.  ACPT, 55. 21.  Ibid., 77. 22.  Ibid., 75. 23.  Ibid., 132. 24.  Fingarette, Confucius, 44. 25.  Ibid., 45. 26.  ACPT, 77. 27.  Ibid., 111. 28.  Lazar Stankov, “Unforgiving Confucian Culture: A Breeding Ground for High Academic Achievement, Test Anxiety and Self-­doubt?,” Learning and Individual Differences 20, no. 6 (2010): 555–563. 29.  Qian Mu, Lunyu xinjie, 168. 30.  See Zhongyong 1 in Chinese Text Project, http://ctext.org/liji/zhong -­yong#n10263; and Daxue 3, in Chinese Text Project, http://ctext.org/liji /da-­xue#n10384. 31.  CRE, 195. 32.  Analects 1.4, in ACPT, 72.

chapter 22

Applying Amesian Ethics Joshua Mason

Roger Ames and Zhi Gong faced similar dilemmas but handled them differently. In ancient China, Zhi Gong’s father stole a sheep, so Zhi Gong (True Goody-­Goody) turned him over to the authorities. Hearing of this, Confucius reproachfully claimed that a “true” son covers for his father, and a father covers for his son. Confucius’s reaction has been controversial for millennia. More recently, when one of Ames’s then teenage sons stole an expensive pen from a stationery store, Ames was faced with a dilemma similar to that of Zhi Gong: turn the thief over to the police, or cover for his son. In fact, he chose neither of these options.1 Ames’s response and his reflections upon this difficult situation exemplify many of the strengths of his ethical views as applied to real-­world matters. But they also expose some potential problems. Further inquiry into these issues could help us imagine productive ways of applying Amesian ethics.

Why It Matters Ames’s endorsement of pragmatic philosophies implies that we should not simply spin out theories and abstract ideas, but that our work should have ameliorative effects on people’s lives. A brief survey of Ames’s work reveals a pattern of concern for concrete matters of modern life. Conferences and volumes that he organized and edited on Asian philosophy and the environment were pioneering efforts.2 In the wake of an economic crisis, Ames hosted an East-­West Philosophers’ Conference devoted to economic themes and produced another volume.3 As well, 235

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he has authored and edited works on military strategy, education, the emotions, and democracy. Along the way he has asked practical questions such as, How does one achieve justice in grading students’ papers? Should a haole attend a Hawaiian heritage high school? What is the proper attitude for giving grandma a back rub? And many more. In recent years Ames has been highlighting the importance of studying Chinese philosophy by referring to a host of real-­world predicaments he collectively refers to as a “perfect storm.” He begins his presentation titled “Confucian China in a Changing World Cultural Order” by noting: “A perfect storm is brewing: climate change, food and water shortages, environmental degradation, pandemics, energy shortages, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, gross income inequities, and so on. An effective response to this human-­exacerbated predicament requires a radical change in values, intentions, and practices.”4 By explicitly thinking through Chinese philosophy to approach concrete problems in the world, Ames invites us to reflect on the applicability of his philosophical work to questions of ethical practices in the face of pressing controversies and impending disasters. The guiding question of this chapter is whether Ames offers us ideas with any cash value for addressing practical problems and improving people’s prospects. Ames has claimed that role ethics is not an abstract theory to be applied to concrete cases but, rather, a vision of ethical life to be enacted. Can this vision of ethical life support people in addressing concrete dilemmas? I argue that Ames’s work can indeed support improved ethical practice, but it leaves open the possibility of irresolvable conflicts. Furthermore, as a way of life it demands a kind of sageliness in action that is difficult to achieve, and the possibility of failure remains all too real. Finally, I suggest that an ethic geared toward achieving meaning and growth in relationships might be more feasible than solving global crises.

Ames in Action How did Ames handle the situation with his pilfering progeny? Rather than handing him over to the police as Zhi Gong did or covering for his improper actions as Confucius recommends, Ames had the lad return to the store with the pen to admit his wrongdoing. As Ames stood by, the furious store owner scolded the young man and banished him from the store forever, shaming him but not seeking any legal punishment. The chastened boy learned a lesson, the store owner had his pen back, and



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Ames had modeled discipline and propriety while maintaining a supportive relationship with his son. Ames relates the event in a hypothetical vein in Confucian Role Ethics as an example of important Confucian and Amesian ethical ideas.5 In this example, Ames preserved the ideas that relationships are primary, that roles imply responsibilities, and that every ethical decision must account for its particular participants and context. This was not just a thief and a victim; this was his son, for whom he had both paternal responsibility and loving affection, and a local merchant who was part of the community. These are familiar people with names and needs, not abstract citizens with a dispute over property rights. With sensitivity to the station and bearing of the store owner, the attitudes of the local community, his son’s patterns of behavior, his wife’s and other son’s responses, and the contours of the relationships he himself had with all of them, Ames used his moral imagination to work toward a resolution that could generate the most harmony.

But Wait This whole affair seems to have turned out fairly well, given that it began with a criminal violation that degraded social harmony. Still, critical reflection can show us some dangers in recommending a similar approach to others in pressing predicaments. First, Ames argues that moral judgments are products of a human aesthetic sensibility rather than rational decisions. Instead of applying abstract principles through syllogistic reasoning or universal decision procedures, moral “deliberation” is an ars contextualis, an art of contextualization, which hopes to produce aesthetic values out of the constituent ingredients of one’s environment.6 In this sense, morality is a kind of taste, a sensitivity to the subtle interactions among diverse flavors in play in any particular situation. In Chinese philosophy the ethical ideal of harmony is often conceptualized in terms of music and cooking, which makes aesthetic taste an apt metaphor for moral judgment. One worry about this notion of moral aesthetics is the apparent relativity of aesthetic tastes—some people like fresh poke at a department potluck, some prefer a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. If this is the case with moral judgments, we seem to be relying on something that is ultimately groundless and thus undecidable. Without recourse to a common standard we seem doomed to interminable conflict.

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Ames considers the resolution of the pen-­stealing situation an aesthetically and morally pleasing arrangement. I happen to agree, but some people may think the law deserves more respect than any satisfying or edifying personal outcomes. They might find lawfulness aesthetically pleasing, and strict and consistent order to be more beautiful than Ames’s creative harmony. If applied ethics is a matter of moral aesthetics, the relativity of aesthetic taste could lead to irresolvable conflict and perhaps to the silencing of respectable minority opinions. Ames considers his solution to be harmonious, but this metaethical understanding of aesthetic moral judgment leaves room for serious disagreements. Second, Ames’s approach to the thieving-­relative problem may be culturally specific in a way that should give us pause when we anticipate the multicultural cooperation required to face down global predicaments. In Confucian Role Ethics, Ames discusses both Zhi Gong and the scenario of a pen-­stealing son as a way of expounding on the core ideas of Confucian role ethics. Role ethics does not rely upon abstract and impersonal laws and principles but instead understands proper behavior as guided by “family roles and the extended relations . . . that designate a specific configuration of activity,”7 recognizing that these roles and relations exert a normative force upon people who embody them. Ames writes, “In Confucian role ethics, ‘to mother’ and ‘to neighbor’ are not merely descriptive; they serve as ethical injunctions, and unlike abstract principles, they serve as concrete guidelines that help us to determine what to do next.”8 These guidelines ensure that morality is not a relativistic free-­for-­all and that a basis for judging people’s actions is whether or not they were in accordance with the responsibilities and expectations of their roles. In his telling of the incident and its aftermath, Ames believes that the normative roles of father and shopkeeper are exemplified well. As a good father he neither abandoned his son to the harshness of the law and the slippery slope of juvenile delinquency, nor failed to instruct him on how to take responsibility for mistakes and be a decent person. As a member of the community, he ensured that that the local shopkeeper did not take a loss and that he himself upheld community standards against stealing. The shopkeeper was a model of shopkeeperhood, showing leniency to a “wayward but otherwise good child who had done a bad thing,”9 while not failing to use the power of shame to help the child reform. At the same time, he showed good business sense in banishing the youth from the store, making it clear that stealing would not



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be tolerated in this community. Both father and shopkeeper upheld the commonly recognized duties of their roles, while also creatively customizing their actions to the immediate situation, thus providing models of fatherly and shopkeeperly behavior. Ames says this notion of role ethics captures people’s actual behaviors better than other ethical theories. He writes, “Such a scenario is not only more creative; it has the huge virtue of approximating what we would actually do.”10 However, a troubling sense of cultural specificity appears when Ames says this is what “we would actually do,” where the boundaries of this “we” are assumed but not defined. This resolution works because “we” do not live in a world of vengeful and violent shopkeepers who jealously guard their reputations for toughness. We do not live in a neighborhood where starvation is a constant threat, and occasional stealing enables a family to survive. We do not live in a society where neighbors are encouraged to report to the government about other neighbors’ minor infractions. In any of these or innumerable other circumstances where the “specific configuration of activities” is different, the roles of father and shopkeeper might involve radically different expectations and might imply a different pursuit of harmony. Because the responsibilities and requirements implied by roles are defined by the way those roles interact with the wider set of social practices and circumstances, there is no final ground for arbitrating among different conceptions of appropriate fathering or shopkeeping. Think of cultures where fathering means stoning one’s child to death for shaming the family, or producing as many children as possible so that some will survive until adulthood, or teaching one’s children to cheat, steal, and handle weapons, thereby responsibly preparing them to survive the mean streets. Even within the American mainstream there are importantly different conceptions of ideal parenting. It is possible that people who have a wildly different conception of the roles of father, shopkeeper, and son would not take Ames’s actions as appropriate role modeling or a dao they would travel themselves. The normative guidelines of roles are not absolutely fixed, and while Ames points out many benefits of this contextual flexibility and creativity, it opens the door to conflict in the interpretation of roles. What is the role of doctor in the face of a massive contagious outbreak? What is the role of steward of the environment when migration patterns change? What is the role of international economic regulator when

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global corporations write domestic laws? While these roles will always be flexible in some sense, wide divergences in the very conception of these roles may make it difficult to appeal to them as guidelines for practical decision making in matters of national or international concern. Especially approaching the coming decades in which we face predicaments that are novel in human history, we will be refining old roles and defining new roles without the benefit of earlier exemplars. I foresee conflict over the normative dimensions of these roles as they begin to take shape. An ethics based primarily on roles and relations may struggle to resolve conflicts over culturally diverse interpretations of those roles. Finally, though Ames had the contextual awareness, social sensitivity, and taste for harmony to navigate this situation, not everyone does. The ars contextualis conception of ethics does come with its own challenges. Ames describes it as “the art of effectively contextualizing and coordinating the experience of the human being within the processes of nature in an effort to optimize the creative possibilities of the cosmos.”11 Because each person stands as the nexus of a unique web of relations and each person’s creative possibilities are unique, this notion is resolutely particularist. In optimizing the cosmos’s possibilities, moral actions cannot be predetermined but must await the concretization of actual contextual arrangements, at which point the person must make a highly personal and morally fraught decision. As we attempt to optimize our actions in accordance with our contexts, Ames argues that we can take guidance from role models of concretely appropriate behavior. However, these can never relieve us of the burden of practicing ars contextualis for ourselves. Just because Ames sorted out a creative and unique resolution to the son-­steals-­a-pen incident does not mean he has determined the final moral answer on how to act when a loved one steals a pen. He insists, not that any actual ethical decisions reflect a universal moral truth, but only that they express a cultivated moral understanding, which might provide inspiration and guidance to others who make their own context-­bound decisions. What should we do about our thieving relatives, or our cheating students, or our corrupt representatives? Ames does not tell us. Much as when Confucius said, “There is nothing that I can do for people who are not constantly asking themselves, ‘What to do? What to do?,’ ”12 Ames highlights the irreducibly personal element of every practical ethical decision. There is no universal rule to automatically follow, no foolproof decision procedure to run through; in every moment you must have



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awareness of your context, rely on your own stock of experiences and sense of propriety, and answer for yourself, “What to do? What to do?” One’s answer to this will inevitably draw upon one’s culture, roles, and relationships but will also incorporate one’s own creative contribution. The vision of ethics that Ames puts forward “requires the ongoing cultivation of an aesthetic, moral, and religious imagination that will enable one to pursue an optimal appropriateness in all that one does (yi 義),” and thus “it is an attempt to use personal artistry in one’s roles and relations to live the most significant life possible.”13 Ultimately, the answer individuals come to depends on their understanding of the roles they inhabit and their aesthetic feel for the elegance, balance, timing, harmony, and beauty of their behaviors. One who through sincere cultivation masterfully and reliably produces this moral artistry might be considered an exemplary person (junzi 君子) or perhaps even a sage (shengren 聖人). This is where I find the most serious problem for applied ethics in the vision of ethical living that Ames lays out. If people are to practice the “art of contextualization,” how many people in any population are great artists? If we leave ethics up to people’s cultivated aesthetic sense of what is appropriate in their unique enactment of their roles, I fear that we may end up with a broadly amateurish moral artistry. As Confucius says, “I will never get to meet a sage—I would be content to meet an exemplary person.”14 If our practical actions are guided by our moral taste and our personal understanding of our social roles, and if these have no ultimate grounding but are always responsive to changing contexts, then the burden of cultivating that taste and interrogating that role is unending. I worry that we can’t count on people to be exemplary, much less sagely. Ames’s moral vison is thus subject to the criticism that it is overdemanding or is overoptimistic about people’s artistic capabilities. Given that role ethics takes inspiration from Confucian ethical ideals, this somewhat Legalist critique of human fallibility might find some purchase. While Ames gives a nod to “regulative ideals,” he leaves us with only a preliminary suggestion about resources for developing impartial views and institutional safeguards.15 Until that vision is fleshed out and can be integrated with the notion of moral creativity, it appears that much is left up to the artistic abilities of particular people, and sadly, people can be notoriously unreliable.

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Then What Ames could offer reasonable replies to these concerns, but such replies might not satisfy those who want the Form of the Good or a Categorical Imperative. He might say that, in the first place, he never set out to settle the conflict of values. Ames drew upon Dewey’s “Three Independent Factors in Morals,” where Dewey argues that the push and pull of conflicting moral goods gives ethical decisions their weight. Negotiation, compromise, sacrifice, and sorrow are part of the moral experience. When aesthetic tastes clash, it may take moral imagination and ­contextual sensitivity to come to the most harmonious resolution available, even if it is far from perfect. Second, normative roles are indeed shaped by contingent histories and particular cultural contexts, but their openness to negotiation and reformation is a feature, not a bug. As with tastes, conflicts over the responsibilities implied by roles will certainly arise, and in these conflicts are new opportunities for moral creativity and optimization amidst new possibilities. Differences can create productive diversity rather than incommensurable dividing lines.16 Finally, just because not everyone will become a sage, this does not diminish the ideal as something to work toward. Lousy artists can improve with practice and cultivation, and though they may never be masters, there is pragmatic value in working to become incrementally better. Thus, Ames might reply that a pragmatic, fallibilist, harmony-­seeking, relationally situated ethics may not provide absolute moral laws or an airtight decision procedure, but it can sometimes produce moral excellence and significance in people’s lives. Ames, his son, and the shopkeeper are evidence of this. But still, even if we can find moral beauty and significant harmonies in our personal lives, should this moral vision give us hope that we can overcome global predicaments? Ames suggests that our best chance is in dispelling the foundational fiction of the autonomous self and adopting a more relational conception of the self. This sounds promising, but I am skeptical that reforming our metaphysical understanding of the self can really drive solid progress in solving our global challenges. In the near term, it will be difficult to overtake the momentum of rights-­based approaches and market-­oriented solutions. Theories of individual rights and global markets may be part of the problem, but they are the current mainstream promoted by many sincere people, and their dominance is nearly total. Even if it is possible to turn



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around this momentum, it may not be feasible in a time frame to stop a whole host of disasters. Additionally, no philosophies are immune to the pernicious gap between theory and practice. In practice, deontologists often break the law; utilitarians often cause greater unhappiness; virtue ethicists are often vicious; and role-­bearing people often act sub-­ consummately. A philosophical change in people’s normative ethical commitments or in their metaphysical self-­conception cannot force them to behave better. While there is a real need for such a global call to action given our predicaments, a “world cultural order” is the kind of abstraction that Ames often criticizes as “misplaced concreteness.” Relational ethics seems to operate most significantly among particular people. If role ethics is not a theory but a way of living, it may not be the appropriate vehicle to define ethics for nonliving entities like states and associations. Instead, I believe Amesian ethics is at its best and most applicable when it focuses on the familiar, on teaching a son to do the proper thing, on showing sincere concern for one’s students, on building (mostly) harmonious relationships with one’s colleagues, on being a consummate host when friends come from afar to a conference in paradise, and so on. Where the context is familiar and intimate, one can account for the subtle particularities of the relevant relationships and their situations. The grand ambition to change the world cultural order and its attendant predicaments must first begin with concrete particulars, with fathers and sons and shopkeepers who will work to develop significant ethical relationships. This is Amesian ethics in application, literally and philosophically.

Notes 1.  Ames alludes to this story, but without noting its real-­life inspiration, in CRE, 166. 2.  J. Baird Callicot and Roger T. Ames, eds., Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). 3.  Roger T. Ames and Peter D. Hershock, eds., Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015). 4.  Roger T. Ames, “Confucian China in a Changing World Cultural Order.” The quoted material is from a poster advertising one of his lectures.

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One version of the talk is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v =2ZGK7qgexQQ (accessed August 16, 2017). 5.  CRE, 166–167. 6.  See Andrew Lambert’s chapter in this volume, “Seeing Through the Aesthetic Worldview.” 7.  CRE, 168. 8.  Ibid. 9.  Ibid., 166. 10.  Ibid., 167. 11.  Ibid., 53. 12.  Analects 15.16. 13.  CRE, 164. 14.  Analects 7.26. 15.  CRE, 267. 16.  See Peter D. Hershock, Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012).

part vi

Classical Daoism While perhaps better known for thinking through Confucius, Ames has consistently engaged with Daoist philosophy and made it central to his broader philosophical project. The broad branches of Ames’s oeuvre draw deeply from Daoist roots. Taking their insights seriously and tracing dao to its source have given Ames’s output the fertile undercurrent that pervades his work. For instance, an Amesian Daoist philosophy appears in “Putting the Te Back in Taoism,” part of a defining volume on Asian traditions and ecology. The conceptions of nature, the environment, and the body that appear in all of Ames’s work have this Daoist cast. Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation was a groundbreaking translation of the Laozi, not only as the first to take account of the Guodian finds and include “The Great One Gives Birth to the Waters,” but also for its interpretive framework of a focus-­field model and a gerundive dao as “way-­making.” Ames’s own delight in the Zhuangzi appears in volumes such as Wandering at Ease in the “Zhuangzi” and Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish. This steady engagement with Daoist themes shows how Ames’s own ideas and vocabulary are intimately influenced by China’s ancient iconoclasts. Meilin Chinn, in “Making Way for Nothing,” imagines how Ames might have dealt with Zhuangzi’s use of negation words. A good grasp of Zhuangzi’s notions of “nothing” might support Ames’s theories of Chinese cosmology. James Sellmann, in “Field, Focus, and Focused Field,” considers the focus-­field model, asserting that meditation practices have the power to 245

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change human physiology. He suggests that effective practices can open up new perspectives on broader fields with deeper focus. Jing Liu, in “The Temporality of Dao,” reflects upon the passing of time as it appears with the transformation of things in their creative spontaneity. Taking on the concepts of shi 时, chang 常, and heng 恒, she analyzes the dynamic interrelations of change and constancy. Kuan-­Hung Chen’s contribution, “Whence Do You Know the Fish Are Happy?,” concludes this section of the book, casting his line of thought upon the Zhuangzi’s story of happy fish and the notions of joy (le 樂) and knowing (zhi 知). In the end he relates joy and knowing to ideals of education.

chapter 23

Making Way for Nothing Meilin Chinn

I once heard Roger Ames name the Zhuangzi 莊子 as the book he would choose to be stranded with on a desert island. While I wholeheartedly agree with his choice, it is nevertheless a curious one, given that Ames has written relatively little about the Zhuangzi in his long, prolific career dealing with all manner of Chinese philosophy. I have wondered if perhaps he has been saving this “deliciously protean” text, as he calls it, for a longer treatment in the right season of his life. In seasons past, Ames has made critical and enduring contributions to our understanding of the deep creativity and aesthetic orders expressed in the Chinese philosophical classics. He has accomplished this in part through original, and at times controversial, translation choices. In this regard, he shares with the Zhuangzi an innovative attitude toward language that makes his approach especially suited to the enigmatic and imaginative character of the text. For this and many other reasons, we would be well served if Ames should choose to reflect further upon the Zhuangzi, not the least of which is that, despite the voluminous scholarship on this complex text, we still struggle with an adequate vocabulary for translating a number of key ideas. I have in mind here what could inadequately be called “nothing” words: wu 無 (to lack, absent, nothing), xu 虛 (insubstantial, tenuous, empty), and kong 空 (vacant, void, spacious). These words are important on their own and are also integral to the meaning of central concepts in the Zhuangzi such as ziran 自然 (spontaneously so) and you 遊 (rambling or wandering at ease). This family of ideas about “nothing” is critical to approaching the protean character of the Zhuangzi. Furthermore, the 247

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common translations of these “nothing” words, noted above in parentheses, are challenged by Ames’s arguments against mistakenly reading substance ontologies and transcendent metaphysics into Daoist ideas, and so, in turn, these words serve as a litmus test of how well his own work avoids this error.

Adding Nothing We can catch glimpses of how Ames might approach a longer treatment of the Zhuangzi in his essay “ ‘Knowing’ as the ‘Realizing of Happiness’ Here, on the Bridge, over the River Hao.”1 In this work, Ames begins from the uncontroversial imperative to read the Zhuangzi with an appropriate interpretive context. We must read the text on its own terms, which requires understanding its intellectual and historical circumstances to the best of our abilities, as well as imagining philosophical possibilities far beyond our familiar conceptual homes. Ames identifies two pervasive and fundamental assumptions of Daoist cosmology with which to prepare a fitting interpretive context for the Zhuangzi: radical contextuality and a commitment to process. To these two assumptions, I would add an expanded vocabulary for translating and conveying “nothing” words. These terms stand on their own as essential to the interpretive context of the Zhuangzi and, as well, are mutually implicated in the portrayal of process and contextuality in the text. For Ames, the thoroughly processual and contextual Daoist worldview has no single, foundational ontological order. Instead, there is ontological parity among all things, including the one and the many, and the world and oneself; for example, as expressed in this well-­turned passage from the Zhuangzi: “The world and I being born together, I am continuous with all things” (天地與我並生, 萬物與我為一).2 Ames argues that this indicates ambiguity in the very idea of order in a Daoist cosmology, which is better understood as an aesthetic rather than logical order. While the two are not mutually exclusive, in a logical order there is a “presumption of an external, objective, and duplicable standard that one perforce must instantiate,” whereas in an aesthetic order “there is no source of order other than the dynamic agency of those unique participants that compose an improvisational and always emergent order.”3 Like a work of art in which all details are reciprocally implicated in one another, the context in which we know the world and others is radically formed by reflexive, holistic relations. A final or single



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order is not possible without erasing the heterogeneity of the particulars from which provisional, aesthetic coherence emerges. Taking a further cue from art, especially from the way that music is constituted by silence as much as sound, we should not neglect how the processual, creative, and continually transformative order described by Ames is also shaped and driven by what the “nothing” words attempt to name. The ambiguity that Ames notes in the idea of a Daoist order runs deeper than the difference between the aesthetic and the logical, for if there is parity in the Daoist worldview, it is not limited to the ten thousand things; it extends to what are not things, to vagueness and liminality, and to processes of emptying, quieting, losing, and forgetting that are ontologically on par with creativity and transformation. The language of “nothing,” “emptiness,” “forgetting,” “fasting,” and “spaciousness” that pervades the Zhuangzi is essential to its central philosophical themes and practical guidance and, as a result, to its interpretive context. These ideas are by their nature acutely difficult to deal with in language and consequently, it seems, inspire some of the more extraordinary imagery of the Zhuangzi, such as losing oneself in the piping of tian 天, fasting the heartmind, flying without wings, and roaming in the limitless. These are practices with strong epistemic implications. For example, as Ames recounts, Yan Hui becomes fully integrated into the spontaneous processes of untold transformation by “sitting and forgetting” (zuowang 坐忘). He allows his body to fall away, relinquishes his senses, and abandons knowledge in order to join the “Grand Thoroughfare” (datong 大通). As Ames explains, Yan Hui must “forget” the assumptions and sense perceptions that isolate him, in order to cultivate a “penetrating discernment of, and coalescence with, the world around him.”4 This is the kind of radical knowing and epistemic ­flexibility that Ames also attributes to Zhuangzi in the famous Happy Fish passage. When Zhuangzi makes the remarkable claim to know that the fish “rambling about” (you 遊) under the bridge over the River Hao are happy, he testifies to the continuity between his world and theirs—a shared world of collaborative knowing that can be realized by practices that tap the transformative power of “nothing.”

Difficult Guests In the Zhuangzi’s opening chapter, Xiao Yao You 逍遙遊 (Free and Easy Wandering), Zhuangzi boldly states that “names are only the guests of

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reality” (名者, 實之賓也).5 This is an especially apt image when it comes to rendering “nothing” words from the Zhuangzi into English. When a metaphysical dualism underlies the logical contradiction of being and nonbeing, concepts that invoke a “not” are generally limited to being categorized as negations. Translating wu into English is therefore problematic because common target terms such as “not,” “nothing,” and “nothingness” lead too easily to an ill-­fitting metaphysics. In the Daoist tradition, negation is not rooted in metaphysical dualism; there is no absolute ontological status accorded to something and nothing. Consequently, wu 無 has been used strategically to portray complex, sometimes paradoxical ideas, to indicate meaning that resists language, and to gesture past language altogether. Drawing on Ames’s work, we could say that the creative generosity of this concept is available to an aesthetic tradition in ways that are absent from a metaphysical, logocentric tradition. Given the limitations of the latter, how might a vocabulary of “nothing” words be added to the interpretive context of the Zhuangzi? How can the generative qualities of these concepts be conveyed without accidentally conjuring the metaphysical puzzles of ex nihilo nihil fit? Ames has already suggested pivotal reimaginings of wu in his work with David Hall on the Daodejing. There they provide a positive vocabulary for what they call the “wu-­forms,” which they take to be ways of expressing deferential activity. The many wu-­forms in the Daodejing include some that also occur in the Zhuangzi: wuwei 無為 (translated as “noncoercive action” instead of “nonaction”), wuzhi 無知 (“unprincipled knowing” instead of “no-­knowledge”), wuxin 無心 (“unmediated thinking and feeling” instead of “no heartmind”), wuqing 無情 (“unmediated feeling” instead of “no-­feeling”), wushi 無事 (“to be non-­interfering in going about your business” instead of “no-­business”), and wuming 無名 (“naming without fixed reference” instead of “no-­name”). According to Ames and Hall, the Daoist critique of acting, knowing, thinking, feeling, and naming is directed to the manner in which these are done, not to their existence altogether. By embodying the wu-­forms, one “enriches the world by allowing the process to unfold spontaneously on its own terms, while at the same time participating fully in it,” which in turn helps one to develop the excellence needed to establish continuity with this “objectless” world.6 The wu-­forms offer a productive strategy for talking about what something is not without overemphasizing or, worse, reifying negation. However, this approach does run the risk of obscuring the reality of



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absence in favor of what it brings about. In other words, the ontological parity of what is not present with what is can be easily elided by language that favors the positive outcomes of wu. This can be illustrated by the passage in which Zhuangzi discusses the person who rides the changes and wanders without limit. He asks, Do they depend on anything? His answer is, “The utmost person is without self (wuji 無己), the spiritual person has no merit (wugong 無功), and the sage is nameless (wuming 無 名).”7 While it is helpful to clarify that the utmost person has no enduring self, the spiritual person has no objective merit, and the sage has no fixed name, Zhuangzi’s point here is stronger. The person being described does not depend on the very things that they risk becoming identified by; it is the absence itself of this dependence that makes them exceptional and not just what the absence provides. There are too many passages in the text where it is clear that the self is lost or forgotten, not just transformed. Likewise, merit, whether objective or not, is an artifact at odds with a genuinely spiritual existence. Finally, as one who is perfectly responsive to and with boundless transformation, the sage must elude names—the mere guests of reality—and not just in order to show the sagely character of butchers, musicians, and swimmers. Another way that Ames has answered the challenge of translating wu is by emphasizing its binomial form with you 有. He has suggested pairs of meanings that resist the being and nonbeing dichotomy, including absence and presence, and determinacy and indeterminacy.8 Yet while presence/absence and determinacy/indeterminacy are better translations than being/nonbeing, particularly because they evoke the creativity of wu, there remains subtle ontological privileging even in these pairs. A quick illustration of this is his choice not to translate you as over-­ determinacy. The relative relationship of determinacy to indeterminacy still favors presence and what is. While this is not necessarily a problem within a Daoist processual understanding of presence, it is misleading once translated into English because presence is usually contrasted with simple or absolute lack. Defining only one of the terms with a qualifier (“in-”) obscures the dynamic parity between you and wu. A look at the word xu 虛 helps to further demonstrate the difficulty of translating “nothing” words. Processes of emptying are crucial to becoming one with the changes in the Zhuangzi. In an especially rich example, Zhuangzi prescribes quieting or “fasting” the heartmind (xinzhai 心齋) through progressively subtler and more open listening. This guidance is curiously relayed by none other than Confucius in the

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Renjianshi 人間世 (In The Human World) chapter, where he instructs Yan Hui on how to transform with things: Unify your attention (zhi 志). Do not listen with the ears; rather, listen with the heartmind. Then, do not listen with the heartmind, but with the vital energy (qi 氣). The ears stop at what they hear. The heartmind stops at what its thoughts tally. As for the vital energy, it is empty (xu 虛) and awaits the arising of things. Only dao gathers in emptiness. This emptiness is the fasting of the heartmind.9 How should we understand the depictions of xu here? One approach is to consider this passage alongside the opening scene of the pivotal chapter Qiwulun 齊物論 (Discussion on Smoothing Things Out), in which Ziqi loses himself listening to the piping of tian. This would suggest that the progression from listening to the music of humans, to that of the earth, and then to tian is a movement from listening with the ears, to listening with the heartmind, and then with qi.10 Only by listening with qi can the self—with its judgments, preferences, and prejudices—be quieted enough for the becoming of things to be audible. The emptiness of qi is not absolute or privative; rather, what is described here is the tenuousness that makes qi responsive, receptive, and adaptive. Because of these qualities, listening with qi opens the inner space needed to directly experience things in their naturalness as ziran 自然, or spontaneously so of themselves, which is to say as well that fasting the heartmind is a way of making space in which dao can gather. There are additional epistemological lessons from the Zhuangzi here. For things to be ziran means that their origins are obscure and complex, but their arising or unfolding spontaneity does not imply that they pop into existence or change without influence. Rather, for Zhuangzi, there is no conclusive source or final cause of things to be discerned beyond the rhythms and patterns of emergence that mark them. He describes the arising of things as being like “music coming out of emptiness (xu),” and as unceasing change without a known “soil from which they sprout.” He cautions that as tempting as it may be to speculate about a supreme cause, it has no manifest form (xing 形) as evidence of its existence. If there is a grander force at play that makes everything “sound,” such as the piping of nature, there is no form or sign besides the sounding that is indistinguishable from what it animates. Since xu



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is a tenuous emptiness and not an absolute nothingness, ziran is not ex nihilo spontaneity; rather, it is an aesthetic and perceptual spontaneous emergence akin to the sounding of music out of silence. Finally, an interpretive context for the Zhuangzi must contend with the concept kong 空 (empty, void, spacious). I know from personal conversations that Ames objects to translating kong as “void” for reasons that protect it from being distorted and appropriated by a mismatched metaphysics. While I generally agree with his reasons, I would still like to suggest one consideration for retaining this translation. Kong is most frequently used to designate space and is often combined with xu to emphasize the emptiness of a space, such as a great valley, the sky, or the internal space of the body. These spaces are not void in the sense of an empty vacuum but are fertile voids full of potentiality. There is no more reason to keep an anachronistic definition of void as barren than there is to continue to define space as an empty container despite advances in physics, philosophy, and art that have undermined this model. In order to develop a more adequate vocabulary for dealing with concepts such as kong, the philosophical traditions bound to European languages must work from their own resources toward new possibilities for old words. For example, as Ames has shown, there are relationships to be drawn between wu and ideas such as “spontaneity,” “natality,” and “wonder” that designate an aesthetic order generally and offer creative content that alters our assumptions about what absence and indeterminacy do.11 In the case of kong, “nothing” and “empty” do not evoke the idea of space as strongly as “void” does, and “space” alone does not tell enough about its qualities, especially aesthetic, to do justice to its meaning in the Zhuangzi. After all, in what kind of space does one wander at ease, and from where does one know fish happiness?

Making Way The images of free and easy wandering, fasting the heartmind, and knowing the world through our oneness with it all involve our liberation from static, homogenous conceptions of space. In fact, if there can be said to be “Daoists,” their namesake expresses a radical sense of space as path, way, or—as Ames designates it—way-­making. Like lived space, the what and where of dao are also how. The fixed distinctions fasted by Zhuangzi’s free wanderer include those that generate opposition between internal and external space

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(neiwai 內外) and result in the way of knowing described in the Happy Fish anecdote. How do we arrive here, to share in fish happiness on the bridge over the River Hao? For one, through practices of increasingly tenuous and empty listening, we learn to wander together with things in a space transformed by our continuity with it. Listening emptied by the piping of the hollows of the earth and the void skies of tian becomes more spacious. And as listening becomes more receptive and responsive through fasting the heartmind, we are brought closer to what Zhuangzi calls “galloping while sitting still” and “roaming in the great emptiness.” Creating a vocabulary of “nothing” words suitable to the ideas of the Zhuangzi is undoubtedly a formidable task and would need an elaborated interpretive context as accompaniment, but this would be as delightful, and as uselessly useful, as any of the great riddles this mercurial text presents. The Zhuangzi is a text keen to the difficulties of its own aspirations, seen as much in its skeptical disputes with language as in its daring efforts to communicate what cannot be said. We can trust that any further reflections by Ames would advance and challenge our understanding of the Zhuangzi’s wandering, void sailing ways. And since one does not come away from this text unchanged themselves, I cannot help but wonder what could come of a meeting of Ames and Zhuangzi on a boundless bridge, right nowhere over a river not there.

Notes 1.  ZHF, 261–290. 2.  Ames’s translation in ZHF, 266. 3.  ZHF, 268. 4.  ZHF, 276. 5.  Zhuangzi Yinde 1.25. My translations here are based on 洪業主編 《莊 子引得》 哈佛燕京學社引得特刊第 20 號 [Zhuangzi Yinde (A Concordance to Chuang Tzu)], Harvard-­Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement 20 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956). 6.  DDJ, 44. 7.  Zhuangzi Yinde 1.19–22. 8.  See the glossaries to Roger T. Ames, ed., The Blackwell Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Wiley-­Blackwell, 2006) and DDJ. 9.  Zhuangzi Yinde 4.26–28. “若一志, 无聽之以耳而聽之以心, 无聽之以 心而聽之以氣. 聽止於耳, 心止於符. 氣也者, 虛而待物者也. 唯道集虛. 虛者, 心齋也.”



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10.  Ames translates the title of this chapter as “Discourse on the Parity among Things.” 11.  Chapter 1 of the Daodejing associates wuyu with wonder and mystery. As Ames translates it: “Thus, to be really objectless in one’s desires (wuyu) is how one observes the mysteries of all things.”

chapter 24

Field, Focus, and Focused Field A Classical Daoist Worldview James D. Sellmann

With the field and focus explanation of dao 道 (way or field) and de 德 (instantiated power or particular focus) in classical Daoist philosophy, David Hall and Roger Ames offer a unique interpretive framework for understanding the self.1 In developing the focus-­field interpretation of the self, Hall and Ames do not emphasize the importance of meditation or deep breathing exercises in Daoism. In this chapter, I expand upon their focus-­field interpretation by emphasizing the role of meditation. Daoist meditation changes people’s physiology and thereby teaches people to “walk two roads.”2 Walking two roads, or seeing things the way they really are by allowing for contradictions or inconsistencies, provides new environmental and social positions that expand people’s perspectives and understandings. As the Laozi says, sitting quietly in your room is sufficient: “We can know the world without going out the door; we can see the way-­making of nature without looking out the window.”3 With the right training that activates their neurophysiology, Daoists develop the ability to take on different positions, to discover new perspectives regarding the self and their own and others’ places in the dao-­field. These new perspectives allow them to gain insights into the positions and perspectives of other creatures and people. The breathing exercises or meditations not only expand people’s horizons and perspectives but also help people develop empathy for others’ perspectives. Self-­actualizing people are better equipped to hold apparent contradictions or radically different perspectives at the same time.4

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Field In Thinking from the Han, Hall and Ames introduce and develop a focus-­ field interpretation of dao and de to explain the Daoist understating of the self.5 Recently, Ames has proposed that Daoist worldviews are based on an understanding that the multiverse (dao 道) is an unsummed totality in which the field of existence (dao of nature) and the instantiated focus (de 德) are correlative aspects.6 The field metaphor is rooted in human preagricultural and agricultural experience. Robert Henricks uses the field metaphor to show how the barren and apparently empty field generates life in the spring, when the field is teeming with life.7 The agricultural field metaphor is easily expanded to an energy field.8 Hall and Ames draw inspiration for the focus-­field interpretation from Joseph Needham, who both used the metaphor and was critical of a simplistic interpretation of it.9 Field and focus are contextual, and they may change places. A field in another context can be a focus, and a focus in another context can be understood to be a field. Hall and Ames explain the contextual and interrelated exchange of fields and foci in the following: Our focus-­field model of the self must be understood in terms of what we have elsewhere termed, ars contextualis. Chinese thinkers, both Confucian and Daoist, most often employ an approach to philosophic understanding that is in striking contrast to the two dominant modes of Western speculation, . . . [namely,] a “general ontology,” . . . [and] a “science of universal principles.” It is the “art of contextualization” that is most characteristic of Chinese intellectual endeavors. The variety of specific contexts defined by particular family relations, or sociopolitical orders, constitute the fields focused by individuals who are in turn shaped by the field of influences they focus. Ars contextualis, as a practical endeavor, names that peculiar art of contextualization that allows the focal individual to ally herself with those contexts that she will constitute and that in turn will constitute her.10 In one context the field becomes a focus, and the focus in another context becomes a field. It is partly a matter of the perceiving subject’s perspective; what was a focus in one context is now seen and understood to be a field in another context. When the clan is viewed as the field, the

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family can be a focus. When the family is the field, the particular family member is the focus. What constitutes a field or focus is a c­ ontextual construct. In a passage from the Zhuangzi, the correlative, bimodal, or non-­dual character of all things, including both linguistic constructs and real things in the world (for example, the large and the small, the river and the ocean, life and death, and so on) is explicated by the God of the North Sea, Ruo, in his discourse with the River God.11 For example, on the largest scale, the multiverse is the field, and the universe we dwell in is a focus or a focused-­field—that is, a field that we are bringing into focus. A focus is an observational perspective, but the term “focus” also denotes one of the myriad things as a point of reference in the dynamic field of transformations. Our universe is a field and the ­galaxies are foci, and so on. In the correlative, bimodal, non-­dual logic of the early Daoist worldviews, there are no higher-­order principles or laws. As the God of the North Sea advises, “It [great wisdom] comprehends the Level Road, and for that reason it does not rejoice in life nor look on death as a calamity, for it knows that no fixed rule can be assigned to beginning and end.”12 Hence Ames argues that the Daoists have a complex “pluri-­verse” rather than a single ordered “universe,” and their cosmology is “acosmotic” in that it is not derived from a single order, law, or principle.13 These issues are explained by appeal to correlative thinking, or the bimodal, non-­dual logic at work in the Zhuangzi, the Yin-­Yang school, Mahayana Buddhism, and Chinese philosophy in general. When we get beyond the dualistic thinking promoted by two-­valued (true/false) logic, and we understand the way the ontological processes of the world operate, we acknowledge that there is always a sloppy gray area. Things are rarely, if ever, pure and untainted substances or essences; statements are rarely entirely true or false, outside of a mathematical equation or a tautology. This is to say that the principle of the excluded middle rarely, if ever, applies. Though the principle of the excluded middle proposes that there is no gray “maybe” between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, or existence and nonexistence, non-­dual thinking embraces the gray “maybe” between the opposites and is able to accept an apparent inconsistency or an outright contradiction. The principle of non­contradiction makes good sense for linguistic communication or mathematical consistency. However, the principle of noncontradiction never applies in a world of the radical transformation of things. The dualistic logic is based on the faulty ontological idea



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of unchanging essences or substances that define or make things what they are. In non-­dual logic, based on an ontology of radical change, there are no unchanging substances or essences such that “things” are ephemeral to their ­contextual transformations, nor does the viewing subject make them “appear” to be (relatively) stable and unchanging when in reality they are not. In this sense even the principle of identity—that a thing can only be itself or that truth is truth and cannot be otherwise—does not apply to Zhuangzi’s view of the transformation of identity, in which change is so radical it mutates the natural identity of that “thing”-in-­process.14

Focus For classical Daoists, de 德, or particular focus, positions a creature in a field that results in particular limited perspectives, generating various biases. The particular focus puts each thing or creature in a relationship with others. The core factor in relationships is “deference.” Each particular focused object or creature yields to others, and in turn others defer to it.15 For Hall and Ames, the focus-­field self in classical Daoism is defined by three wu-­forms of deferential activity—namely, wuzhi 無知, wuwei 無為, and wuyu 無欲.16 These three wu-­activities occur in a context of yielding and being yielded to. For the most part, Hall and Ames describe these as intellectual activities. Following Zhuangzi, they recognize that each creature is limited by its own perspective.17 The three wu-­activities provide what they refer to as a “discipline and practice” for overcoming these limited perspectives and to embrace the ongoing transformation of things.18 So when Zhuangzi says a morning mushroom cannot understand the evening, let alone the long life of the rose of Sharon, or when he says that men prefer Lady Li but fish are afraid of her, diving deep to escape her gaze, Zhuangzi is displaying his understanding of how the particular focus maintains its position and perspective.19 For the self-­ aware creature, the perspective is both a visual view and a cognitive understanding. Hence each creature has its own limited perspective. However, Zhuangzi is able to see things from the other’s perspective; he has a kind of empathy for others, allowing him to see from the other’s point of view. Thus, he knows the difference between the experiences and perspectives of the morning mushroom and the rose of Sharon, the limitations of the summer insect, the well frog, or the cramped scholar.

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He skillfully uses these metaphors to teach us about a different way of experiencing the dao-­field. For humans, society imposes additional understandings, norms, values, forms of proper conduct, desires, and so on. These hinder the natural flow of life. Daoists developed various breathing exercises, forms of meditation both in motion and sitting still, and philosophical understandings concerning how to cut lose from or “cure” (jie 解) the restrictions and ailments imposed by the social order that shorten a person’s natural life span. They developed physiological practices to allow people to expand their perspectives and to empathize with others. This is called “walking both ways.” It is a bimodal or non-­dual way of viewing and understanding. How is it achieved?

Focused Field as Perspective The various fields we inhabit are changing. They are dynamic processes, and we are changing too. The focused field is not merely a field that we pay attention to or focus on. A focused field is a particular, i­ nstantiated-­de field that exists along with our perception of it. The focused field is our reality and our perceived situation, real or imagined. In the bimodal, non-­dual frame or perspective, the two modes—namely, the reality or the way things are and the subjective impression or the way things are perceived—are one and the same. All focused fields are creative, generative processes—from the big bang to the sprouting of a seed. We, in turn, are cocreating our place in the dao-­field. Transformation (hua 化) is the first philosophical concept introduced in the opening lines of the Zhuangzi, relating the story of a huge fish, Kun (tiny fish egg), transforming into the Peng bird.20 Transformation and change (bian 變) are important aspects of the Daoist worldview that affect the way that Daoists look at and understand things. Consider the story of Lady Li, the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was taken captive, she cried until her collar was wet. After she settled down and enjoyed the comforts and food at the palace, she wondered why she ever cried.21 The Lady Li story shows how changing a person’s location and position generates new perspectives on a person’s life and, upon reflection, on a person’s place and position. At home Lady Li has one perspective; at the palace she takes on a new perspective that changes the way she sees her place, her perspective, and herself.



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The ability to change perspectives comes from relying on “heavenly equality,” or natural parity.22 The Daoist perspective that Zhuangzi holds is a correlative, bimodal, or non-­dual logic based on the interplay of correlative opposites and the recognition that most creatures and people hold biased, limited, preconceived, or narrow-­minded understandings. Everything has its “that,” everything has its “this.” From the point of view of “that” you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it. So I say, “that” comes out of “this” and “this” depends on “that”—which is to say that “this” and “that” give birth to each other. But where there is birth there must be death; where there is death there must be birth. . . . Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light of Nature.23 The flip-­flop of correlative opposites leads to a non-­dual logic that makes all things into one: “No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again. Only the man of far-­reaching vision knows how to make them into one.”24 Saying that things are different when they are not different or trying to make things into one with the mind’s eye alone will not yield the natural perspective. The natural perspective is not expressed in a propositional form that can be tested for veracity. Zhuangzi deploys metaphors to present his (non-)position. For ­example, the point of the “three in the morning” story is that we fool ourselves with our expressions, claiming that “things are different,” when in fact they are one already, but our limited perspectives and linguistic constructs obstruct our view of the way things really are: There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them if they want to. So the sage harmonizes with both right and wrong and rests in natural parity. This is called walking two roads.25 The Daoist uses clarity, the light of nature, or the revolving hinge to open new horizons, new perspectives on the interplay of things and concepts: “Heaven and earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me.”26 The alleged opposites are united as one in the Daoist sage’s perspective, which is changed and opened up by the practice of meditation. There is no world-­field without my

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participation, just as I could not exist without the world-­field. Self and world, self and others, or each and every focused field—these are all mutually cocreating each other. This is what the sage relies upon (yinshi 因是, the “that is it that goes by circumstances”) by means of clarity, the light of nature, or the natural parity.

Physiology and Meditation How does the Daoist sage obtain this unique perspective? I propose that it is by means of meditation or deep breathing exercises that the Daoists are able to transform their worldview by freeing themselves from their limited, situational perspective to embrace a correlative, bimodal, or non-­dual understanding and experience of the Great Pervader. The outer chapters of the Zhuangzi are critical of the one-­sided optimism of the yangsheng practitioners who only advocate long life, not recognizing that life and death are interrelated and mutually dependent.27 The Zhuangzi does advocate the use of deep breathing or meditation to release oneself from the restrictions of the desires, knowledge, and the accepted forms of behavior. These practices open new horizons and new perspectives on the way people live: “In fact, the perfected breathe all the way to their heels, unlike ordinary folk who breathe only as far as their throats.”28 These deep breathing exercises circulate the material-­energy (qi 氣) throughout the body, changing the way a person controls desires, knowledge, and actions, by focusing attention on the dao of nature—the ultimate focused field. The meditations and breathing exercises help people focus on their actual place in the various focused fields of nature, freeing them from the limitations of desires, knowledge, and behaviors generated by biological processes or by society. These entail the three wu-­forms of deference proposed by Hall and Ames. The meditation practices free people to take on new perspectives on how to nurture life in these fields and as various foci. The opening passage of chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi depicts a meditation experience in which “Zi Qi of South Wall sat leaning on his armrest, staring up at the sky and breathing—vacant and far away, as though he’d lost his companion.”29 His disciple recognizes the personal transformation by noting that “the man leaning on the armrest now is not the one who leaned on it before!”30 Hall and Ames modify Graham’s translation of this passage to read: “The person meditating now is not



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the same one who was meditating a time ago.”31 It is interesting that Hall and Ames elected to translate “leaning or reclining” as “meditating,” because this is the strongest reference to meditation playing a role in his understanding of the “discipline and practice” of Daoism. So Hall and Ames do recognize that meditation plays a role in the practice. They did not emphasize meditation, only mentioning it in passing in the translation. The practice of meditation and deep breathing exercises transform people such that they gain new views on the focused fields of their lives and their worlds. They are able to achieve a mystical experience of being at one with nature. These practices allow them to understand the discussion on making things equal, on par, or making things one; that is, they see things from the unifying dao perspective. This new perspective is called “that is it that goes by circumstances” (yinshi 因是), elaborated below. The famous story about the fasting of the heartmind in chapter 4 of the Zhuangzi provides another example of a Daoist meditation. Confucius advises Yan Hui: Make your will one! Don’t listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don’t listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the heartmind.32 The fasting of the heartmind describes a meditation practice of stopping the mind’s analysis and allowing the empty spirit to be totally absorbed in the dao-­field perspective. Harold Roth argues convincingly that the Nei-­ye chapter of the Guanzi is a meditation manual. He provides detailed evidence that shows “that inner cultivation is one of the most prevalent and significant influences in the [Zhuangzi] collection.”33 Roth argues that the Zhuangzi and the Nei-­ye chapter share three kinds of passages: those that use different wording for shared techniques and goals; those that use the same or similar wording for shared techniques and goals; and whole passages that are the same or similar.34 He proposes that there is a “bimodal” mystical experience in chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi, which is referred to by the phrase “the ‘that’s it’ which goes by circumstances (yinshi 因是)—the author’s distinctive label for the free and selfless cognition of perfected

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human beings who ‘pervade and unify’ (tongweiyi 通為一) everything in their world.”35 This meditative process is described as a progressive series of forgetting that leads to an insight of the unity of events and things. The unity of all fields and foci is described as the Great Pervader, the Great Thoroughfare, or the great ongoing process of transformation. Zhuangzi uses Confucius and Yan Hui to depict the forgetting process in the following passage: On another day he saw Confucius again and said, “I’m making progress.” “Where?” “I just sit and forget.” Confucius was taken aback. “What do you mean by just sit and forget?” “I let organs and limbs drop away, dismiss eyesight and hearing, cast off the body and expel knowledge, and go along with the Great Thoroughfare. This is what I mean by ‘just sit and forget.’ ” “If you go along with it, you have no desires, 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.”36 By dropping the body-­and-­mind, the meditator is able to get beyond the limitations of his or her limited focus-­perspective by merging with the Great Thoroughfare, the ongoing process of transformation, the dao-­ field. Getting beyond the limitations of one’s own limited perspective opens up new horizons for seeing things differently. With deference, a person develops the empathy to be able to see things from another’s perspective. This kind of personal transformation puts the practitioner in touch with a wider perspective and a different way of viewing the focused fields of the world and its creatures. As Roth says, “This cognition is the culmination of an apophatic practice like that in Inward Training.”37 The return to a natural perspective does not mean that the practitioner merely jumps from one focus to another with no fixed perspective on the field, but rather the meditation practice and the metaphorical stories show or display a perspective and understanding that are entirely different from other ordinary points of view. Zhuangzi develops a position that is not an ordinary one. Put paradoxically, Zhuangzi’s position



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is no-­position. The experience of the unity or oneness in the ongoing transformation of things overrides the linguistic expression of it. Zhuangzi is not presenting a theory and hypothesis that can be tested for their veracity. He is leading us to an embodied experience of living this life in a natural manner, not an artificial, socially or linguistically constructed one. The apophatic meditation practice transforms a person’s experience, perspective, and understanding of the focused-­de and the dao-­field. From the Nei-­ye chapter to the Zhuangzi, early Daoist meditation practices developed. Some of the basic practices continued to develop with inner alchemy and other forms of Daoist meditation, Daoyin 導 引, Qigong 氣功, and Taijiquan 太極拳 to this day.38 These meditation practices give practitioners insights into the art of contextualizing their own focused-­fields.

Notes 1.  TH, 45–77. 2.  Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 41; Zhuangzi, A Concordance to Chuang Tzu, Harvard-­Yenching Index Series no. 20 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 4/2/40. 3.  Laozi, Konkordanz zum Lao tzu, ed. C. C. Müller and R. G. Wagner (Munich: E. Schmitt, 1968), 47. Thomas Michael links these meditation practices to the art of nourishing life (yangsheng 養生) exercises in the Laozi. See Thomas Michael, In the Shadows of the Dao: Laozi, the Sage, and the “Daodejing” (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 93–138. 4.  Kathleen Taylor and Catherine Marienau, Facilitating Learning with the Adult Brain in Mind (San Francisco: Jossey-­Bass, 2016), 269–283. 5.  TH, 45–77. 6.  Roger T. Ames, “Classical Daoism in an Age of Globalization: From Abduction to Ars Contextualis in Early Daoist Cosmology,” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 12, no. 2 (2015): 105–148. 7.  Robert G. Henricks, Lao-­Tzu Te-­Tao Ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-­wang-­tui Texts (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), xx–xxii. 8.  Livia Kohn, Science and the Dao: From the Big Bang to Lived Perfection (St. Petersburg, FL: Three Pines, 2016); Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (New York: Harper Collins, 2010).

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9.  Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 466. 10.  TH, 39–40. 11.  Watson, Chuang Tzu, 173–183. 12.  Ibid., 177. 13.  Ames, “Classical Daoism,” 114. 14.  See Kim-­Chong Chong, Zhuangzi’s Critique of the Confucians: Blinded by the Human (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016), 51–54. 15.  TH, 46. 16.  Ibid., 46–58. 17.  Ibid., 56. 18.  Ibid., 55n16. 19.  Watson, Chuang Tzu, 30, 46. 20.  Ibid., 29. 21.  Ibid., 47. 22.  Ibid., 48. 23.  Ibid., 39–40 (modified). 24.  Ibid., 40–41 (modified). 25.  Ibid., 41 (modified). 26.  Ibid., 43 (modified). 27.  Livia Kohn, Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), 14, citing A. C. Graham, trans., Chuang-­tzu: The Seven Inner Chapters and Other Writings from the Book “Chuang-­ tzu” (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 265. 28.  Watson, Chuang Tzu, 77–78 (modified), in Kohn, Chinese Healing Exercises, 14. 29.  Watson, Chuang Tzu, 36. 30.  Ibid. 31.  TH, 58. 32.  Watson, Chuang Tzu, 57–58 (modified). 33.  Harold D. Roth, Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-­yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 153. 34.  Ibid. 35.  Ibid., 153, 154. 36.  Graham, Chuang-­tzu, 92 (modified); Watson, Chuang Tzu, 90 (modified). 37.  Roth, Original Tao, 154. 38.  Kohn, Chinese Healing Exercises; Kohn, Science and the Dao.

chapter 25

The Temporality of Dao Permanence and Transience Jing Liu

Peach and plum trees do not speak, but paths naturally lead to them. —Traditional Chinese saying

This chapter is an investigation of the philosophy of time in the early Daoist texts, inspired by Roger Ames’s interpretation of dao (道). Ames’s reading of dao is processual and dynamic. He and David Hall translate dao as “way-­making” and characterize it as “gerundive, processional, and dynamic: ‘a leading forth.’ ”1 They focus on the becoming of the world as it is experienced in ordinary life. Here particular things are not discrete substances but processual events “and are thus intrinsically related to the other ‘things’ that provide them context.”2 Creativity grows from the interrelatedness of becoming. Ames and Hall underscore “the reality of time, novelty, and change.”3 Their target is the separation between the changeless realm of being and the transitory world of becoming as embraced by traditional metaphysics: In the received Judeo-­Christian tradition, the all-­powerful God determines things, makes things. God, as Omnipotent Other Who commands the world into being, is Maker of the world, not its Creator. In the presence of the perfection that is God, nothing can be added or taken away. There can be no novelty or spontaneity. Thus, all subsequent acts of “creativity” are in fact secondary and derivative exercises of power. Creativity can make sense only in a processual world that admits of ontological parity among its constitutive events and of the spontaneous emergence of novelty.4 267

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So, for Ames and Hall, creativity spontaneously emerges within the process of transformation, which constitutes the essential meaning of the temporality of dao. Therefore, creativity is at once both the self-­ creativity of the dao and the co-­creativity of things. They are, in the end, the same process. However, the expression “the temporality of dao” is an oxymoron, for we normally consider the “temporality” of something as referring to it “in” time. Dao is not a thing, so how can it be “in” time? Clarification of this issue requires an elaboration of the philosophy of time in Chinese thought. In what follows I explore the philosophy of time in early Daoism from the perspective of process and creativity. I provide an analysis of shi 時, which illuminates the transience and contextual characteristics of time, as well as heng 恒 and chang 常, which are used in the Daodejing to designate the permanence of time, and the entwining of these two essential dimensions in time. The Chinese character for time is shi 時. The bronze script has two parts: the upper part is a foot, which symbolizes going or walking, and the lower part is the sun.5 It uses the image of the running of the sun to symbolize time. Time in this sense is not an abstract idea but one that is embodied in the seasonal interactions of nature. Time has scenery. As the Yijing says, “The sun goes and the moon comes; the moon goes and the sun comes; the sun and the moon push each other and brightness is generated. The coldness goes and the warmth comes; the warmth goes and the coldness comes; the coldness and the warmth push each other and the year is generated.”6 All things thus transform together “with” time. Time is not separate from the transformation of things. Rather, the transformation of things is a temporal, processual, and relational event, through which the things and their interactions are brought into existence. Chinese philosophy underscores the seasonal characteristic of time. It entails an intimate interplay of the alternation of seasons: there is a time for trees to blossom in spring and a time for the autumn wind to billow from the ocean before passing into the mountains, transforming into the autumn rain. In the running of the sun and the alteration of seasons, the passing away of time reveals itself. Shi 時 implies its homophone, shi 逝, which means to pass away or to perish. For this reason, time is often associated with the flow of water in Chinese culture. Perhaps the most famous example is Confucius’s observation of the passing of time. Standing by the Yellow River, he sighed and said, “So it



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passes away, not ceasing day or night!”7 However, this does not mean, as it does in Aristotelian philosophy, that time is a linear succession of “now” points, since this would neglect the richness of the transforming life. Rather, Confucius’s meaning is coextensive with the unfolding of nature itself. Seasonal time is contextual, and I and my environment are unobstructive aspects of this. Neither we nor things around us are taken as discrete atomistic individuals that transmigrate in time as though passing through a container. There is, rather, a substantial interfusion among the self, its environment, and time that constitutes the very existence of the self. I am not merely in time; time is in me, and time is me. There is a time of happiness in which spring blossoms bloom; there is a time of melancholy with the falling rain, a time of hardship and drifting snow, a time of warmth enjoyed with friends. There is a time of questioning, a time of enlightenment, then a time of questioning again. Seasonal time is not just the one-­dimensional fleeting of past, present, and future: it is multidirectional. It can be from the present to the past, from past to present, from present to present, from future to future, and from future to present. Time is in my reflection and my observation. Reflection and observation generate time. As my understanding of “self” changes, my temporality changes with it. What this shows is, again, the unobstructiveness of self and time. As the Huayan Sutra says, “One single thought penetrates all kalpas.” Time is the illumination of the present moment. Herein lies the inseparability of permanence and transience, which is well captured by the character heng 恒 in early Daoism. Heng is a recurring theme in the Daodejing. Since many of the heng characters in the Daodejing were later written as chang 常, I am going to begin with an analysis of the chang character. The bronze script is written as , which is, as the image depicts, a skirt.8 The Shuowen Jiezi reads, “The upper part of the clothing is called yi 衣; the lower part is called shang 裳.”9 Chang 常 is directly derived from shang 裳. The original meaning of chang 常, “a long skirt,” implies that constancy lies nowhere but in ordinary life. The Han Feizi says, Things that now come into being, now disappear; now are dead, now are alive again; now they are in prosperity, now are in decline; these are not what are called chang 常. Only that which lives with the beginning of the separation of heaven and earth, yet does not

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die or wane until the dissipation of heaven and earth, is called chang 常.10 Therefore, chang 常 has the meaning of constancy and abidingness. Yet as soon as we try to grasp from this any metaphysical meaning, we have already brushed past dao. What is called chang 常 does not lie in the changeless world of ideas that is separated from the mundane world. On the contrary, the constancy of dao lies in the ceaselessly transforming world. That is why Han Feizi continues, “That which is constant does not change, yet has no fixed principle [li 理], has no fixed principle at a permanent place. Thus it is ineffable.”11 Han Feizi also says, “The sage sees its nothingness, makes use of its ceaseless running, and therefore is forced to call it dao. It is only now that we can speak of it. For this reason it is said, ‘The dao that can be spoken of is not the constant dao.’ ”12 Next let us take a look at the heng 恒 character.13 Heng in the oracle bones is written as ; the outer strokes are the heavenly and the earthly, and the middle part the moon. It is intended to portray the waxing and waning of the moon; the Book of Poetry reads, “Like the waxing and waning of the moon, like the rising of the sun.”14 In Shuowen Jiezi, Duan Yucai comments on this phenomenon, “The moon waxes and becomes full; therefore it has the meaning of constancy and long-­lasting.”15 Heng is conventionally translated as “permanence.” The etymology of heng shows that the permanence of dao unfolds in the rotation of the sun and the moon, the ceaseless transformation of heaven and earth, and the ten thousand things in between. The permanence of dao is, therefore, not apart or distinct from the changes of the ten thousand things. The hengchang 恒常 that Daoism reflects upon is not the eternal, unchanging essence in Western metaphysics, the static and dead realm of eidos, where the changeless is carefully and resolutely isolated from the constant changes in the phenomenal world. No such dualism exists in Chinese thought. Chapter 25 of the Daodejing reads, “Standing alone, it does not suffer alteration; going around, it is inexhaustible” (獨立而 不改, 周行而不殆). This is a description of the heng of dao. Also, Cheng Yi comments on the heng hexagram as follows: Nothing changeless can persist (heng). It is through change and moving that things come to ends and start anew. Therefore it persists and never stops. Nothing between the heavenly and the earthly remains changeless, even things as grand and majestic as



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the mountains and the sea. For the changeless and immutable is not able to persist (heng 恒). Only that which changes with time is the constant dao (常道).16 What is called “time” is formed in the alteration of the four seasons. Heng is to observe the constancy of dao in the flux and the transformation of the ten thousand things. This is why Laozi says, Determinacy (you 有) and indeterminacy (wu 無) give rise to each other, Difficult and easy complement each other, Long and short set each other off, High and low complete each other, Refined notes and raw sounds harmonize with each other, And before and after lend sequence to each other, Such is constancy.17 It is in the constant transformation of the present that permanence discloses. And this is the temporality of dao. Important teachers are compared to peach and plum trees in Chinese. There is a time for a plum tree to bloom in the spring breeze. This is the tree’s time. We are happy to participate in its blossoming. It is, then, our time too.

Notes 1.  DDJ, 57. 2.  Ibid., 15. 3.  Ibid., 21. 4.  Ibid., 16. 5.  Figure reproduced by Joshua Mason and Fay Shen in accordance with the original image provided by the Multi-­function Chinese Character Database at Chinese University of Hong Kong, http://humanum.arts.cuhk. edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-­mf/search.php?word=時. 6.  “日往则月来, 月往则日来, 日月相推而明生焉; 寒往则暑来, 暑往则寒 来, 寒暑相推而岁成焉.” 7.  Analects 9.17. 8.  Figure reproduced by Joshua Mason and Fay Shen in accordance with the original image provided by the Multi-­function Chinese Character

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Database at Chinese University of Hong Kong, http://humanum.arts.cuhk .edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-­mf/search.php?word=常. 9.  上衣下裳. 10.  “夫物之一存一亡, 乍死乍生, 初盛而後衰者, 不可謂常. 唯夫與天地 之剖判也俱生, 至天地之消散也不死不衰者謂常.” Hanfeizi·Jie Lao (《韓非 子·解老》). 11.  “而常者, 無攸易, 無定理, 無定理非在於常所, 是以不可道也.” 12.  “聖人觀其玄虛, 用其周行, 強字之曰道, 然而可論, 故曰: 「道之可道, 非常道也.” 13.  Figure reproduced by Joshua Mason and Fay Shen in accordance with the original image provided by the Multi-­function Chinese Character Database at Chinese University of Hong Kong, http://humanum.arts.cuhk .edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-­mf/search.php?word=亙. 14.  Notice that the character for time, shi 時, symbolizes the running of the sun. 15.  [漢] 許慎撰, [清]段玉裁注: 《說文解字注》 , 上海古籍出版社, 2010, 681. 16.  “天下之理未有不動而能恒者也, 動則終而復始, 所以恒而不窮. 凡天 地所生之物, 雖山嶽之堅厚, 未有能不變者也. 故‘恒’非‘一定’之謂也, ‘一定’ 則不能恒矣. 惟隨時變異, 乃常道也.” (程頤, 《周易程氏傳·恒卦》). 17.  Daodejing, chap. 2 (modified translation from DDJ).

chapter 26

Whence Do You Know the Fish Are Happy? Knowing Well and Living Well Kuan-­Hung Chen

The Happy Fish Debate between Zhuangzi and Hui Shi is one of the most well known and widely discussed passages not only in classical Daoist texts but also arguably in the entirety of Chinese intellectual history. The profundity and open-­endedness of this passage invites interpretations from different angles and perspectives. Revisiting this passage in the context of this volume is appropriate, not only because Roger Ames published two book chapters and numerous journal articles on this passage but also because it resonates with Ames’s teachings in a profound manner. As a teacher, Ames not only transmits representational knowledge but also focuses on cultivating productive resonance with students that embodies nonrepresentational knowledge: relational acquaintance and competence. These aspects were captured in the Happy Fish Debate. Here is the passage, divided into five claims: (I)  莊子與惠子遊於濠梁之上. 莊子曰: “儵魚出遊從容, 是魚之樂 也.” Zhuangzi and Hui Shi were strolling on a bridge above the Hao River. Zhuangzi said, “Out swim the minnows, so free and easy; that’s the le (enjoyment) of the fish.” (II)  惠子曰: “子非魚, 安知魚之樂?” Hui Shi said, “You are not a fish. Whence do you zhi (know) the le of the fish?”

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(III)  莊子曰: “子非我, 安知我不知魚之樂?” Zhuangzi said, “You aren’t me. Whence do you zhi that I do not zhi the le of the fish?” (IV)  惠子曰: “我非子, 固不知子矣; 子固非魚也. 子之不知魚之樂, 全矣.” Hui Shi said, “Not being you, I do not zhi you; that, not being a fish, you do not zhi the le of the fish is thus comprehensive (quan).” (V)  莊子曰: “請循其本. 子曰 ‘汝安知魚樂’ 云者, 既已知吾知之而 問我, 我知之濠上也.” Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to the root. When you said, ‘Whence do you zhi the le of the fish?’ you asked me the question already zhi-­ing my zhi. I zhi it from up above the River Hao.”1 The goal of this chapter is to provide a specific set of conceptual lenses through which the readers may grasp a Daoist vision of the integration between the epistemic issue (knowing well; related to the notion of zhi 知) and the ethical issue (living well; associated with the notion of le 樂). I choose not to translate both terms for the sake of revisiting the productive ambiguity in this passage. If Ames’s position is warranted, then both zhi and le are essentially concerned with relationality, as much as with rationality. Such relational understandings of zhi and le, I would like to argue, will lead to a Daoist conviction: knowing well entails living well.

Interpretive Contexts: Le and Zhi Le 樂 Le 樂 is usually translated as “pleasure,” “happiness,” or “enjoyment” in English. And the general philosophical discussions of these—from ancient Greece and medieval and modern Europe to contemporary Euro-­ American academia—are concerned with hedonism, desire, rewards-­ and-­ punishments, sensory stimuli, introspection, and cognition. Thus, the central theme of the Happy Fish Debate is highly suspicious. Did they discuss the knowability of the fish’s happiness, or did they focus on a happy Master Zhuang who projected his desire onto the fish?



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Le has broader associated meanings that are required for a fuller appreciation of the Happy Fish Debate. In addition to happiness and enjoyment, le is also associated with music (yue, same character) and medicine (yao 藥, with the herb radical above). With this cluster of semantic associations in mind, there is an understanding that le is relational resonance and is medicinal. In the thirteenth chapter of the Zhuangzi, there is a distinction between the music of ren 人 (distinguished persons) and the music of tian 天 (the totality of transformative processes). The key difference is the object with which the music is harmonious: the music that harmonizes with human affairs is the music of ren, while the music that harmonizes with the totality of transformative processes is the music of tian. No matter what the object to be harmonized with is, harmonizing requires intentionality as well as cultivated responsiveness. Even though the boundary between the harmonizing and the harmonized becomes blurred—and even unrecognizable—in the harmony, the harmony itself represents an optimal outcome of productive relationships. In traditional Chinese medicine, a prescription (fang 方) usually consists of a mixture of herbs that serve four different functions: junyao 君藥 (the lord herbs), which address the main symptoms; chenyao 臣藥 (the minister herbs), which assist junyao to function well; shiyao 使藥 (the messenger herbs), which open paths for both junyao and chenyao; and heyao 和藥 (the harmonizing herbs), which harmonize all the herbs in the prescription. Once again the underlying understanding of such distinctions is irreducibly relational: there is no lord without ministers and no ministers without a lord; there is no messenger without more important agents who have messages to convey; and there is nothing to harmonize without other things and events. In the context of the Zhuangzi, however, le is in contrast to, but closely associated with, emotions and feelings such as bei 悲 (sadness), ai 哀 (grief), and e 惡 (disgust and dislike). Considering the musical and medicinal associations, le is best understood as an emotion or feeling of productive harmony void of dissonance. To understand le appropriately thus requires learning the contextual networks of the whole situation.

Zhi 知 Taking the relational and medicinal dimensions of le into consideration, now we turn to reexamine the traditional interpretations of zhi.

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There is no doubt that this passage is significantly epistemic. But what was there to be known? Did Zhuangzi and Hui Shi pursue the same kind of knowledge? Answers to these questions play crucial roles in a person’s interpretation of this debate. Another interpretive consideration is differing epistemic frameworks across philosophical traditions. Epistemology as a philosophical discipline has long focused on analyzing beliefs in the form of propositions—S knows that p. The knowing subject (S) here is not a central concern because the unchallenged assumption has been that beliefs (that p) with good qualities—such as truth and justifiability—lead to knowledge. Thus, forms of knowledge other than propositions are more or less marginalized in the conventional epistemic scheme. Nevertheless, the person plays a central role in the epistemic framework of the Zhuangzi: “There can only be authentic knowing (zhenzhi 真知) when there is an authentic person (zhenren 真人).”2 In addition, according to Christoph Harbsmeier’s observation, one of the mainstream ways for early Chinese writers to understand knowledge was in terms of competence.3 Both perspectives—that persons are the sources of knowledge and that persons are the foci, if not the loci, of competence—imply that the primary target of epistemic investigation is the quality of the knowing persons. In other words, what was epistemically prioritized in the Zhuangzi has been marginalized in conventional epistemology. Therefore, a more careful epistemic treatment is also needed for a comprehensive interpretation of this debate. Michael Polanyi’s notion of “tacit knowing” is helpful for sorting out the different epistemic orientations. Aligning himself with Thomas Reid and William James, Polanyi argues that nonrepresentational knowledge comes prior to representational knowledge and makes representational knowledge possible. Polanyi states, “No map can read itself. Neither can the most explicit possible treatise on map-­reading read a map.”4 The point is that the mediation of nonrepresentational knowledge (the firsthand familiarity and competence of map reading) is needed in order for representational knowledge (the map) to work. It is because the accuracy—and therefore the proper functioning—of representational knowing is essentially grounded in humans’ competent interactions with the environing conditions. These kinds of competent interactions—according to Dale Cannon—are in themselves nonrepresentational and have everything to do with firsthand familiarity and acquaintance.5 The Polanyian knowing, in this particular regard,



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resonates with the Zhuangzian presupposition that persons are the primary foci of knowledge. Such positioning necessarily involves an epistemic awareness of both one’s inescapably partial, finite, and fallible perspective and the personal, relational, and indwelling state of one’s knowledge. Nonrepresentational knowledge is in this sense concerned with firsthand familiarity with the known. As a consequence, knowledge by representation—including propositional knowledge—is thus considered to be acquired secondhand. What distinguishes firsthand from secondhand knowledge is that the former cannot be made explicit by articulation. Of course, it is not the case that firsthand familiarity with the known (hereafter acquaintance knowledge) and secondhand knowledge by representation (hereafter representational knowledge) are necessarily mutually exclusive in the sense that if we have one, we will not be able to have the other at the same time. It does make a difference, though, if what was meant to refer to acquaintance knowledge (familiarity with a harmonious situation) is interpreted as representational knowledge (the proposition that the fish are happy).

Reexamining the Debate Let’s reexamine the five claims in the debate, keeping the forgoing exposition in mind.

(I) The first sentence of the Happy Fish passage provides key ­contextual information in an efficient and concise way. Readers know what was there (at least two persons—Zhuangzi and Hui Shi—plus at least one bridge over the river, and some fish) and the location (a bridge over the River Hao). The only verb— applied to both the humans and the fish—is you 遊, singled out by Hans-­Georg Moeller as one of the very few philosophically significant terms used frequently in the Zhuangzi.6 Interestingly, you as destination-­less wandering can be considered one of the wu-­forms identified by Hall and Ames.7 This very term qualifies the relationship between Zhuangzi and Hui Shi in a meaningful way, at least from the perspective of the storyteller. Engaging in destination-­less wandering with people who share no friendship is just wasting time; therefore, the you-­ing of

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Zhuangzi and Hui Shi is a highly intentional action. Zhuangzi then initiates the verbal communication, most likely with the intention to invite the resonance of Hui Shi as indicated by the term le, though le is directly associated with the fish here. (II) Hui Shi—not only an intellectual rival but also the prime minister of the state of Wei who is willing to wander with Zhuangzi though the destination is unknown—responds with a sophistical move. An interesting transition is that Hui Shi transforms Zhuangzi’s statement into a knowledge claim, thereby introducing the distinction between the knower and the known. It is possible that the original intention that motivated Zhuangzi to describe the scene was poetic or aesthetic; in other words, Zhuangzi might just have wanted to say, “What a beautiful and pleasant scene!” Hui Shi’s move introduces potential dissonance, since an otherwise enjoyable moment might have been ruined by this intellectual challenge. However, Zhuangzi makes no objection to Hui Shi’s arrangement and the story goes on. (III) Following Hui Shi’s reasoning pattern that changed the rhythm of the conversation and transformed the nature of the conversation into a debate, Zhuangzi asks an even more complicated question: Is it possible for Hui Shi to make a knowledge claim that Zhuangzi has no knowledge regarding the le of the fish? (IV) It seems to be the case that Hui Shi does not want to be involved in the circular argumentation and is ready to settle for an agreement. He attempts to lure Zhuangzi, hoping to win the argument with Zhuangzi’s endorsement of his sample-­to-­ sample reasoning.8 The process of argument is comprehensive and complete (quan), Hui Shi claims. Quan is a highly technical term that evaluates the comprehensiveness of an argument in classical China: one of the most effective ways to dismiss the position of the other party of the debate is to demonstrate that it is far from being comprehensive. (V)  Nevertheless, by thinking outside Hui Shi’s box, Zhuangzi implicitly criticizes the comprehensiveness and completeness of Hui Shi’s claim. For the sake of the argument at least, Hui Shi is willing to accept that the discreteness of individual knowers prevents them from knowing each other in (IV). Zhuangzi counters Hui Shi, stating that knowledge, at its root (ben 本), is relational by pointing out the relationship between two knowers



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and the particular standpoints that they occupy. Knowledge is relational, localized, and contextualized. It would be a stretch to claim that, for Zhuangzi, knowledge is always relational, localized, and contextualized anytime and anywhere. There is no textual evidence to support that Zhuangzi attempted to make a universal statement about knowledge in this passage. What Zhuangzi attempted to establish is that, in this particular case, relatedness, locality, and contextual situatedness constitute an authentic and unmediated path to acquaintance knowledge that serves as the root of other kinds of knowing. Ironically, unless Zhuangzi’s position is falsified, it will remain a powerful antithesis to an abstract universal statement about knowledge. The story ends without mentioning Hui Shi’s responses to Zhuangzi, and we do not know exactly whether there was a winner of this debate. Regardless of the speculations of who won the debate, which might not be the point of this story, Zhuangzi’s point is unmistakable. Le is concerned with appreciative resonance, and the knowledge of le results from neither privileged ability nor access (e.g., that Zhuangzi was an animal whisperer) nor ownership (i.e., this le is neither owned by the fish nor possessed by Zhuangzi) but from intentional participation from particular standpoints.

Knowing Well and Living Well The knowledge that Zhuangzi identified as the “root” is primarily concerned with acquaintance, a first-­person rapport with the terrain: the River Hao, the fish, the bridges, and the beloved friend who was willing to invest time to wander at ease together. Zhuangzi was not pursuing any infallible linguistic mapping of the happiness of the fish; he was cultivating and developing relationship with the known. Zhuangzi’s major objection and criticism is that Hui Shi broke this holistic and holographic process into parts and then claimed comprehensiveness. Rather than claiming certainty and infallibility, Zhuangzi’s statement regarding the le of the fish is an invitation to further conversation and participation. Given that knowing is intimately associated with the process of relationship cultivation, there is no singular description that fully captures the totality of the process. Zhi in this context is demonstrated by a person’s firsthand familiarity with the environs and the competence

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to participate in meaningful resonance that leads to an awareness and recognition of le. Zhi thus means more than knowing and knowledge; it also refers to wisdom and realization. There is a profound understanding that a person who achieves zhi must be wise and capable of making things real. Both being wise and being capable of making things real are difficult to understand impersonally. In other words, personal relationships are part of the essential fabric of recognizing and understanding wisdom and realization. Thus, zhi has an ethical dimension that conventional epistemology does not usually concern itself with. The emphasis on firsthand familiarity and acquaintance naturally leads to looking up to wise and knowledgeable exemplars who have made contributions to the communal knowledge in their conduct as epistemic paradigms. Wise knowers (zhizhe 知者) thus are exemplars who live well. Zhi and le, in this passage, are mutually entailing. Le is a relational quality that cannot be forced into being by imposition. Shallow le may come into being by a contingent congregation of factors considered to be good; profound and long-­lasting le, however, cannot be achieved without intentional cultivation. Therefore, the best shot for realizing le—in the sense of making it real—is to have a community of people who aim to achieve zhi, striving to develop direct relationships and first-­person rapport with each other, with the community that they are part of, and with the terrain where their community is located. This is not to say that representational knowledge has no importance at all; nevertheless, representational knowledge alone cannot replace acquaintance knowledge. Fruitful correlations can be mapped by representational knowledge; they cannot be achieved, however, without acquaintance knowledge and intentional participation. Both zhi and le are significant in the context of education. While transmitting knowledge is indeed an important goal of education, cultivating the enjoyment of learning among students is also essential. Good teachers demonstrate zhi not only by transmitting representational knowledge but also by firsthand familiarity and acquaintance with their students. Teaching that focuses on cultivating productive resonance with students leads to le in a noncoercive manner and in turn enables students to someday become better teachers. This kind of delightful participatory education exemplifies the tenor of Zhuangzi’s conversation with Hui Shi on that bridge over the River Hao.9



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Notes 1.  Zhuangzi, chap. 17 (translation based on Graham’s rendering, with minor modifications). See A. C. Graham, trans., Chuang-­Tzu: The Inner Chapters (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), 123. 2.  Zhuangzi, chap. 15; cf. Graham, Chuang-­Tzu, 84. 3.  Christoph Harbsmeier, “Conceptions of Knowledge in Ancient China,” in Epistemological Issues in Classical Chinese Philosophy, ed. Hans Lenk and Gregor Paul (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 15. 4.  Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 30. 5.  Dale Cannon, “Constructing Polanyi’s Tacit Knowing as Knowing by Acquaintance Rather than Knowing by Representation: Some Implications,” in Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical 29, no. 2 (2002): 28. 6.  Hans-­ Georg Moeller, “Rambling without Destination: On Daoist ‘You-­ing’ in the World,” in ZHF, 248. 7.  See, e.g., DDJ, 36–48. 8.  This sample-­to-­sample reasoning, though appealing to some readers, is a weak form of induction. 9.  Roger T. Ames, “Knowing in the Zhuangzi: ‘From Here, on the Bridge, over the River Hao,’ ” in Wandering at Ease in the “Zhuangzi,” ed. Roger T. Ames (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 220.

part vii

Critical Social and Political Directions Two senses of the word “critical” are highlighted here: first as “critique,” these social and political directions are critical in that they involve a detailed and thorough scholarly evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of Confucian philosophy; second as “vital,” these evaluations are critical insofar as the viability of classical Confucian philosophy for contemporary life depends on the ability of Confucianism to address these concerns. The contributors to this part see Chinese philosophy to be rich with resources for contemporary social and political critiques, and all see Confucianism especially as in need of explicit and dedicated engagement with inclusivity. The final chapters theorize from the standpoint of gender, and in so doing extend Ames’s work on Confucian role ethics into contemporary critical social and political philosophy. Sor-­hoon Tan’s chapter, “Confucianism as Transformative Practice,” analyzes the relation of the ethical to the political in Confucianism and argues that any moralistic interpretation of Confucian philosophy—in which the political is subsumed under the ethical—will inherently serve to keep the powerful in power and to obscure those oppressive mechanisms that require political remedies. Amy Olberding, in “The Promise and Problem of Creativity and Li,” focuses on the Amesian interpretation of li (ritual propriety) in the Analects. Ames’s interpretation is most notable for his emphasis on creativity over adherence to rules. Like grammar, rules have a place, but meaning-­making does—and often must—break with the rules to fit the aesthetic context. Olberding notes that while the creative interpretation 283

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is promising in terms of building trust in community relations, the rule-­ bound interpretation is also beneficial once we consider the pervasiveness of implicit social biases in society. There is a risk in ignoring these biases when promoting social order grounded in creative li. Sydney Morrow’s chapter, “Men Tell Me Paternalism Is Good,” provides a feminist analysis of Confucian philosophy. She examines the role of paternalism in Confucian philosophy, both in the classical texts and in the present-­day academy. By engaging an Amesian presentation of classical Confucianism with the works of Fei Xiaotong and Li Zehou, Morrow lays the foundation for future feminist transformations of contemporary Confucian societies. Li-­Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, in “Confucianism Reimagined,” turns the reader’s attention to the analysis of transnational feminist discourse. She argues for a care-­informed, intersectional, transnational Confucian feminism in a discursive academic space where Western liberal feminism is not automatically elevated above non-­Western feminisms and philosophies. Here the question is not whether there are feminist concerns with how power operates in the Confucian worldview, but rather whether feminists should be concerned with how power operates when working with Confucian philosophy in feminist spaces.

chapter 27

Confucianism as Transformative Practice Ethical Impact and Political Pitfalls Sor-­hoon Tan

No serious scholar today denies the close relationship between politics and ethics in Confucian thought and practice. Political matters are among the wide-­ranging concerns and issues addressed by Confucian teachings centered in cultivating ren 仁 (authoritative conduct), yi 義 (appropriateness), li 禮 (ritual propriety), zhi 知 (wisdom), xin 信 (trustworthiness), and other excellent characteristics of exemplary persons. The best government is that of a sage, the highest ethical achievement of humanity. The exact nature and significance of the relationship between the political and the ethical is, however, open to debate; at one extreme, one could view Confucian philosophy as advocating the inseparability of the political and the ethical, with the former completely subsumed under the ethical. John Dewey, for example, in The Public and Its Problems made this observation about traditional China: “Politics is not a branch of morals; it is submerged in morals. All virtues are summed up in filial piety.”1 One of the most important twentieth-­century Confucian thinkers, Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909–1995), distinguished premodern Confucian concern with government as “administrative” (zhidao 治道)—answering the question of how best to bring about social order—contrasted with the “political” (zhengdao 政道) concern answering the question of “who rules” and what legitimates a particular political regime.2 More recently, the inseparability of the political and the ethical, denying the political any privileged status, is among the reasons Sungmoon Kim cites for the inapplicability of Michael Walzer’s “dirty hands” dilemma in Confucian virtue politics: Confucian sage rulers handle problematic situations of governing with moral virtues that are 285

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not qualitatively different from those that the common people are to acquire and practice in their daily lives.3 In contrast, some have identified concerns with procedural matters and norms of “order” that they argue are not subordinated to ethical ends.4 They gesture toward a distinctive political domain or dimension that fits better with the modern assertion of the autonomy of the political. However, the asserted autonomy requires a specific conception of the political that arose only in the modern era, since the Enlightenment and its legacies in subsequent centuries.5 Chris Thornhill notes that arguments for the political as an autonomous, even sui generis, category explain the political by reference to assumed but contestable philosophical anthropologies—be it Carl Schmitt’s assumption of human predisposition for “competitive conflict” over power or Hannah Arendt’s account of authentic human life in terms of a specific capacity for freedom.6 It is highly questionable whether the political in the Confucian canonical texts is autonomous, or even whether it is justifiable to “modernize” Confucianism by reconstructing its philosophy to accommodate the autonomously political. One is probably distorting Confucianism (if not all ancient Chinese thought) by reading into its texts a historically and culturally specific category from an alien civilization of different times. Acknowledging the procrustean danger of imposing modern theoretical frameworks and concepts when approaching Confucianism should nevertheless not blind us to the possibility that contemporary theories and concepts about the political raise issues and highlight problems pertinent to contemporary life that are relevant to the application of Confucian cultures to real practices in order to save us from today’s predicaments. The discussion that follows will focus on the worry that moralism (of which Confucian subordination of the political to the ethical is a version) will get in the way of solving problems that need political solutions, and moreover, in nonideal political arenas, the good intentions of moralists almost invariably end up being manipulated by those whose interests have little to do with ethics but who see advantages in dressing them up in moralistic aspirations. This concern is not new. Some might say that, in retrospect, it summarizes the “fate” of Confucianism in traditional China. It might explain why the Confucian ideal community was never realized even though Confucian teachings were widely accepted and practiced, with numerous officials attempting to govern the empire according to Confucian ideas



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of good government, and prominent Confucian scholars trying hard to persuade those in power to act like Confucian sage rulers. Granted that one should not exaggerate the failures and forget the many impressive achievements of Sinic civilization, at least some if not most of which owe something to Confucian practices and values, it remains a valid concern whether one might repeat the mistakes of the past by not recognizing what went wrong. Could contemporary Confucians do better than their distinguished predecessors in putting Confucius’s ideas into practice, in “bringing peace to all under heaven”? Historically, Confucians are no strangers to imperfect situations, starting with Mencius advising the use of quan 權 (discretionary judgment) when ethical ritual norms in specific circumstances result in ethically unacceptable consequences.7 Even Confucius, in his own attitude toward legalistic governance—despite his desire to rid the court of cases altogether, “in hearing cases, he is no different from others”—displayed a realistic attitude to social and political life.8 As pragmatic realists, Confucians would be open to investigating the best ways to solve any problem, including fully leveraging the latest means of producing new knowledge—including those of natural and social sciences—unknown to the ancients. Today’s predicaments, often of global scale, have no easy escape. A great deal of hard work, fact finding, hard thinking about complex connections among dynamic factors, difficult decisions in weighing priorities, and much more is required to achieve even some progress. Contemporary Confucians should not deny that or naively believe that one could “govern the world with half of the Analects.” The World Consortium for Research on Confucian Cultures (WCRCC), an academic body initiated by Roger Ames in 2014, is dedicated to fostering the collaboration among international scholars studying Confucian cultures and their application to real social practices. In promoting research into Confucian cultures, the WCRCC expands the horizon for today’s Confucians, as the idea of cultures implies entire ways of life with their diverse and complex dynamics. The WCRCC project will live up to its global promise if it accommodates diversity and remains open to new ideas and open critical discussions in its inquiries into how Confucian cultures could help solve the world’s problems. The task is not one for philosophers alone, for the inquiries must be multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary; nor is it one for academics alone, for the calm reflection facilitated by ivory towers should attend to real problems of the world and must pass the test of actual practice.

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What Confucians would not and should not compromise on is the need for appropriate ethical perspectives to guide the inquiries needed to solve problems. This does not mean imposing some form of absolutist morality on everyone. In a pluralistic environment, Confucians interested in practical impact should also welcome critical debates in which varied interpretations of Confucian ethics engage one another and other ethical perspectives. In insisting on the inseparability of ethics and politics in the sense that some kind of ethical framework is always already assumed in political decisions and actions, Confucians would argue that the philosophical anthropology assumed by theorists such as Schmitt (i.e., that human nature is dominated by “competitive conflict”), which underlies contemporary claims about the autonomy of the political, is itself as much an ethical framework as is the Confucian assumption that harmony is the basic potential of the cosmos and human flourishing. The assumptions that competitive conflict and the pursuit of self-­interest (if not selfish interests) are inevitable and perhaps desirable have arguably driven modern political economy into its present predicaments; the suggestion of changing track by experimenting with a different set of assumptions and working out what they require in real practice to change our ways should hold some appeal for many audiences. Roger Ames remarked in an interview in 2015 that “collaboration between the academy and the government in China,” which has been part of normal Confucian practice through the ages, is constantly looked upon with suspicion by many American academics.9 Confucius himself sought political influence either in office or through giving advice to those in power and, in the process, was willing to associate with ethically dubious characters, including Gongshan Furao and Bixi, who were plotting rebellions, and Duke Ling’s notorious concubine, Nanzi, if it would allow him to put his teachings into practice.10 Although Confucius’s teaching eventually had much more influence than Confucius had during his own lifetime, in subsequent centuries it was still hard to find persons who united ethical character and ideals with political aspirations and power. The real impacts Confucian values and ideas had in social and political life probably owe a considerable debt to Confucians’ collaboration with political (and other forms of) power. In any such collaboration, the risk that ethical aspirations might fall victim to unethical political motives and goals is ever present. The Confucian response to the risk of being made use of by cunning and unscrupulous politicians could be found in Analects 6.26:



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Zaiwo inquired, “If an authoritative person (ren 仁) were informed that there is another authoritative person down in the well, would he go in after him?” The Master replied, “How could this be? The exemplary person (junzi 君子) can be sent to save him, but not to jump in after him; he can be deceived (qi 欺), but not duped (wang 罔).”11 Confucians, as fallible human beings even if they are authoritative and exemplary persons, can be mistaken and therefore can be deceived, but such errors would neither undermine their own reasoning capacity about reasonable and appropriate conduct in any given situation nor lead them to commit a wrong against their own ethical ideals and standards. When reproved by Zilu about his willingness to answer the summons of Bixi, Confucius’s response in Analects 17.7 is illuminating. Zilu said, “In the past I have heard you, Master, say, ‘Exemplary persons (junzi 君子) will have nothing to do with someone who personally behaves badly (bushan 不善).’ Bixi is plotting rebellion with the Zhongmou stronghold. How could you justify going to him?” “You are right,” said the Master. “It is as you say. But is it not said, ‘With the hardest, grinding will not wear it thin.’ Is it not said, ‘With the whitest, dyeing will not turn it black.’ Am I just some kind of gourd? How can I allow myself to be strung up on the wall and not be eaten?” In collaboration with those whose characters and motives might fall below one’s ethical standards, one must be steadfast enough in one’s ethical commitments to avoid being led astray. One must remain vigilant and know where and when to draw the line before the attempt to influence another toward goodness results in one’s own ethical downfall. One might seek guidance for balancing ethical commitment with political involvement in Confucius’s advice to his students and in the historical personalities he praised. For instance, in Analects 8.13 one finds the following: Do not enter a state in crisis, and do not tarry in one that is in revolt. Be known when the way prevails in the world, but remain

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hidden away when it does not. It is a disgrace to remain poor and without rank when the way prevails in the state; it is a disgrace to be wealthy and of noble rank when it does not. Similarly, in Analects 15.7 Confucius says: How true was Shiyu! When the way (dao 道) prevailed in the state, he was as true as an arrow; when it did not, he was still as true as an arrow. And Qu Boyu was indeed an exemplary person (junzi 君子)! When the way prevailed in the state, he gave of his service, and when it did not, he rolled it up and tucked it away. Yet, is withdrawing from public service, and perhaps contributing to “good government” by being filial and brotherly at home, the only appropriate response of a Confucian when the way does not prevail in the world? It would seem not. When commenting on other historical personalities whose “talents were lost to the people”—individuals who lived in times when the way did not prevail—Confucius is not judgmental about whether they “compromised their purposes or brought disgrace on their own persons” in their efforts to transform the world through political action. Confucius had “no presuppositions as to what may or may not be done.”12 There is no universal rule in Confucian philosophy and practice for any ethical decision, no simple black-­and-­white answers as to whether, to what extent, and in what way one should involve oneself in politics or associate with others with political agendas who might not share one’s ethical commitments. For Confucians who wish to make a difference in the real world, there will always be the risks: of being corrupted by worldly ambition; of being deceived and made use of by cunning manipulators; of making errors of judgment; of having good intentions produce disastrous consequences. Any of these would lead to failure, either in making things worse or at least in not positively improving the world. However, this is no excuse for hiding in an ivory tower, turning up one’s nose at “dirty politics,” and ignoring the predicaments that trouble the world. This illusion of personal purity, rather than an expression of the highest ethical ideals, is a form of vanity and cowardice. Such persons care more about their reputations than they do about improving the lives of people around them, and are afraid of failure bringing only blame and condemnation. In contrast, the most resolute commitment



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to the Confucian way expresses itself in the courage to do one’s best to put Confucius’s teachings into practice—which is not confined to political action narrowly defined—while always aware of the many pitfalls that await the ethically unwary, aware that failure, with its attendant blame and condemnation by future generations, remains ever likely.

Notes 1.  John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, in The Later Works of John Dewey, ed. Jo Ann Boydston and Larry Hickman (Charlottesville, VA: Intelex, 2003), electronic ed., 2:261–262. 2.  Mou Zongsan, “Zhengdao yu Zhidao,” in Complete Works (Taipei: Lianjing, 2003), vol. 10. 3.  Sungmoon Kim, “Achieving the Way: Confucian Virtue Politics and the Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy East and West 66, no. 1 (2016): 156–158. 4.  Justin Tiwald, “A Right of Rebellion in the Mengzi?,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 7 (2008): 269–282; Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 5.  Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. Georg Schwab (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007). 6.  Chris Thornhill, “The Autonomy of the Political: A Socio-­Theoretical Response,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 35, no. 6 (2009): 711–712. 7.  D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1970), 4A17. 8.  ACPT, 12.14; cf. 2.3. 9.  Rogelio Leal Benavides conducted the interview in Beijing, July 2015 (unpublished transcript). 10.  Analects 17.5, 17.7, 6.28. 11.  All translations from the Analects are from ACPT. 12.  Analects 18.8.

chapter 28

The Promise and Problem of Creativity and Li Amy Olberding

When I attended graduate school at the University of Hawai‘i, one of my more memorable experiences was hearing Professor Roger Ames protest a new regime in the Philosophy Department’s computer room. A member of staff had posted a set of rules on the computer room’s door, rules that, if memory serves, regulated such issues as how long one might use a computer while others were waiting and the need for students to defer to faculty should the latter need the computers. Ames’s objection was that the new rules solved a problem no one in fact had. The rules specified in formal and rather rigid language how sharing resources should transpire, yet we were, already and under our own powers, sharing quite well: people asked considerately about others’ needs and deferred to others as the situation recommended. To institute rules was thus an affront to li 禮, already in fluid and elegant operation, a gesture that transformed a harmonious environment into rigidly regulated space in which explicit commands to share and defer supplanted the better intentions and good dispositions of all involved. Ames’s response to our computer room rules reflects in miniature themes that he and his principal collaborators, Henry Rosemont Jr. and David Hall, developed across a substantial body of work in Confucian ethics. Ames, Rosemont, and Hall consistently evince a concern that formalized rules and rigid prescription can frustrate valuable social processes such as informal accord, interpersonal consideration, and context sensitivity. Recognition of the value of such processes infuses their shared and enlivening preoccupation with how creativity seats in early Confucian ethics. We need space, their work emphatically suggests, to be 292



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our best selves, and that space cannot be well won under the constraints of explicit commands and too-­formal structures. Likewise, communities and the people who make them are particular, layered in complexities derived not only from members’ distinctive personalities, temperaments, and backgrounds but also from the myriad ways these may combine, interweave, and sum together. Rules and formal constraints ought not deny opportunities to volunteer deference or generously share. More broadly, they ought not stifle the personal and interpersonal expressions of self through which robust community is formed. Much in the collaborative work of Ames, Rosemont, and Hall explores how creativity operates in early Confucianism. I want here to focus on a comparably early exploration, Hall and Ames’s account of li in the Analects. On Hall and Ames’s reading, a strong disposition toward creativity is built into Confucius’s preoccupation with li, with the moral micropractices that include civility, good manners, etiquette, and high ritual. They write that one signally important function of li is to serve as “a vehicle for reifying the creative insights of the self-­cultivating person.”1 Creative, expressive, personal performance, not adherence to rules, marks what it means to follow li in the sense and spirit intended by Confucius. In what follows, I sketch both the promise and the problem of this account. There is, I think, a puzzle that li presents, particularly for scholars such as Ames, Hall, and myself—scholars who are (if I may speak for them too) less interested in straightforward historical study than in what li can do philosophically for us and, more particularly, how the early Confucian account of li can jointly explain social relations we enjoy and articulate paths forward for those we do not enjoy. The ­puzzle, in brief, is just how to seat creativity with rules.

The Promise of Creativity and Li David Hall and Roger Ames’s commendation of creativity in the practice of li stems in part from a conviction that neglecting the personal dimensions of li has “robbed classical Confucianism of considerable profundity,” aligning it with conservative impulses at odds with what we find not only in the Analects but in many classical sources.2 Tradition matters—of course it does—but how it matters is core to Hall and Ames’s account. The person who self-­cultivates operates by “enacting the formal structures of his tradition” but must simultaneously “adapt the tradition to his novel circumstances and intentions” and thereby

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“recover these formal structures as an apparatus for developing and disclosing his own significance.”3 Not only is creative innovation not at odds with robust performance of li, but it is required. For it is through active personalization of li that the self is made and, equally significant, made available to others with whom, and through whom, community and relations are formed. Critics of Hall and Ames’s emphasis on the creative and expressive aspects of li object that Hall and Ames simply go too far. Stephen Wilson succinctly captures the critics’ concern, arguing that Hall and Ames’s account renders practitioners “almost completely free of the confines of tradition in their quest for personal significance.”4 Hall and Ames’s early Confucians, Wilson contends, resemble jazz musicians, eschewing formal limits in order to “improvise on the songs and styles that engage their imaginations.”5 Such concerns find support in passages in the Analects that appear to emphasize close adherence to traditional forms and rules, such as when Confucius tells Yan Hui not to look, listen, speak of, or do “anything that violates li.”6 While many contemporary scholars would likely concur that strident conservatism is at odds with any deeper investigation of the Analects, they shrink from the scope of freedom implied in Hall and Ames’s account, as well as Ames’s additional collaborations with Henry Rosemont Jr. What room the text affords for innovation upon li is more modest and grounded in a presumption of greater deference and conformity to existing, traditional forms. The passages to which scholars often appeal in looking for ways to integrate a more moderate creativity into the text’s account of li do indeed offer but the narrowest latitude. In Analects 9.3, Confucius himself sanctions an alteration in ritual, allowing that economic frugality in hard times renders the substitution of a silk cap for a hemp cap acceptable. However, he then pivots into rejecting another modification, insisting that bowing after ascending the stairs to greet a superior fails to demonstrate the deference encoded in the traditional form of doing so before making one’s ascent. In a second passage, Analects 17.21, Confucius’s student Zaiwo suggests that abbreviating mourning rituals would promote a host of significant improvements. Following an exchange in which Confucius asks whether a shortened mourning would satisfy Zaiwo’s own grief, he seems to sanction abbreviating mourning for those who, like Zaiwo, can find their own grief answered in such a way. However, his subsequent remarks make clear that the permission he offers is not really about each adjusting li to his own emotive measures but



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akin to saying that one may jump off a moral cliff if that really is one’s unchangeable wish. That is, if Zaiwo lacks the moral-­emotive range to appreciate the mourning tradition as is and, moreover, lacks the wherewithal to expand his range, then he may do as he wants. In short, the Analects’ most explicit comments on flexibility in practicing li do not uniformly insist upon absolute conformity to rule, but neither do they unambiguously sanction the flex Hall, Rosemont, and Ames’s work might suggest. A strength of their work, however, is that it is not exclusively reliant on the text’s most explicit comments. Of the many enlivening features in the work of Ames, Rosemont, and Hall is a willingness to pass up the lowest-­hanging interpretive fruit in favor of seeking the harder-­to-­reach, more subtle, and, to be sure, more exciting yet uncertain aspects of Confucian ethics. Where one wants to understand how creative approaches to li are possible, reaching beyond the text’s meager explicit statements seems especially important. And this is what Ames, Rosemont, and Hall do, not only in observing the close connection between li and yi 義, but also in catching the atmospherics of the Analects. Ames observes, “The Analects does not provide us with a catechism of prescribed formal conducts, but rather with the image of a particular historical person striving with imagination to exhibit the sensitivity to ritualized living that would ultimately make him the teacher of an entire civilization.”7 What should most draw our notice in understanding li are its practitioners, most especially its signal practitioner, Confucius himself, a sage who is clearly, and sometimes even comically, far from staid and rule-­bound.8 Moreover, the community Confucius enjoys with his students is lively, sometimes informal, and affords considerable space for self-­expression. This account of li catches these initially elusive but ultimately more pronounced aspects of the text. It also has considerable explanatory power where we turn away from the classical sources and seek to apply their insights to our experience. Ames’s negative response to our department’s instituting computer room rules illuminates the explanatory power of accounts that favor a strongly innovative and less formal conception of li. There exist in the world orders that derive their power from their spontaneous generation out of contexts in which each contributes voluntarily and personally in a collective harmony. In my recollection, the computer room functioned well sans rules, not simply because people did behave considerately, but because the exchanges that summoned consideration were infused with

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much free and unregulated interaction: the graduate student confessing panic about finishing a project, the harried professor needing to complete something quickly, and the subsequent expressions of fellow-­ feeling and sympathy such situations drew from others. The order that existed was not, in other words, a well-­oiled machine of calm, mannerly interaction but a chaos of needs and desires that were socially well met. Rules can of course register as an affront to such orders, not simply frustrating the voluntary consideration we may offer others, but also suppressing the chaotic particularities that enable our identifications with others, with their circumstances, and with our common plights and travails. Put most plainly, there is something jazzlike in such orders. Improvisation in response, well fitting oneself to what one finds, and cooperative personal engagement produce order, and one instance of order is not necessarily like another. There is of course something decidedly odd in likening li order to jazz improvisation: The purported sting of critically identifying Ames and Hall’s account of li with jazz rests in the presumed incongruity of dignified Confucius aligned with a freewheeling musical form most at home in smoky bars. The incongruity dissipates, however, if we shift attention away from the Analects’ explicit statements and seek to capture its narrative atmospherics. To take but one example, Confucius’s exchanges with his student Zilu—exchanges ranging from biting critique, quarrelsome disagreement, and exasperation to gentle mockery and tender affection—read as a friendship founded on an improvisational responsiveness in which the distinctive personality and temperament of each sounds and resounds with the other.9 Confucius and Zilu insult each other, learn from each other, and, at least in Confucius’s imaginings, take to the high seas on a raft together. In this, and I think in other relations depicted in the text, we find relations creatively ordered out of many rich particularities.10 The work of Ames, Hall, and Rosemont encourages us to understand that such relations are no less li-­like for their robustly personal aspects and expressiveness. Indeed, they may be the most li-­like of all. Friendships like that between Zilu and Confucius and social environments like the Philosophy Department’s computer room may serve as exemplary cases in which the operations of creative, expressive, personalized li succeed. However, considerable trust is a precondition enabling the informality of order we see in both. An insult delivered to a friend is permissible, and perhaps even affectionate, when friends operate in



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trusting accord, with the conviction that each cares for each in ways never supplanted by the irritations of a moment. A computer room functioning well without rules relies on trust that one will encounter others attentive to one’s needs. A significant challenge in emphasizing the creative, expressive possibilities of li is whether this approach can extend well into contexts where trust with our social co-­participants is absent.

The Problem of Creativity and Li Creative, personally expressive li may function well in some cases, but it is less clear that it can well function in all. In my work, I have become increasingly alert to the ways that close adherence to rather fixed norms and rules may sometimes be preferable. At issue is not whether li can include creativity but whether there are situations—indeed, many situations—in which it ought not, where a commitment to “stick with the rules” would be the more promising course toward community. Let me give an example. Since attending the University of Hawai‘i, I have become regrettably more alert to how commonplace practices in the profession of philosophy can replicate and normalize social biases. Early in my career, I regularly played hangman during professional philosophy presentations. For those unfamiliar with this grim pastime, playing hangman entails drawing individual pieces of a stick figure person—head, then torso, then limbs, and so forth—each time one is prompted by predetermined conditions. The conditions in my version of the game were that I would draw a body part each time a presenter was interrupted or talked over or people were conversing while the presenter spoke. My results were striking: Over a couple of years, I never succeeded in “hanging” any male speaker, but I not only “hanged” every woman speaker but also managed to embellish many with elaborate hairdos, jewelry, and other flourishes. That is, in my informal hangman bookkeeping, women speakers were far more subject to interruption, being talked over, and the disruption of other conversations while they spoke. Outcomes such as this have made me increasingly wary of how informality and expressive freedom may sometimes inhibit robustly inclusive community. At issue is how our behavior may intersect with deeply ingrained implicit social biases. Analyzing phenomena such as differential rates of interruption for male and female speakers requires recognizing that looseness in

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adherence to social mannerly norms can yield outcomes that track unconscious social biases. A favorable implicit bias toward male speakers will produce greater deference behavior, such as silence while the speaker is speaking. An unfavorable implicit bias toward female speakers will permit behaviors shaded toward disrespect, such as interruption and competing conversation. My worry about differences such as these resides in how, as a practical matter, latitude in our adherence to mannerly norms, to li, affords space for behaviors that will mirror and replicate social biases. The same space we open in order to achieve personal, expressive relation also leaves room for differential treatments that are morally undesirable. Freedom to deviate from rules of li, to innovate upon mannerly norms, may give sanction and cover to deviations in conduct that disfavor social partners who are not our social equals, allowing bias to manifest in ways it could not under more rule-­governed interaction. Most worrisome, deviations that manifest social biases may transpire absent conscious awareness of our biases and, relatedly, of how our biases are reflected in our deviations. My hangman example is one case, but the wider concern is that as social creatures we cannot but imbibe a host of pernicious social biases regarding not just gender but race, ethnic identity, sexual identity, socioeconomic class, and so forth. Social power relations may render me unconsciously more willing to treat less politely or deferentially those whom social training has schooled me to consider social subordinates. As a practical matter, then, treating “Do not interrupt others” as a loose guide rather than a rule may result in those with the least social capital being most often interrupted. And this will be, not because our relations are grounded in felicitous, happy social trust, but because flex with the rules flexes toward unconscious replication of widespread social biases. Significantly, where our creative deviations from sound practice and rules differentially register unequal social capital and power, expressive freedom in practicing li will function as a barrier to establishing social trust. My own sense is that early Confucian sensibilities regarding li have significant philosophical potency in understanding how social inequalities resulting in mundane but pernicious differences in treatment work. Likewise, their sensibilities regarding li are rich with possibility for addressing such inequities: were we more thoroughly trained in and bound by li, we would be less likely to exhibit ill-­mannered conduct toward those whom our unconscious biases target. However, both the



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explanatory power and possible remedies found in early Confucianism require emphasizing close and rather strict adherence to li—li qua a system of binding social mannerly rules. Where I treat myself as bound by the rules—say, as unfree to interrupt others—I will be far less likely to fall into behaviors that perniciously replicate social biases, such as interrupting my social subordinates while deferentially holding silence with my superiors. Key to having such a strategy work is that I submit myself to the rules in a rather totalizing manner, that I not privilege expressive freedom over close conformity to rules. The rules would thus guard me from expressing that which I would not consciously endorse, the learned biases that my existence in an unequal society has inculcated. More significantly, it would guard those with whom I interact from experience of those biases, thereby laying groundwork for increased social trust. A more rule-­bound approach to li acknowledges that where fostering social trust is concerned, a healthy measure of self-­distrust may be useful. The practices of li may be, and in some cases certainly are, more reliable than my own judgments where my goal is to reassure others that I am well-­meaning and disposed toward community with them. Because they provide readily recognizable shared symbolic meanings, the practices of li have potency in communication that my innovations may not. I surmise that in many instances in which our implicit biases result in pernicious differences in treatment, we think we are being good social partners with others. For example, we interpret our interruptions of others as warmly collegial back-­and-­forth or our talking over another as engaged passion with their work. Yet evidence on implicit biases suggests that we should distrust these impressions, that we should doubt our own conclusions about our expressive deviations from standards. If what we want is to communicate receptivity to community with others, adherence to rules would serve us better.

The Puzzle I began this chapter by observing that li represents a puzzle of sorts. For me at least, this puzzle does not permit easy resolution, for it entails trying to take measure both of successfully improvisational li relations that flourish precisely because they are grounded in trusting freedom and of suboptimal social atmospheres and failures that transpire precisely because slackness in hewing to rules allows social bias to manifest

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and inhibit genuinely robust inclusive community. To the extent that these represent two distinct ways of approaching li, both enjoy considerable explanatory power. A creative, expressive account of li well captures our most enjoyable, trusting, and happy social relations, those in which personal accord can best flourish. A more rule-­ governed approach emphasizing close adherence to fixed standards enables understanding of what goes wrong where unregulated interaction operates to the social disfavor of the vulnerable and less powerful. Both approaches to li, it bears remarking, evade concerns about identifying Confucianism with hidebound conservatism. In the former, personalized, expressive freedom supplants blunt conformity; in the latter, adherence to rules is privileged precisely to disrupt long-­standing pernicious social inequities. We can of course opt for scholarly approaches that seek to preserve both approaches, making our treatments of li acutely sensitive to context and seeking in our own behavior to toggle between freedom and rules. This only superficially resolves the puzzle, though, I think. For the case for a more rule-­bound approach rides on awareness that our judgments about context are unreliable, that our perceptions of when deviation can well serve social trust are themselves, with worrying frequency, flawed.

Notes 1.  TTC, 100. 2.  Ibid., 98. 3.  Ibid., 84. 4.  Stephen A. Wilson, “Conformity, Individuality, and the Nature of Virtue: A Classical Confucian Contribution to Contemporary Ethical Reflection,” Journal of Religious Ethics 23, no. 2 (1995): 265. 5.  Ibid., 272. 6.  Analects 12.1. The translation I employ is from ACPT. 7.  Roger T. Ames, “Observing Ritual Propriety (li 禮) as Focusing the ‘Familiar’ in the Affairs of the Day,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 1, no. 2 (2002): 146. 8.  See Christoph Harbsmeier, “Confucius Ridens: Humor in the ­Analects,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50, no. 1 (1990): 131–161; and Amy Olberding, Moral Exemplars in the Analects (New York: Routledge, 2011), esp. chap. 5. 9.  See Analects 5.7, 5.14, 9.12, 13.3, 17.7. 10.  Especially the relationship between Confucius and Yan Hui.

chapter 29

Men Tell Me Paternalism Is Good Sydney Morrow

How does a woman in academia go about being a feminist who specializes in Confucian philosophy, in particular pre-­Qin and Han Ruist bureaucentro-­idealist philosophies of life and the cosmos? How can she hold aloft the words attributed to the historically glorified figure of Kongzi as instructional and insightful without undermining her own convictions about the place of women in the modern world and their possible and preferred futures?1 This is perhaps where I struggle the most as I continue to devote my time to excavating and internalizing ancient Chinese thought and its place in academia, in contemporary post–Cultural Revolution China, and in the living Confucian traditions of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam.2 Here, I set out to explore the potential for a modern, woman- and LGBTIAQ+-friendly reading of Confucianism. Simply put, the question boils down to whether paternalism isn’t always a bad thing. If we can accommodate gender equality and sensitivity into a Ruist social worldview, then we may be optimistic about pushing the sort of relationally driven ethic it promotes. Of course, the Ruist texts elicit a blatantly paternalist and patriarchal perspective, but here I will, by heeding and needling a few more men, find a place for myself. The work of Roger Ames, Henry Rosemont Jr., David Hall, and others to reorient the discussion toward the positive aspects of the Confucian tradition has gone far to popularize its useful themes. Getting the most out of classical Chinese thought does not mean ignoring the sexist aspects of Chinese history and many of its contemporary interpretations, but it also does not mean reducing Confucianism to these 301

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aspects. With this in mind, Li-­Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee addresses the tradition’s patriarchal and sexist reading head-­on: Confucianism should not be reduced to a set of hierarchical kinship and rigid gender roles, since in this reductionism one overlooks the dynamic aspect of Confucianism, whose ethical theory of ren 仁 as well as its emphasis on the lifelong project of self-­ cultivation and maintaining proper relations, at least at the theoretical level, are akin to the feminist ethic of care and its socially constructed self as a web of relations.3 In the contemporary push for gender equality, Confucianism might be a key philosophical player, but this will depend on the recognition of the Western tendency to essentialize Ru philosophy and define it as strictly patriarchal and on the malleability of Confucianism’s limits regarding the appropriate place for non-­male and non-­masculine individuals. In this chapter, I will give my reasons for increasing the academic visibility of Confucianism, especially the formulation presented by Ames and Rosemont—namely, Confucian role ethics. They emphasize the capacity for positive change through broadening one’s webs of relationships rather than cleaving to narrow, prescribed social arrangements. But does this make for an acceptable paternalism?

Reading Confucian Role Ethics To begin, I will develop, out of the works of Roger Ames, David Hall, and Henry Rosemont Jr., my own reading of Confucian role ethics as a post-­comparative and original theory that emphasizes the contextualized state of persons, lives, and experiences that are never repeated. Ames and his coauthors weave the narratives and analogies of the Chinese tradition in texts like the Lunyu 論語 and the Zhongyong 中庸 with the pragmatist vocabulary of Richard Rorty, William James, and John Dewey. The result is not simply a side-­by side comparison between the two traditions but a conversation between them. Ames and his coauthors’ exposition of correlative cosmology captures the dynamicity and interconnectedness of Chinese cosmology and metaphysics, just as the twentieth-­century philosophical pragmatists rejected atomistic theories of ethics and education in their own context.4 This I think defines a post-­comparative project, where historical acuity meets creativity.



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In the socio-­cosmological arena—which is a way of saying that the term “ethics” does not get all the way around Confucian appraisals of human action—creativity and the imaginative incorporation of cultural roles and individual striving are the driving force of self-­fulfillment and social belonging. From a historical perspective, the relationships among people are held together by power differentials. These power dynamics are the root of Confucian paternalism. The primary Confucian relationships—the relationships on which other relationships are modeled—are ruler and ruled, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and friend to friend. It is obvious to me that this needs a little remediation. What about daughters, mothers, citizens, and colleagues? On my reading, Confucian role ethics abstracts from these primary relationships to make the point that they allow for the fecundity of relationships generally. Forefronting the formation of new and meaningful connections is the culmination of the relationally constituted person. This gives Rosemont and Ames’s theory the potential to move beyond the rigid patriarchal order of the Chinese source material, which is something I think can be left, though preserved, in the dusty annals of history without undermining the project of employing Confucian ideas and values to contribute to the formation of an inclusive future.

Focusing the Paternalism of Confucian Thought Given that “Not all paternalisms are bad” implies that “Some paternalisms are good,” I will consider the possibility and value of a paternalistic tradition informing an inclusive future. As an aside, I’d like to say that although I’m bringing my experience as a cis woman into focus here, an ideal version of gender equality would not be binary but would be inclusive of all genders. My argument does not hinge on the gender binary commonly thought to be inalienable from Chinese philosophy and may be useful for more radical gender inclusivity. In this section, I will supplement the Confucian role ethics account with insights provided by Fei Xiaotong (1910–2005), a researcher, professor, and activist who specialized in sociology and anthropology. One of his most well-­known books, Xiangtu chongjian, traces the evolution of Chinese society from its rural origins in order to expose the fundamental differences between Chinese and Western societies.5 He begins with the different ways that social groups are formed. In the West, people are

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grouped based on similar interests, and so the organization of the social structure is based on the desire and willingness to be a part of a certain group. Chinese organization, he argues, has never been divorced from the patrilineal organization of ancient agrarian clans, and so the notion of leaving one group to join another, or even one town to settle in another, is not common. There is not the same focus on independence and fresh starts in the Chinese cultural tradition as may be found in the United States, for example. The networks that are the foundation of Chinese society were regional and based on the rule of elders, rather than the rule of law. This establishes the uniqueness of education in this tradition, which supplements objective facts and historical accounts with the wisdom of the village elders, whose worldviews as well as admonitions are heeded because of their superior position in the clan. Culture, Fei writes, is “the collective social experience perpetuated by a symbolic system and individual memories.”6 This inclusive notion of culture covers individuals and their pasts, as well as their group’s past, and so maintains ­culture as formative and practical, which allows it to be flexible as well as historical. In maintaining the relationship between education and authority within the basic Chinese organizational matrix based on the rule of elders rather than the rule of law, Fei Xiaotong is committed to paternalism, which he defines as the “power generated through education and through patriarchal privilege.”7 But rather than use paternalism to undergird his theory of societal organization, he coins “social metabolism” to explain why cultures retain some social mores and tools and let others fall away.8 On the surface, the focus of his theory of paternalism does not seem to be about men clenching power in their own hands; rather, it emphasizes the usefulness of the past and the inextricable connections to one’s historical clan members. The necessity of education may indeed be a paternal concern, but the trajectory of the society, which defines the place of today’s children in the future, may jettison certain ideas, such as those that slow integration and equality. While it is important to recognize China’s patriarchal power dynamic and its misogynist history, which often go hand in hand with paternalism, interpretations of Confucian philosophies do not depend on a male-­ centered societal structure. Fei does not privilege the male perspective in his use of analogy and metaphor, though he does emphasize consanguinity and partnerships formed for procreation as stabilizing forces



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for society, which designates different spaces for men and women and virtually no space for sexual minorities. Fei is not keen to preserve the strict rituals among men and women per se, except as they “offer effective solutions to life’s problems.”9 Paired with my reading of Confucian role ethics, this paternalism may be acceptable for future-­oriented theorizing about gender equality, especially if one emphasizes Fei’s theory of social metabolism.

Sedimentation and Education: Li Zehou’s Bridging of the Past and Future Comparing Fei’s social metabolism to Li Zehou’s (b. 1930) theory of cultural sedimentation will emphasize Fei’s historical account of Chinese society and the sort of social change that is possible within this paradigm. The history of hierarchical relationship structure in Chinese society is shown in the Liji (Book of Rites). Fei quotes: “Toward the intimate, there is only intimacy; toward the respected, only respect; toward superiors, only deference; between men and women, only differences; these are things that people cannot alter.”10 Egalitarianism is not possible within this preserved framework, but patterns of respect, deference, and even difference change over time. Fei does not speculate about what kinds of changes are possible. However, Li, a contemporary scholar of Chinese philosophy, politics, aesthetics, and culture, provides a theory for moving into the future from Fei’s foundation. He describes the interaction of historically rooted culture and the individual in terms of geological formations. From where we are standing, much of history is hidden beneath the surface manifestations of culture, a landscape of social structures and expectations rooted in the past. Because history is solid, we cannot go back—or in this metaphor, down—but as we learn, we familiarize ourselves with the values that are sedimented into the edifice of the past. For Li, education is the way that the ethics of society are translated into personal morals.11 One’s understanding of history’s rites and traditions serves as a ground for understanding a society that morphs with time. This is true of Confucian hierarchical relationships; the effect of modernization has changed the content of the relational structure. Li doubts that relationality among persons will ever be truly egalitarian, because of the uniqueness of each individual and the relationships they share. He writes of the marital relationship:

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Husbands and wives cannot be completely equal; it is often the case that one leads and the other follows. In ancient times, economic considerations determined that the husband was often in charge and dominated external affairs while the wife took care of the home. Today things are sometimes opposite, and that is also fine. . . . What is important for husbands and wives is maintaining the family through caring for and loving each other—that is, emotional harmony.12 Here the structure of the marital relationship, one of the five paradigmatic relationships described in the Mencius, is retained, but the appropriate behaviors for each person have changed. Li shows us that the past is indispensable but not reproducible. Furthering his metaphor, we cannot live underground among the inert rocks of the past, separating ourselves from the surface-­world shaped by modernity, and call ourselves moral. Morality is achieved by being among others and configuring unique relationships based on the “non-­equivalence of older and younger, senior and junior, upper and lower, right and left, near and far, close and distant.”13 Refusing to accept the topological changes wrought by the fresh sediment left by the social metabolism described by Fei—for example, by declaiming equality on the basis of historical arguments and actualities—is futile because it buries one, motionless, below that dynamic production of the present. Li Zehou’s interpretation of Confucianism frames it as a pragmatic approach that can address contemporary ethical issues, rather than as an idiosyncratic Chinese religion or a dated, strict, and scripted ethico-­ political system. This mellows the patriarchal paternalism of Confucianism by putting change and progress in the hands of everyone in society, at least in theory, because the distribution of equal rights is the trend in contemporary, successful societies. Li’s interpretation of Confucianism gives us distance from Fei’s positive appraisal of patriarchal societal structures. Paternalism is warranted in relationships that include the emotion of fatherly concern, but it is possible that these relationships are not exclusively among or to the benefit of men.14 My goal is to use Confucianism to advocate for gender equality, which would, among obvious other benefits, provide some solid ground to stand on as a female academic working with a historically patriarchal philosophical tradition. Of course, movement toward gender equality



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may be undermined by what turns out to be an inalienably paternal part of Confucian thought as well as Confucian role ethics—namely, the emphasis on the primacy of family relationships as those on which potentially all other relationships are modeled. Ames writes: Foregrounding the family, we can say that the unity, integrity, and value of the family is a function of achieving the appropriate patterns of deference among the members that constitute the family. And foregrounding individual members of the family, we can say that the unity, integrity, and worth of particular persons is a function of coordinating effectively all of the various roles and relations that they live within the family and by extension, community. . . . Indeed, it is an adaptive correlation of the demands and the rewards of these roles, even when conflicted and in tension, that gives me an increasingly focused, persistent identity as a person: a stability that others might regard as my personality and my character.15 On my reading of this passage, tension and conflict among relationships within the family are educational exercises in deference, and not the sort that dissolves the family unit. There may be little space to think critically about how radically the relationships among a family can change, and how the lack of the type of family dynamic Ames seems to be referring to affects a person’s ability to form relationships. It is not plausible to redefine the historic lexicon that ritualized the ubiquitous submission of women in order to approximate modern ideals of equality, but the way that I engage with and teach the tradition seeks to empower those whose lives do not fit the model, whose concentric webs of relationships did not begin with their father and mother, and who will not follow the fading blueprint of families formed on the basis of biological, religious, or societal imperatives. By creatively drawing upon the Chinese Confucian tradition, we can say that everyone has a stake in life and the opportunity to develop and better themselves. These goals of Confucianism have stood the test of time, and they are both preserved and vivified by the work of Ames, Hall, and Rosemont. This is a legacy I happily carry along.

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Notes 1.  See James A. Dator, Advancing Futures: Futures Studies in Higher Education (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002). See also Wendell Bell, Foundations of Futures Studies (New York: Transaction, 1997). 2.  See Chun-­chieh Huang, East Asian Confucianisms (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2015). 3.  Li-­Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 16. 4.  See FF, 19–25. 5.  Fei Xiaotong, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society, trans. Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 6.  Ibid., 55. 7.  Ibid., 114. 8.  Ibid., 73. 9.  Ibid., 100. 10.  Ibid., 66. 11.  Li Zehou, “A Response to Michael Sandel and Other Matters,” trans. Paul J. D’Ambrosio and Robert A. Carleo, Philosophy East and West 66, no. 4 (2016): 1112. 12.  Ibid., 1098. 13.  Ibid., 1099. 14.  See Sin-­yee Chan, “Would Confucianism Allow Two Men to Share a Peach? Compatibility between Ancient Confucianism and Homosexuality,” in The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Gender, ed. Ann A. Pang-­White (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 173–201. 15.  CRE, 175–176.

chapter 30

Confucianism Reimagined A Feminist Project Li-­Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee

With the election of Donald Trump as the forty-­fifth president of the United States, the contemporary feminist movement entered an unprecedented, uncertain territory, with some questioning the movement’s viability in the age of Trumpism.1 A presidential candidate who made his fame and fortune in part through the business of beauty pageants that objectify women and young girls, and whose comments revealed on the infamous Access Hollywood tape were accompanied by a string of sexual assault allegations, was nevertheless elected. This stunning election outcome dealt feminists not only a devastating defeat but, more importantly, a practical challenge: how do feminists fight miso­ gyny when the person holding the highest office in the land embodies it overtly in his conduct as well as in his rhetoric? The answer to that question would not be retreat or silence. I, for one, would stand up and continue to project a feminist future where cultural inclusivity is the proper way forward for women of all colors. For me specifically, an inclusive feminist future will also be a Confucian hybrid. In sum, I am proposing a Confucian-­feminist hybrid in order to add to the ever more expansive portrait of a transnational feminist theory. David Hall and Roger Ames’s early works2 on the issue of gender within the Confucian tradition brought attention to this aspect of ­Confucianism, which was often neglected by sinologists who saw the issue of gender as either irrelevant or insufficiently philosophical to the study of Confucianism, not unlike the way in which feminist scholar­ ship was routinely marginalized in the West.3 Despite feminists’ own very best efforts, the field of philosophy has largely rejected the inclusion 309

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of gender as an integral part of the discipline; its rejection is clearly reflected in the actual practices and course offerings where the topic of gender is addressed only in a few designated courses and then is entirely left out of the “regular” philosophy courses. To incorporate gender into the study of a particular philosophical tradition is oftentimes seen as a mere distraction from the “more important” philosophical concepts on which a true philosopher should instead focus. Even when textual misogyny is as clear as day, those discrepancies are oftentimes brushed aside as irrelevant to our studies of all the great canons. Fortunately, there are exceptions, and scholars such as Hall and Ames normalized gender discourse in the “regular” study of Confucianism and helped pave the way for the rising record of comparative feminist studies on Confucianism. In “Chinese Sexism” and in “Sexism, with Chinese Characteristics,” Hall and Ames not only confront the sexist aspects of Chinese culture head-­on but also provide a culturally grounded conceptual paradigm for rethinking Western feminist critiques of Confucian misogyny.4 The reason for revisiting Western feminist critiques of Chinese culture, of which Confucianism forms a prominent part, is that the feminist analysis of “third-­world” women’s oppression is more often than not based on the assumed universality of its liberal individualistic framework. But liberal individualism is a culturally specific intellectual tradition rooted in a specific historical time. To blindly superimpose a Western conceptual framework onto a non-­Western subject not only distorts the non-­Western subject conceptually but, more importantly, hinders the feminist analysis in bringing about a liberatory movement in the transnational space. For instance, in the conventional feminist analysis, the liberal dualistic paradigm of autonomy/dependency, subject/object, rationality/ emotion, and so on underpins the problem of gender oppression. This is because it takes masculinity/male to be the embodiment of the ideal traits of humanity, whereas femininity/female is the defective being. This Western dualistic paradigm then is commonly used as the basis for understanding Chinese misogyny in terms of yin/yang. However, as Hall and Ames have argued, the yin/yang paradigm is correlative, not dualistic. Moreover, yin/yang and femininity/masculinity are not conceptual equivalents, since yin/yang is not primarily gender-­based. In other words, gender is not the underlying principle of the correlative pair yin/ yang. Instead, the yin/yang correlative pair is the basic organizational principle encompassing the human, natural, and cosmic realms. To see



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Chinese gender oppression through the lens of the Western dualistic paradigm of masculinity/femininity, autonomy/dependency, subject/ object, rationality/emotion, and so on is to miss the mark. The process of genderization, after all, is a process of enculturation. Hall and Ames’s call for a culturally grounded conceptual framework to understand Chinese sexism is the first step forward to forming a viable solution to women’s oppression transnationally. Despite sexism’s pervasiveness throughout Chinese history, it is not an exclusive invention of Chinese culture, and despite its obvious t­ extual misogyny, Confucianism is not incompatible with contemporary progressive projects, including feminism. Akin to the way in which contemporary scholars routinely appropriate Western canonical resources in an effort to solve contemporary issues, a much more charitable interpretation of Confucianism in its encounter with modernity can also be forged. Just like the canonical texts of Aristotle, Locke, or Kant, Confucian texts can also function as a great well of resources for all sorts of contemporary progressive projects. There is no a priori impediment to forming an inclusive transnational feminist theory that is Confucian and feminist at the same time. Feminism is not an exclusive prerogative of the West, and no one should be required to exit her own culture in order to be a feminist of some sort. Each culture, despite some of its questionable practices, must be granted a basic sense of respect as a starting point in the transnational feminist discourse. Any enduring culture, as Charles Taylor eloquently argues, must have something valuable to offer despite its radical differences from our own. To discount that possibility is a show of blunt arrogance. As he writes precisely, “it would take supreme arrogance to discount this possibility a priori.”5 Hence, in contrast to some who argue that multiculturalism is bad for women, I maintain not only that multiculturalism and feminism are compatible but also that non-­Western traditions such as Confucianism can strengthen feminist theorizing.6 Feminism as a liberatory movement, in the most basic sense of the word, demands inclusivity. To limit feminist theorizing to Western scholarship is an unnecessary self-­imposed impoverishment, and moreover, it misses the mark of its liberatory end. After all, the majority of women in the world are raised in non-­Western traditions. Incorporating non-­Western traditions such as Confucianism into feminist theorizing not only provides feminists with appropriate cultural frameworks to understand gender-­ based oppression transnationally but also provides conceptual alternatives for

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women of all colors to chart their own liberatory future. Specifically, a hybridized Confucian feminism merging care ethics with Confucianism is able to provide women viable alternatives to think through practical issues, such as filial obligations, inequality in spousal relationships, and political indifference to dependency care by utilizing characteristic Confucian concepts such as ren 仁, xiao 孝, you 友, li 禮, and datong 大同. First of all, much like care ethics, caring relations underpin the core of Confucian ethics; other-­regarding is characteristic of the highest ethical life for the Confucian. It is an ethical life that seeks outward expansion of its caring relations, incorporating ever more distant others. A hybridized care ethics with Confucian ren both cares for one’s loved ones at home and seeks caring relations beyond the domestic, personal sphere. A Confucian-­infused care ethics not only is able to retain the centrality of its caring character but also is able to meet the common liberal objection that care ethics is restricted to the domestic sphere. Confucianism is essentially a political theory that aims at effecting a ren-­based humane governance by taking the intimate model of familial relationships as the starting point and then radiating outward to the community, state, and beyond. Hence, Confucian ren is able to extend care ethics’ personal care to the social and political realms while retaining its caring centrality in an ethical life. Confucian ren in its maximal form is expansive and political in nature, but its starting point is always personal and familial. Xiao, or our filial care for our parents, is the beginning of our moral education. And hence a hybridized care ethics will also take xiao as integral to our ethical life. Care ethics’ emphasis on caring for the young is completed by the incorporation of Confucian xiao, which focuses on caring for the old. The centrality of xiao in Confucianism is undeniable: to be human is to be ren, and ren begins with xiao. In contrast, in the West the question of filial obligations is usually brushed aside as meriting no particular moral or public import, since familial obligations are seen as belonging to the personal (and conventionally women’s) realm. The West’s dichotomizing tendency in separating what is personal from what is public, or what is moral from what is familial, is unhelpful, since it provides no workable conceptual tools for us to navigate the actual contours of our everyday existence. Confucianism, on the other hand, understands our inevitable interdependency and thereby sees our filial obligations not as something merely personal (or particularly feminine) but instead as the basic moral foundation for a ren-­based governance.



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By grounding the moral foundation of the state in the family and the development of civic virtue in familial virtue, Confucianism does not fall into the same traps bedeviling the Western, liberal, contractual tradition where the personal is separate from the public and the ethical from the familial. This hybrid Confucian model also sidesteps the pitfalls facing care ethics where the criticism is centered on its apparent inability to go beyond concrete personal caring relations, thereby reinforcing the limited, caring roles of women. Confucian xiao is not a personal care belonging only to the womanly sphere; rather, it is a moral basic for all in their search for a complete personhood of ren. Confucian xiao—an intergenerational labor of love that grooms each of us, as it were, from the ground up—is the perfect embodiment of the understanding that our inevitable interdependency must then lead us to our moral obligations to care for those near and far. But some might argue that, by promoting a care-­oriented ethics without at the same time addressing the problem of the unequal share of caring labor, care ethics is furthering the oppression of women, since now women must also care for the needy before they care for themselves.7 And there is nothing more revealing of women’s disproportionate caring labor than the roles of mother and wife. Marriage and motherhood have long been subjects of considerable discussion within the feminist communities, with some advocating for a “philosophy of evacuation,” or a complete abolition of the legal institution of marriage.8 But instead of evading the problem by advocating for a retreat from the institution of marriage or motherhood, a hybrid concept of friendship infused with Greek philia and Confucian you 友 can help us reconceptualize modern spousal relationships and hence rehabilitate the institution of marriage. This might enable women to live a fully flourishing and ethically satisfying life, while sidestepping the pitfalls of liberalism’s absolute equality. In rethinking the spousal relationship as a kind of friendship, the functionary and oppressive aspects of marriage are made incompatible with this friendship-­based marital union. At the same time, by incorporating the marital relationship into friendship, the concept of friendship is made ever more perfect, since the best friendship is also the most intimate, where one shares all things in common with one’s philos while walking the same path of moral goodness. Spouses, instead of being defined functionally, should be best friends who lead one another to moral goodness, and the spousal relationship, in turn, is also the best friendship that is perpetual and complete in

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its form and content by building a truly shared life with all aspects of human capacities—eros and all. A feminist marriage should be a marriage of moral friendship and passionate love. This is a new conceptual paradigm of marriage that is made in a Confucian image for feminists. It is also a practical feminist paradigm that we mortals can strive for. To replace the spousal relationship with this hybrid friendship model of Confucian you and Greek philia will enable us to discard the gender-­ based roles in the family as well as the gender-­based hierarchy, while at the same time upholding the integrity of the Confucian framework in meeting the feminist demand for gender equity, since friendship is one of the five Confucian social relations and is not gender-­based. Moreover, this hybrid friendship model is able to avoid the pitfalls of the liberal concept of friendship based on symmetrical equality, which not only is unrealizable in our all-­too-­human life but also is at risk of degrading both friendship and marriage into a mere contractual transaction for the sake of absolute equality. Lastly, this hybrid friendship model is able to offer us a much more wholesome concept of human relationship, where family and strangers are not seen as two opposing poles but instead form a continuum of human intimacy. Beyond the unequal caring labor in marriage, another perennial critique of care ethics is that it offers no structural changes that one can implement in the larger social/political realm. To stress the ethical importance of care does not by itself bring about a caring society. To achieve that, the care needs of the dependent must be addressed politically, and that in turn requires a political theory that addresses, first and foremost, the inevitability of dependency. This can be done by grounding the state’s authority in its capacity to care for the most socially vulnerable instead of relegating the responsibility of care to the private/personal (and conventionally women’s) realm. Second, we need a political theory that does not narrowly focus on defending the negative liberties of the self-­reliant individual. This can be done by providing an enduring social mechanism, such as li, to render the self ever more porous and other-­regarding so that the self becomes increasingly socially responsive as the self becomes increasingly ritually competent. Li has a moderating and transformative effect on the self, since in performing li, the self must be in tune with others—the subject of one’s reverence—and must be circumspect in each unique situation in an effort to harmonize the myriad things in the world. Unlike the Hobbesian man of nature, a Confucian self sees her existential interdependency,



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not as a lesser evil she tolerates out of the fear of mutual destruction, but as a strength. This strength is characteristic of human society in which the secured, meaningful, and flourishing life of each individual is made possible only in the midst of the continuous stream of human ecology and is sustained by ritualized mutual obligations that are measured, refined, and responsive to the changing human condition intraand intergenerationally. Li is the ritual knot that binds us all to the past, present, and future. Hence, in Confucianism, dependency care is not seen as oppositional to one’s civic competency or outside the realm of political discourse but instead forms an integral part of civil society. Indeed, in order to foster a shared sense of dependency care, not just in the personal realm but also in the social and political realm, we will have to reconceptualize what constitutes the self, citizenry, and political authority. The liberal model of individual rights and limited government that has carried us this far is no longer conceptually adequate to carry us forward into this ever more interdependent and globalized world where emerging environmental/economic/social/political problems oftentimes crisscross multiple boundaries. The modern state must be more than an empty container for disparate individuals limited only by reactive, punitive laws. In facing the rise of national isolationism and xenophobia, not just in the United States but also across Europe, a shift in our conceptual paradigm of what constitutes a well-­functioning state and a flourishing citizenry is sorely needed so that complex social/ political problems, such as climate change, income inequality, criminal justice reform, and refugee crises, can be addressed and solved. In contrast to the individually inclined Western political theory, where civic obligations and relations are contract-­based and considered external to the core concerns of one’s own self-­interests, the Confucian utopia of datong epitomizes the ideal society in which all are cared for. This idyllic community represents the highest political aspiration for the Confucian, and its realization, in part, is premised on our willingness to go beyond the narrow concerns of our own selves or our immediate families to also care for others, especially the socially vulnerable, so that the old, the young, the sick, and the disabled are not just left out in the cold without proper care. An inclusive, caring political community is quintessentially, if not uniquely, Confucian. This provides a stark contrast when compared with the Western political theories that hinge largely on rational self-­centric concerns. In other words, datong offers a genuine care-­based state whose political legitimacy is derived, first and

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foremost, from its capacities to care for all, especially the socially vulnerable. As Mencius puts it, caring for the socially vulnerable is the political priority of a kingly state.9 This Confucian model, as I see it, is the proper way for us to move forward into an ever more compassionate and inclusive future for humanity. In the end, this inventive Confucian-­ feminist project is intended to provide women of all colors viable conceptual alternatives to think through their own lives in this increasingly globalized, hybridized world. To draw feminist inspirations solely from Western scholarship, making feminist theorizing synonymous with the West, is an unnecessary self-­ imposed impoverishment, and more importantly, it is self-­defeating for feminists, since the aim of feminist liberation is to foster a truly inclusive world in which all are accounted for. Just as feminist scholarship is striving to be counted as genuinely philosophical, non-­Western traditions are striving to be noted as intellectual equals capable of informing all sorts of contemporary progressive projects, including feminism. Feminist liberation must be transnational in scope, and so must be its theorizing. An inclusive feminist future cannot be built based on a Western monopoly on theoretical space. A non-­Western tradition, such as Confucianism, must be seen as capable of providing viable conceptual alternatives for achieving the feminist liberatory end. Hall and Ames’s normalization of the topic of gender in the “regular” study of Confucianism opens up a constructive path for feminists like me to engage Confucianism philosophically and to envision a progressive and inclusive future for humanity that is feminist and Confucian at the same time. This forward projection of a feminist future is ever more needed in the age of Trumpism.

Notes 1.  See Jill Filipovic, “What Does President Trump Mean for Feminists?,” Washington Post, November 9, 2016; Christine Emba, “Is Modern Feminism Out of Touch?,” Washington Post, November 30, 2016; and Christina Hoff Sommers, “How to Make Feminism Great Again,” Washington Post, December 5, 2016. 2.  TH, 79–100; David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, “Sexism, with Chinese Characteristics,” in The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics and Gender, ed. Chenyang Li (Chicago: Open Court, 2000), 75–96. 3.  See Robin May Schott, Discovering Feminist Philosophy: Knowledge, Ethics, Politics (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 6–21.



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4.  David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, “Chinese Sexism,” in TH, 79–100; Hall and Ames, “Sexism, with Chinese Characteristics.” 5.  Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 256. 6.  See Susan Moller Okin, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?,” in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, ed. Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha C. Nussbaum (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 7–24. 7.  See Claudia Card, “Caring and Evil,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 5, no. 1 (1990): 101–106; Marilyn Friedman, What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Vrinda Dalmiya, “Caring Comparisons: Thoughts on Comparative Care Ethics,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36, no. 2 (2009): 192–209. 8.  See Jeffner Allen, “Motherhood: The Annihilation of Women,” in Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the Relations between Women and Men, ed. Alison M. Jaggar and Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1993), 380–385; and Claudia Card, “Against Marriage and Motherhood,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 11, no. 3 (1996): 1–23. 9.  See Mencius 1B5.

Afterword The Amesian Square in the Perfect Storm Martin Schönfeld

This book’s title, One Corner of the Square, refers to the student-­ teacher relationship described in Analects 6.8. Peter Hershock, in the foreword, and Joshua Mason and Ian Sullivan, in the introduction, explain how the passage needs to be understood when applied to Roger Ames’s work. Ames expects students to complete what the teacher has left for them to do, and he further inspires his students to push beyond his lessons. Students should not just spell out the teacher’s ideas as if they were adding a corner to a square left unfinished by the teacher. Rather, they should add on more corners, even though doing so will turn the square into a polygon. In the Amesian square, the student-­ teacher relationship is one of open-­ended, shared creativity. As Ames puts it, “teachers and students cocreate each other.”1 Appealing to the Analects in this way helps gather the reflections assembled here into a panoply of perspectives. But this does not mean that Ames’s cocreated work—judged by the angles and corners of this volume—is ultimately all over the place. It is not, for two reasons. One is a consensus shared by Ames’s students, and another is a contention advanced by Ames, together with Henry Rosemont Jr. The consensus of Ames’s students is a tacitly adopted collective stance. All of them defend the value of the humanities for civilizational well-­being; each of them does research at the cutting edge of comparative thought, and as a group, they respect the notion of wisdom. Together, they represent a philosophically progressive outlook, dedicated to the ideals of equality, solidarity, and cross-­cultural cosmopolitanism. Such a stance may seem trivial, but it is not trivial anymore in our turbulent and polarized times. In short, there is unanimity among 318



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those who add creative corners to the Amesian square. Thus, seen from a formal point of view alone, their contributions add up to a contiguous geometric figure. The contention advanced by Ames, with Rosemont, is that this ­cocreated figure is not just floating in space but also traveling through time. The Amesian square is a future-­oriented conceptual structure. Ames has been explicit about this. At a philosophical retreat of the Académie du Midi in 2012, he and Rosemont explained what their work ultimately aims for: a relational reading of Confucianism, which deserves a seat at the contemporary table of major ethical theories. Their argument is that civilization is facing a challenge, whose resolution will require a reevaluation of values, and that the major theories of Western moral philosophy are not up to the task. They are either incapable of meeting this challenge or implicated in having precipitated it. The culture of individualism, in the postwar liberal world order, has ushered in a crisis that this hegemonic outlook is ill-­equipped to handle. Policies of economic liberties, corporate profit, and competition are drivers of the problem, and the problem is only growing in urgency. Confucianism, however, can be part of the solution. With this challenge, Ames and Rosemont were referring to the planetary crisis. At the Académie and elsewhere—as in a lecture, “Confucian China in a Changing World Cultural Order,” mentioned in chapter 22 of the current volume—they called this crisis the perfect storm. Ames describes it as follows: “A perfect storm is brewing: climate change, food and water shortages, environmental degradation, pandemics, energy shortages, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, gross income inequities, and so on. An effective response to this human-­exacerbated predicament requires a radical change in values, intentions, and practices.”2 This is the empirical backdrop to the Amesian square. Guided by the values of liberty, profit, and competition, Western individualism has sown a wind. Civilization is reaping a whirlwind that is blowing across the biosphere back to humanity. The scientific community tells us that the elements of the perfect storm are entangled. The core of entanglement is climate change. Its consequences cause biotic declines and crop failures and therefore food shortages. Other consequences, such as desertification and deglaciation, cause water shortages. All of these consequences conspire to worsen environmental degradation. This, in turn, has impacts on communities and intensifies gross income inequities. For just as perpetrators of the crisis are the big energy corporations,

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its profiteers are the very rich. The dynamics of capitalism trend to deregulation, which introduces risks and courts disasters. Their occurrence creates market opportunities, which make the rich only richer. The victims are the rest of us, especially the poor. The countries most vulnerable are in the Global South. China, in particular, faces domestic risks. Thus, the more the climate changes, the more the inequities. Climate-­driven inequalities not only drive migration but also add fuel to terrorism. Finally, that national actors, in an increasingly volatile world, are less committed to nuclear nonproliferation should not come as a geopolitical surprise. Since the crisis has been caused by the dominance of one set of values—economic liberties, corporate profit, and competition—over others, this raises the question of whether managing the crisis can really be done with the same set. It might instead require us to think outside the box of individualism and embrace the “radical change” Ames speaks of. This bigger picture poses an unprecedented challenge, but it is also a historic opportunity. The opportunity is of a civilizational and cultural sort, because we suffer not from a lack of scientific information and technological solutions but from a lack of the right “values, intentions, and practices,” as Ames pointed out. This is the fulcrum that gives the Amesian square its future-­oriented leverage, and this is what entitles Confucianism, in Ames and Rosemont’s modernized reading, to a seat at the table of the major ethical theories. In this way, Ames’s students add corners to the square, turning it into a polygon, while keeping the cocreated figure tight, balanced, and centered. In the first chapter of this volume, Jim Behuniak provides a forward-­looking reflection that sets the tone. He explains how “to philosophize post-­comparatively from within this field.” Philosophizing based on the findings of comparative studies is more than a Socratic love of wisdom (philosophia), because it aspires to Confucian wisdom learning (zhexue 哲學), and it evokes the model of philosophy that allowed early modern Europeans to strike the first East-­West bridge to Confucianism—the model of philosophy that was then called world-­ wisdom (Weltweisheit). Later in the volume, Geir Sigurðsson gives a current example of world-­ wisdom: the endorsement of Confucianism by the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China, as evidenced by General Secretary Xi Jinping’s welcome speech at the 2014 congress of the International



Afterword: The Amesian Square in the Perfect Storm

321

Confucian Association in Beijing.3 Xi’s endorsement integrates Confucius into the doctrine of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (新时代中国特色社会主义). The goal of this doctrine is the construction of an “Ecological Civilization” (shengtai wenming 生态文 明). When Ames sees the perfect storm as a chance for Confucianism, then this contention, as Sigurðsson observes, receives backing from very high places. The thrust of Ames’s work encourages us to think outside the box. Amy Olberding reminds us that aligning Confucianism with conservative impulses is “at odds with what we find not only in the Analects but in many classical sources.”4 Further forward-­looking examples appear as Sydney Morrow invites us to draw creatively upon the Chinese tradition for the sake of articulating a feminist Confucianism, and in the final chapter, Li-­Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee develops just such a Confucian-­ feminist hybrid.5 The first words of this book are “human becoming.” In Ames’s relational reading of Confucianism, human identity is defined not by one’s subjective personhood but by one’s objective relationships instead. This turns the idea of being human into a dynamic notion: human becoming. In a Confucian setting, human becoming is a shift from self-­absorbed individualism to empathetic communitarianism, from a Cartesian ego to a nexus of links. With regard to the bigger picture, this appears to be the direction in which philosophy is heading. The theme of the 2018 World Congress of Philosophy was “Learning to Be Human.” The theme of a 2019 international conference on Kantian philosophy at Peking University was “The Future of Humanity.” The future is at stake. The time has come to step out of our self-­incurred immaturity. Human becoming is the way forward. Becoming human means to weaken the storm and to build a stormproof world that is sustainable for all. Alongside his philosophical work on Chinese and comparative philosophy, I think this can be Ames’s lasting contribution: to show how the perfect storm gives Confucianism a seat at the table of ethics and policy.

Notes 1.  See the introduction to this book. 2.  Roger T. Ames, “Confucian China in a Changing World Cultural Order.” The quoted material is from a poster advertising one of his

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lectures. One version of the talk is online at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2ZGK7qgexQQ, accessed November 10, 2010. 3.  See chapter 20. 4.  See chapter 28. 5.  See chapters 29 and 30, respectively.

Contributors

Attilio Andreini is an associate professor of classical Chinese and Chinese paleography at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Eiho Baba (Rong-­Fong Chang) is an associate professor of philosophy and Asian studies at Furman University. Jim Behuniak is an associate professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Colby College. Brian Bruya is a professor of philosophy at Eastern Michigan University and an affiliate member of the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-­Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. Kuan-­Hung Chen is an instructor and discipline coordinator of philosophy at Kapiolani Community College. Meilin Chinn is an assistant professor of philosophy at Santa Clara University. Steve Coutinho is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Muhlenberg College. Daniel Coyle is a visiting assistant professor of philosophy and program coordinator for Asian studies at Birmingham-­Southern College. Carine Defoort is a professor of sinology at KU Leuven (University of Leuven). Kurtis Hagen is an independent scholar and former associate professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at the State University of New York–Plattsburgh. Thorian R. Harris is a lecturer of philosophy at the University of California, Davis.

323

324 Contributors

Joseph E. Harroff is a lecturer of philosophy and religion at Temple University. Marty H. Heitz is an associate professor of philosophy at Oklahoma State University. Peter D. Hershock is the director of the Asian Studies Development Program and an education specialist at the East-­West Center. Peter Wong Yih Jiun is a research assistant at the Chinese Studies Research Centre at La Trobe University. Jung-­Yeup Kim is an associate professor of philosophy at Kent State University. Andrew Lambert is an assistant professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Jing Liu is an associate professor of Chinese literature at Sun-­yat Sen University. Joshua Mason is an assistant professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. Sarah A. Mattice is an associate professor of philosophy and religious studies and the director of interdisciplinary studies at the University of North Florida. Sydney Morrow is an assistant professor of philosophy at Nazarbayev University. Amy Olberding is a Presidential Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma. Lauren F. Pfister is a professor emeritus of religion and philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University. Li-­Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee is a professor of philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu. Martin Schönfeld was a professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida at the time of his passing, shortly before this volume went to press. His colleagues and collaborators here feel a deep sense of loss. James D. Sellmann is the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and a professor of philosophy and Micronesian studies at the University of Guam.



Contributors325

Geir Sigurðsson is a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Iceland. Vytis Silius is a researcher on the Faculty of Philosophy at Sun Yat-­sen University. Ian M. Sullivan is an assistant professor of philosophy at Arcadia University. Sor-­hoon Tan is a professor of philosophy at the Singapore Management University. Kirill O. Thompson is a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University. Haiming Wen is a professor in the School of Philosophy at Renmin University of China. Jinmei Yuan is a professor of philosophy at Creighton University.

Index

aesthetic, xii, 15–16, 23, 31, 76–77, 97, 102, 117, 118n28, 119, 141–149, 157, 160, 199n2, 204, 207–208, 213, 221, 237, 238, 241–242, 247–250, 253, 278, 283, 305. See also somaesthetic Analects (Lunyu), xi, xix, 16, 21, 24, 27, 29–32, 41, 47, 49, 56, 61–68, 81–93, 102, 116, 123–126, 144–147, 151, 153–161, 164–166, 174, 176, 197, 212, 221–222, 226–234, 240–241, 268–269, 283, 287–290, 293–296, 302, 318, 321 anxiety, 115; you, 202, 226–234 appropriateness (yi). See yi (situational appropriateness) Aristotle, xii, 38, 39, 217, 311 ars contextualis, 2, 15–26, 102, 106, 152, 172–179, 205, 211, 237, 240, 257, 265n6 Art of Warfare: Sunzi’s, 162, 164, 169n1; Sun Bin’s, 162, 169n4 authoritative conduct or person (ren). See ren (consummate conduct or person) Bao Shuya, 153–154, 159–160 benevolence (ren). See ren (consummate conduct or person) Book of Documents (Shujing), 110 Book of Rites (Liji), 110, 115, 232, 305. See also Daxue and Zhongyong Book of Songs (Shijing), 116, 118n26, 123, 210, 232 bronze inscriptions, 268, 269

Buddha, 109 Buddhism, xvii, 74, 187, 244n16, 258 ceaselessness, 113, 116, 270; generation (shengsheng buxi), 142 cheng, 96, 111–113, 115–116, 123, 126, 150n34, 205, 209, 211 Cheng Brothers, 41; Cheng Yi, 270 Classic of Changes (Yijing). See Yijing (Classic of Changes) Classic of Mountains and Seas, 194–195 cocreation, xviii, 43, 318–320 Confucianism (Ruism), 74, 96, 131–140; and cosmology, 99–108; and feminism, 309–317; as “lineage of ritual masters,” 166; and paternalism, 301–308; the philosophical tradition of, 49, 57–58, 135–136, 138, 141–150, 301, 318–321; as religion, 96, 109–118, 119–130, 136, 196–197; as role ethics, 201–244; and strategic imagination, 162–171; as virtue politics, 285–291 Confucius (Kongzi), xi, xviii–xix, 16–24, 25n17, 27–34, 51, 62–67, 68n7, 79, 81, 86–87, 91, 99, 102, 106, 115–117, 123, 133, 138, 146– 147, 151, 154–158, 160n2, 165–169, 190, 192, 196–199, 202, 212, 216, 219–223, 226–231, 235–236, 240–241, 251, 263–264, 268–269, 287–296, 301, 321 consummate conduct or person (ren). See ren (consummate conduct or person)

327

328 Index continuity of humanity and the cosmos (tianren heyi), 135, 142, 203 correctness of terminology (zhengming). See zhengming (rectifying names) correlativity 41, 57, 103, 167, 182–188, 205–211, 257–262, 302, 310 courage 117, 125, 202, 233n5, 291; yong, 226, 230 creatio ex nihilo, 28, 32, 42, 102, 250, 253 creatio in situ, 42, 207, 214, 214n8 creativity (cheng). See cheng dao, xi, xviii–xix, 27–33, 39–43, 69, 77, 82–92, 96, 102, 103, 114, 142, 164–166, 187–188, 192, 195, 203– 204, 210–212, 226, 239, 245–246, 252–253, 256–266, 267–272, 290; Way of Humane Authority (wangdao), 136. See also tiandao (Way of Heaven) Daodejing, 13, 41, 49, 163, 165, 250, 255n11, 265n3, 268–270, 272n17 Daoism, xx, 46, 49, 57, 192, 195, 245, 256, 259, 263, 265n6, 266n13, 268–270 Datong (Great Thoroughfare), 249, 262, 264 Davidson, Donald, 72 Daxue (Great Learning), 19, 128, 130n22, 173, 204, 214n3, 232, 234n30 de, 34, 39, 52, 62, 79, 122, 142, 150n32, 156, 212, 222, 230–231, 256–259 deference, 66, 113, 208, 259, 262, 264, 293–294, 298, 305, 307; fraternal deference (di), 164 Derrida, Jacques, 71, 74 Dewey, John, 8, 42, 59n2, 60n27, 60n31, 95–96, 105–106, 108n20, 146, 223, 225n26, 242, 285, 291n1, 302 diviners, 190–191 Dong Zhongshu, 136 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 18 doubt (huo), 226–234

Duan Yucai, 270 Duke Huan of Qi, 153 efficacy (de). See de empathic imagination (shu). See shu (empathic imagination) enlightenment, 109, 195, 269 essence, xvii, 39, 46, 51, 76, 78, 96, 137, 182, 209, 258–259, 270 essentialism, 12, 72, 75 Eurocentrism, 50, 133, 134 European Enlightenment, xvii, 132–133, 286 excellence (de). See de exemplary person (junzi). See junzi (exemplary person) Expansive Learning (Daxue). See Daxue (Great Learning) family reverence (xiao). See xiao (­family reverence) Fang Dongmei, 143 Fei Xiaotong, 284, 303–306, 308n5 feminism, xx, 284, 301–302, 309–317, 321 Feng Youlan, 50 filial piety (xiao). See xiao (family reverence) five relations (wulun). See wulun (five relations) Five Modes of Proper Conduct (Wuxingpian). See wuxing (five modes of proper conduct) focus-field, 16, 43, 204, 206, 208, 245, 256–266 focusing the familiar (zhongyong). See zhongyong (focusing the familiar) Four Books 118n9, 118n20, 119–120, 125–128, 136, 139, 214n3 four sprouts (siduan), 113 friendship, xvii–xix, 11, 16, 19, 146, 150n25, 153–154, 158–159, 201, 229, 243, 269, 277, 279, 296, 303, 313–314, 317n7 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 52, 59n17, 73–74, 100 gender, xx, 283, 298, 301–306, 308n14, 309–311, 314, 316, 316n2



Index329

gods, 122–125, 129n21, 192, 197; as di, 38; of the North Sea, 258; River God, 258; as tian, 127; transcendent God, 38–39, 42, 53, 59n16, 60n22, 60n34, 103, 128n3, 132–135, 191–196, 267 Graham, A.C., 41, 44nn4–5, 60n39, 113, 118n15, 151, 198, 199n7, 200n11, 200nn15–16, 262, 266n27, 266n36, 281nn1–2 Great Learning (Daxue). See Daxue (Great Learning) Great Pervader (Datong). See Datong (Great Thoroughfare) Great Thoroughfare (Datong). See Datong (Great Thoroughfare) Greek philosophical tradition, xvii, 38, 40, 42, 50, 58n1, 163, 192, 313–314 Guan Zhong, 63, 68n7, 153–154, 159–160, 160n1, 166, 168 Guanzi, 263

Ibsen, Henrik, 18 imagination, 152, 162–165, 167–169, 177, 194, 211, 212, 214, 237, 241, 242, 294, 295. See also shu (empathic imagination) individualism, 43, 137, 201, 206, 208, 212–213, 242, 269, 310, 314–315, 319, 320–321 inner potency (de). See de inner sage, 222 integrity (cheng). See cheng investigation of things (gewu), 152, 172–179

habitus, 211 Han Feizi, 269–270, 272n10 happy fish, 23–24, 26n23, 245–246, 249, 254, 273–281 harmony (he). See he (harmony) Hartshorne, Charles, 128n3 he (harmony), xii, xx, 33–34, 52, 79, 142, 144, 149n13, 151, 163–164, 183, 196, 199, 201, 214n8, 224n2, 237–242, 275, 288, 295, 306 heartmind (xin). See xin (heartmind) Heaven. See tian heavens. See tian Heidegger, Martin, 58n1, 217 Heraclitus, 74 Hu Shi, 50, 124, 173 Huang Lao, 12 Huayan Sutra, 269 Huizi (Hui Shi), 11, 23–24, 273–280 human becoming, xi, xiii, xvii–xviii, 43, 114, 148, 213, 321; and shendu, 204–211 humaneness (ren). See ren (consummate conduct or person) humbleness (jian), 47, 81–87, 89–92

Kant, Immanuel, 41, 217, 311 Kantianism, 41, 109, 217, 321 Kierkegaard, Søren, 18, 74 Kongzi (Confucius). See Confucius (Kongzi)

Jiang Qing, 96, 131–140 joy (le), 97, 146, 147, 150n26, 150n34, 228, 246, 273–275, 280 junzi (exemplary person), 28–31, 34, 47, 64, 77–78, 81–93, 144–148, 150n32, 158, 164, 168, 199, 202– 213, 221–222, 226–227, 230–231, 241, 285, 289–290

Laozi, 51, 163, 245, 256, 265n3, 271 Lau, D. C., xvi, 41, 46, 81, 87, 90, 92, 93n11, 162, 169n4, 170nn21–22, 291 learning: love of learning (haoxue), 58, 280; process of, 56, 172–177, 219–220, 223, 228, 275; to become human, 17, 28, 209, 211–212, 214, 321; xue, 155, 174–175 Legalism, 12, 74, 241; Legalist Three Bond Doctrine (sangang), 218 Legge, James, 38, 83, 93n4, 111, 113, 118n9, 118n14, 128, 128n4, 149n9, 228, 234n12 LGBTIAQ+, 301 li (pattern), 17, 206, 270 Li Zehou, 115, 142, 149n7, 150n35, 199n2, 284, 305–306, 308n11 Liezi, 153, 160n1

330 Index Liji (Book of Rites). See Book of Rites (Liji) Liu Xiang, 168, 171n26 logos, 40, 193 Lunyu (Analects). See Analects (Lunyu) material-energy (qi). See qi meditation, 245, 256, 260–265 Mencius (Mengzi), xii, 8, 12, 29, 111–116, 125–127, 145–147, 150n34, 166, 173–175, 190, 198, 208, 222, 287, 306, 316 Milgram, Stanley, 62 Mou Zongsan, 40–41, 139, 285, 291n2 Mozi, 11–12, 26n17, 49, 89, 93n14 music, 32, 142, 147–148, 156, 183, 213, 237, 249–253, 275, 294, 296; yue, 120, 146–147, 150n26, 173, 212, 275 Nanzi, 288 natural tendencies (xing), 39–40, 114, 203, 212 Neo-Confucianism, xvii, 18 New Confucianism, 3, 37, 41 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 8, 58, 60n41, 74, 91, 93n15, 165, 169n1, 170nn12–13, 220–221, 224nn13–14 numinous, 96, 109–119, 122–124, 127, 129n21 ontology. See process ontology; substance ontology oracle bone scripts, 191, 270 Orientalism, xvi, 139n1; neo-, 6, 7 paronomasia 76, 194 pattern (li). See li (pattern) Plato, 8–9, 38, 58n1, 76, 95, 210, 217; and Forms, 191, 194; and Platonism, 217 post-comparative, 2, 5, 10, 12, 302, 320 poverty, 153; pin, 47, 81–92 power (de). See de principle (li). See li (pattern) process ontology, xvi, xx, 6, 8, 14n20, 14n24, 14n29, 37–43, 46, 74, 95–96, 103, 119, 128n3, 143, 145, 150nn23–24, 150n34, 152, 163,

173, 177, 181–184, 201, 204, 206, 210–211, 240, 248–251, 258–260, 264, 267–268, 275, 279 propensities of circumstances (tianming). See tian proper use of terms (zhengming). See zhengming (rectifying names) qi, 23, 96, 103, 107n15, 110, 143, 183, 206, 252, 262 Qian Mu, 18, 23, 163, 169n2, 228, 229, 231, 234n13, 234n16, 234n29 race, 298 rambling (you), 195, 247, 249, 281n6 Ranyou, 29, 64 realizing (zhi). See zhi (realizing/ understanding) rectifying names (zhengming). See zhengming (rectifying names) reflecting (si), 155, 211, 228 Reid, Thomas, 61, 276 ren (consummate conduct or person), xi, xiii–xix, 22–23, 29–32, 34, 35n24, 39, 46, 61–68, 68n7, 77–78, 82, 91–92, 93n8, 113–114, 142, 146–147, 157–158, 164, 166, 168–169, 198, 201, 205–209, 212, 220, 230–232, 243, 285, 289, 302, 312–313 resolute personal uniqueness (shendu), 201, 203–215 respect, xix, 34, 40, 52, 82, 119–120, 123, 125, 153, 197, 211, 218, 238, 305, 311, 318; disrespect, 298; jing, 17, 113, 117 rightness (yi). See yi (situational appropriateness) Rites Controversy, 133 ritual, 13nn7–8, 19, 28, 30–32, 64, 66–67, 68n9, 113, 121, 127, 135–136, 138, 145, 191, 196, 198, 217, 219, 222, 224n4, 225n22, 287, 293–295, 305, 307, 314–315; ancestral rites, 17–23, 26n17; ritual propriety (li), 34, 62, 68n7, 114, 119–120, 125, 127, 133, 152, 166, 172–177, 201, 208–209, 212, 219, 222, 283, 285,



Index331

292, 300n7, 312; sacrificial rites, 110, 125–126, 130n21 Ruism (Confucianism). See Confucianism (Ruism) sage (sheng), 27, 30–31, 33, 65, 111, 126–127, 129n21, 164–165, 168, 207–208, 211–212, 220, 222, 226– 227, 236, 241–242, 251, 261–262, 270, 285–287, 295 secularism, 96, 119, 124–128, 129n9, 130n21, 131–135, 137–139, 193 sexism, 301–302, 310–311, 316n2, 317n4 Shangdi, 120–122, 125, 127, 129n21 shengshengbuxi (ceaseless generation). See ceaselessness shu (empathic imagination), 35n24, 164, 170n23, 210–212, 221, 232 Shuowen Jiezi, 175, 193, 214n4, 269–270 Sima Niu, 230–231 sincerity (cheng). See cheng sitting and forgetting (zuowang), 249 situational appropriateness (yi). See yi (situational appropriateness) social eminence, 47, 81, 83, 91 Socrates, 59n3, 76 somaesthetic, 208–209, 211, 214n12 substance ontology, xvi, 6, 39, 42, 46, 102–103, 152, 165, 180–183, 188, 248, 258–259, 267 Sun Bin. See Art of Warfare. Sunzi. See Art of Warfare. taiji, 182–183. See also yinyang Taijiquan, 265 Tang Junyi, 40, 43, 135, 139, 142–143, 148, 149n8, 149n10–11 theism, 109–116, 119–120, 124–128, 128n4; atheism, 132, 134; mono­ theism, 69; nontheistic, 109, 125, 127, 131; polytheism, 125 tian (Heaven/heavens), 11, 16, 38–39, 41, 69, 87, 102–103, 110–116, 119– 122, 125–127, 129n10,130n28, 136, 157, 193, 196, 203, 207, 209, 214, 220, 228, 249, 254, 261, 269–270,

287; heavenly spirits (tianshen), 125; piping of tian, 251–252, 275; tiandao (Way of Heaven), 2, 27, 41, 135, 136; tianming (propensities of circumstances), 157, 228–229. See also continuity of humans and cosmos (tianrenheyi) tianren heyi (continuity of humanity and the cosmos). See continuity of humanity and the cosmos (tianren heyi) Tolstoy, Leo, 18 transcendence, 5, 7, 11–12, 16, 39–41, 52, 69, 95–96, 102–103, 109–111, 116–117, 120, 132–136, 139n3, 144, 152, 190–196, 199, 206–209, 248; chaoyue, 40–41 transformation, xviii, 16, 31, 49, 54, 71–72, 79n2, 95–96, 112–113, 142– 145, 164–165, 168, 169n7, 176, 187, 190–196, 206–209, 211, 217, 233, 246, 249–254, 258–265, 268–271, 275, 278, 283–285, 290, 292, 314 understanding (zhi). See zhi (realizing/ understanding) village worthies, 202, 216–225 vital energy (qi). See qi Wang Chong, 86–87, 89–90 war (zhan), xv, 153, 160, 167; postwar liberal world order, 319; World War II, 62. See also Art of Warfare Warring States, 150, 163 Way of Heaven (tiandao). See tian. wealth, 47, 81–93, 111, 205, 290 Whitehead, Alfred North, 10, 11, 14nn20–21, 14n24, 42, 59n2, 60n27, 60n31, 74, 97, 119, 128n3, 143, 146, 148, 150n23–24, 217, 218, 224n3 Wilhelm, Richard, 128 wisdom, 31, 56, 58, 64, 145, 192, 197, 227, 258, 304, 318; love of (philo­ sophia), 49, 52, 54–55, 188, 320; strategic wisdom, 168; zhi, 114, 142, 155, 208–209, 229–230, 280, 285. See also zhi (realizing/understanding)

332 Index Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 16–19, 22–24, 24n7, 25n8, 25n11–12, 25n18–20, 72–76, 79n2, 116, 118n25 Wordsworth, William, 2, 19, 22–24, 24nn6–7, 25nn9–12, 26n18 wu-forms, 250, 259, 262, 277; wuming (naming without fixed reference) 250–251; wushi (to be non-interfering in going about your business) 250; wuwei (nonassertive or noncoercive action) 234n9, 250, 259, 262; wuxin (unmediated feeling) 250; wuyu (objectless desire) 250, 255n11, 259, 262; wuzhi (unprincipled knowing) 250, 259, 262 wulun (five relations), 233, 303, 306, 314 wuxing (five modes of proper ­conduct), 96; Wuxingpian (Five Modes of Proper Conduct), 150n32, 206–208, 214n9 Xi Jinping, 216, 320 xiao (family reverence), 29, 39, 65, 121, 164, 197–198, 285, 312–313 xin (heartmind) 40, 79, 113, 114, 126, 175, 192, 205, 208, 227, 229, 249–254, 263 Xuan Xue, 74 Xunzi, 29, 35n9, 88, 111, 127, 139 Yan Hui, xviii, 115, 146, 156, 228, 249, 252, 263–264, 294, 300n10 Yang Bojun, 85–90, 93nn6–7 Yang Xiong, 168, 171n26 yi (situational appropriateness) 17, 29, 34, 39, 144, 147, 149n19, 164,

168–169, 175, 201, 208–209, 230, 241, 285, 295 Yijing (Classic of Changes), xvii, 16, 42, 96, 129n18, 268; Great Treatise on the Book of Changes (Yijing dazhuan), 142, 149n9 yinyang, 96, 142, 182, 224n2, 310; the Yinyang School, 258 yong (courage). See courage you (anxiety). See anxiety Zaiwo, 289, 294–295 Zengzi, 205, 232 Zhang Juzheng, 120, 124–128, 130n22, 130nn26–27 Zheng Xuan, 123, 127, 205 zhengming (rectifying names), 31, 76 zhi (realizing/understanding), 114, 146, 148, 151, 153–161, 173–174, 213, 228–230, 232, 246, 250, 259, 273–281 zhongyong (focusing the familiar), 17, 148; Focusing the Familiar (text), 19, 39, 96, 103, 109–118, 119–130, 147–148, 150n36, 203, 206, 210–212, 234n30, 302. Zhu Xi, 17–19, 22–24, 24n5, 114–115, 118n20, 130n28, 139, 152, 172–179, 205, 214n3 Zhuangzi, 11–12, 14n22, 23–24, 49, 57, 75, 79, 80n7, 96, 163, 187, 195, 245–254, 258–266, 273–281 Zigong, 116, 156 Zilu, 64, 157, 192, 289, 296 Ziqi of Nanguo, 195, 252 Zisi, 123–125, 147, 207 Zixia, 28 Zizhang, 64–65