The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy 2018025802, 2018039350, 9781350007215, 9781350007192, 9781350007208

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THE BLOOMSBURY RESEARCH HANDBOOK OF EARLY CHINESE ETHICS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

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Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy Series Editors Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Lancaster University, UK Sor-hoon Tan, National University of Singapore

Editorial Advisory Board Roger Ames, Professor of Philosophy, University of Hawai‘i, USA ; Doug Berger, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, USA ; Carine Defoort, Professor of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium; Owen Flanagan, James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy, Duke University, USA ; Jessica Frazier, Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Kent, UK ; Chenyang Li, Associate Professor of Chinese Philosophy, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Ronnie Littlejohn, Professor of Philosophy, Director of Asian Studies, Belmont University, USA ; Evan Thompson, Professor of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Canada Bringing together established academics and rising stars, Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy survey philosophical topics across all the main schools of Asian thought. Each volume focuses on the history and development of a core subject in a single tradition, asking how the field has changed, highlighting current disputes, anticipating new directions of study, illustrating the Western philosophical significance of a subject and demonstrating why a topic is important for understanding Asian thought. From knowledge, being, gender and ethics, to methodology, language and art, these research handbooks provide up-to-date and authoritative overviews of Asian philosophy in the twenty-first century. Available titles The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Gender, edited by Ann A. Pang White The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies, edited by Sor-hoon Tan The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, edited by Arindam Chakrabarti The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics, edited by Shyam Ranganathan

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THE BLOOMSBURY RESEARCH HANDBOOK OF EARLY CHINESE ETHICS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Edited by Alexus McLeod

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC 1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Alexus McLeod, 2019 Alexus McLeod has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. Series design by Clare Turner Cover image: Emperor Hsien Ti (fl.189–220) with scholars translating classical texts, from a history of Chinese emperors (colour on silk), Chinese School, (17th century) / Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France © Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: McLeod, Alexus, editor. Title: The Bloomsbury research handbook of early Chinese ethics and political philosophy / edited by Alexus McLeod. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. | Series: Bloomsbury research handbooks in Asian philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed. Identifiers: LCCN 2018025802 (print) | LCCN 2018039350 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350007215 (ePub) | ISBN 9781350007192 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781350007208 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Ethics—China—History. | Political science—China—Philosophy—History. Classification: LCC BJ117 (ebook) | LCC BJ117 .B56 2018 (print) | DDC 170.931—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018025802 ISBN : HB : 978-1-3500-0720-8 ePDF : 978-1-3500-0719-2 eBook: 978-1-3500-0721-5 Series: Bloomsbury Research Handbooks in Asian Philosophy Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. iv

CONTENTS

Introduction Alexus McLeod

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Part One Historical Approaches 1 Confucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming, Translation, and Interpretation Sarah Mattice

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2 From Patterning to Governing: A Constructivist Interpretation of the Xunzi Kurtis Hagen

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3 Some Considerations in Defense of a Radical Reading of the Mohist Jian Ai Alexus McLeod

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4 Ritual and the Vulnerability of a Prosperous World: A Reading of the “Liyun” 禮運 Michael D.K. Ing

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5 Morality Without Moral Reasoning: The Case of Heshanggong Misha Tadd

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CONTENTS

6 Nothingness and Selfhood in the Zhuangzi David Chai

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7 Han Fei’s Rule of Law and its Limits Alejandro Bárcenas

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Part Two Comparative Approaches 8 Non-Impositional Rule in Confucius and Aristotle Matthew D. Walker

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9 Other People Die and That is the Problem Amy Olberding

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10 The Problem of Anxiety in the Zhuangzi as Contrasted with Indian and Hellenistic Views Alexus McLeod

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11 “Son of Heaven”: Developing The Theological Aspects of Mengzi’s Philosophy of the Ruler 247 Joshua R. Brown 12 Justifying Human Rights in Confucianism May Sim

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A NNOTATED B IBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS ON EARLY C HINESE E THICS AND P OLITICAL P HILOSOPHY Alexus McLeod

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C ONTRIBUTORS

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I NDEX

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Introduction Ethical and Political Thought in Early China ALEXUS McLEOD

It is well known that ethics and political thought are foundational to the Chinese intellectual tradition. Most thinkers of early China, considered as the period before the foundation of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE , were primarily interested in social and political issues. To the extent that they did engage in discussions of metaphysics, epistemology, language, and other areas, they did so in order to answer fundamental social and political questions. For early Chinese thinkers, answering these questions was not a matter primarily of formulating accounts of social and political phenomena. Rather, their aim was cultivation of skill and practice, in elements of individual and communal life. Though we are accustomed to separating as distinct areas of thought ethics and politics, for most early Chinese thinkers the two were continuous. Even where we see thinkers, such as Hanfeizi, Shen Dao, or the Daoists rejecting concern with the virtue (de 德) of the Confucians and Mohists, there was still no conception that what they were doing was rejecting a certain category of human thought, ethics, to concentrate instead on politics. Thinkers such as these simply thought of the de of the Confucians as unnecessary for bringing about the desired communal and individual states. The early Chinese thinkers might thus be best described not as being primarily concerned with ethics and politics, but as concerned primarily with questions concerning the dao 道 (Way). The dao for most of these early 1

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thinkers described a particular way of organizing individual and communal life, a pattern to follow to realize the values inherent in the dao, which differed given different accounts of the world.1 Traditionally, early Chinese approaches have been categorized by school (jia 家).2 While this approach does not capture a number of complexities, including the fact that there are radical differences within “school,” and that school boundaries themselves are often arbitrary, it can be a somewhat useful heuristic. I employ it here, as do a number of the authors of the chapters of this volume, while keeping in mind its limitations, and pointing out its weaknesses where necessary. While I want to let the chapters themselves put forward the positions of the philosophers and philosophical schools discussed, below I offer a brief historical background and describe the basic points and context of each of the thinkers and schools discussed. The scope of this volume is early Chinese ethics and politics, which I have defined as the period from the Spring and Autumn through the end of the Han Dynasty. These boundaries are of necessity somewhat arbitrary, however. Many draw the upper boundary of “early Chinese philosophy” at the end of the Warring States Period, with the unification of the states by the Qin Shihuang (First Emperor of Qin). The Qin, these authors claim, marks the boundary between classic Chinese philosophy and what can be referred to as “medieval” Chinese philosophy.3 This has partly to do with the view that the basic parameters of Chinese philosophical development were set in the Pre-Qin period, and that the years of empire beginning with the Qin and Han saw a shift from innovative philosophical thought to primarily commentary.4 This view relies on a number of problematic assumptions. First, though Han philosophers did understand their views as commentarial and supplementary to the main strands of their tradition, Pre-Qin thinkers also thought of their views the same way. Confucius’ teachings, as recounted in the Analects, are almost always couched in terms of the Shijing (Odes) and other classics, and he says of his own positions in the famous claim of Analects 7.1, “I transmit and do not create” (shu er bu zuo 述而不作). The only thinkers in the PreQin period who reject this kind of commentarial/traditional thinking are the Legalists, such as Han Feizi. Han Dynasty philosophers rely on commentary and tradition as well, for the most part (this is not true of all of them of course), yet still develop their own unique, important, and influential views. Indeed, much of our interpretation of Pre-Qin texts is based on positions developed in the Han that later influenced Neo-Confucians such as the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming.5 The end of the Han makes a more natural dividing line between early Chinese philosophy and later Chinese philosophy, as the descent of empire into a second period of warring states through the Wei-Jin period marks, if

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not the end of philosophical thought, the beginning of a very different direction in Chinese thought. It is in this period that Buddhism takes root in China, which changes the intellectual landscape of China from that point onward. Thus, I understand “early Chinese philosophy” here as “preBuddhist Chinese philosophy”. Two other natural divisions might be “postBuddhist Chinese philosophy” from the third to the tenth century CE , and “later Chinese philosophy,” corresponding to the development and rise of Neo-Confucianism after the tenth century. Ethics and politics, the themes of this volume, were central to almost all early Chinese philosophers. While it is common for philosophical investigations into early China to begin with Confucians, and particularly with the Analects, the most well-known collection of teachings attributed to Confucius and his students, the Analects is neither the earliest philosophical text of the Chinese tradition nor the most foundational for later thinkers. In both these measures, we should begin by looking to the Zhou classics (the famous “Five Classics”), including texts on history, ritual, and poetry. While there is little of obvious philosophical import in these texts, they lay the foundation that later thinkers, especially Confucians, use in later years. The earliest texts we can clearly call philosophical texts in the tradition are probably the early strata of the Mozi and the Daodejing. Some parts of the Analects likely date back this far as well, though it is likely that the collection as we have it was compiled much later, perhaps as late as the Han Dynasty.6 This would be consistent with the development of a number of other collections of teachings attributed to Confucius compiled in the Han, such as the Kongzi Jiayu (School Sayings of Confucius) and the Kong Congzi (Collected Sayings of Confucius), both compiled by the late Eastern Han/ Wei-Jin scholar Wang Su. Regardless of where we choose to begin the philosophical story in terms of timeline, however, it is clear that in the earliest Chinese philosophy, of the Mohists, Confucians, and Daoists (despite these problematic categories, as mentioned above), the central concerns were ethical and political. In the texts of both Mohists and Confucians, the central goal is the establishment and maintenance of social harmony (he 和), which they see as both an ethical and political goal. This is one of the things that sets much of early Chinese philosophy apart from numerous systems we see in the West. Ethics and politics are not taken as two distinct areas of human endeavor. Thinking about the best way for the individual to live (ethics) is intimately tied to consideration of the best ways to organize the community, in part because we cannot make sense of the individual independently of the community within which the individual attains identity and agency. This is, of course, not a position found only within the Chinese tradition, nor does every

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thinker in the Chinese tradition accept it. The ancient Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle, held views much like this, with Aristotle’s claim in the Nicomachean Ethics that politics is the art of human living within which we find ethics and morality. On the other side, thinkers within the Chinese tradition such as the Yangist, Zhuangists, and others vehemently disagreed with the traditional view that the individual human was essentially a communally defined, grounded, and constrained being. Still, ethics and politics were closely intertwined in much of the tradition. And even for those who split them apart (and who often rejected politics while still committed to ethics), the two played major roles. The Zhuangist, for example, who have little good to say about politics (though their views do not necessarily commit them to evasion of politics) are still motivated primarily by ethical considerations, even if very different ethical considerations than other thinkers. We see a wide variety of answers in early Chinese philosophy to the central question of ethics: how should one live? We see almost as many answers to the central questions of political philosophy, concerning the best way(s) of organizing communities and the state. While ethics and politics were certainly the central concerns of early Chinese philosophers, they also dealt with metaphysics, epistemology, language, and a host of other issues. As this volume focuses on ethics and politics, I will outline their views on these issues alone—though of course given the centrality of these topics, no single overview could be sufficient in capturing all or even most of their concerns. I offer here only the most general of snapshots, with some parts of the story to be filled in with greater detail by the chapters of the volume. Readers with knowledge of the early Chinese philosophical tradition may want to skip to Part II below.

SOCIAL HARMONY THINKERS: EARLY CONFUCIANISM (LUNYU, LIJI, CHUNQIU COMMENTARIES) AND MOHISM The earliest and most well known of the Chinese philosophers, the Confucians, in many ways reflected traditional early Chinese views in their thought. While they can be rightfully seen as bearers of the tradition in its orthodox sense, there is much innovation in the early Confucian tradition as well. The earliest Confucians, or ru 儒 (classicists) saw themselves as stewards of the tradition of the culture of the Zhou, the ancient “dynasty” dating back to 1046 BCE . The Zhou culture was based on the so-called “Five Classics” (wu jing 五經), which ru scholars were employed to teach to nobility in the various states aligned with the Zhou. Confucius and those who followed him saw in these works the key to answering the pressing ethical and political questions of the day.7

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Some of the primary concerns of the early Confucians were the political disharmony of the late Zhou period (referred to today as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period), what they saw as a break with Zhou cultural ideals, lack of self-cultivation, and insufficient commitment to communal norms and the thriving of the community. I purposefully draw a very broad picture of early Confucianism here, as these aspects of the early Confucian program are agreed upon by all. The specifics of the Confucian answer to these questions, however, are interpreted differently by scholars. What is clear is that the early Confucians focus on a few specific concepts in their attempt to solve these ethical and political problems. Here, then, I outline a few of these important concepts. The list below is not exhaustive, of course, but offers a few of the central concepts of early Confucianism. He 和 (harmony) While it is problematic to point to any single concept as that with which early Confucians were most concerned, he (harmony) is certainly among the most important. Though it is not often discussed by name, much of what is developed in early Confucian texts has social harmony as its aim. Such is what obtains when we achieve an orderly society, in which the people are committed to their own roles and to the wellbeing of the entire community (rather than their personal profit or achievement alone). Ren 仁 (humanity) The concept of ren is one of the more difficult in the early Confucian texts, even though it is one of the most discussed. Ren appears to be a kind of commitment to the integrity and development of the community, and in some texts a benevolent feeling toward this communal project. This is the reason it is often translated “benevolence” in the Mengzi, while “humanity” is a common choice for the Lunyu. In many places is appears to be a kind of central Confucian goal, such that some scholars refer to it a kind of “cardinal virtue” of Confucianism.8 While this confuses things somewhat, given the key differences between Confucian and Aristotelian or Thomistic approaches to ethics, it is certainly the case that ren is something Confucians consistently advocate striving toward. Without ren, according to the Confucians, one cannot advance the aims of bringing about and maintaining a harmonious society, and one cannot realize one’s full humanity. Having ren is a matter of having a fully developed, coherent, and praiseworthy character. When one possesses ren, this creates a kind of attractive power, which Confucian texts call de 德 (potency, virtue). This de has the ability to influence

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and inspire others, such that the potency of the ren person can make a major contribution to the social project of a thriving society in which each person performs his or her role in the proper spirit and is themselves committed to the overarching social project. For the Confucians, as for a number of other early Chinese thinkers, ethics and politics do not come apart. Self-cultivation is at the same time the development and strengthening of the community and society in general. This is in part because what the person most essentially is, as Sarah Mattice discusses in her chapter, is a confluence of social roles. One’s agency is determined by one’s place in the community in terms of roles and the actions (rituals) that attach to these roles. The very idea of a role contains within it certain social norms and commitments, because a role is a role in community. One cannot have a role on one’s own, and thus one cannot be fully a person or agent on one’s own. Ren, then, can be understood as the kind of commitment to performing and perfecting one’s roles that a developed person has. One becomes ren as one perfects one’s roles, as one integrates into the social order through the exemplification of these roles such that one becomes a crucial part of the community. It is in part for this reason that Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont translate the term “authoritativeness.” The development of ren through exemplification of one’s roles and commitment in community creates the kind of person who is effective at influencing others due to his or her cultural capital, who is able to create the kind of shame in others that drives them to develop themselves (Analects 2.3), and whose visibility and respect enables them to play an important role in the maintenance of harmonious community. This, of course, is not all there is to the picture. Confucianism is not a kind of harmony-consequentialism. One can ultimately only attain ren if one has the commitment to self and other developments that are not myopically focused on goals. A person of ren is one who aims to exemplify roles and develop the community out of a deep concern for these ideals, whether or not they come to fruition. Ren is thus in some sense a paradox—those who care about constructing the harmonious society should ultimately do so because such concern is part of what it is to be human. But in having such concern, one will also thereby care about consequences. This may be part of the reason the early Confucians have such a difficult time characterizing ren. It is a concept to be grappled with, pondered, and observed through practice, rather than one to define. Li 禮 (ritual) Another central concept in Confucianism alongside of ren is that of ritual (li). The term “ritual” in English has rather limited connotations compared to the early Confucian concept. We generally think of ritual as the regularized

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actions and norms connected to ceremonies, specifically religious ceremonies and ceremonies of state. This is certainly included in the Confucian sense of ritual, but it goes beyond this. Li denotes the complex of norms attached to roles, and thus forms the basis for proper human activity. Whether the right view of the Confucians is that they took the person as constituted by roles or instead that they saw roles as a central aspect of the life of the person (we can be neutral about this here), they certainly took roles as at the very center of human life and therefore of ethical consideration. Thus, the language of roles, the norms governing the performance of these roles, was likewise of crucial importance. For this reason, I sometimes translate li with the bulky and somewhat unwieldy phrase “contextual standards of conduct.” Li are standards of action or norms similar to what we might call “morals,” but unlike the status of morals in much of Western thought, li is highly individualized according to role. The standards of conduct binding on a person do not depend on facts about them as an individual autonomous agent or as a human being in general (as we see in Kantian ethics), but rather on the roles the person has. Norms are connected to particular roles, such that any person who occupies a particular role takes as responsibility the li associated with that role. In part, then, an individual can be defined by the li, the standards of conduct, that govern their actions (as this also informs us about their roles). Confucian texts such as the Liji (Record of Rituals) are centrally concerned with various questions surrounding the nature and application of ritual—with how we balance conflicting ritual duties, the variable efficacy of ritual, and even the inevitable failure of ritual to achieve its set goals. Michael Ing’s contribution discusses some of these features of ritual in the Liyun chapter of Liji. Xiao 孝 (filiality) One of the more unique features of Confucian ethics and politics in comparison to many Western systems is its focus on family virtues such as filiality as central, rather than peripheral. In most Western systems of ethics, if family virtues are important at all, they are important insofar as they arise from or count as examples of moral responsibilities generated based on other considerations. For early Confucians, however, morality and politics were understood as impossible without filial concern. According to the Analects, filial concern is the root or origin of ren (humanity). This filial concern the Confucians discuss comprises two parts: the physical care for one’s parents, such that one takes care of parents when they get too old to care for themselves, and emotional concern for one’s parents, in form of a compassionate commitment to their wellbeing, moral and physical.

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According to early Confucians, there are at least two positive features of filiality. First—filial concern creates structurally similar virtues in other areas of one’s life. Virtues, according to the Confucians, do not remain local but seep into other areas of one’s experience. If one cultivates care and respect for parents, one will also thereby develop care and respect for superiors in general (as a parent is an example of a superior). Development of filiality then will at the same time be development of more general virtues of respect for superiors. Likewise, care for siblings will at the same time constitute development of the more general virtue of care for one’s fellow citizens (Analects 1.2). Second—development of filial concern is at the same time the development of one’s nature as a human being. When we recognize that what we are is completely dependent on what our parents are, then having respect for ourselves is one and the same as having respect for parents and ancestors. Thus, filial care is a necessary component of self-cultivation, of the full realization of one’s humanity. Tian 天 (heaven) The concept of tian, like that of dao discussed below, is a moving target in early Chinese texts. Unlike the above concepts, almost every thinker who discusses tian seems to have something different in mind when they do so, including different thinkers within the early Confucian tradition. In the Analects as well as the Mengzi, tian seems to be understood as a kind of seminatural cosmic principle, a kind of ordered world and cause that can have something like intent, but not in the same way humans have it. It perhaps comes close to the eighteenth and nineteenth century Western conception of deism, belief in a distant and impersonal creator God responsible for the maintenance of the universe but which does not stand outside of the world, act as humans do (willing, etc.), or intervene in the world, a kind of naturalist view of God. Not all scholars agree on this, however. Tian, given the little specifically said about it in early Confucian texts beside tangential mentions and statement that it supports and causes humans to be as they are, is thus difficult to pin down. It could be nothing more than a general nature concept. In some texts, such as the Xunzi, it seems clear that this is how tian is understood. The case is less clear for other early Confucian texts, however. And we see that in other non-Confucian texts, such as the Mozi, tian is understood very much as something approximating God, a (relatively) personal and transcendent deity who wills and intervenes in the world. In early Confucian texts, we often see reference to tian to explain things that are seemingly inevitable, human fate, nature, and the development of the world. All that cannot be transformed through human effort is attributable

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to tian. In some sense, there is overlap between this and our contemporary conception of “nature,” in that we generally deem that what happens in and by nature is uncontrolled or happens without human intervention. Insofar as we modify nature, it is on the basis of human will and activity. It is a matter of nature that humans age and die, or that the seasons change, and the sun rises in the east. Certain features of nature as such can thwart us or help us in our attempts to cultivate virtue and create and sustain thriving communities. Confucius, on the death of his best student Yan Hui, cried out that tian had forsaken him (Analects 11.8). This need not be taken as a statement that a divine agent withdrew its approval of Confucius, but rather can be understood as a lament that the uncontrollable aspects of the world are such that they lead to the thwarting of Confucius’ projects and the crushing of his hopes for his best student. Nature, in that sense, appears as “against” him, in that it runs counter to his purposes and his efforts. Whether we understand tian as containing something more than this depends on interpretive choices. Regardless, tian is certainly taken by the Confucians as something that inevitably constrains what we are able to do in our efforts at self-cultivation and social harmony. If something is determined by tian, there is nothing we can do to alter or overcome it. This is linked to the concept of ming (fate, decree)—in part what tian does is to make things necessarily how they are. Something that is as it is as a matter of tian has a ming to be as it is. The later formulation tianming is in some sense redundant—a thing has a particular fate only insofar as this fate is grounded in and caused by tian. Ming then can be seen as an aspect of tian, or rather an aspect of things in relation to tian. Dao 道 (way) I end this section on the early Confucians with by far the most contentious concept in early Chinese philosophy, and one whose definition varies radically by text and school. Dao is translated numerous ways: “way,” “course,” and sometimes simply left untranslated, due to the variety of different ways is it understood in early texts. This may be part of the reason dao is by far the most familiar term of early Chinese literature in the West. The Confucian concept of dao is fairly easy to characterize, if very different from the dao of the Daoists and other thinkers. For the early Confucians, the dao they are concerned with is the uniquely human dao, which they understand as the moral way outlined by the Zhou classics, including the ritual norms governing roles, and the proper ways of commitment to and constructing communities. Commitment at some level to this dao is in part what makes humans what we are, and to turn our back on this dao is thus to be less than human. Each kind of thing, according to the Confucians, has its unique dao. There is the dao of

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humans, which involves enacting of roles, commitment to community, and self-cultivation, and there is also the dao of dogs, cows, and other beings. According to the Confucians, self-development and true thriving can only happen when we follow the uniquely human dao and not other daos. Despite some abiguity in early Confucian texts (Lunyu . . . “a dao is made by the person, the person is not made by the dao”), in general the dao seems to be something like the collection of normative ways a person should strive to be. A person committed to self-cultivation and creation and maintenance of social harmony is committed to the dao of humanity.

PHILOSOPHIES OF THRIVING NATURE: YANGISM, DAOISM (DAODEJING AND ZHUANGZI, NEIYE), MENGZI Early dissenters to the dominant Confucian conception of ethics and politics included the Yangists, followers of the philosopher Yang Zhu, the Daoists, and a slightly later group of Daoist-related thinkers I refer to as Zhuangists, after the text Zhuangzi in which their thought is compiled, much of it attributed to the figure Zhuang Zhou. A group of related texts in the early Han of the socalled Huang-Lao school also joined in this dissent, along with texts such as the Guanzi and the basic structure of the Huainanzi and other “synthesis” texts. One of the key criticisms of these systems to the Confucian conception of ethics and politics is that the Confucian dao is artificial and involves the movement away from what they consider our natural and spontaneous reactions to the world. For this tradition, the concepts of “non-action” (wu wei 無為) and spontaneity (ziran 自然) are central. Though all of these related texts have something to say about the questions of ethics, some of them appear to reject the view of the centrality of politics in human life, or eschew politics altogether. This is particularly the case with the collection of texts in the Zhuangzi often referred to as the “primitivist” chapters.9 In the remainder of this section, instead of breaking down the basic ideas of these philosophies of thriving and nature on the basis of shared concepts, I describe the views of this tradition based on their particular views concerning effective action, personhood, and politics. It is necessary to begin, however, with a concept—the very one with which the last section ended—the central concept of dao. Dao The concept of dao gives the Daoist tradition (dao jia 道家) its name. But the way the thinkers in this category, Yangist, Daoist, Zhuangist, thought of dao

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was very different from the way Confucans understood it as outlined above. Dao for the Daoists was an ultimately ineffable source of action and vitality, made manifest in part by the “natural patterns” (tian li 天理) of things. There are numerous interpretations of what these patterns amount to, and their relationship to the underlying dao. My own view on this is that the dao is understood as a metaphysical ground of being that can be followed through one’s activity but cannot be fully expressed through language due to the limitation of human concepts, the latter being a theme discussed in various chapters of the Zhuangzi. One of the main aims according to this tradition is to understand the nature and patterns of the dao, so as to effectively act in the world. Effective action, as explained below, is only possible when we follow along with rather than cut against the patterns inherent in the world, and understanding how to do this is to understand dao. Dao in this sense thus seems to have some relationship with the Confucian tian, and sometimes is used interchangeably. Effective action According to the thinkers in this tradition, when we understand and follow the natural patterns or the dao, our action becomes effective, regardless of our goals. One way of making sense of the difference between the Dao tradition and other thinkers is that Dao tradition thinkers were often focused on method rather than particular purposes. The Confucians and Mohists, for example, were concerned with social harmony and moral self-cultivation. The Dao tradition is more concerned with general methods. That is, a question that tends to occupy them is: “how can we ensure that our action is effective, regardless of the ends?” The thinkers of the Dao tradition offer various responses to this question, but they all involve the same basic elements. In order to effectively act according to these thinkers, we must cultivate the ability to act in an unforced and spontaneous manner (wu wei). For most of these thinkers, this involves avoiding engagement in the kind of valuation and devaluation that thinkers like the Confucians and Mohists exemplify. When we make distinctions, according to many of these thinkers, we thereby render certain things useless, which narrow the possibilities of what we can make use of to act effectively and ultimately thrive. According to the Zhuangists, the way to avoid this is to give up shi-fei 是 非 conceptualization, that is, the distinction between “this” and “not-this,” which captures a number of different kinds of evaluation, such as true/false, right/wrong, useful/useless, etc. When we engage in such conceptualization, we establish a valued and devalued category, and it is just then that we miss the efficacy of “valueless” categories—we become rigid and fail to recognize

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the transformation of things, how something useless for one thing or purpose and in one time becomes useful for another, and vice versa. Recognition of this is crucial to thriving according to the Zhuangists, and it leads to the ability to undermine this conceptualization such that we can shift perspectives and transform with the myriad things, thus able to make the most of our experience. To do this, however, we must ultimately abandon our concern with particular goals and even with the concept of our separate self, with its particular identity and goals. Personhood Our attachment to personhood, according to the Zhuangists, is the root of the problem concerning conceptualization and ineffective action. The conception of a self comes with that of identity, and this involves (as the Confucian discusses) acceptance of certain valuations and devaluations as necessary. As the Confucians hold, identity is a matter of valuation—one can only occupy and exemplify certain roles insofar as one accepts a kind of structured order of valuations pertinent to that role. Thus, for the athlete winning is valuable and losing is disvaluable. For the merchant, making money is valuable and losing money is disvaluable. It is impossible to maintain a particular identity (in terms of roles, etc.) without retaining the conceptualization and valuations these identities rely on. Thus, since undermining the necessity of certain valuation is the only way to ensure effective action and ultimately thriving according to the Zhuangists, we must also undermine identity and the sense of our unique personhood. Attachment to personhood makes it impossible, among other things, to correctly direct the various mental states such that they are consistent with our thriving—including seemingly negative states such as fear and anxiety. This is consistent with the general Zhuangist approach that shuns valuation and (thus) devaluation as well. Other Dao tradition texts, such as the Daodejing, are less focused on the difficulties of the concept of personhood. While non-forced action (wu wei) is as much the goal there, we do not see the argument that undermining a concept of self or conceptualization is necessary in order to achieve such activity. In the Daodejing, it is recognition of aspects of the world we generally miss, associated with yin (low, yielding, invisible) characteristics that enables this action. Yin here is part of a binary transformational principle of yin and yang (high, powerful, apparent). The text makes the point that we often recognize the effectiveness of yang actions, but fail to recognize the effectiveness of yin actions, which can often overcome yang actions. Yielding can overcome aggression, the low can overcome the high. Background makes possible foreground.

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Politics This general orientation of Dao tradition texts carries on to their discussion of politics. We see a number of different views concerning political organization throughout these texts. In the Daodejing, the general method of using yin and engaging in wu wei activity is applied to rulership and order. The best way, the text argues, to order the people is not to use visible force, but rather to use their own natural (psychological) patterns. Chapter 17 of the Daodejing is probably the most famous statement of such a view. The best kind of ruler is one of whom the people only know that he exists, and nothing more. Such a ruler is the “shadowy presence” (to use the excellent creative translation of D.C. Lau10). The ultimate aim of Dao traditional teaching on rulership is that disengaged or understated rule is ultimately most effective. The more a ruler is forced to do as far as activity, the more endangered he becomes. As with other realms of human activity, understanding dao is a matter of using and following natural patterns, which enables one to act in a non-forced manner, both retaining one’s qi and achieving greater effect. These views are not limited to the Dao tradition, of course. Confucians stress the efficacy of the ruler who is not forced to act, and who has his greatest potency as something like a virtuous figurehead (Analects 2.1). In the later Han synthetic literature as well, ideal rulership is understood as indirectly and non-forcefully administered. The primary task of the ruler is to understand the propensities of people and things and to subtly direct these propensities through operation at the most effective joint in order to ensure that these people and things act in their accustomed or natural ways in the right direction. The ruler’s task is not to attempt to impose order or fundamentally change what things are, but rather to use the natural propensities and inborn characteristics of things to achieve the purposes of the state and strengthening of the community.

RITUAL, STANDARDS, AND LAW: XUNZI, THE LEGALISTS (HAN FEIZI, SHANG YANG, SHEN DAO) This fundamental orientation toward political thought that runs through numerous traditions in early Chinese philosophy also finds expression in a group of thinkers who have come to be called “Legalists” (fa jia 法家). While the thinkers categorized as Legalist have a wide variety of views, they seem to roughly adopt a Dao tradition-influenced stance on rulership. There are, however, a number of innovations in Legalist thought that go beyond what Dao tradition and other thinkers offered. In some sense, we can see the origins of Legalism in the thought of the Confucian thinker Xunzi and the political

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philosopher Shen Dao. Both Xunzi and Shen Dao focused on the concept of fa 法 (standards, laws) in their considerations of ethics and politics. Though the Legalist tradition is often interpreted as purely political and not concerned with ethics or morality, there is much reason to reject this picture. A number of scholars have demonstrated the concern of Legalist thinkers with ethics,11 and some texts categorized as Legalist, such as the Guanzi, contain a great deal of ethical thought with much in common with other early Chinese schools such as the Dao tradition. As noted above, ethical and political considerations are never completely separated in early Chinese philosophy, and the situation is no different for the Legalists. The main emphasis of the Legalist thinkers is on the maintenance of the state— not so different a goal from that of the Confucians. To that end, they concentrate on the need for effective standards (fa) to aid with the task of rulership and keep the people under control. The most robust and well-known accounts of fa we find are in the Hanfeizi. According to Han Feizi, the ruler must construct standards that are effective in both guarding the ruler’s own intentions and encouraging proper action in the people. Standards, unlike ritual (on some conceptions) are not fixed based on human nature or facts about the world, but are completely conventional, chosen and constructed by the ruler on the basis of their efficacy. Han Feizi argued that effective standards must take into consideration the current situation only, and on this basis he rejects the notion of applying standards and rituals from the past on the basis of the sagehood of the ancient kings. Standards can only be effective in a certain time and place, as they are constructed so as to effectively use the features of a certain situation. The standards that proved effective in the early Zhou period, then, will not necessarily be effective in the late Warring States. This is the basis of the Hanfeizi’s view that the teachings of earlier thinkers and schools should be rejected, as it is dangerous to the project of the construction and enforcement of standards in society.12 Old standards were constructed based on what proved effective for other times—why should we expect the same to work today? Of course, such a view presupposes that key features of human conduct (and perhaps even nature) are constantly changing. Here, we can see some of the influence of the Dao tradition—the idea of a constant transformation (of people, times, circumstance) entails that there must be constantly renewed standards. To enforce these standards, it is not enough, according to Han Feizi, to rely on Confucian techniques of virtuous example and motivation by shame. Han Feizi’s view of humans seems to be that they are motivated by selfinterest and profit (in this way drawing an interesting similarity to Xunzi’s views). Unlike Xunzi, however, Han Feizi does not think that this intrinsic

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nature can be reshaped through ritual. Instead, the good ruler establishes a system of reward and punishment to create incentive to follow the standards, which will further integrate the standards into the society. The thought of the Legalists tends to be neglected in later Chinese thought, in part due to its association with the disastrous rule of the short-lived Qin dynasty which ended the Warring States. Despite this, Legalist thought influenced many later systems of thought, including Han Dynasty synthetic thought and later traditions. Including the ethical and political thought of Han Fei in this volume then was a necessary choice.

PHILOSOPHY OR SOMETHING ELSE? THE METHODOLOGIES OF THIS VOLUME While I have been calling the concerns of the texts and thinkers of early China we focus on in this volume philosophy, the application of the term is far from uncontroversial. There are a number of reasons for this. From the side of professional philosophy, some wonder whether early Chinese thinkers were engaged in projects similar enough to those familiar in the Western academy from Plato through contemporary analytic philosophy to count as philosophy. From the side of non-philosophers, there is skepticism about the usefulness of labeling this thought as philosophy, rather than as political thought, ritual scholarship, religion, or something else altogether. The idea seems to be that to label early Chinese thinkers as philosophers misconstrues their aims and their methods, and commits an ahistorical error. Early Chinese thinkers certainly did not have the category or the concept of “philosophy,” so isn’t it a historical error to attribute this to them? My answer to these challenges is that certainly early Chinese thinkers had no concept of philosophy—but this does not mean that they were not doing philosophy. Just as early Chinese observers of the sky did not have a conception of astronomy as we understand it, it still makes perfectly good sense to say that they were engaged in astronomy. The Presocratics certainly had no conception of philosophy, nor did Aristotle for that matter, nor did Augustine— nonetheless, hardly anyone has an issue applying the title of “philosopher” to them. The early Chinese thinkers covered in this volume, as well as others, were certainly engaged in the same kinds of projects as were philosophers in other parts of the world and in other times. They dealt with the same fundamental questions and used largely similar methods to attempt answers to these questions. While I maintain that early Chinese thinkers examined here were indeed engaged in philosophy (as well as a number of other thinkers not as commonly associated with philosophy, such as the authors of the astronomical and

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medical texts of the Han), I think that in order to fully appreciate what these thinkers were doing, it is important to study their philosophical thought from numerous disciplinary angles. It is important to have philosophical discussions about these thinkers that do not involve professional philosophers alone. It is in that spirit that in this volume, not only philosophers, but also scholars of religion, history, and theology are included.

OVERVIEW OF THIS VOLUME In putting together this volume, I was presented with a difficulty. How does one do justice to ethics and political philosophy, undoubtedly the central concerns of early Chinese thinkers, while limited to what is possible within the pages of a single volume? Rather than aim for a comprehensive survey of all of the thinkers, texts, and issues associated with early Chinese ethics and political philosophy, I decided to focus on a number of select important issues in the tradition, and on different approaches to these issues. The two dominant approaches today in scholarship on early Chinese philosophy are the historical and comparative approaches. While these terms are not completely accurate and miss certain aspects of the methodological approaches named, they are familiar. Rather than coining new terms to confuse things further, I use the familiar terms, with the caveat that the terms alone cannot give us a completely accurate understanding. But, as with anything, we learn hardly anything about a view from its name alone. We should not be as concerned about names as we sometimes are. The historical approach, represented by the chapters in Part One of the book, is mainly focused on understanding early Chinese thinkers in their own historical and cultural context. While contemporary tools are certainly used, and concepts early Chinese thinkers did not have access to are brought to bear as aids, the central considerations in advancing arguments on textual interpretation are text, language, and historical/cultural context. The comparative approach is represented by the chapters in Part Two of the book. While there has in recent years been some resistance to the idea of “comparative” philosophy (mainly constituted by objection to the term and what some think it suggests about the pursuit), I find the basic idea of comparative philosophy a perfectly acceptable one. As I mention above, it is a well-known term, and it also serves to flag certain important aspects of the philosophical method in question. While it certainly does not completely characterize the method (and is misleading in some ways), no single term for describing an entire philosophical discipline or method can be perfect. Any single term explanation will necessarily oversimplify, miss nuance, or even confuse things.

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The comparative approach is primarily characterized by the use of non-Chinese philosophical material to clarify or build on early Chinese approaches. This can happen in a number of different ways,13 from using one tradition as a frame through which to understand early Chinese philosophy, to developing positions put forward in early Chinese philosophy by importing the tools of another tradition, or considering the possibilities for development of particular ideas in the Chinese tradition on the basis of what has been done in other traditions. Such approaches are common within philosophy for a number of reasons. In philosophy departments in the West, Chinese philosophy is a relatively new entrant. Even fifty years ago, there were only a handful of departments in which there were experts in Chinese philosophy. Though the situation is certainly improved today, it is not significantly different. The vast majority of departments at institutions in the USA for example have no Chinese philosophy specialists, and there are hardly any departments that require courses in Chinese philosophy or any kind of “Non-Western” Philosophy for majors or graduate degrees in philosophy. Thus, partly of necessity, philosophers working in Chinese philosophy have always had at least one foot in so-called “mainstream” Western philosophy, whether contemporary analytic or continental philosophy, or historical Western philosophy, such as Ancient Greek or Modern European Philosophy.14 This situation has meant that of necessity, philosophers working on Chinese philosophy have background in Western Philosophy at least as robust as their training in Chinese philosophy. Indeed, many philosophers working on Chinese philosophy in the last few generations began as specialists in Western or contemporary philosophy and later in their careers moved to working on Chinese philosophy.15 And even those, like myself, who specialized in Chinese philosophy in their graduate training, have robust backgrounds in Western and contemporary philosophy as well, simply due to the makeup of the departments in which we studied, and the requirements of study that existed there as a result. The comparative approach is thus a natural one to such scholars. The underrepresentation of Chinese philosophy within philosophy departments has also meant that specialists in Chinese philosophy have had to engage with Western and contemporary philosophy as a way to “translate” what we do to philosophical audiences outside our area. Nonetheless, it is not only such disciplinary necessity that leads one to adopt comparative approaches. Numerous scholars in recent years have discussed the value of comparative approaches. Among these valuable results are: the uncovering of problems and issues in particular traditions that might otherwise go unrecognized,16 better understanding positions and contexts in one tradition on the basis of comparative positions in other traditions, a

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better understanding of the way certain basic and foundational concepts work across cultures and traditions, such as personhood, morality, and truth (among many others), a better understanding of just what elements of a philosophical tradition are culture-bound and which are more likely universal, and the list goes on. Of course, one of the reasons that the comparative method is more often seen in philosophy than other fields of scholarship on Chinese philosophy is that philosophers tend to be primarily interested in solving philosophical questions. One common view among comparativists is that through using the resources of numerous traditions, rather than only one, we are more likely to come up with better answers to these philosophical questions.17 In this volume, these different approaches to Chinese philosophy are represented. Thus, some of what is collected here is concerned mainly with understanding early Chinese philosophical texts within their own historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts. Other of the material here is concerned with using the tools of Chinese ethics and politics, alongside of those of other traditions, to offer new ways of approaching enduring philosophical questions. And still other material attempts to understand early Chinese material, sharing aims with historical approaches, through the use of comparative tools, thus sharing a methodology with comparative approaches. Going forward, all of these approaches (and others) have much to teach us about early Chinese philosophy. In this volume, some of the major thinkers and schools of early Chinese philosophy are covered, with a focus on their ethical and/or political views. As mentioned above, not all of the major areas, thinkers, and texts within the early Chinese philosophical tradition are covered here. I have tried to present a cross-section of what I think are the most important texts and thinkers in their influence on the tradition, and the most interesting and illuminating texts and thinkers in terms of how they can influence our understanding of early Chinese ethics and politics. Early Confucian texts, the Lunyu, Xunzi, Mengzi, and Liji are discussed in the chapters of this collection, as well as the Laozi, Zhuangzi, Hanfeizi, and Mozi. In Part One, the focus is on historical approaches to early Chinese ethics and politics. Sarah Mattice’s contribution discusses Confucian ethics as a “role ethics,” following recent work by Roger Ames and others. She lays out the rationale behind this framing of Confucian ethics, and argues that naming plays a central role in Confucian ethics, and also that the interpretation of Confucian ethics as a role ethics can itself be understood as an exercise in “proper naming” (zhengming 正名). Kurtis Hagen argues for what he calls a “Confucian constructivist” understanding of Xunzi’s position on moral selfcultivation grounded in a kind of conventionalism concerning ritual. He

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argues that ritual, for Xunzi, is conventional, malleable, and contingent on particular cultural and historical features. Even so, such human constructions are essential in the cultivation of virtues and ultimately the creation of social harmony that is the general Confucian goal. Hagen presents arguments against what we might call a “realist” interpretation of Xunzi’s view of ritual, holding that the constructivist position ultimately makes better sense of the text. In my contribution on the Mozi, I defend what I call the “radical” interpretation of jian ai 兼愛 as a universal care for all people without distinctions, entailing work toward benefiting all equally. Though this is the position Mengzi famously dismissed, and which has struck some scholars as a strawman of the Mohist position, I argue that there is greater textual support for the radical interpretation (as opposed to newer “modest” interpretations of jian ai). Michael Ing discusses a particular issue surrounding ritual (li) in the Liyun chapter of the Liji in his contribution. He argues that the conception of ritual we find in the opening of the Liyun shows that ritual developed along with society in its complexity and scope. Ing argues that we find a view that with the prosperity that comes through the development of society, new forms of ritual became necessary that themselves allowed for the possibility of failure, and thus created a kind of vulnerability. In advocating development and prosperity, then, the text is also encouraging this vulnerability. Misha Tadd considers morality in the Daodejing, a text not often seen as discussing morality. In his investigation of the Heshanggong commentary on the Daodejing, Tadd argues that we find a view that the avoidance of moral considerations and reasoning can be part of ultimately moral action, thus unifying the seemingly inconsistent strains in the Daodejing which appear to both reject moral systems (such as those of the Confucians) while praising and encouraging moral virtues. David Chai deals with the issue of self in the Zhuangzi, arguing that the view found in the text is that the individual and subjective self posited in ethics and political discourse is ultimately not a genuine self, and that we must instead turn to the “nothingness” of the dao itself to discover the ground of an authentic self. Alejandro Bárcenas discusses Han Feizi’s development of the idea of a legal system as an alternative to the Confucian focus on ritual (li). This system of laws was meant to more effectively achieve the social harmony and harmony with the dao at which earlier Confucian systems aimed. In Part Two the chapters use various comparative approaches to early Chinese material. Matthew Walker argues that the parallels between the non-impositional view of the order of the cosmos (that is, the position order consists of non-command-based authority) in the Analects and the work of

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Aristotle contrast with their differing views on political order. Despite these differences, however, Walker argues that Aristotle’s view of political authority and order is closer to that of the Analects than often realized. In Amy Olberding’s contribution, she considers a problem surrounding death—the death of others—and considers the contributions to thinking about this problem made by Confucius and Zhuangzi. Her chapter represents a way of using early Chinese texts to think through enduring philosophical problems and to refine the ways we think about these problems, as well as our sense of the possible answers to them. In my contribution on anxiety in the Zhuangzi, I consider the case of anxiety as a way of arguing for a reading of Zhuangist ethics contrary to Buddhist-inspired readings, in which the Zhuangist aim is not to eliminate certain mental or physical states deemed problematic, but instead to understand how and where they are useful and to correctly apply them. I contrast this approach to painful or distractive mental states with that of Indian and Hellenistic texts such as those of the Brahmanists, Buddhists, and Stoics. I argue that our tendency to read the Zhuangzi something like “peace of mind” as a goal is due to influence of these Indo-European systems of thought, particularly Buddhism. Joshua R. Brown brings the tools of theology to his study of the Mengzi, considering the development of various concepts in the texts, including lesserstudied concepts such as that of the “son of heaven” (tianzi 天子), of interest to comparative theologians. This approach is particularly interesting because the positions and concepts we tend to center in early Chinese ethics will necessarily be the ones most interesting to us and that we are already primed to see as central. Thus, in much contemporary philosophical work on early Chinese texts, the issues of self and agency, nature, and virtue have been emphasized. These are certainly important themes in early Chinese work, but they are by no means the only or the centrally important themes in early Chinese texts. Approaching the texts through different disciplinary lenses helps uncover some of the important issues many philosophers miss in these texts. Finally, May Sim considers the thorny issue of rights in Confucianism, which has been a major focus of scholarship on Confucianism in both China and the West. She examines three approaches scholars have used to try to integrate a concept of human rights with Confucianism, and argues for an alternative approach justifying rights in their instrumental value to development of the Confucian aim of ren (humanity).

NOTES 1. The late sinologist Angus C. Graham called the early Chinese thinkers “disputers of the dao” in a book by the same name.

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2. The standard categorization is to use the “six schools” formulated by the Han scholar Sima Tan. 3. Chad Hansen makes a particularly strong claim in A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, calling the establishment of the Qin dynasty the beginning of a “philosophical dark age” (344). 4. Chi-yun Chen offers statement of this, claiming that the Pre-Han period (specifically the fifth to third centuries BCE ) “established the mode and the basic vocabulary of philosophical-ideological discourse in traditional China.” He defines the early period by this “philosophical” focus he says is sidelined beginning in the Han. Chen, “Confucianism: Han” in Cua, ed. Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, 82. 5. Although Neo-Confucians didn’t generally admit their debts to Han thinkers. Zhu Xi saw himself as recovering the message of Pre-Qin texts that he thought were corrupted by the interpretations of Han scholars. 6. Michael Hunter, Confucius Beyond the Analects (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 7. There is debate as to whether the ru preexisted Confucius or instead grew out of the early Confucian movement—see Nicolas Zufferey, To the Origins of Confucianism (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). 8. Lisa Raphals, Knowing Words (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 36; Li, The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony (New York: Routledge, 2014), 20; Seok, Embodies Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy, 156; Daniel Bell, Confucian Political Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); among many others. 9. See Xiaogan Liu, Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004). 10. Lau, Daodejing 17. 11. Eirik Harris, The Shenzi Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis and Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 12. Notice the similarity here to Plato’s rejection of the poets and mythical literature in the Republic. 13. For discussions of various methods of comparative philosophy, see Tim Connolly, Doing Philosophy Comparatively (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015); Robert W. Smid, Methodologies of Comparative Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2010), and Sor-hoon Tan, Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017). 14. Some other historical areas, such as Medieval European Philosophy, were at one time seen as “core” historical areas, but this has diminished in perceived importance in recent years. 15. Notable examples include David Wong, Jiyuan Yu, and my own Ph.D. advisor, Joel Kupperman. 16. Including an approach I refer to as the “analogical approach”, in Philosophy of the Ancient Maya (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017). 17. Mathew Foust, intro to Confucianism and American Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2017).

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PART ONE

Historical Approaches

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CHAPTER ONE

Confucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming, Translation, and Interpretation SARAH MATTICE

The last ten to fifteen years have seen a proliferation of philosophical manuscripts and chapters in English concerning Confucian ethics. Some of these have an overtly historical/textual approach, while others are explicitly comparative (often between Confucius 孔子 or Mencius 孟子 and Aristotle), and some seek to put ideas from the classical period into conversation with issues in contemporary ethics. Some projects begin from within a more “analytic” orientation, while still others identify themselves as belonging to the “continental” tradition. Theorists have argued that Confucian ethics is best understood as a species of deontology, as a distinctive form of virtue ethics, and as care ethics, to name a few. The project of trying to figure out the best already-present Western category to use for Confucian ethics is one that has occupied a great deal of time and effort in contemporary circles, and which may, as Stephen Angle has argued, be an example of the “unhealthy hegemony” of Western frameworks in comparative or cross-cultural philosophy.1 As I see it, the project of Confucian Role Ethics (CRE ), however, is not trying to intervene in that discourse. While Roger Ames and others use 25

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some non-Confucian thinkers in articulating CRE , the project itself is trying to set up Confucian ethics as a distinct category of its own, on par with, but not subsumed under, other ethical traditions. Ames opens his monograph by suggesting that CRE and its commitment to growth in personal relationships should not be understood solely as an historical artifact, but as a meaningful participant in contemporary ethical discourse. In the Introduction to Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary Ames writes: The contention of this monograph then, is that we are entering upon a transitional period of enormous proportions with the imminent emergence of a new cultural order, and that Confucianism offers us philosophical assets that can be resourced and applied to serve not only the renaissance of a revitalized Chinese culture, but also the interests of world culture more broadly.2 That is, Ames is arguing for what Kam-Por Yu, Julia Tao, and Philip J. Ivanhoe have called taking Confucian ethics seriously—this means that one does not “see it simply as something East Asian or Confucian; to take Confucian ethics seriously is to be concerned with the contemporary philosophical relevance of the Confucian tradition.”3 CRE adds to this that taking Confucian ethics seriously in a philosophical sense also requires taking it first and foremost on its own terms, which requires rethinking and retranslating much of the content of early Confucian texts, as their early reception in the western world was filtered through some decidedly distortive sources. While Ames may be the most famous current proponent of Confucian Role Ethics, this interpretation of Confucianism is situated in an intellectual lineage that owes much to earlier interpreters such as Zhang Dongsun 張東蓀 (1886– 1973) and Tang Junyi 唐君毅 (1909–78), and which continues in the work of scholars such as Henry Rosemont, Jr., A.T. Nuyen, WEN Haiming, John Ramsey, and others.4 Many contemporary accounts of Confucian ethics focus heavily on the classical texts, especially the Analects 論語 and the Mengzi 孟子, although some do include and/or focus on other texts. Most accounts share certain features such as the central place of the family and the importance of relationships, the need for a strong connection to and contribution to tradition, an understanding of ethical life as inherently political, and the demonstration of ethical cultivation through ritual proficiency, to name a few. CRE also shares these features, but it takes them in what I call elsewhere a “radically relational direction,” putting correlative cosmology and relational personhood at the nexus of the interpretive framework.5

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When we speak of a _______ ethic(s), an X ethics, we take that to be a theory of ethics that focuses on X, takes X as a central concept or concern. Confucian Role Ethics, then, is an account of ethics drawn from Confucian traditions that takes human persons as irreducibly relational and human lives as flourishing in and through familial, social, and political roles.6 Ames writes, “At the very heart of Confucian role ethics, distinguishing it fundamentally from more familiar Western ethical ‘theories,’ is a concept of a relationally constituted person who realizes a vision of the consummate life through a kind of moral artistry.”7 I see at least three sets of concerns that animate the reasoning behind Confucian role ethics: naming, translation, and interpretation. In terms of naming, I discuss this project as an example of zhengming 正名, or proper naming, which is a common Confucian ethical project. Confucian thinkers are often preoccupied with appropriate categorization, one species of which is naming. The naming of Confucian ethics as role ethics, I argue, is not only consistent with but is situated in a larger Confucian concern with appropriate names. In terms of translation, I explore CRE in conversation with the translation theory of Lawrence Venuti, who argues against translations of “fluency” for an anti-domestication strategy—a method for translations to maintain some level of “foreignness.” Finally, I engage certain hermeneutic and interpretive assumptions about the very project of coming to understand “Confucian” ethics at all. In doing so, I also provide certain critical reflections on “role ethics” as a way of understanding Confucianism.

NAMING In Confucian traditions, names matter. One way to understand the project of Confucian role ethics is as an example of zhengming 正名, or proper naming, which is a common Confucian ethical project, and an inherently political project. Confucian thinkers are often preoccupied with language and appropriate categorization, one species of which is naming. While the phrase zhengming itself only appears once in the Analects (although proper naming is a concern of other passages), and not at all in the Mengzi, it is the subject of an entire chapter of the Xunzi, and is incorporated into Confucian concerns as the tradition moves forward. The most oftencited passages in the Analects having to do with proper naming are 12.11, 13.3, and 13.6, although as nearly every commentator on early Confucianism remarks, the key terms “ren” and “li” (along with others) are in a constant process of definition and refining, as Confucius takes these terms up in new and innovatively philosophical directions—so the concern with naming roles, relationships, and ideals is present through much of the text. In addition, the

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context of the text, and of early Confucianism, as a product of the situations of the pre-Qin Warring States period, suggest that the name of a person or a role is especially important for what that person is expected to do and how that person is expected to behave. In 12.11, when asked by the Duke of Qi about zheng 政, effective governing, Confucius replies: “君君, 臣臣, 父父, 子子。 ”8 In his reply, Confucius uses the reduplicative function of nouns to emphasize the already present moral dimension of the roles of ruler, minister, father, and child. In saying that the ruler should rule, the minister minister, the father father, and the child child, he directs the Duke’s attention to the fact that these key political and family roles and relationships are inherently normative, and as such require regular tuneups to be attuned properly. To be appropriately called a ruler, certain practices, attitudes, activities, and behaviors are expected, and one who does not act/live in accordance with these should not be called a ruler. The tuning standard for Confucius was the flourishing of the Zhou Dynasty, but his project, as I argue elsewhere, is not simply retrospective: “it is an hermeneutic process of attuning names, of proper naming, intersecting past meanings, present circumstances, and future possibilities.”9 That is, although for Confucius the standard was the Zhou, we need not understand zhengming as limited to the Zhou specifically, but we can see the activity of proper naming as responding to effective configurations, as Confucius understood the Zhou to be. In 13.3, we see Confucius claim that his first priority of state leadership would be zhengming. Although Zilu is concerned that this would be impractical, Confucius argues that this is, in fact, the lynchpin of ethicopolitical success, upon which speech, matters of state, ritual proficiency, the playing of music, the application of standards, laws, and punishments, and the understanding of the people’s daily purpose depend.10 I have argued elsewhere that the naming of Confucian ethics as role ethics is an instance of zhengming, of the project of attuning names. Thus, the naming of Confucian ethics as “role ethics” points to the three directional movements of the process of zhengming. First, in attempting to be as faithful as possible to the tradition itself, it is incorporating past meanings and insights, while being sensitive to the often unconscious foisting of prejudices onto another tradition. Second, it recognizes the current philosophical landscape and, in seeking to properly contextualize Confucian ethics, negotiates with contemporary scholarship. Finally, it is not solely a scholarly move. Rosemont and Ames find insights in this tradition that have applicability now and for aiding in the process of intelligent deliberation regarding future possibilities. As such, Confucian role ethics is itself an instance of zhengming.11 *

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The naming of Confucian ethics as role ethics, I argue, is not only consistent with but is situated in a larger Confucian concern with appropriate names. Names, in Classical Confucianism, are understood as real, important, useful, efficacious, but also as provisional, temporary, adjustable, and negotiable. Because naming is not merely a descriptive act, but an inherently normative one, the negotiation of names also carries with it a negotiation of both activity and expectation. Calling Confucian ethics “role ethics” implies a particular set of practices and a particular set of expectations, and these particulars are different from other ways of naming Confucian ethics. In Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, Ames argues that family is understood as the governing metaphor in Confucianism. Playing with the term lun 倫, Ames describes lun (human roles, living one’s roles and relations) as part of a cluster of cognate “lun’s,” the intersections of which are helpful for making sense of the radial order made possible through and demonstrated in family relations. He writes: When we bring these various associations of this family of characters together, the insight gleaned is that the perceived source of growing proper “relations” is fundamentally discursive: an aggregating ‘relating to’ and “giving an account of oneself ” within the compass of one’s roles that define family, and by extension, community. Simply put, a thriving familybased community derives from continuing familial patterns of effective communicating [. . .] Family roles as a strategy for getting the most out of relations are thus an inspiration for order more broadly construed—social, political, and cosmic order. We might say that Confucianism is nothing more than a sustained attempt “to family” the lived human experience. For Confucianism, it is through discursive living in a communicating family and community that we are able to enchant the ordinary, to ritualize the routine, to invigorate the familiar, to inspire the customary habits of life, and ultimately, to commune spiritually in the common and the everyday.12 In naming Confucian ethics as role ethics, then, the “role” not only brings in connotations from the Chinese terminology, but from the kinds of concerns that animate this interpretation. Roles are the radial center of this vision of prescriptive ethics, from which all activities and concerns both begin and come to completion. It also acts as a kind of categorization— naming, in Classical Chinese, is less connected with a kind of vertical concept subsumption than with a more horizontal project of categorization—and the naming of Confucian ethics as role ethics marks out a distinct category in the larger field of ethics.

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TRANSLATING As not simply a descriptive move, the normative side of naming Confucian ethics as role ethics concerns activity and expectation—how do we understand the key features of personal, familial, and political cultivation in a Confucian context? The re-naming thus entails re-translating and re-articulating with the same intersection of past, present, and future. One of the consistent criticisms Ames especially has received from others in the sinological/philosophical community has been in the form of concerns about translation. This is a long-standing issue, and is not limited to his work on CRE . However, as a central component of the work in CRE has to do with translation, thinking about some of the second-order issues with translation seems appropriate. One of the consistent features of Ames’ work is a concern with translation that does not replace the ambient assumptions and background cosmology of classical China with either broadly western/Abrahamic or contemporary frameworks. This often requires extended discussions of metaphysics (or what Ames and Zhang call “cosmology”13) in the context of parsing certain translations. It also often requires stretching the bounds of common English in ways that visibly depart from more traditional translations—think here of the difference between “benevolence” and “consummate personhood” as translations for ren 仁. While Ames explains this in terms of attention to the original language, context, and commentaries, I would like to suggest an additional way of thinking about the value of efforts to translate, and so to interpret, that may go against the grain of the target language or audience. In Lawrence Venuti’s book, The Translator’s Invisibility, he critically examines translation practices (into English) from the seventeenth century to today. He demonstrates that fluency, often taken for granted as an obviously desirable translation strategy, is in fact one of many strategies, and he shows how it was that fluency came to be prized over other translation strategies in English. He does this in the context of arguing that certain ethnocentric and culturally imperialistic values are imposed on foreign texts during the process of translating for “fluency.” In this section, I explore the idea of understanding Confucian role ethics as a translation project, as what Venuti calls “resistancy”, or “foreignizing translation.”14 Venuti begins his project by thinking through his title phrase, the invisibility of the translator. By prioritizing fluency in terms of translation, the translator has become “invisible” in two ways; first she is invisible in terms of her manipulation of English, and second, the fact of her translation is made invisible through what Venuti calls the “illusion of transparency,” where the translation gives the effect of reading the original:

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The illusion of transparency is an effect of fluent discourse, of the translator’s effort to insure easy readability by adhering to current usage, maintaining continuous syntax, fixing a precise meaning. What is so remarkable here is that this illusory effect conceals the numerous conditions under which the translation is made, starting with the translator’s crucial intervention in the foreign text. The more fluent the translation, the more invisible the translator, and, presumably, the more visible the writer or meaning of the foreign text.15 This is the translation strategy Venuti calls “familiarizing” or “domesticating,” where the goal of the translation is to make the text seem as if it were written in the target language. By making her work seem invisible, the translator is giving the illusion of direct access to the author(s) of the original text. If it reads “fluently” in this sense, the translation seems natural, and so less obviously a translation. This, according to Venuti, has been the governing standard of translation into English for the last several hundred years.16 However, Venuti argues that this practice is at best naïve and at worst “symptomatic of a complacency in Anglo-American relations with cultural others, a complacency that can be described—without too much exaggeration— as imperialistic abroad and xenophobic at home.”17 That is, by making something written in classical Chinese seem too at ease in contemporary American English, it not only suggests that “our” language is the language of the world, but also that nothing else is really terribly different from how “we” think. Venuti draws on an 1813 lecture by Friedrich Schleiermacher, in which he argues that there are primarily two methods of translation—a domesticating method that is inherently ethnocentric and reduces the foreign text to target language cultural values, and a foreignizing method, “an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad”—and that the choice of which to use is ethically significant. Schleiermacher argues for the foreignizing method, and others since have argued that the translated text should be a place where the cultural other is allowed to manifest, although always through the medium of the target language.18 Venuti takes this up as a call for using translation to disrupt and resist target language cultural values and codes. “In its effort to do right abroad, this translation method must do wrong at home, deviating enough from native norms to stage an alien reading experience—choosing to translate a foreign text excluded by domestic literary canons, for instance, or using a marginal discourse to translate it.”19 This, he argues, is not a simple valorization of the foreign as foreign, but a strategic move against ethnocentrism, racism, cultural imperialism, and

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narcissism. The goal, then, is a political goal, to develop translation practices that signify the genuine difference of the foreign text, while still maintaining the possibility of real inter-cultural understanding—that is, this goal is political, but in service of, and indeed perhaps required for, a more genuine understanding of the other. This strategy of resistancy or foreignizing is not immune from the troubles that plague other translations—it too is committed to a particular interpretation of and orientation toward the text—but translators who employ this kind of strategy tend to be more upfront with their partiality. The very idea of resisting invisibility and fluency as translation values requires a somewhat more elaborate explanatory framework and explicitness about the project of translation on the part of the translator. But, choosing this kind of method enacts the text as what Venuti calls “a locus of difference, instead of the homogeneity that widely characterizes it today.”20 There are several ways that I see the project of Confucian role ethics as using this kind of resistant or foreignizing methodology. First, the charge given by Venuti—to read and write translated texts in ways that recognize and valorize linguistic and cultural difference—is at least parallel to the overarching concern of CRE as an interpretive project attempting to let the Chinese tradition speak for itself.21 Henry Rosemont Jr. writes of the project of Confucian role ethics that it is part of a larger project attempting to ask the question, what makes Chinese thought Chinese? and “what is the cluster of concepts within the early Chinese canons that on their own terms give full expression to this notion of Confucian Role Ethics”?22 That is, how can we understand Chinese philosophy broadly, and ethics more specifically, in the distinctively Chinese ways that it has emerged. This requires active strategies to resist asymmetrical reductionism. Ames and Rosemont here follow Zhang in giving explicit attention to the differences between Chinese and English (or Western languages more broadly), not only in terms of vocabulary but in the ways in which grammatical structures and metaphysical concerns are coinfluencing. Second, while many contemporary interpreters of Confucianism broadly and Confucian ethics in particular will draw on traditionally accepted translations for key terms, even while sometimes acknowledging certain problems or issues with them, CRE is explicit about the connection between interpretation and translation such that regardless of the general acceptability of a given term for translation, if it carries a problematic interpretive connotation, it requires reworking. Ames’ recent monograph has many examples of this, including retranslations and extensive discussions of key terms, for example xing 性 (commonly translated as human nature, there translated as natural human tendencies).23

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Third, Venuti notes that a translation that values resistancy and foreignizing methods tends to “value experimentation, tampers with usage, and seeks to match the polyvalencies or plurivocities or expressive stresses of the original by producing its own.”24 These three characteristics are certainly present in CRE . Consider here the descriptions of ren as a kind of moral artistry and the use of the language of aesthetics in making sense of ethics.25 This is in part a way of experimenting, altering common usage, and producing parallel kinds of expressions to make good sense of the original in the new language and context. Finally, the concern that motivates much of Venuti’s project is a concern with cultural imperialism and ethnocentricism, and the ways in which those are produced and reproduced through projects of translation. This concern is visibly present in the interpretive framework of CRE as attempting to carve out a space for Confucian ethics alongside other ethical theories, rather than subsumed under a western theory.26 All translations and interpretations are products of a particular context, and that context is purposeful. Part of the judgment of the value of a given translation/interpretation needs to concern how well it matches with its contextual purpose.27 So, part of thinking through how to make sense of Confucian ethics, and how to translate given terms and phrases, needs to involve the more meta-questions of context, purpose, and audience.

INTERPRETING Translation and interpretation are inseparable. There is no translation into a bare, uninterpreted space, and no interpretation from another language that does not privilege certain translations over others. Hans-Georg Gadamer, the twentieth century giant of hermeneutics, once famously argued that one of the serious problems we face, coming out of Enlightenment thinking, is that we have a real prejudice against prejudices. As Jean Grondin explains: “Gadamer is so reluctant to renounce the ideal of a critical elucidation of prejudices that he himself criticizes a Cartesian prejudice: the prejudice against prejudices! The expression, ingenious, presupposes that there are prejudices prejudicial to the understanding and that the prejudices against prejudices is part of it.”28 That is, we tend to think that there is a way to understand something without having any preconceptions, expectations, or anticipations. From an hermeneutic perspective, this is impossible. Whether it be language, culture, history, time, location, society, personal idiosyncrasies, or some combination thereof, we all begin engagements of understanding within a landscape and a horizon of our own. The interpretive challenge, then, is not to get ourselves

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into outer space, as it were, but to attempt to carefully refine the prejudices we do have so as to be the most responsible to the tradition in question as possible. The interpretive methodology of Confucian role ethics begins from this sort of hermeneutic perspective. Given that unfettered access is at best an illusion and at worst a dangerous distortion, a primary component of Confucian ethics is attempting to articulate the relevant ambient cultural assumptions at work in the formative period of Confucianism.29 This work was started in large part by twentieth century comparativist Zhang Dongsun, whose pioneering work in comparative epistemology and cultural philosophy locates many of these discussions in his attempts to articulate his own cultural, linguistic, and philosophical heritage, in light of increasing dominance of western concepts.30 That is, the over-arching concern with ambient cultural assumptions is one that is located in a concern with accuracy and precision in interpretation—what is required to give the best possible account of the tradition on its own terms in another language and cultural context?31 As I see it, Confucian role ethics operates with (at least) eight interconnected interpretive techniques: 1. Attend to language, cultural evidence, and texts and commentaries from related fields (such as the Yijing 易經, the early medical texts, etc.) to articulate cultural assumptions, especially those that differ from contemporary Western ones. In specific terms, for CRE this means a focus on correlative or qi 氣 cosmology.32 When taken to the level of persons, correlative cosmology entails the idea of relational personhood, where personal identity is understood first and foremost as relationally constituted.33 CRE also argues, in this vein, that the processual nature of Classical Chinese language and the immanent cosmology (not metaphysics) lends itself to being understood as lacking certain common dualisms present in the west such as mind/body, reason/emotion, God/man, human/nature, and so on. Many CRE interpreters have also argued, following Zhang and Ames, against the idea of a strong notion of philosophical transcendence in early China.34 2. Highlight relevant differences. Beginning with Zhang Dongsun and continuing through other twentieth century figures such as A.C. Graham, CRE takes difference, and especially differences between cultures, to be a central interpretive concern. One difference often highlighted by Ames and others is cosmological: “There can be no superordinate and independent ‘one’ in this ecological cosmology,

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no single cause, no grounding, foundational standard, no one privileged order.”35 Any interpretive strategy has to identify the appropriate audience, and given that audience, figure out what to emphasize. In this case, since the audience is primarily a contemporary audience (although not an exclusively Western audience), given the tendencies toward reductionism and asymmetry present in the field, setting a context where genuine differences are identified not only helps to avoid reductionism and asymmetry, but allows for Confucianism to make more of a distinctive contribution to the field.36 This is contrasted, for instance, with the interpretive strategy found in William de Bary’s book, Confucian Tradition and Global Education (2007), where he suggests that students, in order to generate interest, should read Chinese classics and look for what is familiar first. Although an interpretation can focus too much on difference, and head its readers toward incommensurability, CRE attempts to avoid that problem through explicit concerns with comparison. 3. Use careful generalizations and retail analogies. Many contemporary comparativists and non-Western philosophers have argued for the need for careful generalizations across different traditions. Chenyang Li calls these “cultural patterns” and suggests that as long as they are used provisionally, carefully, and with appropriate context, they are crucial in contemporary philosophizing.37 Cultural patterns are probabilistic, not universal, and not only admit of exceptions but also admit of change over time. He further suggests that the presence of cultural patterns makes generalizations necessary, but that the fact of needing generalizations does not privilege any one interpretation over another. Ames describes these as informed generalizations, and argues at length that they are a necessary part of doing comparative work.38 Furthermore, he argues that we need to use retail (as opposed to wholesale) analogies in order to create temporary bridges between ideas.39 4. Draw on a wide variety of sources. CRE thinkers often draw on a wide variety of sources, from more traditional early commentaries in China to twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals, from American pragmatists to Chinese sociologists. This catholic resourcing is somewhat unusual, but it provides a number of different avenues of approach to the material, many of which are being drawn from Chinese sources. This is important, because as Aaron Creller has noted, we have a responsibility to try to “de-orientalize” our perspectives, and one of the ways to do this is to look for “local” interpretive bridges to play a more central role.40 So, for instance, looking to a twentieth century Chinese philosopher

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such as Zhang Dongsun as a bridge person between classical China and the contemporary West not only provides valuable insights but also helps to correct against the tendency for Western sources to occupy the center. Or, looking at classical medical treatises might give insight into how early Chinese philosophers were understanding the body, which may provide insight into practices of ethical cultivation. 5. Re-orient readers by retranslating terms and providing extensive glossaries and explanations of vocabulary. As discussed earlier, translation and interpretation are deeply intertwined, and interpretation needs to be sensitive to issues of translation. As most are aware, many common translations of Chinese philosophical terms were first coined by Jesuit missionaries. These missionaries were often high caliber scholars doing revolutionary work, often with the aid of Chinese scholars who have received little historical credit for their contributions. However, their work was in the context of conversion, and that context colors many of their translations. In addition, just because a term has inertia as a translation, or is in the Mandarin/English dictionary, does not make it the best philosophical translation. While translations do need to be anchored in the original text, bringing attention to how we use words and what they mean is an important interpretive project. 6. Attempt to draw out what is distinctly Chinese, but not impossibly foreign. As mentioned earlier, CRE interpreters tend to begin an interpretation with an emphasis on difference. This emphasis on difference can sometimes go too far and lead to issues of incommensurability. However, it can also go too far in the other direction, and lead to problems of relativism. Being able to make cultural generalizations does not entail relativism, but rather a kind of cultural pluralism. Paying attention to what is distinctly Chinese does not imply either that there are no standards that can be shared across traditions or that the distinctive features apply only and ever to Chinese people. The project of CRE is committed to taking Confucian ethics seriously, meaning that this interpretation sees Confucianism as having genuine contributions to make to a world conversation about how to live well. Ames writes, “I would contend that it is precisely the recognition and appreciation of the degree of difference obtaining among cultures in living and thinking that properly motivates cultural translation in the first place, and that ultimately rewards the effort.”41 That is, we are not presented with only two options, universalism or relativism. We have a middle ground that recognizes the value of difference in the context of seeking understanding and wisdom in how to live here and now.

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7. Highlight the political. It is especially with respect to this interpretive tool that CRE can be seen as doing something different from some contemporary projects that look to Confucian ethics as a species of Virtue Ethics, or Care Ethics, or Deontology. Paying explicit attention to the political dimensions of and context for an interpretation is a central concern of CRE . This, however, does not detract from the quality of the interpretation. Just as Berthold Brecht once remarked that the only non-political art is the art of the ruling class, so too the only “non-political” interpretation is one that is already situated in a place of interpretive power, which in this case is likely the Western canon. As this is an interpretive tool, it also has specific standards with it that do not entail this being the only interpretation that is explicitly political. For instance, Bryan Van Norden’s interpretation of Confucianism as Virtue Ethics in Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy is a good example of a careful interpretation that is explicitly trying to deal with problems of ethnocentrism. Yong Huang’s recent book, Why be Moral: Learning from the Neo-Confucian Cheng Brothers, is also explicitly political, but in a different direction, aiming at getting the attention of mainstream western (analytic) philosophers. CRE is not the only political interpretation of Confucian ethics, but it does take this political dimension to be relevant, especially in meta-concerns of interpretation and translation. 8. Give as genuine and accurate an account as possible. That is, while Ames in particular is often described as doing what Stalnaker calls “creative, emblematic generalization” or what Kwong-loi Shun calls “philosophical construction,” both of which imply some sense of movement away from the classical texts and toward the personage of the interpreter, CRE is attempting to give a genuine and accurate account of how we might understand Confucian ethics today.42 This is a philosophical project, and not in some sense an historical project, so the emphasis is not on how Confucianism worked out as a political ideology in the Han, for instance, but nonetheless it does not seem to understand itself as departing from the tradition. It tends to employ the common Confucian hermeneutic strategy of “return to the classics” and through commentary be original and contribute to the lineage. This is a strategy at play in most later Confucian scholars. The contrast here might be with something like Kupperman’s Character Ethics, which owes a significant debt to Confucianism but is not in particular claiming to be a species of Confucian ethics. This is unlike Peimin Ni’s Gongfu Ethics, which like Confucian role ethics is trying to carve out its own space in contemporary ethical discourse as a distinctly Chinese/Confucian

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ethical project. CRE , then, is not trying to articulate a view inspired by Confucianism, but rather is giving an articulation of Confucianism.

CONCLUSION I would like to conclude with some critical and hopefully constructive remarks about Confucian role ethics. There are some critical engagements with CRE that have already been well raised. Ames himself brings up several critical concerns in the epilogue to the monograph; he considers problems like justice, impartiality, and corruption, and the need for something like regulative ideas in CRE . I have elsewhere argued that CRE could benefit from a more robust feminist orientation, and Stephen Angle raised interesting questions about the normative force of role ethics and the grounding of commitments to interdependence and relationality in his 2014 chapter on the Analects. In a book symposium in Frontiers of Philosophy in China, scholars critiqued Ames’ monograph and CRE along a number of different avenues, from May Sim’s engagement with his translation and parsing of ren to Daniel Bell’s questions about the nature of community in role ethics, from WEN Haiming’s concern with connotations of “role” ethics in contemporary Chinese language to ZHANG Xianglong’s issues with Ames’ discussion of xiao. While there are many interesting critical avenues to pursue, as this chapter has mainly focused not on detail issues with particular translations or interpretations, but with bigger picture questions, that is where I will conclude. By far the most common critical perspective on CRE has come from other interpreters who are interested in Confucian Virtue Ethics. While critiques may be implicit or explicit, a focus on virtue is often seen as suggesting that a focus on role is incorrect, and vice versa. I actually do not find this to be particularly compelling—often discussions of Confucian Virtue Ethics do much to enhance and complicate virtue ethics, and in some cases the vocabulary of virtue can be useful for thinking through Confucianism, especially with regards to particular thinkers or passages. These interpretations are not aimed at the same goal, and so do not need, in particular, to be in conflict. That said, Ames and others are also occasionally critical of the idea of Confucian Virtue Ethics, as tending to reduce notions of self and principles to western ideas in ways that they find contrary to the early Confucian texts. One common complaint about CRE is that role ethics is, in fact, already a present category in Western ethics. Some discussions of business or other professional ethics have used the term “role” to describe the particular obligations one might have as a doctor, for instance, that do not apply outside of that role. As a central part of the argument for this interpretation

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is that it is trying to take Confucian ethics on its own terms, and on equal footing with other Western and non-Western ethical theories, the fact that something called role ethics already exists would seem to be a serious issue. However, I think there are a couple of reasons why this is not that big of a problem. First, the argument is not that Confucian ethics is a species of professional ethics, but that “role” is a useful term for the emphasis of Confucian ethics. If we were prevented from ever using any terms already used, philosophical discourse would be brief indeed. Second, although the term does exist in Western ethics, that does not mean it necessarily has priority in determining how the category will be used moving forward. Finally, there are several serious differences between Confucian role ethics and role ethics as found in professional ethics. The role ethics found in professional ethics does not constitute its own theory, but tends to rely on a theoretical framework from a more established position (virtue, utility, deontology, etc.) to resolve its problems. So, while “role ethics” may mark out a specific discourse, it is not the same discourse nor is it operating on the same theoretical level as CRE . Ames in particular is also occasionally accused of being “post-modern,” where the context makes it clear that this is a bad thing. I think when this is used, critics are concerned that there is not a tight enough relationship between theory and text. Whether or not that is a fair concern is a topic for another day. I would actually suggest that in as much as Ames and other CRE interpreters are post-modern, they are perhaps not post-modern enough, and could go further to incorporate post-colonial, feminist, and other postmodern insights into the interpretive frame. Given the concern with foreignizing translation, for example, why are we still saying “ethics” and “Confucius” and not using the Chinese? Why translate at all? For instance, if a major concern is setting up the conditions for the tradition to speak on its own terms, why not attempt to “properly name” Confucian role ethics 儒家角色倫理學 (rujia juese lunlixue), and attune the ears of English speakers to the Chinese? Or at least drop the “Confucian” and call it “Ruist” role ethics, as some scholars have already done? Or why include the “role,” and not just call it Confucian/Ruist ethics? I think the answer to this is not only an answer provided by Confucian role ethics, but by most contemporary engagements, be they through virtue ethics, care ethics, or another name. Part of the process of zhengming entails attention to the circumstances surrounding the present moment, and the circumstances of the present moment are encouraging a conversation involving Chinese philosophy generally and Confucian ethics specifically, in the English-speaking philosophical world. This is a purely pragmatic concern, and one that many hope will fade as mainstream English language philosophy

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becomes less Eurocentric. Calling Confucius “Kongzi,” for instance, is a small change, but one that does help to circumvent certain problematic historical issues. The trouble is that non-specialists who are familiar at all with Confucius do not recognize “Kongzi.” So, this is a strategy that will take time and effort on the part of specialists to educate non-specialists. However, this actually presents another concern. Even if mainstream English language philosophers were willing, able, and sensitized to Chinese language, the phrase for “ethics” in Chinese is not historically how Confucian thinkers would have understood their projects. In Mandarin Chinese, “ethics,” in the technical sense used by philosophers, is lunlixue 伦理学. This phrase is one of many contemporary Chinese phrases borrowed from the Japanese, who created an entire lexicon of vocabulary during the Meiji Restoration, in an attempt to translate foreign technical terms into Japanese. So even if one is concerned to use terms and categories internal to the tradition as resistance to Western imposition and centralization, as contemporary theorists such as Leah Kalmanson argue for, just borrowing the current Mandarin term is not enough.43 We have to dig into why the Meiji-era thinkers found lunlixue to be a good translation for ethics, and why contemporary Chinese speakers have continued to find this term appropriate. As something like “the study of the patterns and reasons of human relationships,” lunlixue has some overlap with contemporary connotations of “ethics,” and some genuine differences. One of the things it does is foreground this importance of human roles and relationships (lun). If, as Ames and others suggest, a Confucian conception of ethics takes a different direction than common western ethical theories, then naming Confucian ethics something that highlights this overlap, but also gives attention to a central difference, makes sense. We can do more with this by bringing concepts, ideas, and vocabulary from traditions like Confucianism (Ruism) into contemporary western discourse, so that we can, for instance, ask after a Socratic li 禮, a Cartesian xin 心, or Iris Murdoch’s account of xiao 孝. In a sense, this is a complement to the foreignizing translation strategy—not only to choose less familiar translations or leave fewer terms untranslated and require extensive glosses, but to de-center the field by advocating a plurality of vocabulary. Finally, I would like to end by suggesting that CRE is not the end of the discussion. CRE is an heuristic category, a provisional and useful way of approaching and engaging Confucian ethics in the current philosophical landscape. Saying that CRE is valuable does not entail that thinking about Confucian ethics in terms of virtue or care is not useful, or that Confucianism does not have something particularly valuable to contribute to those conversations. But, contributing to those conversations and carving out a

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space for itself are different projects, and require different discourses. As scholars concerned with the lack of diverse resources in contemporary conversations about ethics, we should celebrate Confucian role ethics and other interpretations of non-western traditions that are finding a home and a place to grow and develop in contemporary ethical discourse and as resources for enriching how we might live well together.

NOTES 1. Stephen Angle, “The Analects and Moral Theory,” in Dao Companion to the Analects, ed. Amy Olberding (New York: Springer Press, 2014), 225. 2. Roger Ames, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011), 2. 3. Kam-Por Yu, Julia Tao, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Why Take Confucian Ethics Seriously,” in Taking Confucian Ethics Seriously: Contemporary Theories and Applications (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011), 1. 4. As far as I am able to ascertain, the first use of the phrase Confucian Role Ethics is in a dissertation, “An Ethic of Loving: Ethical Particularism and the Engaged Perspective in Confucian Role-Ethics,” by Sin Yee Chan, out of the University of Michigan in 1993. However, this does not appear connected to the later use of the term by Ames and Rosemont. Angle describes the first use of this by them in print in 2009, although earlier references exist to “role-bearing persons” in Confucian ethics by Ames and Rosemont (Angle, 2014). Also, apparently unconnected, A.T. Nuyen has published on Confucian Role Ethics (2007), although, again, not meaning the same thing as Ames and Rosemont. And, while Zhang Dongsun did not use the phrase “Confucian Role Ethics” there is clearly a significant similarity in content between his work and Ames and Rosemont’s, and this is a debt they acknowledge. 5. Sarah Mattice, “Confucian Role Ethics in the 21st Century: Domestic Violence, Same-sex Marriage, and Christian Family Values,” in Feminist Encounters with Confucius, eds. Sor-hoon Tan and Mathew Foust (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 6. I say here “Confucian traditions” because Confucianism is not a monolithic tradition, but admits of much variety and difference across historical periods and geographical locations. 7. Ames 2011, 85. 8. Analects 12.11. 9. Sarah Mattice, “On ‘Rectifying’ Rectification: Reconsidering Zhengming in Light of Confucian Role Ethics,” Asian Philosophy, 20.3 (2010): 247–60, 254. 10. Analects 13.3, my translation and paraphrase. 11. Mattice 2010, 257. 12. Ames 2011, 98. 13. For more on this from Zhang, see Xinyan Jiang’s “Pluralist Epistemology and Chinese Philosophy ”, p. 29, and Zhang, Knoweldge and Culture (Shanghai:

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Commercial Press 1946), 75. Zhang specifically used the phrase “metaphysics” to refer to doctrines asserting the existence and primacy of substance. 14. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (New York: Routledge Press, 2008), 24, 34, 36. To be clear, to my knowledge neither Ames nor any of the other proponents of CRE use Venuti or this kind of argument to justify the project. 15. Venuti 2008, 1. 16. Venuti himself is primarily focused on literature, but there is no reason his comments here could not also apply to philosophical works. 17. Venuti 2008, 17. 18. Ibid., 19–20. 19. Ibid., 20. 20. Ibid., 42. 21. Ibid., 41. 22. Ames 2011, xvi, paraphrasing from Henry Rosemont Jr.’s 1991 chapter, “Rights-bearing Individuals and Role-bearing Persons” in Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility: Chapters Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette, ed. Mary I. Bockover (La Salle, IL : Open Court Press, 1991). 23. Ames 2011, 73, 128–34. 24. Phillip Lewis, “The Measure of Translation Effects,” in Difference in Translation, ed. J. Graham, 1985, quoted in Venuti 2008, 24. 25. See for instance Ames 2011, 171 and 189. 26. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that projects attempting to draw out similarities between Confucian ethics and a Western ethical tradition are necessarily ethnocentric. 27. This is true of part of the value of a translation, but it is not the entirety of value. Other translation standards are still relevant, and this does not imply that anything goes, or that translations do not need to be anchored in texts and time periods. 28. Jean Grondin, The Philosophy of Gadamer, trans. Kathryn Plant (Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 84. 29. Again, this differs from other interpretive projects due in part to purpose. For instance, in Bryan Van Norden’s Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (2012), instead of trying to articulate ambient cultural assumptions, he is focused explicitly on drawing out arguments from the text. 30. Although not much of his work is available in translation, see Jiang 2014 for a translation of selected works and a commentary chapter on Zhang. 31. Contemporary China and Mandarin Chinese are also, in a sense, another language and context, also clearly closer in many regards than English and contemporary America as cultural contexts. 32. See chapter two of Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary for a discussion of correlative cosmology as it relates to the Yijing, to Traditional Chinese

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Medicine, and to the work of Tang Junyi. See chapter three of Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, for a discussion of relational personhood, especially III .13. 33. For an excellent discussion of what this means, without the language of “relational personhood,” see the end of chapter two of Yong Huang’s Why Be Moral, 2014. 34. Many of these ideas can be found in Zhang’s work, although not under the name “Confucian Role Ethics.” 35. Ames 2011, 72. 36. For more on this idea of asymmetry, see Kwong Loi-Shun’s chapter, “Studying Confucian and Comparative Ethics: Methodological Reflections” in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36 (3): 455–78 (2009). 37. Chenyang Li, “Capacities and Purposes of Comparative Philosophy,” special panel on How to Do Chinese and Comparative Philosophy I: Methodology, ACPA , APA Eastern Division Meeting, January 2016. 38. See Ames 2011, 20–35. 39. Many contemporary theorists have slightly different accounts of what these analogies look like. For instance, Aaron Stalnaker calls them “bridge concepts” and argues that they can form loose focal points for comparative work. See Aaron Stalnaker Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine (Washington DC : Georgetown University Press), 2006. 40. Aaron Creller, “De-Orienting Comparative Philosophy: Approaching the ‘West’ From China,” presented at the APA Eastern Division Meeting, January 2016. 41. Ames 2011, 32. 42. Stalnaker 2006, 15–16; Shun 2009, 267–8. 43. Leah Kalmanson, “Annotating the Self: The Ritual Methods of Comparative Philosophy,” Philosophy East and West Vol. 67, No. 3 (2017).

WORKS CITED Ames, Roger. Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011. Angle, Stephen. “The Analects and Moral Theory,” in Dao Companion to the Analects, ed. Amy Olberding. New York: Springer Press, 2014. Bell, Daniel. “A Comment on Confucian Role Ethics,” in Frontiers of Philosophy in China 7.4 (2012): 626–31. Grondin, Jean. The Philosophy of Gadamer, trans. Kathryn Plant. Ithaca: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2003. Jiang, Xinyan. “Pluralist Epistemology and Chinese Philosophy,” in Knowledge, Culture, and Chinese Philosophy: A Study and Translation of Zhang Dongsun’s Works. New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 2014. Kalmanson, Leah. “Annotating the Self: The Ritual Methods of Comparative Philosophy.” Philosophy East and West 67.3 (2017).

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Huang, Yong. Why Be Moral? Learning from the Neo-Confucian Cheng Brothers. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2014. Li, Chenyang. “The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care: A Comparative Study ” in Hypatia 9.1 (1994): 70–89. Mattice, Sarah. “Confucian Ethics in the Twenty-First Century ”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 7.4 (2012): 632–7. Mattice, Sarah. “Confucian Role Ethics in the 21st Century: Domestic Violence, Same-sex Marriage, and Christian Family Values,” in Feminist Encounters with Confucius. Ed. Sor-hoon Tan and Mathew Foust. Brill Press, 2016. Mattice, Sarah. “On ‘Rectifying’ Rectification: Reconsidering Zhengming in Light of Confucian Role Ethics,” Asian Philosophy 20.3 (2010): 247–60. Nuyen, A.T. “Moral Obligation and Moral Motivation in Confucian Role-Based Ethics.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 8.1 (2009): 1–11. Ramsey, John. “The Role Dilemma in Early Confucianism.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 8.3 (2013): 376–87. Rosemont, Henry Jr. “Rights-bearing Individuals and Role-bearing Persons” in Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility: Chapters Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette, ed. Mary I. Bockover, La Salle, IL : Open Court Press, 1991. Shun, Kwong Loi. “Studying Confucian and Comparative Ethics: Methodological Reflections” in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36.3 (2009):455–78. Sim, May. “Review of Roger Ames’ Confucian Role Ethics,” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 7.4 (2012): 638–43. Stalnaker, Aaron. Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine, Washington DC : Georgetown University Press, 2006. Van Norden, Bryan. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Yu, Kam-Por, Julia Tao, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Why Take Confucian Ethics Seriously,” Taking Confucian Ethics Seriously: Contemporary Theories and Applications. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York: Routledge Press, 2008. Wen Haiming. “Confucian Role Ethics in Chinese- and English-Language Contexts,” Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 7.4 (2012): 649–56. Zhang Dongsun. Zhishi yu Wenhua 知識與文化 (Knowledge and Culture), Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1946. Zhang Xiaolong. “Time in Familial Reverence-Deference (孝): A Comment on Roger T. Ames’ Confucian Role Ethics”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 7.4 (2012): 657–61.

CHAPTER TWO

From Patterning to Governing: A Constructivist Interpretation of the Xunzi1 KURTIS HAGEN

Xunzi is best known for his slogan “xing e 性惡,” which means that natural human dispositions are crude or detestable. But Xunzi was no pessimist. He believed everyone could cultivate virtue. And his philosophy was intended to explain how this process worked. His solution stresses wei 偽 (constructiveeffort/acquired-character), which he contrasts repeatedly with xing (natural disposition). According to Xunzi, norms of appropriate behavior, which are patterns of social life, are delineated and engrained though the habit-forming practice of ritualized conduct. By sincerely following the norms of ritual propriety one cultivates a virtuous character. This new character is a contingent product of human effort. For Xunzi, there is no fixed pattern of virtue (Xunzi 21.5e), and the process of developing oneself never comes to an end (Xunzi 1.8). Xunzi’s conception of virtue as contingent and evolving is consistent with his conception of language and patterns generally, as well as the patterns associated with ritual propriety more specifically. Indeed, ritual and virtue reinforce each 45

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other. It is the virtuous person, cultivated through ritual practice, who in turn sets, and continually reappraises, the standards for that practice, as well as for an appropriate patterning of language to go along with it. Such a person fulfills the name “exemplary person.” Just as patterns, categories, and names are contingent products of continuous processes, norms of ritual propriety are both contingent products of historical conditions and open to change. Good government, in turn, depends on exemplary persons making wise judgments. So, it is critical that the constructs that facilitate the development of such persons be supported. I have called this interpretation “Confucian constructivism,” since it emphasizes human artifice (constructs) that are designed to be constructive, that is, conducive to social harmony. This interpretation is controversial. On the one hand, such notable scholars as Roger Ames, Antonio Cua, Lee Yearley, and Robert Cummings Neville have supported similar interpretations.2 And support for particular aspects of this interpretation can also be found in the Chinese and Japanese scholarship on Xunzi, including the work of Chen Daqi, who characterizes Xunzi’s view as “artificial-ism (人為主義).”3 (A small sampling of this East Asian scholarship can be found below.) On the other hand, quite a number of prominent scholars have taken a distinctly different position.4 I call the interpretation that they collectively seem to suggest “the realist interpretation” (described below), and I present the constructivist account of Xunzi’s philosophy in explicit contrast to it. (However, I have relegated my treatment of passages often cited in support of the realist interpretation to an appendix.)

THE REALIST INTERPRETATION According to the realist interpretation, Xunzi claims that the sages of old “gave birth” to a language that truly and uniquely describes the world and our roles and reciprocal obligations in it. In this view, the ritual patterns embodied by the sages are uniquely appropriate, and universally and eternally so. Moral categories expressed in language are real, and alternative interpretations are necessarily false and thus pernicious. There is no room for discussion, unorthodox doctrines are to be silenced, and the crooked are to be pressed straight in conformity with the true standard. No one person has stated this position so baldly. It is a composite. Nevertheless, its various aspects are stated or implied by a number of prominent scholars, and the overall picture seems to guide many interpretations and translations. For example, Robert Eno claims: Xunzi’s theory of language is realist. Although individual words are initially chosen arbitrarily, their consistent use and syntactic relations in

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language create a perfect correspondence between the elements and structure of language and the objects of the world and their relations. — Eno 1990, 272 n65 And, Brian Van Norden writes, “Xunzi held what might be described as an ‘intellectualist’ position: Confucianism can be justified with almost mathematical certainty, and knowledge guarantees right action” (Van Norden 1996, 3). Paul Goldin describes Xunzi’s position as “uncompromising objectivism” (Goldin 1999, 99). And according to Chad Hansen, the Xunzi is an “absolutist account of discovery of the single correct dao” (Hansen 1992, 342). The realist interpretation can be thought of as grounded in the notion that li 理 (pattern) refers to a kind of rational structure or “reason.” This view is expressed, for example, in John Knoblock’s characterization of li in the introduction to his translation of the Xunzi: “wherever a distinctive pattern provided the order of a thing, there was li. It was the principle of order that provided the pattern, regulated the thing, and made it recognizable as that thing and function as that thing functions. It is the reason and rationality common to the minds of all men” (Knoblock 1988, 80). He goes on to say that, “The li is the rational basis of all order. It is natural order, and it is reason.” This interpretation is also suggested in his translation of lei 類 (category). Since li is reason, lei, which is taken as the unique set of categories truly based on it, is thought of as the “proper logical categories” (Knoblock’s translation of lei). A.C. Graham expresses a similar view to that of Knoblock. Referring to Xunzi’s philosophy, he says: “Morality has the pattern (li) by which it is knowable by thought; man has, presumably in his nature, the equipment by which, although his desires run the other way, it is possible for him to know it” (Graham 1989, 249). Although Graham avoids the word “reason,” the view expressed seems to be that morality has a rational pattern and we have the capacity, reason, to know it in the abstract. A different view, with similar implications, is that knowledge of the true nature of things is attained through mystical experience. For example, Chad Hansen attributes to Xunzi the position that “a mystical, unbiased, apprehension of the correct dao is possible to Confucians” (Hansen 1992, 313, cf. 342, emphasis added). Adding detail to the mystical knowledge interpretation, Henri Maspero’s account reads as follows: “Xunzi has borrowed from the mystical school certain of its techniques, and seeks to attain truth not by reasoning [. . .] but by a meditation pushed very far, to the point where the spirit, freed from all surface phenomena, grasps the very nature of things directly and becomes capable of knowing them and naming

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them without mistake” (Maspero, 351–2). In this view, though we go about arriving at the truth differently (through meditation rather than reason), in the end we know the real set of categories. This view, however, seems to involve a deeper conception of reality than simply nature. Consider Paul Goldin’s remark, “Xunzi enjoins us [. . .] to inquire into the ontic presence that lies behind everything we see in the world—and then to bring ourselves into harmony with that force” (Goldin 1999, 104). As for li 禮 (“rituals”), Patricia Buckley Ebrey suggests that, for Xunzi, traditional rites were rationally grounded in the “patterns of heaven and earth,” and thus were “objective” (Ebrey 1991, 28–9). In this view, even if the singularly proper ritual patterns are not manifest prior to human distinction making, they are nevertheless implied by a preexisting structure. In P.J. Ivanhoe’s words, “The Confucian rituals [. . .] provide a way to realize an orderly design inherent in the world” (Ivanhoe 2000, 240, emphasis added). Robert Eno espouses a similar view. He writes: In describing a world sliced into pieces and roles, and a human mind that learns truth by distinguishing classes, the Xunzi designs rationalizing theories that make its ritual ethics appear to be an analogue of Nature [tian 天]. By providing li [ritual] with this structural affinity to Nature, it becomes possible to claim that ritual is an extension of Nature’s organizing principles”. — Eno 1990, 147, emphasis added And so, in a significant sense, these ritual patterns could be regarded as waiting to be discovered. According to such interpretations, there not only exists a “truth” regarding the classes (lei 類) of things in the world, and the rational structure (li 理) that underlies those classes, but also, similarly, li 禮 (“rituals”) have a fixed existence as “an analogue of Nature.” Ivanhoe characterizes the Confucian rites as “unalterable patterns” (1991, 321), and as “immutable” (310), and suggests that Xunzi’s ethics is “a form of ethical realism” (2000, 247 n10). As far as the development of rites, the process of evolution is over. Ivanhoe explains, “[Xunzi] clearly believed that the sages had brought the process to a successful conclusion and that the Confucian Way provided the unique solution which would be valid for all times” (1991, 318). I disagree with all of this. Rather than an objective and determinate set of patterns serving as an absolute foundation for a fixed set of norms, I maintain that, in Xunzi’s view, it is the role of people, especially exemplary people and sages, to organize the world intelligently. They do this through a continual process of apply patterns to the world, continually revising,

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improving, and adapting to new circumstances. This patterning is not arbitrary, for it must be productive, but neither is it fully determined by the fundamental nature of things. Below I describe this “constructivist view” in more detail.

THE CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEW Xunzi acknowledges that newly created constructs can be legitimate. He writes, “If true kings were to arise, they would certainly revitalize old names and create (zuo 作) new ones” (ICS : 22/108/9; K: 22.2a).5 This expresses Xunzi’s belief in Confucianism as a living tradition. Also, regarding names and their referents, Xunzi says this: Names do not have intrinsic appropriateness. They are arranged by decree. Arrangements that are settled upon to the point of becoming customary are called appropriate. If something differs from the arrangement, then it is called inappropriate. Names do not have intrinsic actual objects. By arranging the objects, we thereby name them. If the arrangement has become fixed and has succeeded in becoming customary, the term may be called the object’s name. — ICS : 22/109/10; K: 22.2g In the constructivist view, naming serves the function of formalizing particular patterns (or patternings) in language. For Xunzi, naming is both labeling and making judgments about what patterns should be thereby sanctioned. That is, naming not only assigns a label to a pattern, but also establishes particular patternings as significant.6 In this view, what Xunzi refers to as li (patterns 理) are not determinate structures fixed in nature. Rather, while patterns (li) do involve regularities in the world of nature and human nature, they also necessarily involve interpretations of those regularities. It may be helpful to consider the original meaning of li 理 (patterns). John Knoblock explains that, “As a verb, it means to cut along the veins of a piece of jade or to lay out fields according to the requirements of land forms” (Knoblock 1988, 80). To li a field or a piece of jade involves an element of creativity. The creation is not ex nihilo but rather complementary to what is given, necessarily emphasizing some features and suppressing others. There are veins in jade, and they influence the way the jeweler will shape it. But, would two experts cut the same piece of jade in exactly the same way? Their respective incisions would be best thought of as interpretations, which bring certain features to light at the expense of others. Articulating the li relative

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to a given topic highlights and brings into focus particular aspects of it, and orders the subject matter accordingly. One does not cut a piece of jade to reveal the way it is, but to bring forth a beautiful way it can be. Forming categories (lei 類) is a process of extending an exemplary case on the basis of these highlighted patterns. Categories either accommodate or exclude instances based on analogical reasoning, grounded in patterns regarded as significant. Since every circumstance, just like each piece of jade, is unique, and since categories are always grounded in particular instances, they require a degree of re-interpretation in every application. As Xunzi succinctly puts it: “A model cannot stand on its own, categories cannot apply themselves” (ICS : 12/57/4; K: 12.1). Deciding how a rule applies in a given situation requires an interpretation of the situation, the rule, and the relation between the two. Similarly, for categories to function constructively they need to be applied by competent and sensitive interpreters. Realizing that categories, which rely on the process of patterning for their rationale, have a conventional aspect, Xunzi saw that they might be designed to facilitate social harmony and personal fulfillment. They could be crafted as tools to serve constructive purposes. As with any tool, they are assessed by how well they perform their function. Thus, the legitimacy of a distinction lies in its workability rather than a special status it might have resulting from its rational structure or correspondence with some deeper level of reality. Xunzi explicitly rejects the idea that the Confucian way is reducible to the way of tian, saying: “The way is not the way of tian 天, neither is it the way of the earth. It is that by which the people are led; it is the path of the exemplary person” (ICS : 8/28/15; K: 8.3). Xunzi emphasizes that there are “different roles for tian and people” (ICS : 17/79/21; K: 17.1). He describes tian (the heavens), di (the earth), and people as forming a “triad” (K: 23.5a, 3.5, 8.11, 9.15, 13.9, and 17.2a) in which people must bring to completion what tian and di have made possible. Succinctly stated, “Nature (tiandi) produces it, sages complete it” (ICS : 10/44/8; K: 10.6; cf. 10.7 and 27.41). Further, Xunzi does not equate the natural with the good. After all, his most distinctive doctrine is that “natural-human-disposition (xing) is detestable.” And he clearly says that ritual and propriety do not come from xing. He writes, “Ritual and propriety (liyi) are produced by the constructiveeffort (wei 偽) of sages. They are not products of people’s original nature (xing)” (ICS : 23/114/8; K: 23.2a). Xunzi believes it is the role of humans to construct artifice, such as norms of ritual propriety, which enable us to reform our nature. These are likened to the products of artisans (K: 23. 2a; 23.4a). And, the management of such norms is an ongoing task. As Xunzi

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put it, “The heart-mind is the craftsperson and steward of the way” (ICS : 22/110/7; K: 22.3f). Again and again, Xunzi emphasizes that it is people—exemplary persons and sages—that are the “wellspring of order” (ICS : 12/57/15; K: 12.2; K: 12.1, 9.2, and 14.2). Indeed, both the natural world and society are thought to require the exercise of human intelligence in order to become productively organized. Xunzi explains, “Tian can generate things but cannot articulate distinctions among them. The earth can support people but cannot order them. The myriad things of the whole world, and all living people, await sages, and only then are they apportioned” (ICS : 19/95/3; K: 19.6). And, again, it is not just that people make explicit what is already implicit in the patterns of nature, for nature itself is pattered by people. Xunzi writes, “[E]xemplary person applies patterns (li 理) to earth and nature . . . If there were no exemplary people, nature and the earth would not be patterned” (ICS : 9/39/3; K: 9.15). Elsewhere Xunzi writes, “If a sincere mind applies a sense of appropriateness (yi) then there will be patterns (li)” (ICS : 3/11/5; K: 3.9). And, just as people develop patterns to organize the world in constructive ways, so too it is up to exemplary individuals to generate productive norms. As Jiang Shangxian expresses Xunzi’s view, “[Ritual and propriety, and models and norms] are not things that exist naturally in the cosmos, but are rather things that we human beings, on account of our own intelligence and abilities, as well as our needs, come to invent and create” (Jiang 1966, p. 31). On the one hand, it is morally developed persons who assure the soundness of ritualized norms, and standards of propriety. On the other hand, ritual propriety produces not only exemplary persons, but also orderly government. Xunzi writes, “Ritual and propriety (liyi 禮義) are the beginning of good government (zhi 治). The exemplary person (junzi 君子) is the beginning of ritual and propriety” (ICS : 9/39/2; K: 9.15). Analogously, Xunzi also writes, “Ritual propriety is that by which one’s person (shen 身) is made proper (zheng 正). A teacher is the means by which ritual propriety is made proper” (ICS : 2/8/1; K: 2.11). In other words, there is a self-correcting cycle that connects ritual propriety, self-cultivation, and good government. Through following the norms of ritual propriety (li) and emulating one’s teacher, one develops not only a habit of, but also a fondness for, acting in accordance with li. That is, one develops the virtue of ritual propriety. For Xunzi, people who develop this virtue sufficiently also acquire a kind of practical wisdom, or sense of appropriateness (yi), which allows them to skillfully interpret and apply li in novel circumstances. While the novice is expected simply to follow a model, the exemplary person’s example sets the standard to be followed (see Analects 9.3 for an example7). The evolution of li is a natural

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consequence of the personal appropriation and interpretation of exemplary people over a period of time. The Japanese scholars Abe Yoshio and Murase Hiroya agree that, for Xunzi, li (ritual propriety) can legitimately evolve. And they further suggest that this evolution is not a matter of continuing to approach some predetermined ideal set by the nature of things, but rather it is a matter of accommodating changes in circumstance. Abe writes, “[. . .] for Xunzi the new li established by the later kings have the same dignity as the li of the former kings.” And he clarifies, “This theory of li being made by the sages does not amount to an explanation of the ultimate origin of li, but we can recognize the sages as formulators of li that have been formulated along with the times” (Abe 1964, p. 61). Similarly, Murase reasons: Based on the accumulation of thought and experience, and having considered the actual situation, sages established norms of ritual propriety (liyi). Assuming this, if norms of ritual propriety, which were established in this way, lose their compatibility with the actual situation due to a change of circumstances, then they may always be modified by the same procedure, and one would expect no objection. — Murase 1986, 62 In this view, there is no absolutely correct set of rituals; there can at best be an appropriateness of rituals that are well attuned to the circumstances. This is not to deny that there are regularities in nature and human nature, and that one can expect certain themes to endure through the changes. So, Xunzi writes: If something did not change throughout the period of the hundred kings,8 this is enough to consider it a connecting thread of the way. One should respond to the ups and downs of history with this thread. If one applies patterns (li) to this thread there will not be disorder. But if one does not understand it, one will not know how to respond to changing circumstances. — ICS : 17/82/20; K: 17.11 Even here, a passage that some may wish to point to in order to argue that rituals are grounded in something changeless, we see that the point is to accommodate changing circumstances, and to do so by “applying patterns (li) to this thread (of consistency).” So, it is not that there are preexisting patterns that fully determine precise and unchangeable rituals. Rather timely patterns are to be applied so as to maintain enduring

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aspects of a changing way, giving it a form that is responsive to the current situation. Xunzi suggests that there are regularities in nature and general propensities in human nature. Tian, for example, has its regularities. Though not precise, they can nevertheless offer a degree of predictability. This is the basis for practices such as planting in the appropriate season. Similarly, there are tendencies in human nature that are enduring. For example, “Everyone desires (yu) comforts and honors, and detests danger and disgrace” (ICS : 8/34/10; K: 8.11). Even exemplary persons desire profit—though they do not act inappropriately upon this desire (K: 3.2, 4.8). And even those who become sages maintain basic human desires: to eat when hungry, to rest when weary, to be warmed when cold (K: 4.9; cf. 5.4, 23.1e). These regularities suggest (but do not entail) that there will be some consistency in successful responses to changing times. For one thing, Xunzi believes that having some forms of ritual propriety is critical for the very survival of a society. He writes, “People cannot survive without ritual propriety. Endeavors will not succeed without ritual propriety. Neither the state nor the home will be at peace without ritual propriety” (ICS : 2/5/15; K: 2.2). Nothing about this passage suggests that there is one precise form that ritualized norms should always take (contra Kline 2000, 165–6). Nevertheless, in a very general sense, one could say that “the only way” to have a functioning society is to have some effective set of norms of ritual propriety. And, Xunzi thinks that a well-tuned system of rituals is essential to achieve a high degree of harmony and stability. Further, the form that these rituals take may also reasonably be expected to have some degree of similarity across time and circumstance—the “connecting thread of the way.” This is because, although they will need to be attuned to changes in circumstances, they will nevertheless be addressing relatively stable natural human dispositions and emotions. But none of this requires that Xunzi adopt a rigid realism about norms of ritual propriety, or about anything else.

NATURAL DISPOSITIONS (XING 性) AND ACQUIRED CHARACTER (WEI 偽) Xunzi’s often repeated phrase, “natural human dispositions are detestable” (xing’e 性惡), is a dramatic slogan. But a clearer statement of his position is this: People have natural selfish desires that, if unchecked, tend to lead to quarreling, and ultimately to chaos and strife. So, “natural human tendencies are problematic” more accurately captures his view. Alternatively, since e 惡 means “ugly,” interpreting the phrase in question as “human nature is crude” may be a reasonable approximation. Indeed, this comports well with Xunzi’s

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characterization of xing as “the unadorned raw material” (ICS : 19/95/1; K: 19.6, quoted below). Xunzi characterizes xing (性 natural disposition) as something we have by virtue of birth (K: 22.1b; cf. 23.1c), but he nevertheless holds that people’s character can change and grow. However, because xing is problematic or crude, constructs such as norms of ritual propriety are needed to help people lead satisfying lives. Xunzi writes: People are born with desires. If these desires are not fulfilled, [their objects] are certain to be sought after. If this seeking has no limit or bounds, contention is inevitable. If there is contention there will be chaos, and chaos leads to ruin (qiong 窮). The ancient kings detested this chaos. Thus, they fashioned (zhi 制) ritual-and-propriety (liyi 禮義), and thereby made divisions which nurtured and cultivated (yang 養) people’s desires, and provided for their satisfaction. — ICS : 19/90/3; K: 19.1a The Confucian project, in Xunzi’s view, is to fashion a social system in which all people flourish. Xunzi contrasts xing with wei 偽, which he defines as follows: “What the mind deliberates and is able to put into motion is called wei 偽 (humaneffort). Deliberations accumulate and one is able to become practiced in them, after this is accomplished, it is [also] called wei 偽 (acquired-character)” (ICS : 22/107/24; K: 22.1b). So, on the one hand, Xunzi uses the character “wei” to indicate the deliberate-constructive-mental-effort9 of sages who exercise their intelligence and wisdom to develop productive cultural artifice, and, on the other hand, wei also indicates the acquired character10 of a person who has reformed his/her dispositions aided by norms of ritual propriety. In other words, while wei 偽 indicates something people (人) do or make (為), it equally means a made (為) person (人).11 Xunzi writes: Ritual propriety and a sense of appropriateness (liyi) are the products of sages. They are what people become capable of through learning; they are what people can accomplish through work. What resides in people and cannot be learned or acquired through work is called xing. What resides in people that they are capable of through learning and can accomplish through work is called wei. This is the distinction between xing and wei. — ICS : 23/113/17; K: 23.1c Xunzi explains that ritual and propriety “are produced by the constructiveeffort (wei) of sages” just as potters and carpenters craft their products (ICS :

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23/114/8; K: 23. 2a; cf. 23.4a), a metaphor that fits the constructivist interpretation quite nicely. Xunzi also describes the relation between xing and wei in the following manner: Original nature (xing) is the root and beginning, the unadorned raw material. Wei is the flourishing abundance of cultural patterns. If there was no original nature, then there would be nothing to which wei could add. If there was no wei, original nature would not be able to beautify itself. — ICS : 19/95/1; K: 19.6 Through human efforts, like those of crafts persons, cultural patterns are produced that facilitate the improvement of personal character. And people of developed character then contribute to this process, completing a virtuous cycle. Note that Xunzi’s theory of self-cultivation implies that, although it occurs in an existing ritualized context that serves to guide a person’s moral development, personal achievement is nevertheless unique to each person. Just as there are better and worse institutions people might devise to organize society and to take advantage of the propensities of nature, but no single ultimate set of institutions, similarly, while there are better and worse results of character development, there is no single best set of dispositions or personality traits, no single best complete character. Describing a “great person,” Xunzi writes, “So extensive, so expansive, who know his limits? So broad-minded, so boundless, who knows his virtue? Boiling and bubbling, from one to another, who knows his form?” (ICS : 21/104/9; K: 21.5e).

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS On Xunzi’s view, there is a mutually supportive relationship between sound government and human virtue. Sound government fosters cultural artifice— such as norms of ritual propriety and constructive distinctions in language, as well as appropriate music, laws, and standards—that create fertile conditions for the development of virtue. At the same time, virtuous persons must construct and sustain this cultural artifice. The latter part of this relation is expressed in Xunzi’s descriptions of the insufficiency of good policies, or laws (fa 法), and the need for good people to interpret and administer them. Xunzi writes: Exemplary people are vital for uniting the way (dao 道) with law (fa 法). They must not be neglected for even for a short time. If they are acquired

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there will be order; if they are lost there will be chaos. If they are acquired there will be peace and security; if they are lost there will be danger. If they are acquired [the state] will survive; if they are lost it will perish. Thus, there are cases in which there were good laws, and yet there was chaos. But, from ancient times to the present, to have exemplary people and yet chaos is unheard of. A tradition says, “Order is produced by exemplary people; chaos is produced by inferior people.” This expresses my point. — ICS : 14/66/24; K: 14.2 Similarly, Xunzi also writes: If there are good people, then [the state] will survive. If there are no good people then it will be lost. Laws and norms are the starting point of orderly government. Exemplary people are the wellspring of these laws and norms. Thus, if there are exemplary people, this is sufficient for a vast state, even if laws and norms are omitted. But if there are no exemplary people, then although a state may be equipped with laws and norms, it will misstep in the application of priorities, and its inability to cope with changing circumstances will suffice to result in anarchy. — ICS : 12/57/4; K: 12.1 What is most important for good government is good people, and since people’s original set of desires are problematic, a society needs artifice (wei 偽) that will encourage and facilitate moral development.12 After one has reformed oneself, and cultivated one’s virtue sufficiently, one is prepared to be of service in government, and to participate in cultivating cultural constructs. Xunzi writes: “Comprehensive-virtue (ren 仁) and appropriateness (yi 義) is that by which good government is cultivated (xiuzheng 修政)” (ICS : 15/72/2; K: 15.3). Good governmental policies, in order to be effectively administered, need to be cultivated by those who have also cultivated a moral sense and character. Xunzi repeatedly stresses the need for people of exemplary character, whose moral authority is sufficient to inspire, and whose judgment is sound enough to intelligently interpret existing policies as well as extend tradition appropriately to cover new situations. Most importantly, this system of governance, which requires good and wise people to manage it, must be so constituted as to continually produce such people. From a Confucian perspective, it is norms of ritual propriety, as well as morally attuned language, more than sound laws, that are essential for this task to be effectively sustained.13

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CONCLUSION There is a consistency in the way Xunzi views language, norms, and character. And there is a cyclical self-correcting relation between norms, exemplary persons and good government. Naming properly (zhengming 正名) is solidifying morally efficacious categories into language. Norms of ritual propriety are social patterns conducive to social harmony. These are embodiments of dao 道, continually negotiated through exemplary action; they form, at the same time, the basis for constructive discourse regarding the direction of the way.14 They are both the means by which a person develops virtue, and the product of people who have been in this way cultivated. And, one of the products of this process is the character of individuals who have undertaken such cultivation. And this, the reliable production of virtuous people, is critical to good governance.

APPENDIX: EVIDENCE FOR REALISM IN THE XUNZI? Those who advocate realist interpretations of Xunzi tend to focus on different passages than those quoted above. Here I will briefly discuss the passages most commonly cited as evidence that Xunzi was a realist. I will argue that, upon inspection, they do not turn out to provide very strong evidence. Puqun Li, in his recent textbook on Asian philosophy, lists these four passages as providing the basis for a realist reading of Xunzi.15 (1) “There are no two Ways in the world; the sage is never of two minds” (Watson 1993, 121; ICS : 21/102/5; K: 21.1) (2) “The Way is the proper standard for past and present” (Watson 1993, 153; ICS : 22/112/2; K: 22.6b) (3) “Music is unalterable harmonies. The rites are unchangeable patterns” (Van Norden 2000, 120; ICS : 20/100/14; K: 20.3) (4) “He who tries to travel two roads at once will arrive nowhere; he who serves two masters will please neither.” (Watson 1993, 18; ICS : 1/2/14; K: 1.6) Li asks, in a seemingly neutral voice, how the constructivist interpretation could be reconciled with these passages. The following is a short version16 of my answer.

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It is convenient for me that Li includes Passage 4, because the point is clearly practical, not a statement about Xunzi’s fundamental worldview. Elsewhere Xunzi makes the same point this way: “The ruler is the most exalted in the state. The father is the most exalted in the family. Exalting one [results in] order; exalting two [results in] chaos. From ancient times to the present, there has never been a situation that was able to endure for very long with two exalted, each contending for respect” (ICS : 14/67/17; K: 14.7). Xunzi is indicating that, as a practical matter, having two daos is not going to work very well. This concern for unity is expressed again in Book 10, in which Xunzi quotes a tradition that says, “When superiors are unified, so too are subordinates. When superiors are divided, so too are subordinates” (Xunzi ICS : 10/47/1; K: 10.10). The point of these passages is purely practical: having two competing moral doctrines, Xunzi believes, is destabilizing. And so Xunzi thinks that it would be best if everyone rallies around a single, well-established, and reliable dao. But this says nothing about whether or not alternative paths (if well-established and coalesced around) might be equally legitimate and effective at fostering harmony. In other words, it tells us nothing about Xunzi’s fundamental worldview, whether he is a realist or a constructivist. It might help to think about a metaphor Xunzi provides twice to describe the relation between rituals and the way. He likens rituals to markers that enable people to manage their way across a river while avoiding the deep spots.17 By focusing on this metaphor, we can understand how Xunzi can have both a traditionalist attitude and a worldview that is fundamentally compatible with pluralism. While he advocates a return to following the way marked by the successes of the sage kings, his image does not suggest that there could be no other ways, or that the way outlined will remain absolutely constant. In fact, he characterizes rituals as markers that help people avoid pitfalls, not as a singular course. These considerations may help us interpret Passage 1. Is Xunzi here also making a practical point when he says, “There are no two Ways in the world; the sage is never of two minds”? Consider that the sentence immediately preceding it is this: “If one is in doubt about two [conflicting views] then there will be confusion.” It seems that Xunzi is indicating that the reason for maintaining a single dominant dao, and for sages to be decisive, is simply to avoid confusion. Xunzi seems to think that having everyone “on board” or “with the program” would facilitate social harmony. But this does not mean he is committed to a realist worldview. Indeed, the passage immediately following “the sage is never of two minds” is this: “Now, the feudal lords have different governments, and the hundred schools have different theories. Certainly some [of these ways] are to be affirmed, and others rejected; some

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[lands] are well governed, others are in chaos.” This would be a strange way of claiming that there is, metaphysically, only one legitimate way, for it suggests that more than one way of governing was acceptable and working smoothly within its own sphere. Regarding Passage 3, translations vary. The venerable A.C. Graham translated the passage as follows: “‘[M]usic’ is the unalterable in harmonising, ‘ceremony’ is the irreplaceable in patterning. Music joins the similar, ceremony separates the different” (Graham 1989, 261). Here both music and ceremony are active, they are establishing standards, rather than conforming to them. Just as the passage “people cannot live without li” does not imply that there is one specific set of rituals without which people cannot live, but rather that some form of patterning appropriate behavior is necessary for any society to survive, this passage can be taken to assert there is no substitute for ritual propriety; it is an invaluable and irreplaceable mode of patterning a harmonious world. Regarding the remaining passage, Passage 2, “The Way is the proper standard [quan 權] for past and present,” this translation may be misleading. Quan 權 means balance.18 And, arguably, the gist of this passage is that dao has always been a matter of judicious balancing. Feng Youlan describes the meaning of the passage this way: “[W]hen people make choices, they must put the prudence and wisdom of their minds to work, and weigh the various aspects of advantages and disadvantage in a balance, in order not to be ‘confused regarding weal and woe.’ In this way, ‘dao is the proper balance of ancient and present’ ” (Feng 1961, 361).19 Clearly there is nothing in this reading of the passage that conflicts with a constructivist interpretation. There are other passages that have also been put forward as supporting a realist position. But they have turned out to be addressable along similar lines. Bryan Van Norden offers a list of five passages that he believes “demonstrate that [Xunzi] is an objectivist and ‘monist’ about ritual, music, the Way and at least some aspects of language use” (Van Norden 2000, 120). His list includes Passages 1, 2, and 3 above. Of the remaining two passages, one addresses consistency in language but does not in any clear way conflict with the constructivist view.20 The remaining passage was also cited by P.J. Ivanhoe, along with Passages 2 and 3 above, in support the idea that “the Confucian Way provided the unique solution which would be valid for all times” (Ivanhoe 1991, 318). For that passage, Van Norden and Ivanhoe both use Burton Watson’s translation, which reads: “Are they [i.e., the rites] not wonderful [zhi 至] indeed? When they are properly established and brought to the peak of perfection [ji 極], no one in the world can add to or detract from them” (Watson 1993, 94). Compare this with John Knoblock’s translation: “Surely it is true that the rites are indeed perfection [zhi 至]!

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Establishing them and exalting them, make of them the ridgepole [ji 極], and nothing in the world can add to or subtract from them” (K: 19.2c). There are two issues here. First, the notion of “perfection” seems to imply a realist understanding, in which there is a single correct answer that does not change. Second, the remark that nothing, or no one, “can add to or detract from” the rites suggest that, being perfect, they are immutable. Let’s start with their purported “perfection.” Interestingly, in Watson’s translation, zhi is taken as “wonderful,”21 which has no realist implications. However, Knoblock reads it as “perfection,” which does. Then, switching roles, Watson reads ji as “the peak of perfection,” which suggests a realist view, whereas Knoblock reads it as “the ridgepole” (the main supporting beam in a roof), which is not a particularly realist image. If we take Watson’s reading of zhi along with Knoblock’s reading of ji, then the whole issue of “perfection” disappears. So, depending on word choice, is seems the translation could go either way. Now, turning to the second issue, what does it mean to say that nothing or no one “can add to or detract from them”? Does it mean that the rituals cannot legitimately be altered (because they are “perfect”)? Or, does it mean that, serving as the ridgepole, li are simply “wonderful indeed.” Adding a line for context, my translation is as follows: “Not to concentrate on li would be a cause for sorrow. Has not ritual propriety reached great heights? Establishing and exalting it and making it the ridgepole, nothing in the world can add to or subtract from this” (ICS : 19/92/6; K: 19.2c). A freer translation could read: “Nothing in the world is better than establishing and exalting ritual propriety, making it the ridgepole.” This seems fully compatible with a constructivist interpretation. And, importantly, it fits with the point of the passage as whole, which concludes: “Everywhere in the world, those who follow [norms of ritual propriety] are orderly; those who do not are in chaos. Those who follow them are secure; those who do not are in danger. Those who follow them live; those who do not perish” (ICS : 19/92/9; K: 19.2c). The passage as a whole is about the importance of ritual propriety generally, not about the fixity of its details, and it seems appropriate to understand the sentences in question accordingly.

A FINAL NOTE This chapter is an attempt to provide a relatively brief introduction to the constructivist interpretation of Xunzi. The main purpose is to explain the constructivist interpretation in contrast with the realist interpretation, supported by textual evidence. Though I have dealt with some contrary evidence in the appendix, it is far from a complete defense of the constructivist position. In The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction I have endeavored to

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establish that a constructivist view can be rigorously defended at length, and I there engage with much more secondary material. However, I have never claimed to have provided a decisive argument for the constructivist position. Still, I do believe that the realist interpretation is, at least, not well established, and indeed significantly misleading. So, I hope the insertion of a constructivist account into the conversation will stimulate further consideration of these issues. As I stated in The Philosophy of Xunzi, my goal in describing and contrasting constructivist and realist interpretations is to “create a space [. . .] wherein a more adequate account may continue to be worked out” (Hagen 2007, xiv; cf. x–xi).

NOTES 1. This summarizes the argument I make in The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction (La Salle, IL : Open Court, 2007). Some sections have been transplanted with only minor revisions and abridgments; others have been reorganized and substantially rewritten. I would like to thank Open Court for allowing me to republish this material in this way. The original chapters on which The Philosophy of Xunzi was based are as follows: Hagen 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003b and 2003a. 2. Roger Ames, who was my dissertation advisor, was a substantial influence in the development of my position. Though he had not written about Xunzi in great detail, the position I developed was consistent with his perspective on early Chinese thought generally. Lee Yearley had outlined a similar position with respect to Xunzi in a 1980 chapter. At the time I was formulating my defense of these views, the preeminent Xunzi scholar writing in English, arguably, was Antonio Cua. And it was to his work that I commonly turned for inspiration and support. It was only later that I discovered the strong resonance with the work of Robert Cummings Neville, especially regarding ritual propriety. 3. In this context Chen writes, “It is people themselves who invent and establish [ritual and propriety]; they do not exist naturally” (Chen 1954, p. 5; see Hagen 2007, 13–14, for elaboration). 4. Scholars who at least seem to support something like the realist interpretations include P.J. Ivanhoe, Bryan Van Norden, Eric Hutton, T.C. Kline, and David Nivison, as well as Robert Eno, Benjamin Schwartz, Donald Munro, Angus Graham, Paul Goldin, and Aaron Stalnaker. Realist assumptions also seem to have influenced translators such as John Knoblock and Burton Watson, as well as Eric Hutton. For the purposes of this chapter, I largely ignore subtle differences in interpretation among the realist interpreters. And so, “the realist interpretation” may be regarded as referring to the general worldview they tend to suggest. The positions of most of these scholars are addressed in more detail in Hagen 2007. 5. Translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. “ICS :” refers to the Institute of Chinese Studies’ A Concordance to the Xunzi cited as (chapter/page/ line number), and “K:” refers to section numbers in John Knoblock’s translation of the Xunzi.

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Eric Hutton has questioned my interpretation of K: 22.2a (see Hutton 2007, 420, 446), according to which a new sage would “create (zuo 作) new names.” But Hutton nevertheless continues to use this interpretation himself in his 2014 translation of the Xunzi, which reads: “If there arose a true king, he would surely follow the old names in some cases, and create new names in other cases. Thus, one must examine the reason for having names, the proper means for distinguishing like and unlike, and the essential points in establishing names” (Hutton 2014, 237, emphasis added). Hutton notes that Wang Xianqian offers a different interpretation, in which zuo means “change back” (Hutton 2007, 420, 446; and 2014, 247 n2). However, not only is “create” the more natural and relatively standard reading here, but it also makes sense of the lines that follow. Why would one have to “examine the reasons for having names,” and so on, if all one needed to do was return to the names of old? 6. Whether Xunzi intends ming (names) to mean simply “labels,” or also the associated concepts is controversial (see Van Norden 1993, 376, contrasted with Hagen 2007, 10, 53, 61–7). Suffice it to say here that there is not much leverage in “creating new names” or in the Confucian doctrine of “rectifying names” (zhengming), if “names” refers merely to arbitrary labels. However, if “names” includes concept as part of its meaning, as is commonly suggested in the Japanese literature on Xunzi (see Hagen 2007, 63–4, 156), then Xunzi’s statements in K: 22.2g, quoted above, strongly suggest a constructivist perspective. 7. In Analects 9.3 Confucius remarks, “A hemp cap is called for by li, but nowadays a silk one is worn as a matter of frugality. On this matter I follow the common practice. To bow before ascending is called for by li, but nowadays people bow after ascending. This is arrogant. Although diverging from the common practice, I bow before ascending.” 8. Elsewhere Xunzi explains, “Although the methods (fa 法) of the Hundred Kings have not been the same in [implementation], what they return to is same (ICS : 11/54/9; K: 11.8). This refers to four things: (1) orderly laws (zhi fa 治法), (2) worthy scholar-officials (xian shi 賢士) and assistants (zuo 佐), (3) devoted people (yuan min 愿民), and (4) admirable customs (mei su 美俗) (ICS : 11/54/3; K: 11.8). So, it is not that laws and customs are the same, but rather it is always important to ensure that laws are orderly and customs admirable, and also that there are worthy officials and that the common people are devoted. Such are the common threads. 9. In this sense, wei 偽 has been translated variously as “conscious activity” (Watson), “conscious exertion” (Knoblock), and “deliberate effort” (Hutton). 10. Knoblock renders “wei” in this sense as “acquired nature.” 11. In the earliest (818 CE ) extant commentary on the Xunzi, Yang Liang explains, “Wei 偽 means wei 為 [to do or accomplish, to be or become] and jiao 矯 [to straighten, rectify, correct; to raise high]. It is to straighten/raise up one’s original nature. Things which are not natural tendencies but rather accomplished by people, are all called wei 偽. Thus, the character composed of ren 人 [a person] beside wei 為 [to become] is also an associative compound character [that is, a character formed from the meaning elements of other characters]” (Wang 1998, 434).

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12. Likewise, Confucius also suggested that law was not the best means to stimulate moral development, saying: “Lead them with [legalistic] government, keep them in order with punishments, and the common people will avoid trouble but have no sense of shame. Lead them with de 德 (force of character), keep them in order with li (ritual propriety), and they will not only develop a sense of shame, but will reform themselves” (Analects 2.3; cf. 13.6 and 13.13). 13. This point has significant contemporary relevance. For one thing, it helps explain the Confucian resistance to Western human rights ideology. See Hagen 2005. 14. Xunzi writes, “If they respect ritual propriety only then can one speak meaningfully with them about the direction of the way. If their disposition is considerate only then can one speak meaningfully with them about the patterns of the way. If their demeanor is deferential only then can one speak meaningfully with them about transmitting the way” (ICS : 1/4/7; K: 1.12). 15. I have provided the translations as they appear in Li 2012, 252. Li uses Burton Watson’s translations for passages 1, 2, and 4 (except with “no” instead of “not” in Passage 1). But he uses Bryan Van Norden’s translation of Passage 3 (Van Norden 2000, 120). Watson’s translation of Passage 3 reads: “Music embodies an unchanging harmony, while rites represent unalterable reason” (Watson 1963, 117). Notice that, compared to Watson’s version, Van Norden’s translation is more clearly realist with respect to rites, because the way one represents unalterable reason may vary, but “unchangeable patterns” clearly cannot. 16. Longer versions of my answers can be found in Hagen 2007. See sections 1.3.1 and 1.5, for detailed interpretations of passages 1 and 2. For Passage 2, also see p. 19 (section 1.2.1). For Passage 3, see section 4.3.4. 17. Xunzi writes: “Those who ford rivers indicate the deep spots, allowing others to avoid falling in. Those who bring order to the common people indicate the sources of disorder, enabling others not to fall into error. Rituals are the markers. The former kings used rituals to indicate the sources of the world’s disorder. To abandon ritual now is to remove the markers. Thus, the common people are confused and mislead, and fall into misfortune and disaster. That is why punishments are so numerous” (ICS : 27/127/4; K: 27.12; cf. K: 17.11). 18. See Hagen 2007 section 1.5, 37–8, for a relevant discussion. 19. Cf. Fung 1952, 290, for Derk Bodde’s translation. 20. As presented by Van Norden, the passage reads, “That which everyone in the world, past and present, calls ‘good,’ is that which is correct, well-patterned, peaceful, and well-ordered. That which they call ‘evil’ is prejudiced, dangerous, perverse, and chaotic” (Van Norden 2000, 121; K: 23.3a). Rather than reading zheng 正 as “correct,” which suggests a “one right answer” model, I would suggest words like “proper,” “upright,” and “exemplary,” which go well with “well-patterned, peaceful, and well-ordered.” On that reading, the passage seems very much in line with a constructivist view. 21. In Hagen 2007 and 2003b, I mistakenly write that Watson reads zhi 至 as “peak of perfection.” In fact, although Knoblock does read zhi as “perfection,” it is ji 極, not zhi, that Watson reads as “peak of perfection.” I regret the error, but the main thrust of my argument remains unchanged.

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WORKS CITED Abe Yoshio 阿部吉雄. Chu ¯ goku no Tetsugaku 中国の哲学 [Chinese philosophy]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1964. Chen Daqi 陳大齊. Xunzi Xueshuo 荀子學說 [Xunzi’s theory]. Taipei: Chung-hua Wen-hua Publication Committee, 1954. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History of Writings about Rites. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Eno, Robert. The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1990. Feng Youlan [Fung Yu-lan] 馮友蘭. Zhongguo zhexueshi 中國哲學史 [A history of Chinese philosophy]. Hong Kong: Taiping Yang Tushu, 1961. Fung Yu-lan [Feng Youlan]. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Vol. 1, The Period of the Philosophers. Translated by Derk Bodde. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. Goldin, Paul Rakita. Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi. Chicago: Open Court, 1999. Graham, A.C. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. La Salle, IL : Open Court, 1989. Hagen, Kurtis. “A Critical Review of Ivanhoe on Xunzi.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 27.3 (September): 361–73, 2000. Hagen, Kurtis. “The Concepts of Li and Lei in the Xunzi: Constructive Patterning of Categories.” International Philosophical Quarterly 41.2 (June): 183–97, 2001. Hagen, Kurtis. “Xunzi’s Use of Zhengming: Naming as a Constructive Project.” Asian Philosophy. 12.1 (March): 35–51, 2002. Hagen, Kurtis. “Artifice and Virtue in the Xunzi.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 3.1 (Winter): 85–107, 2003a. Hagen, Kurtis. “Xunzi and the Nature of Confucian Ritual.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 71.2 (June): 371–403, 2003b. Hagen, Kurtis. “A Confucian Vision of Human Rights.” Journal of Asia-Pacific Affairs 6.2 (February): 1–31, 2005. Hagen, Kurtis. The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction. La Salle, IL : Open Court, 2007. Hansen, Chad. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hutton, Eric L. 2007. Review of: Hagen, Kurtis, The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction, and “A Further Response to Kurtis Hagen.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6.4 (December): 417–21, 445–6. Hutton, Eric L. Xunzi: The Complete Text. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2014. Ivanhoe, Philip J. “A Happy Symmetry: Xunzi’s Ethical Thought.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59.2 (1991): 309–22. Ivanhoe, Philip J. “Human Nature and Moral Understanding in the Xunzi,” in T.C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.) Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, 237–49. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000. Jiang Shangxian 姜尚賢. Xunzi sixiang tixi 荀子思想體系 [Xunzi’s ideology]. Tainan: Xie yi yinshua ju, 1966.

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Kline III , T.C. “Moral Agency and Motivation in the Xunzi,” in T.C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.) Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, 155–75. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000. Knoblock, John. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works. 3 volumes. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988, 1990, 1994. Lau, D.C., and F.C. Chen, eds. A Concordance to the Xunzi. Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS ) Ancient Chinese Texts Concordance Series. Hong Kong: The Commercial Press, 1996. Li, Puqun. A Guide to Asian Philosophy Classics. Toronto: Broadview Press, 2012. Maspero, Henri. China in Antiquity. Frank A. Kierman, Jr. (trans.) Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978. Murase Hiroya 村瀬裕也. Junshi no sekai 荀子の世界 [The world of Xunzi]. Tokyo: Nich shuppan, 1986. Van Norden, Bryan W. “Hansen on Hsün-Tzu.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 20 (1993): 365–82. Van Norden, Bryan W. “Introduction,” in David Nivison, The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in Chinese Philosophy, 1–13. Chicago: Open Court, 1996. Van Norden, Bryan W. “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two Views of Human Agency,” in T.C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, 103–34. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000. Wang Xianqian 王先謙. Xunzi Jijie 荀子集解 [Collected commentaries on the Xunzi]. 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1988. Yearley, Lee. “Hsün Tzu on the Mind: His Attempted Synthesis of Confucianism and Taoism.” Journal of Asian Studies 39: 465–80, 1980.

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CHAPTER THREE

Some Considerations in Defense of a Radical Reading of the Mohist Jian Ai ALEXUS McLEOD

At the heart of the ethical theory of the Mohists lies the doctrine of jian ai 兼愛, alternatively translated as “universal love,” “impartial care,” and “inclusive concern” (among other possibilities). The Mohist ethical system in general is focused on the equal distribution of benefit (li 利) to all in order to insure social harmony. While many of their aims are consistent with those of other schools such as Confucians or even Daoists, Mohists came under heavy criticism for what some took as the extreme views they endorsed, taking (as did Mengzi) jian ai to amount to the claim that we should care the same for everyone in the world, and thus treat them all equally—a shocking claim for the time, and even for today. Some contemporary scholars understand the jian ai of the Mohists to be a less extreme position than it is sometimes made out to be and was often made out to be by opponents of the Mohists in their day. Other scholars have agreed with Mengzi and critics of the Mohists that the Mohists were indeed committed to a radical view of jian ai. Burton Watson, Ian Johnston, and others have translated the phrase “universal love,” suggesting its radical 67

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character, while others who have read the concept as more modest translate it “impartial care” or “inclusive care”1, and have presented it as a less radical claim. While the question of translation is in itself of relatively low importance, the translation issue tracks a fundamental disagreement between scholars in understanding the Mohist concept. Numerous interpretations of jian ai have been offered over the years, and as much of the Mohist ethical system turns on this central concept, these readings have led to very different understandings of the Mohist system. I argue here that what I call the “radical” reading of jian ai makes most sense of what we find in the Mozi, particularly a number of argumentative moves made in the Jian ai chapters. The Mohists would have had better reason, that is, for accepting the radical view, in opposition primarily to Confucians and those holding more traditional views concerning partial concern. The radical view, though it is perhaps less plausible to us, is more plausible reading of the Mohists. It’s true that Confucians such as Mengzi leveled criticisms at the Mohists on the basis of a radical reading of jian ai, but if they were unfair to the Mohists, it was in what they thought such a radical view committed them to, not in saddling them with the radical view, which I argue here it is plausible that they actually held. The Mohists themselves, as I show below, seemed sensitive to such criticisms as Confucians like Mengzi offer, and many of their arguments in the Jian ai chapters, I argue, were meant to disarm resistance to the view on the basis of its radical nature. Some read these arguments as Mohist softening of jian ai, while I argue here that what is actually going on is an attempt to demonstrate the plausibility of the radical view. Indeed, if this is not what the Mohists are doing in the Jian Ai chapters,2 then it is hard to avoid reaching the conclusion that the Mohists, or at least those responsible for the Jian ai chapters, were simply argumentatively inept.

JIAN AI AS “UNIVERSAL CARE”—THE RADICAL VIEW A good and concise statement of the “radical view” I defend in this chapter is offered by Bryan Van Norden, who defines the Mohist jian ai doctrine as the view that “one should have equal concern for, and has equal ethical obligations toward, promoting the wellbeing of every person, regardless of any special relation a person might have with oneself.”3 A number of scholars point out that this doctrine appears to conflict with any obligations one might have to particular groups, such as family members and friends, and that it thus appears to be overly demanding.4 I translate jian ai in this radical sense as “universal care.” Although Van Norden, who endorses

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the radical view, translates jian as “impartial,” which certainly has its virtues, a major feature of the radical view is that the doctrine of jian ai commits the Mohist to a kind of concern of care that is inclusive of all, and thus universal in its scope. Part of what is at issue in interpretation of the Mohist jian ai is the question of the scope of the inclusivity involved in jian ai. On the radical view, this inclusivity of jian extends to everyone, and thus ‘universal’ is a fair rendering of the scope of care called for on this view. A well-known older translation of jian ai is “universal love”, adopted by scholars such as Ian Johnston, Burton Watson, A.C. Graham, W.P. Mei, and others.5 Kwong-loi Shun uses a different translation that is nonetheless suggestive of something like the radical view, “indiscriminate concern.”6 Much of the motivation for the radical view likely comes from the reading of Mozi’s doctrine found in the Mengzi, which objects to it on grounds that it violates the particular concerns people should have for parents and those close to them. In Mengzi 3B9, Mengzi famously lumps Mozi with Yang Zhu into a collection of thinkers with what he takes to be faulty ethical views, claiming that: 楊氏為我, 是無君也; 墨氏兼愛, 是無父也。無父無君, 是禽獸也。 Yang Zhu is for himself—this is to lack a ruler. Mozi cares universally— this is to lack a father. Lacking a father and a ruler is like being of the birds and beasts.7 The idea here seems to be that Mozi’s focus on equality and universality of care makes it impossible to have the kind of particular or special concern that is necessary to the parent-child relationship (among others). It thus becomes impossible to maintain such relationships, and because these relationships are at the core of what it is to be human, the Mohist who cares universally is rendered less than human—akin to the birds and beasts.8 While we certainly should not impose the radical reading of jian ai on the Mozi on the basis of a reconstruction of the view by someone who took himself to be an opponent of the Mohists and certainly had good reason to be uncharitable,9 my contention below is that Mengzi is not far off the mark in this case. Though the Mohist would likely reject the notion that they undermined the father-son relationship, they do seem to have claimed that one should care for the parents of others as one cares for one’s own parents,10 which may turn out to have the implication Mengzi claimed.

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JIAN AI AS “IMPARTIAL CARE”—THE MODEST VIEW In opposition to the radical view, philosophers such as Chris Fraser, Dan Robins, and others11 argue for a reading of jian ai on which it is fairly similar to modern liberal democratic ideas of equal concern insofar as it suggests commitment to the welfare of all. Fraser argues that Mohist jian ai consistent with both differential treatment and differential concern for those close to us. He calls this a “moderately demanding” conception of jian ai (which he translates as “inclusive care”), and says: The norms of conduct associated with strong inclusive care are only moderately demanding. By today’s standards, they amount roughly to refraining from taking advantage of others, treating our circle well, being a good neighbor, and contributing to charity for those who have no other means of support. Though we are to help strangers with urgent needs, radical altruism is not required. In a society in which strong inclusive care were widely practiced, we would normally care chiefly for our family and ourselves, share information and labor with our neighbors, and donate some of our surplus resources to others with urgent needs.12 This picture of the Mohist jian ai, while perhaps comforting to modern Western readers of the text accustomed to liberal democratic norms, is difficult to justify as a reading of the Mozi, for a number of reasons provided below. In addition, it is a less plausible view, given the Mohist concern with benefit (li 利), than the radical view of jian ai, as I briefly argue in the final section below. Numerous scholars have pointed out the problems with reading Confucian criticisms of the Mohist view as offering an accurate description of it.13 However, as I suggested above, there is independent reason to think that the Mohists held the radical view of jian ai. One difficulty the modest reading faces is a clear tension with the arguments Mohists offer for jian ai against Confucian and other competitors. In the Jian ai chapters of the Mozi, Mohists make a number of arguments for the doctrine, as well as responses to objections from opponents, that suggest they held something stronger than the kind of theoretical commitment to others Fraser offers as interpretation. For one, it’s more likely that the effects Mozi discusses (distribution of benefit to all) will actually follow from something like jian ai in the radical sense. We have little reason to believe that the claims about the benefits attained by jian ai at the end of Jian Ai 1 will actually be attained, if jian ai is as undemanding as Fraser and Robins claim. Mozi there says that if everyone in the world possesses jian ai, then states will not attack other states, families

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will not turn against one another, there will be no robbery, and there will be filial care and affection between rulers and servants, fathers and sons.14 If we follow modest readings of jian ai as a liberal democratic ideal, such that that of Fraser, these claims seem farfetched. Given the account of jian ai as moderately demanding consideration for others, we can certainly imagine justifications of attacking other states or turning against other families, just insofar as their interests conflict with our own—a situation we know often obtains. Nor will such care rule out robbery. I can have an inclusive concern for all yet be in a situation such that taking care of the needs of my closest community outweighs those of distant others. One does not have to be a sociopath to be a robber. Some thieves and people who commit violence even sympathize with or feel remorse for their victims. All of this is consistent with the modest view Fraser presents. Notice, however, that it is not consistent with the radical view. If we care equally for the stranger and our own parent, then we will never have reason to steal from or otherwise harm the stranger to better our parent. While we may still harm others on the basis of something like a utilitarian calculus (when harming person X or allowing them to be harmed improves the situation of numerous others), if we care equally for all, we will not favor one party over the other in one-to-one value considerations, based on who we have a closer relationship with. The fact that this is still possible on the modest reading of jian ai turns out to make the doctrine almost indistinguishable from that of the early Confucians. This forms the basis of another objection to the modest reading. If this reading is correct, then the Mohist view was not different in substance than that of the Confucians, who could have accepted every point of the jian ai doctrine as interpreted by Fraser. If this is the case, the way the Mohists argued for the doctrine in the Jian Ai chapters is inexplicable. They seem to have accepted that the view opposed that of the Confucians (or at least people who had very Confucian-sounding intuitions about such virtues as filiality, and that it lacked a number of key features of the Confucian view that distinguished it. Confucians such as Mengzi thought this as well. It could turn out that both were wrong, and that neither side realized that they actually held roughly the same position and thus were talking past one another. This is unlikely, though, particularly because of the ways the Mohists characterize their own position when they construct arguments against the Confucians. The argument in Jian Ai 3 on filiality, discussed below, particularly demonstrates this. Fraser argues that the Mohist conception of care does not commit them to universal benefit or equal treatment of people, as care and benefit come apart. He writes:

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The Mohists advocate that our caring attitude be all-inclusive, encompassing everyone. But beneficial conduct will generally be directed only toward people with whom we actually interact. Since care refers primarily to an attitude—a commitment to people’s welfare—rather than to actual conduct, we can care about others without actually benefiting them. Hence, the Mohists hold that we can care about people all-inclusively without benefiting everyone or treating everyone equally.15 Dan Robins makes a similar argument, claiming that the formulation in Jian Ai 2, 兼相愛, 交相利, shows that the Mohists make a distinction between inclusively caring and mutually benefitting.16 There are some deep problems with this interpretation. First, it undermines the very reason the Mohists seem to have established the jian ai doctrine in the first place—to bring about greater benefit equally distributed to all, so as to undermine conflict. If my benefitting action is only required toward those with whom I interact, then I can simply lessen my ethical burden by keeping my communities small and resisting interaction with people outside of it. But this was just the kind of thing the Mohists were trying to avoid. If one falls outside the scope of “benefitting one another” (jiao xiang li 交相利) just by falling outside our sphere of interaction, this seems to give us as much reason to benefit others outside this sphere by expanding it as it does to save our resources by limiting our sphere of interaction. And the latter is just the kind of thing Mohists were trying to avoid. There is little reason to think that they would care much about the partial care they attribute to the Confucians if this partial care did not entail partial benefit, and if partial benefit were still possible even when caring impartially. There would simply be no pragmatic reason for adopting jian ai on the basis of benefit. But it is just in terms of benefit that the Mohists defend jian ai. In Jian Ai 1.2, Mozi discusses this direct connection between care and benefit in the case of the self: 子自愛不愛父, 故虧父而自利; 弟自愛不愛兄, 故虧兄而自利; 臣自愛不愛君, 故虧君而自利, 此所謂亂也。 The son cares about himself and does not care about his father, thus he harms his father and benefits himself. The servant cares about himself and does not care about the ruler, thus he harms the ruler and benefits himself. This is what is called disastrous. Here, Mozi argues that failure to benefit others is directly attributable to lacking care for them. The suggestion seems to be that if the people mentioned did care for others, then they would also benefit them. Otherwise, this

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statement would make no sense as a normative claim. Would Mozi think it is better for the son to care about his father also yet not benefit him? One who accepts the modest reading of jian ai could counter here that in all of these cases there is interaction between the two parties, and so generation of care would entail benefit in such cases. This misses a crucial point, however. Part of the audience of the Mohists would have been those tempted by Yangist and Daoist responses to the problems of ethics and government—removing oneself from the world, “wandering free and easy.” A view that basically said that obligations to benefit others could be eliminated by simply not interacting with them would have played right into the hands of these opponents. And presumably Mozi thought it was possible for a servant to turn his back on a ruler or a son on a father. If care only translates to benefit in cases of interaction, then the Mohists owe us an account of what relevant interactions are. That they never provide such is curious, if this is their view. And such relevant interactions would be hard to characterize even if the Mohists had tried. The relationships given in the above quote—father and son, ruler and servant, are best understood in terms of role relations. In such role relations, the two related persons need not even know one another (as was likely commonly the case in ruler-servant relations). But if such role relationships are sufficient to qualify as relationships that require benefit seeking on the basis of care, then it looks like we are thrown into a situation in which one who cares impartially does have the obligation to benefit unknown others, as one is in a role relationship of some kind with everyone in society, or perhaps even everyone in the world. I am in the relationship “fellow citizen” with a stranger living on the other side of the country who I’ve never met. I am in the relationship “junior” to every living human being older than me. As we can see, role relationships do not give us a proper subset of people with whom I can be said to interact in ways that create obligations to benefit. The view thus collapses into the radical jian ai view. Much of Robins’ argument for the distinction between care and benefit rests on his reading of the jian xiang ai, jiao xiang li passage from Jian Ai 2. He reads the two parts as contrasting with one another, the first clause rendered “inclusively, care for one another” and the second “interacting, benefit one another.” This interpretation would be fine, but what reason do we have to think these two phrases are not linked at some more fundamental level, which explains why they always occur together? Like the ren 仁 and li 裡 of the Confucians, there may simply be a mutual relationship between the two, such that one brings about the other. In addition, even if we read the jiao 交 in the passage as “interacting,” which is perfectly acceptable, this does not entail that the scope of this interaction is meant to be limited to those we in fact interact with, any more than the scope of jian should be

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understood as limited to those people we have met, and not others yet unmet. It is also less than clear just what is intended by “interaction” here. Surely anyone we can care for we can also have interaction with—indeed, the relation of care itself can be understood as an interaction, or at least as a potential interaction. It is hard to see why someone with whom we are in such a relation would not also be considered someone with whom we should interact so as to benefit them. This reading also runs into trouble when considering the close connection between ai 愛 and li 利 throughout the text. Hui-Chieh Loy points out this close association, even extending to the use of the construction ai li 愛利, as well as a discussion in the Tian Zhi chapter explaining the care (ai 愛) of heaven for the world in terms of the way heaven benefits (li 利) the world.17 He writes that “to ai something goes hand in hand with seeking to benefit it in the ‘Core Chapters,’ or at least having the disposition to do so . . . I take ‘A ai X’ to mean something like ‘A is concerned to promote what benefits X.”18 A relevant passage in Tian Zhi offers an imagined statement of the “will of heaven”: 此之我所愛, 兼而愛之; 我所利, 兼而利之。愛人者此為博焉, 利人者此為厚焉。 Like this, that which I care for, universally care for it. That which I benefit, universally benefit it. Caring for persons like this becomes broadly reaching, and benefitting persons like this becomes vast.19 Even apart from the issue of whether caring for and attempting to benefit come apart, the claim is made here that we should universally strive to benefit all things that heaven itself strives to benefit, which is all people. And the term jian 兼 (impartial, universal) is applied to benefit (li 利) here as well. Thus, this seems to undercut the motivation offered by Fraser and Robins for distinguishing care and benefit that will allow it to be the case that one who cares impartially can ever fail to take all persons into consideration in making decisions concerning benefit, even those with whom they do not interact. Again, we are pushed toward something like the more extreme view.

ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE—MIXED INTERPRETATIONS Youngsun Back offers a compelling interpretation of the connection between what she sees as multiple senses of jian ai (or rather, xiang ai 相愛 in the

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context). Unlike Fraser and Robins, she understands the Mohists as adopting the view that the person with jian ai puts concern for (in terms of commitment to benefitting) even strangers on the same level as commitment to ourselves and those closest to us. It is the failure of people to have jian ai that leads them to do things like steal from or invade other states. Presumably, the people of other states are those who a ruler or people do not interact with, yet the person who cultivates jian ai will have a concern such that they aim to benefit such people as well. Back distinguishes three different senses of impartial care, associating the first sense with the kind of concern and recognition of obligations to benefit those I am in direct relationships with (what Back calls “particular others”), in a sense similar to Fraser’s reading. The second sense of impartial care accounts for the various universalizations throughout the text. In this sense, impartial care goes beyond the relationships to particular others and creates care and obligation to benefit “non-particular others.” She writes that this sense of impartial care comes close to the idea of “equal ethical obligations to all.”20 She describes a third sense of impartial care, a more wide-ranging and intensive care, that is supposed to be cultivated by the ruler (but not necessarily the ordinary person). This third sense of impartial care gives us something like the radical reading of jian ai. Back’s analysis of jian ai can help make sense of the numerous claims made about the concept in the text, while retaining something of both the modest and radical interpretations. Back argues that this third sense of jian ai can be accurately translated “universal care”, and that because of these three senses “we can say that Mozi’s jian ai embraces all three elements of impartiality, inclusivity, and universality.”21 Back claims that the requirement for the strong “universal care” jian ai of the ruler is not meant to be cultivated by all of the people, who instead should aim toward a more limited “impartial care” akin to Fraser’s “moderately demanding” jian ai. I think there is better reason to believe that the Mohists actually did think that the strong version of jian ai was something that all people should aspire to, not only the ruler. Carine Defoort also offers a version of a similar “mixed interpretation” view, arguing that the Mohist doctrine became more radical over time, beginning with something like the modest view adopted by Fraser and Robins, and developing later to something akin to the radical view.22 Though she is clearly right that there are differences between the three Jian Ai chapters, the radical reading is consistent with all three, and we need not posit changes in the Mohist view on this central concept to make sense of the differences between the three chapters.

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FILIALITY AND JIAN AI—A TEST CASE A common line of argument scholars offer for the modest reading of jian ai is that the Mohists claim in a number of places that jian ai makes it possible for one to be more reliably filial, committed to one’s ruler, and attain a number of other seemingly relationship-based virtues.23 If Mohists accept virtues such as filiality, which require us to have a particular care for parents over others, then the radical reading of jian ai cannot be correct. The Mohist view on filiality, however, is consistent with the radical reading of jian ai. I argue here that the Mohists offer a view of filiality and other virtues that associate them with benefit in a way Confucians and others would have found objectionable. That is, Mohist filiality is simply different than Confucian filiality. Why think the Mohists are “re-interpreting” virtues like filiality in this way? Because of the way they argue against Confucians and those who hold more traditional views of filiality. They do not make the obvious “we’re saying the same thing you are” move one would expect if they in fact endorsed the traditional view, but rather they argue in ways supportive of the most extreme case, that is, the radical reading. Now, it could be that the Mohists thought that if they could justify a radical conception of jian ai, then the less radical versions will follow—but if they thought the radical version was defensible, why wouldn’t they have adopted it instead? And likewise, if they accepted the modest version, why would they bother making the case for the radical version, which was sure to receive much more resistance? One can perhaps succeed in making the Mohists look more modest and reasonable (to us), but at the price of making their argumentative moves questionable at best. And we should expect that the Mohist view would not fit neatly with traditional conceptions of filiality and other particularist virtues. After all, the Mohists were extremists. They adopted harsh punishments and the death penalty within their group. The historical situation of the Mohist movement is certainly relevant to helping us interpret their views. And it would have been very odd that this disciplined traveling paramilitary group was founded on principles widely accepted in their society, which they felt compelled to defend in the way they did. Both Robins and Fraser deploy an “argument from absence” in their evaluation of Mohist jian ai. The Mohists never explicitly claim that family ties, for example, or “particularist attachments” are problematic, and thus the “universalization” or impartiality that comes from jian ai we should expect to be consistent with these ties.24 In addition, Robins argues that the Mohists do not offer any other structure to ensure well-being beyond the family, which they would have to do in order to show that the person with jian ai would have more reason to care equally for everyone than to focus on

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the well-being of their own families primarily. The absence of such structures and institutions does not, however, show that the Mohists endorsed the partial relationships of the family. A more likely reason they provided no alternative institution is that they did not believe an alternative institution was necessary. If they indeed held the radical jian ai view, then it is unlikely they would have thought that any social institution needed to take the place of the family or other partialist structures. In a society in which all people possessed jian ai, no such structures would be necessary—the only reason we need them in the first place is because people fail to jian ai. A parallel argument could be made concerning government, very similar to something we find in both the Daoist tradition as well as in Western philosophers such as Rousseau. Given the right mindset and motivation, government and laws are unnecessary. When people are simply disinclined to steal from one another, authorities and militaries are unnecessary. Further, if the Mohist view relies on commitments to “particularist attachments,” they leave themselves open to decisive objections from Confucians, who can respond that many of our particularist attachments require something like differential care—that they simply cannot be adequately maintained without such care. And if the Mohists agree to this differential care, then it is unclear just what their disagreement with the Confucians is. After all, no Confucian holds that we should not care at all about those outside of our closest communities. What is at issue is not whether or not we should care for those outside of our particular groups— all parties agree that we should. What is at issue is just how we should care for these various people. Robins argues that Mohists accept a number of particularlist attachments. He writes: These passages continue to insist on the relational virtues and the institutions that require them. For example, the passage from book 14 asks: “if they saw their fathers, older brothers, and rulers as they do their own persons, how could they practice unfiliality?” The passage from book 15 similarly emphasizes the relational virtues. And the passage in book 16 takes for granted our allegiance to particular lineages, cities, and states. Assuming that the Mohists were not just engaging in exaggerated rhetoric, and that they really were describing inclusive care as an impartial attitude, they must nonetheless have thought it was compatible with other, partial attitudes.25 Robins then points out a number of passages throughout the Mozi in which filiality is either praised or used as part of an argument to establish some

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aspect of the Mohist position. When we look to these passages, however, there is a better explanation for them. Namely, that the Mohists simply understood by filiality (xiao 孝) something different than did the Confucians. Whether they consciously redefined the virtue, knowing the Confucian view of it, is a question that will be impossible to answer. But that they indeed had a different conception of it is something we can demonstrate. And this would not have been at all bizarre or controversial—after all, it is unproblematic that almost every philosopher in early China had a different understanding of concepts like dao 道. And even philosophers of the same “school” who largely agreed with one another, such as Mengzi and Xunzi, had different understandings of what concepts such as xing 性 (human nature) amounted to. I suspect something is going on here similar to what we see in Chapter Four of the Zhuangzi, in which we see a redefinition of a central concept on the basis of adoption of the view the text wishes us to hold. We see this development with the concept of personhood in the Zhuangzi. Zhuangists reject Confucian conceptions of personhood, but they replace it with a different conception. Thus, when Zhuangists praise the zhen ren 真人 (“genuine person”), they use the same term as Confucians, but with a very different connotation. In the Zhuangzi, they appear to intentionally invert this concept, attempting to show that only through rejection and ridding oneself of personhood in the narrow Confucian sense can one develop personhood in the more expansive Zhuangist sense, which then leads to the very goals the Confucian was after in the first place.26 The Mohist discussions of particularist attachments and relational virtues such as filiality are very similar. Rather than accept Confucian conceptions of filiality and argue for their importance, the Mohists offer alternative conceptions of virtues like filiality, imbued by universal care, that they think are in the end more effective than the “partial” versions. That is, the kind of filiality that results from universal care, which will look much different than “partial” filiality, is ultimately more effective at achieving the goals the Confucian takes partial filiality to help us achieve. If the Mohists were indeed committed to familial and relational virtues, as Robins argues, their understanding of these virtues was very different than that of the Confucians. Robins is right when he says that the Mohists did not frame their arguments in the Jian Ai chapters in terms of opposition to Confucian views, but the way they argue for their position on Jian ai does entail that criticisms they either imagined might be leveled against the position or that actually were leveled against it would be offered by those sympathetic to views similar to those of the Confucians—whether they called them by name or not. Let’s look to the critical passages on this discussed by Robins, and at how the Mohists understand the virtue of filiality, as a test case for the

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relational virtues in general. The Mohist view on filiality is importantly different from that of the Confucians as I show below, as the Mohist concept is based in a consideration of material benefit, in the same way Mohists judge everything else. That is, just as they associate care with benefit, as Hui-chieh Loy demonstrates, they associate filiality with benefitting one’s parent, in the material sense of benefit used throughout the text. It turns out then that while they do accept the need for filiality, for the Mohists filiality means nothing more than benefitting one’s parents. And this should be unsurprising, because the person with jian ai will aim to benefit all people, including his or her own parents. Thus, insofar as they aim at the benefit of all people, they will also therein fulfill the duties of filiality. There are a couple of things we can say about this, however. First— there is no special duty of filiality in terms of a commitment that the person with jian ai has to their parents that they do not have to all other people. Filiality in this sense can be understood as the commitment to benefit others as it pertains to one’s parents. It is no different in kind from our commitments to benefit other people, though it is also necessary as a component of our commitment to benefit all. Second—other advocates of filiality would not accept the Mohist sense as filiality at all. Since the Mohists associate care with benefit, virtues such as filiality can then be understood as certain kinds of commitment to benefit (of course, not inconsistent with commitments to benefit all). Confucians, for one, would simply deny that this is filiality at all. Recall the famous statement of Confucius in Analects 2.7: 今之孝者, 是謂能養。至於犬馬, 皆能有養; 不敬, 何以別乎? What people call filiality today is the ability to materially provide for one’s parents. This much the dogs and horses do—everyone can thus materially provide. Without reverence, what is the difference? The passages surrounding this one further stress the centrality of ritual (li 理), care that goes beyond material benefit, and particularity, such as obedience, in filiality. The virtue of filiality is a matter of following one’s parents as parents, rather than as persons for whom one should care the same as anyone else. But is this the case for the Mohists? A.C. Graham and others argued that the Mohists likely rejected the notion of care as emotional attachment and were skeptical of the value of conceptions of care that went beyond merely commitment to benefit in terms of material wellbeing.27 This attitude is certainly consistent with the strange Mohist view that rejects multiple uses of objects on grounds of benefit.

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Let us now look to a number of the passages Robins cites to demonstrate the Mohist commitment to filiality and family virtue. In 9.4, the Mohists describe the situation when there is no proper punishment of the vicious and reward of the virtuous by the ruler. Among other disastrous outcomes in such a situation, it would be the case that: 是以入則不慈孝父母, 出則不長弟鄉里, 居處無節, 出入無度, 男女無別。 Within the household people would not be kind and filial to their parents, and outside in the world people would respect their elders in other villages. They would remain without restraint, roam about without standards, and fail to respect the separation between men and women. This seems like a clear case of vicious action promoted and coming about based on bad rulership. Being filial here is taken as a virtue, but if we look at the other failures lack of filiality is associated with in the passage, they all have to do with behavioral concern for others. There is nothing about the filiality described here that marks it as a special relationship, obligation, or concern for one’s parents. It is one in a number of proper actions that ensure the wellbeing of all. This is likely why it is combined with the consideration of respect for elders in other villages. Within (ru 入), a virtuous person is filial, and going out (chu 出), they are respectful to elders. This much does not suggest a conflict with a radical reading of jian ai as equal commitment to the benefit of all. Robins is right that a number of passages throughout the Mozi discuss filiality and its role in order and generation of benefit, but the “argument from absence” applies here as well—nowhere does is this filiality said to consist in a special kind of care for one’s parents. It may simply be the case that one is best placed to ensure benefit for one’s parents because of proximity, and the material care one renders to the parent is instructive for others as well. Let us look to the arguments concerning filiality and jian ai that Mozi makes in Jian ai. There is a great deal packed into these arguments that can help the proponent of a radical reading of jian ai. In the first Jian Ai chapter, Mozi associates filiality with universal care, a concern for others as one has for oneself. The passage reads: 若使天下兼相愛, 愛人若愛其身, 猶有不孝者乎? 視父兄與君若其身, 惡施不孝? If everyone in the world possessed universal care, and cared for others as they cared for themselves, would there be anyone who was unfilial? When one regards father, brother, and ruler as they regard themselves, how can there be unfiliality?28

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Here, the Mohists seem to associate filiality with universal concern, not just for parents, but for rulers and brothers as well. This seems consistent with the view outlined above that filiality is taken as distinct from the Confucian sense in that it is associated primarily with benefit, and also that it requires universal care to be achieved, as one’s own parents only benefit when we can ensure the benefit of others. The key passage on filiality in the Jian Ai chapters comes toward the end of Jian Ai 3. It reads: 意不忠親之利, 而害為孝乎? 」子墨子曰：「姑嘗本原之孝子之為親度 者。吾不識孝子之為親度者, 亦欲人愛利其親與? 意欲人之惡賊其親與? 以說觀之, 即欲人之愛利其親也。然即吾惡先從事即得此? 若我先從事乎 愛利人之親, 然後人報我愛利吾親乎? 意我先從事乎惡人之親, 然後人報 我以愛利吾親乎? 即必吾先從事乎愛利人之親, 然後人報我以愛利吾親 也。然即之交孝子者, 果不得已乎, 毋先從事愛利人之親者與? When one is not focused on benefit to one’s parents, is this injurious to filiality? Mozi said: “let’s look into the source of the filial son’s considerations in connection with his parents. Do we know whether in the filial son’s considerations in connection with his parents, he desires for other people to also care for them, or whether he desires for other people to lack care for them? I can say from observation that he surely desires for other people to care for his parents. This being the case, what should I first do in order to obtain this care? If I first care for the parents of others, won’t then others return care and benefit (ai li 愛利) to my parents? Surely then I should first care for and benefit the parents of others, and in return others will care for and benefit my parents. Surely then those who would be mutually filial [toward others], if they have not attained what they seek, have failed to first care for and benefit the parents of others.”29 Here, filiality is connected directly to care (of seemingly the same kind) for the parents of others, and by extension all other people. It is only possible to fulfill one’s filial duties, of benefitting and caring for their own parents, if one also has care for and attempts to benefit all others. Thus, the very conditions for possession of the virtue of filiality, according to the Mohists, is to have equal concern for the parents of others, and to care equally for everyone. This should strike us as akin to the argumentation used in the Daodejing to undermine the Confucian (or popular) concept of virtue (de 德). In Daodejing 38, the authors engage in a deconstruction of the generally accepted notion of virtue, writing:

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上德不德, 是以有德; 下德不失德, 是以無德。上德無為而無以為; 下德為 之而有以為。 The highest virtue is not virtuous, and for this reason it has virtue. The lowest virtue never strays from virtue, and for this reason it lacks virtue. The highest virtue is without action and without holding as so. The lowest virtue acts and holds as so. What is going on here is an inversion of the category of virtue altogether. The authors of the Daodejing in a number of chapters point out that the goal of being truly virtuous, even by Confucian lights, is to have a natural and spontaneous disposition to act in virtuous ways, such that one is not guided by a concept of virtue at all, but acts simply out of one’s nature.30 Thus, when one is truly virtuous, they are not confined within the limitations of virtue. The truly virtuous person neither thinks nor acts in terms of right or wrong, they simply follow the spontaneous desires of their heart-mind. Thus, what the Daodejing calls true virtue is something that looks quite different from what Confucians and others would call virtue. It seems that the Mohists are making a very similar move in the above passage on filiality from Jian Ai 3. If the only way to truly achieve filial action, in terms of benefitting and caring for one’s parent, is to care universally, then it turns out that we have to alter our conception of what filiality is in order to make room for universal care. As in the Daodejing inversion of virtue, what we see here is a Mohist inversion of filiality. True filiality is nothing but universal care. As mentioned above, the critical piece of evidence comes from the Mohist arguments for jian ai in the three Jian Ai chapters. From the ways they argue for the doctrine, they seem to assume the radical view, or at least attempt to make the case for the most radical reading of jian ai possible. Hui-chieh Loy offers a reading of the numerous arguments in the Jian Ai chapters as variations of a single argument structure.31 This is a compelling reading, as a common feature of Mohist argumentation seems to be presentation of single arguments in multiple versions, playing out variations on a theme—in the Jian Ai chapters as well as elsewhere in the text.

CONCLUSION: RADICAL JIAN AI AS AN ETHICAL POSITION—A METHODOLOGICAL SUGGESTION While I think the radical reading of jian ai fits much more comfortably with the text of the Mozi, it also has some additional virtues. The fact that the radical reading of jian ai strikes many contemporary Western readers of the

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text as implausible should not, I think, be taken as a strike against it, but rather a consideration in its favor. Presumably, part of the reason for moves in recent work favoring the modest interpretation of jian ai is that it seems to us to make the position more plausible, it is more intuitive to us, and that it does not fall victim to the attacks of the Mengzi. It would be strange indeed if this small paramilitary group who lived fairly spartan lifestyles and were in the business of defending states militarily turned out to have ethical ideals consist with liberal democratic notions constructed in a very different social situation. The kind distant commitment to making one’s way through life in ways that cause least harm to others and a theoretical commitment to benefitting those we encounter seems more at home in contemporary large-scale democratic societies grounded in Enlightenment conceptions of rights and liberty than it does in a close-knit, small-scale, and organized group like the Mohists. An ideology that looks more like that of Sparta than that of Athens would be unsurprising, and if I am right about the radical reading, this is just what we find in the Mohists. Finally, we should prize finding views that challenge our assumptions about morality. Perhaps we should not go out of our way to make thinkers like the Mohists sound different—after all, we should be committed to understanding what they actually held. But the fact that their moral intuitions may have clashed so fundamentally with our own is not a reason to dismiss them, but rather a reason to reconsider the ground of our own moral positions. Perhaps the foundations of our thought are shakier than we think. And there is nothing better than radical disagreement at this foundational level to teach us that perhaps what we think of as obvious or self-evident is after all not so. Perhaps these things are even mistaken.

NOTES 1. Such as Chris Fraser, Dan Robins, Philip Ivanhoe, and Hui-chieh Loy, among others. 2. I will refer to the three chapters in the Mozi titled Jian Ai (shang, zhong, and xia) by using capitalization and number, such as “Jian Ai 1,” “Jian Ai 2,” etc. I refer to the doctrine of jian ai using lowercase letters. 3. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, 179. 4. Loy, “On the Argument for Jian’ai”, 497; Fraser, Philosophy of the Mozi, 158. 5. Johnston, Mozi; Watson, Mo Tzu: Basic Writings; Graham, Disputers of the Tao; Mei, The Ethical and Poltical Works of Motse. 6. Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought. I use “care” rather than “love” throughout this chapter for ai 愛, mainly in order to avoid the broader emotional associations of “love” that are not intended by the Mohists in this context.

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7. Mengzi 3B9. All translations from the Chinese are my own. 8. This is a common Confucian tactic against philosophical opponents. In Analects 18.5–7, Confucius and Zilu encounter a number of “Proto-Daoist” hermits who have given up on the social project for various reasons. Confucius concludes that this lack of commitment to human society makes these characters akin to the birds and beasts—they have turned their back on their humanity in some crucial way. 9. Especially given how prone Confucians tend to be to constructing strawmen of their opponents. 10. Mozi 16.10, which I discuss further below. All citations from the Mozi are taken from the numbering of the Chinese Text Project website (ctext.org). 11. Chris Fraser, Philosophy of the Mozi, chapter 6; Dan Robins, “Mohist Care.” The readings of Carine Defoort, in “Are the Three ‘Jian Ai’ Chapters About Universal Love?” and Youngsun Back, in “Reconstructing Mozi’s Jian Ai” are special cases, as they accept aspects of both the radical and modest readings. 12. Frazer, Philosophy of the Mozi, 170. 13. Youngsun Back, “Reconstructing Mozi’s Jian Ai,” Philosophy East and West, 1092–3. 14. Mozi 14.5. 15. Fraser, Philosophy of the Mozi, 162. Defoort accepts a similar reading, translating 兼相愛, 交相利 as “inclusively caring for each other, mutually benefiting each other.” Defoort, “Are the Three ‘Jian Ai’ Chapters About Universal Love?” 37. 16. Robins, “Mohist Care,” 64. 17. Loy, “On the Argument for Jian’ai,” 489. 18. Ibid., 489. 19. Mozi, 26.4 20. Back, 1101. 21. Ibid., 1102. 22. Defoort, “Are the Three ‘Jian Ai’ Chapters About Universal Love?” 23. Robins, “Mohist Care,” 63. Fraser, Philosophy of the Mozi. 24. Robins, “Mohist Care,” 63–4. 25. Ibid., 65. 26. I discuss these Zhuangist arguments in “In the World of Persons: The Personhood Debate in the Analects and Zhuangzi”. 27. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 41–2. Though some of Graham’s claims are unfair to the Mohists, he is likely right about this. He writes “The Mohists were dour people whose ears were open to the demands of justice rather than to the appeal of love. When King Hui of Ch’in (324–311 BC ) refused to execute for murder the son of the Grand Master Fu Tun, he replied, ‘By the law of the Mohists whoever kills a man suffers death, whoever wounds a man suffers mutilation. This is how one deters killing and wounding.’ He executed his son himself.” Youngsun Back also shares this view of Mohists on emotions. Back, “Reconstructing Mozi’s Jian’ai,” 1144.

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28. Mozi, 14.4. 29. Mozi, 16.10. 30. The state achieved by Confucius at the age of seventy in Analects 2.4, when he said he could 從心所欲, 不踰矩 (“follow the desires of my heart without overstepping the bounds of what is right”). 31. Loy, “On the Argument for Jian’ai,” 490.

WORKS CITED Back, Youngsun. “Reconstructing Mozi’s Jian’ai.” Philosophy East and West 67 (4), 2017. Defoort, Carine. “Are the Three ‘Jian Ai’ Chapters About Universal Love?” in Defoort and Standaert, eds. The Mozi as an Evolving Text. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Fraser, Chris. The Philosophy of the Mozi: The First Consequentialists. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Graham, Angus. Disputers of the Tao. La Salle, IL : Open Court, 1989. Ivanhoe, Philip J. “Mozi,” in Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2001. Johnston, Ian. The Mozi: A Complete Translation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Loy, Hui-chieh. “On the Argument for Jian’ai.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 12, 2013. McLeod, Alexus. “In the World of Persons: The Personhood Debate in the Analects and Zhuangzi.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 11 (4), 2012. Mei, Y.P. The Ethical and Political Works of Motse. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1929. Shun, Kwong-loi. Mencius and Early Chinese Thought. Stanford CA : Stanford University Press, 2000. Van Norden, Bryan. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Watson, Burton. Mo Tzu: Basic Writings. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Ritual and the Vulnerability of a Prosperous World: A Reading of the “Liyun” 禮運 MICHAEL D.K. ING

This chapter seeks to interpret the opening passages of the “Liyun” 禮運 chapter in the Liji《禮記》 . In it I argue that the narrative of ritual put forth in these passages of the “Liyun” is a narrative of growing complexity where the performances of ritual as well as the ways in which human beings thought of themselves in relation to ritual become more complex as society develops. More specifically, I argue that the “Liyun” encourages its readers to ambivalently accept this narrative. By this I mean that the text asserts that humanity once lived in a safe, yet simple, condition that transitioned into a prosperous, yet vulnerable, condition. The text encourages its readers to pursue prosperity, yet to recognize that the only way to create prosperity is to develop more sophisticated forms of ritual as well as a more crafty notion of the self, thereby allowing for the possibility that human beings might ruin prosperity. The reader’s ambivalence, therefore, stems from the conflicting desires to pursue prosperity in the context of a vulnerable world. 87

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In making this argument I will translate and interpret the opening scene of the “Liyun.” Shortly before the conclusion I will show how my reading of the “Liyun” serves as an important contrast to some contemporary accounts of early Chinese worldviews. The “Liyun” begins with Confucius sighing after witnessing the zha 蜡 ceremony performed in the State of Lu.1 His disciple Ziyou, hearing him sigh, asks what went wrong. Confucius responds with a lengthy description of two utopian time periods in human history—one he calls Grand Unity (datong 大同), and the other he calls Modest Prosperity (xiaokang 小康). Confucius explains that he hoped that the world might again attain to the greatness of these two time periods, yet, as evident from the poor performance of the ritual just witnessed, such a desire will not be realized.2 This opening scene raises a few immediate questions. Is it possible, in the view of the text, for humanity to return to a state of Grand Unity or Modest Prosperity? If so, which state is preferred, and how should humanity work toward it? As the “Liyun” chapter unfolds we gain a complex set of answers to these questions. In describing the era of Grand Unity Confucius explains, 大道之行也, 天下為公。選賢與能, 講信脩睦。故人不獨親其親, 不獨子 其子, 使老有所終, 壯有所用, 幼有所長, 矜寡孤獨廢疾者, 皆有所養。男 有分, 女有歸。貨惡其棄於地也, 不必藏於己; 力惡其不出於身也, 不必為 3 己。是故謀閉而不興, 盜竊亂賊而不作, 故外戶而不閉, 是謂大同。 The Great Way moved [throughout the world]; and everything under the heavens was commonly shared. Those in positions of authority were chosen because of their abilities. Trust was emphasized, and solidarity was cultivated. As such, people did not only treat their parents as parents, nor only their children as children. The old were allowed to live their lives to the fullest. The able-bodied were employed, and the young were raised into adulthood. The widowed, the orphaned, the childless, and the sick were all cared for. Men had proper allotments of work, and women were married into good families. When crafting goods, people disdained not putting them to their full use; yet they did not need to store up [goods] for themselves. When working, people disdained not exerting themselves to the fullest; yet they did not [work] simply for themselves. As such, deceitful plans were curbed so that they did not arise; and thieves, robbers, and malcontents did not come about. Because of this, [people] did not [even] shut the outer gate to their homes. This is what is called Grand Unity.

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The period of Grand Unity, Confucius explains, is a time when the Great Way pervaded the world. People were chosen to serve in positions of leadership according to their merit rather than their family lineage. The younger generation treated all of the older generation uniformly as their parents; and the older generation looked after all of the younger generation as their children. People had no need to close the doors to their homes since thieves were non-existent. The sick, widowed, and orphaned were cared for. People, generally speaking, had little need to worry about themselves. What is notable here is that somewhat simple social divisions mark this period of unity—roles such as husband and wife, as well as parent and child are made explicit; however, distinctions between older brother and younger brother, as well as parent and unrelated adult are either not stressed, or, as we learn as the narrative continues, these roles are largely unarticulated in the era of Grand Unity. Confucius then goes on to describe the era of Modest Prosperity. 大道既隱, 天下為家, 各親其親, 各子其子, 貨力為己。大人世及以為禮。 城郭溝池以為固, 禮義以為紀; 以正君臣, 以篤父子, 以睦兄弟, 以和夫婦, 以設制度, 以立田里, 以賢勇知, 以功為己。故謀用是作, 而兵由此起。 禹、湯、文、武、成王、周公, 由此其選也。此六君子者, 未有不謹於禮 者也。以著其義, 以考其信, 著有過, 刑仁講讓, 示民有常。如有不由此 4 者, 在埶者去, 眾以為殃, 是謂小康。 The Great Way was obscured, and everything under the heavens became the property of individual families. [People] treated only their parents as parents, and only their children as children. [They] crafted goods and labored for themselves. [They] considered it ritually proper to pass down positions of authority on the basis of lineage; and considered it necessary to construct city walls and moats [to protect their towns]. [They] took ritual and rightness as their standards. By these means [people] properly arranged the social stations of ruler and minister, deepened the relationship between fathers and sons, solidified the relationship between older brother and younger brother, harmonized the relationship between husband and wife, standardized the measurements used to build things, organized farming plots and villages, praised the brave and the wise, and worked for the betterment of themselves. It was at this point that [people] created and employed deceitful schemes; and military weapons came about. The figures Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, King Cheng, and the Duke of Zhou arose in the midst of all this. Of these six rulers, none were not careful to do things in accordance with

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ritual. They thereby proclaimed their rightness, gained the trust of others, revealed the errors [of their detractors], demonstrated benevolence, and encouraged deference. [As such, they] set a standard for all people. If there were [people] who did not accord with this, they removed [them from society] because the masses regarded [any detractors] as great harms [to society]. This is what is called Modest Prosperity. According to Confucius, and for reasons not explained in the text, the Great Way became obscure and people found themselves living in a different world.5 In this new world, city walls and moats were erected to keep unfamiliar people out of the cities. Weapons and armies came into being; and successors to the throne were chosen on the basis of their lineage rather than their merit.6 In contrast to the previous time period, people labored for themselves (huoli weiji 貨力為己, yigong weiji 以功為己) rather than for the benefit of all of humanity. Fortunately, a number of exemplary figures (junzi 君子) appeared on the scene and devised a means to order society. These people created, or more likely, further developed, a system of rituals that ordered things to the point of Modest Prosperity. People living in this time period, the text explains, took ritual as their standard, or ji 紀.

COMPARING GRAND UNITY WITH MODEST PROSPERITY There are many points of comparison that can be made between the eras of Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity. I will note three of the most relevant points here. First, ritual is not mentioned in the “Liyun” until the era of Modest Prosperity where it is described as a kind of ji 紀. Literally, the term ji 紀 refers to threads in rope used to bind things together or threads used to mark out particular lengths of measurement. Figuratively speaking, ritual serves as a kind of thread that binds society together.7 Without these threads human society would be like loose items, scattered across the world without coherent pattern, and left in a state of disorder. As implemented by the six exemplary rulers that appear in the era of Modest Prosperity, ritual served to bind society together with the Great Way.8 By introducing the notion of ritual, the text indicates that the shift from the era of Grand Unity to the era of Modest Prosperity is marked by a new need for mediation. The Great Way no longer bound society together; rather society needed a supplementary series of bindings to be bound together as before.9 These binds, in the form of ritual, are the means by which human beings were able to prosper. Ritual, as such, had either already been operating subtly (i.e., without people knowing they were practicing ritual) during the

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era of Grand Unity or was only created during the era of Modest Prosperity. As I will discuss below, a coherent reading of the opening passages of the “Liyun” entails that we understand ritual to have been already at work during the era of Grand Unity. However, ritual performance during the era of Grand Unity did not exist as a body of named practices. To borrow the terms of one commentator, ritual existed as a series of actions (lizhishi 禮之事), but did not exist in name (lizhiming 禮之名).10 The second comparison worthy of attention focuses on the issue of differentiation or sophistication. The era of Modest Prosperity is marked by the rise of different, and more complex, familial and social relationships, as well as more complex physical structures such as moats and city walls. No longer is just anyone from the older generation simply a “father” or “mother”; instead fathers and mothers are differentiated from those who are not one’s parents. The relationship between older brother and younger brother is delineated, as well as the relationship between ruler and minister. The creation of city walls also marks a clear distinction between insiders and outsiders. Prosperity in this more complex social setting is possible but requires a more sophisticated set of physical structures and more sophisticated rituals to properly maintain these relationships. When an aunt dies, for instance, the question now must be asked, should she be mourned for the same way that one would mourn for one’s mother? As the narrative developed in the “Liyun” continues the theme of differentiation becomes more prominent, and I will discuss this more below. The last significant point of comparison is between a more literal understanding of the titles “Grand Unity” and “Modest Prosperity.” The terms “Grand” and “Modest” can also be rendered as “large” (da 大) and “small” (xiao 小). Many commentators, building on the fact that “Large Unity” seems intuitively better than “Small Prosperity,” understand this contrast to mean that the era of Grand Unity is preferred over the era of Modest Prosperity, and humanity should, therefore, work to recreate the conditions of Grand Unity.11 Additionally, the text is quite clear that humanity is without discord until the era of Modest Prosperity. On the other hand, there are several reasons to reject the conclusion that Grand Unity is preferable to Modest Prosperity. For one, the figure of Confucius in the “Liyun” never advocates returning to the era of Grand Unity. Rather, throughout the text he argues for implementing the rituals created by the six rulers in the era of Modest Prosperity. Secondly, the notion of unity, or tong 同, in early Ruist texts is sometimes valued only in proper degree or in conjunction with other characteristics. The “Yueji” 樂記 chapter of the Liji, for instance, states, “Music works to unify (tong 同) [people] and ritual works to differentiate [them]. When unified they will love each other.

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When differentiated they will respect each other. If music is emphasized over [ritual] then [people] will [inappropriately] intermix; and if ritual is emphasized over [music] then [people] will [inappropriately] pull apart 樂者 為同, 禮者為異。同則相親, 異則相敬。樂勝則流, 禮勝則離.12 Here, the notion of unity (vis-à-vis music) must be tempered with differentiation (vis-à-vis ritual). Too much, or not enough, unity is a less than desirable circumstance. In the case of the “Yueji,” tong 同 is a characteristic sought after only in appropriate amounts or only when put in a kind of dynamic tension with notions of differentiation. In this light, the era of Grand Unity could be seen as an era in need of differentiation (so as to cease the inappropriate intermixing of people), or, said another way, it could be seen as an era in need of ritual. Finally, the term I translate as “Modest Prosperity” (xiaokang 小康), while seldom appearing in other early Chinese texts, appears in a significant passage of the Shijing《詩經》where it refers to a period of prosperity or rest after work. The poem, in part, reads: 民亦勞止、汔可小康。 惠此中國、以綏四方 。 無縱詭隨、以謹無良。 式遏寇虐、憯不畏明 。 柔遠能邇、以定我王。 The people have now ceased their labors; and are finally enjoying a season of prosperity (xiaokang 小康). [Let us] favor this place, the middle kingdom; and pacify the four corners of the world. [Let us] keep it without even traces of those who seek to be deceitful; and guard it from those who are not good. [Let us] protect it from thieves and villains; and destroy those who do not fear our perspicacity. [Let us] be caring to those who are far, embrace those who are near; and thereby [let us] establish our reign. 13 The Shijing poem and the opening passages of the “Liyun” share many similar themes. They both speak about establishing a period of prosperity; dealing with thieves and deceitful schemes when creating the conditions of prosperity; and instituting a form of government—including military endeavors—that strives to continue the conditions of prosperity. As such, if the “Liyun” is drawing on the imagery of the Shijing, the term xiao 小 (“small”) should not necessarily be put in contrast with da 大

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(“large”); rather, the term xiaokang 小康 must be taken in its entirety where it serves as a kind of metonym for the conditions spoken of in the poem.14 The era of Modest Prosperity, in this light, is not a lesser era when compared with the era of Grand Unity as much as it is a time period marked by the need for a different set of responses to create the conditions of prosperity. In short, precisely how the “Liyun” esteems the era of Grand Unity in comparison with the era of Modest Prosperity is not entirely clear. Modest Prosperity is certainly more complex, and requires ritual to create the conditions of prosperity; but the question remains as to whether complexity should be valued, and whether it should be valued above the condition of Grand Unity where the harms described in the era of Modest Prosperity either did not exist or were effectively suppressed. Many previous interpreters have read the text as arguing against complexity, and have therefore labeled it a text influenced by “Daoists” arguing for the value of simplicity.15 My sense, however, given the three comparisons explained above, is to read the “Liyun” as advocating an ambivalent acceptance of the conditions of Modest Prosperity. In other words, the era of Modest Prosperity may in fact be a time where weapons, deceptive schemes, and self-interest come about, but it is also a world that supports a larger, more robust, population where, through the performance of ritual, people are able to achieve a deeper sense of self-realization. As such, the “Liyun” calls for its readers to ambivalently pursue the situation of Modest Prosperity. The meaning of the title “Liyun” 禮運 is open to multiple interpretations. Among the possibilities are “The Implementation of Ritual” (in other words, how human beings should put ritual into practice), “The Motion of Ritual” (in the sense of ritual being the means by which society is able to move and work together), or “The Movement of Ritual” (implying the coming forth, or creation, of ritual). I take the title in the latter sense; teasing out its implication to mean the movement of the social world of human beings into a situation where ritual is now explicit and necessary for creating the conditions of prosperity. Following early commentators, I view it in the sense of a change in condition (a yunzhuan 運轉), where, due to a break with the past, people find themselves in a significantly different state of affairs—a state of affairs characterized by the positive and negative implications of a more complex society and more complex ritual performances.16

THE ORIGINS OF RITUAL After Confucius provides Ziyou with an explanation for his sigh, Ziyou asks two more questions. Both concern the role of ritual. Confucius’ response to

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Ziyou’s second question is particularly interesting since it provides a description of the origin of ritual (lizhichu 禮之初). Confucius explains: 昔者先王, 未有宮室, 冬則居營窟, 夏則居橧巢。未有火化, 食草木之實、 鳥獸之肉, 飲其血, 茹其毛。未有麻絲, 衣其羽皮。後聖有作, 然後修火之 利, 范金合土, 以為臺榭、宮室、牖戶, 以炮以燔, 以亨以炙, 以為醴酪; 治 其麻絲, 以為布帛, 以養生送死, 以事鬼神上帝, 皆從其朔。 In ancient times, before there were palaces and buildings, the early kings dwelt in caves during the winter and in nests during the summer. There was no fire so they ate grass, fruit from trees, and the raw flesh of birds and animals. They drank the blood of these animals and feasted on their feathers and fur. There was no hemp or silk so they wore feathers and hides. Later, sages created [things]. They harnessed the benefits of fire, they smelt metal, and they shaped clay. By means of these things they constructed platforms with roofs, as well as palaces, houses, windows, and doors. They were able to grill, roast, boil, and cook [their food]. They were also able to make various seasonings. They gained control over fibers so as to produce hemp and silk [for clothing]. By means of these things they prolonged life and put off death. They were able to serve the spirits of the world. All [ritual] follows from this beginning.17 Ritual began with the civilization of human society. The sages noticed the condition of the world and created things such as fire to better that condition. The simple creations of weaving and cooking enabled people to serve the spirits of the world. Ritual, as such, is about ordering the world. It is about organizing relationships; including relationships between individual human beings, relationships between human beings and the physical world, and relationships between human beings and spirits. This passage of the “Liyun” continues on to describe how the foundational acts of the sages led to more sophisticated ritual implements and performances. 故玄酒在室, 醴、醆在戶, 粢醍在堂, 澄酒在下。陳其犧牲, 備其鼎、俎, 列其琴、瑟、管、磬、鍾、鼓, 脩其祝、嘏, 以降上神與其先祖。以正君 臣, 以篤父子, 以睦兄弟, 以齊上下, 夫婦有所。是謂承天之祜。作其祝 號, 玄酒以祭, 薦其血、毛, 腥其俎, 孰其殽, 與其越席, 疏布以冪, 衣其澣 帛, 醴、醆以獻, 薦其燔、炙, 君與夫人交獻, 以嘉魂魄, 是謂合莫。然後 退而合亨, 體其犬豕牛羊, 實其簠、簋、籩、豆、鉶羹。祝以孝告, 嘏以 慈告, 是謂大祥。此禮之大成也。

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Now, the dark wine is put in the room [where the sacrificial ceremony is performed] and the sweet wines are placed at the door. The sacrificial grains and red wines are placed in the hall and the clear liquors are placed below the hall. The sacrifices are arrayed, and the tripods and tables are readied; the small and large zither, the flutes, the musical stones, the bells, and the drums are displayed; and the words of the prayer are arranged. [All this is done] to bring the spirits down from above and to enjoin with one’s ancestors; to arrange the social stations of ruler and minister; to deepen the relationship between fathers and sons; to solidify the relationship between older brother and younger brother; to properly adjust the stations of those in authority and those subservient to authority; and to provide a proper place for husband and wife. This is what is called receiving blessings from the heavens. The prayers are then pronounced, and the dark wine is offered. The blood and fur of the sacrifices are offered up; and their uncooked meat is placed on the tables, with their bones cooked in a soup. Then floor mats are brought forth, and a hempen cloth is used to cover the sacrifices. [The ruler and his wife] are clothed in newly washed silk robes. They present the sweet wines and offer up the roasted and cooked meat of the sacrifices. They alternate making these sacrifices; and the spirits are thereby pleased. This is what is called according with the deep and arcane. After this, they retire from the room where the ceremony was performed and boil the remaining meat [for others to eat]; separating the meat of the dog, the pig, the cow, and the sheep into dishes—some square, some round, some made of bamboo, and some made of other wood. A prayer is offered to express the filiality of those making the sacrifices; and words of compassion are expressed by the spirits [through a person representing them]. This is what is called great fortune. All of this constitutes the grand completion of ritual.18 Ritual, while rooted in the basic activities of cooking, weaving, and housebuilding, progressed from these basic activities into more intricate practices. Ritual came to involve a variety of performers, utilizing various wines, clothing, and sacrificial vessels. By building on the early teachings of the sages, ritual served to bring down the spirits of the ancestors and “arranged the social stations of ruler and minister, deepened the relationship between fathers and sons, and solidified the relationship between older brother and younger brother.” Reminiscent of the passage quoted earlier in this chapter, ritual became the means by which humanity instituted the conditions of Modest Prosperity. As such, this passage from the “Liyun” can be read as a description of ritual leading to the era of Modest Prosperity. When put

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together with the passages translated above, they, in total, provide a narrative of ritual progressing from the earliest stages of human history to the era of Modest Prosperity.19

SYNTHESIZING THE NARRATIVE(S) OF RITUAL IN THE “LIYUN” The scene depicting human beings living in primitive conditions such as using caves and nests for housing seems to be set in a period previous to the eras of Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity. It is worth briefly mentioning that other early Chinese texts present similar narratives, however none of these narratives include accounts of both the primitive era and the eras of Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity. In other words, the “Liyun” chapter in the Kongzi Jiayu《孔子家語》, for instance, describes the periods of Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity but does not describe a situation where human beings lived in crude conditions.20 The “Ciguo” 辭過 chapter in the Mozi《墨子》, on the other hand, provides a description of human beings living in caves and nests but never discusses the eras of Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity.21 With good reason, some scholars argue that these two stories actually originated in independent traditions years before they were combined in the “Liyun.”22 Nevertheless, when maintaining a coherent reading of the chapter as it stands in the Liji there are few options other than chronologically situating the two accounts. Given that human beings are described as having developed some form of civilization in the eras of Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity, it seems most likely that the era of living in caves and eating the raw flesh of animals should be taken as an earlier time.23 Most traditional commentators also read the “Liyun” in this light.24 In essence this entails seeing four time periods discussed in the “Liyun”— the first is this early stage in human history when people lived in caves and nests. The second is the period of Grand Unity. Since the “Liyun” chapter does not explain how human society moved from this early period into the era of Grand Unity, we are left to suppose that the creations of the sages fostered the conditions that lead to it. The third period covered in the “Liyun” is the era of Modest Prosperity; and the fourth period is the time of Confucius, a post-Modest Prosperity world. There are several consequences of synthesizing the narrative in this manner. Most significant is the place that ritual holds in distinguishing Grand Unity from Modest Prosperity. Since ritual originated before the era of Grand Unity, the transition to Modest Prosperity cannot be marked by the appearance of ritual. Instead, ritual must be understood as developing slowly and continuously from the first organization of human society and continuing

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to develop all the way through the era of Modest Prosperity. Rituals, therefore, in the earliest stages of human civilization were rooted in the basic needs of food and shelter. They progress into the period of Grand Unity where, as the text states, the young are properly nourished, and males and females play distinct social roles. In the era of Modest Prosperity, ritual culminates in the intricate vessels and clothing that are employed in ritual performances. What we see here is the development of ritual in terms of growing sophistication. Early rituals comprised the bare essentials of human living. They were basic and unadorned. The notion of tong 同, or unity, in the era of Grand Unity implies a kind of undifferentiation. There was “grand undifferentiation” in the sense that people did not distinguish between their family and the families of others; their cities were also simple—lacking defense fortifications and complex forms of government. As society formed, points of tension between the emerging life of prosperity (kang 康) and the previous life of unity (tong 同) took shape as well. The advent of defense fortifications, while a necessary thing due to the rise of armies, also entailed the need to maintain them and continually modify them as the weapons foreign armies brought against them also continued to increase in complexity. Differentiation and development fostered further and even more complex differentiation and development; and this entailed an ever-growing infrastructure to manage the process of development. Ritual played an important role in this process by both reinforcing the growing number of distinctions as well as controlling (zhi 治) the process of differentiation. At the same time, though, ritual itself also grew in complexity. Since ritual was rooted in the everyday practices of eating, wearing clothing, and social interaction, the development of human civilization and the development of ritual should be seen as the very same process. Practically speaking, we see that more sophisticated rituals required more sophisticated ritual implements, and we can suppose that this in turn required more sophisticated artisans and tools to make the implements. This led to an array of skilled and less skilled artisans, which in turn demanded a more complex economy to reward the artisans according to their degree of skill.25 As society developed, therefore, so did ritual; and as ritual became more complex so did society. The goal of humanity, in this reading of the “Liyun,” is not to recreate the conditions of simplicity or unity; rather the goal is to continue to create the tools necessary to enable prosperity. Inevitably this entails furthering the process of differentiation and sophistication. Further differentiation is not necessarily good, but it must occur to further the conditions for a good life. The idea that prosperity is possible yet requires a complex response,

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which then generates a further set of complications, can be restated by saying that only through continued differentiation is prosperity made possible for an ever-growing number of human beings.26 The shift from the era of Grand Unity to Modest Prosperity, as such, is not about the appearance of ritual; rather, what distinguishes these two time periods is a change in awareness with regards to ritual. This transition is best understood in terms of an emerging discourse about ritual.27 In other words, previous to the era of Modest Prosperity, ritual was simply what people did as given them by the sages. They built homes, manufactured clothing, and cooked food in accordance with the tradition established by these sages. However, in the era of Modest Prosperity ritual became an externalized (and institutionalized) discourse. It became not simply something people did, but something people thought about and could choose to perform or to not perform.28 It became something other than the facile practices of humanity. Adapting an interpretive strategy of one commentator, ritual existed in principle (lizhili 禮之理) during the primitive era (where the sages were the first to identify the principles of ritual), it existed in practice (lizhishi 禮之事) during the era of Grand Unity (where humanity did not self-consciously identify it as ritual), and it existed in name (lizhiming 禮之名) during the era of Modest Prosperity (where human beings labeled it to distinguish it from other practices that arose).29 The practices of ritual, the “Liyun” reveals, are often in tension with certain proclivities of human beings; and as society develops, these tensions become more prominent.30 Ritual, in other words, comes about in the era of Modest Prosperity not in terms of a new series of practices that were nonexistent in the era of Grand Unity. Instead, ritual comes about in the era of Modest Prosperity as a name for certain practices that are now in opposition to, and in competition with, other practices people are promoting and performing. The era of Modest Prosperity presents not just an added complexity in terms of ritual practices, but also a plurality of options in terms of performance. In the era of Modest Prosperity, people can perform in accordance with the demands of ritual, or they can perform a variety of non-ritualized (and therefore “improper”) activities, whereas in the era of Grand Unity people uniformly followed the dictates of ritual. What we have in the period of Modest Prosperity is the creation of a tradition in the sense of a series of ideas and practices that are in opposition with other competing ideas and practices. It is the creation of this tradition, in tandem with people choosing to follow or reject it, that distinguishes the era of Modest Prosperity. In short, what we see in the period of Modest Prosperity is the gradual rise of a new conceptualization of the “self ” and its relationship with the ritual tradition. What we see is a self marked by the ability to reflect and

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determine the content of its tradition. The dispositions of this self are sometimes in tension with the demands of the ritual tradition.

THE PROSPEROUS SELF The relationship between the two characters ji 己 (“self ”) and ji 紀 (“standard”) that appear in the opening scene of the “Liyun” best captures the tension between the self and the ritual tradition. Both characters are graphically and semantically related.31 The first ji (己) is usually translated as “self.”32 The second ji (紀), as explained above, literally refers to threads in fabric or an abstract notion of standard. The “Liyun” explains that one fundamental difference between the era of Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity is that people were not concerned with themselves (bubi weiji 不必為己, literally “did not need to be for themselves”) in the period of Grand Unity, whereas in the period of Modest Prosperity people were self-concerned (weiji 為己). This opening passage suggests that in moving from the era of Grand Unity to the era of Modest Prosperity some kind of transformation of the self (ji 己) took place. An alternative reading of these characters—taking wei 為 in the second rather than the fourth tone used in contemporary Mandarin—highlights the significance of this transformation. The character wei 為 in these contexts is usually understood as “for” or “in behalf of,” so the phrase bubi weiji 不必為己 is translated character by character as “not necessary in behalf of oneself,” or more fluidly as “It was not necessary for people to behave for the sake of themselves.” It can also be understood, however, to mean “construct” or “become.” This latter reading takes the phrase bubi weiji 不必為己 as “not necessary to become a self,” or more loosely as “It was not necessary for people to construct a notion of the ‘self.’ ” In other words, this alternative reading suggests that human beings in the period of Grand Unity did not yet have a developed concept of a self. This reading is supported by other concepts such as “unity,” or tong 同, where in the period of Grand Unity human society was largely undifferentiated—there were concepts of young and old, as well as male and female, but there were no explicit distinctions beyond these basic categories. The notion of a self, we may surmise, was one largely undifferentiated from other human beings. Translating the most famous line of the “Liyun” more literally, during the era of Grand Unity “the world was one group” 天下為公.33 The unity of the world in the era of Grand Unity should be understood in contrast to the period of Modest Prosperity where “the world became [individual] households” 天下為家.34 In distinction from the era of Grand

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Unity, people in the time of Modest Prosperity “used their labors to benefit themselves” 以功為己. Or, reading wei 為 as “to become,” people in the era of Modest Prosperity “took the fruit of their labors as constitutive of their selves.” Rather than viewing the products of their labor as communal goods contributing to an undifferentiated society, people conceptualized the results of their efforts as their own. No longer did they work to take care of all of the older generation. Instead, they labored for their own family and for themselves. No longer did they watch after the younger generation as if they were all their children. Instead, they treated each person according to a more stratified sense of relationships. The world was no longer communal; rather, cities were divided from other cities by means of walls and moats; states were divided from other states with the creation of weapons and military troops; and the ultimate position of leadership—the role of emperor—was cut off from the public as now only those in blood relation were chosen for the position. What we see in the era of Modest Prosperity is a rise in distinctions; and in the center of this rise is a more distinctive notion of the self. The “Liyun” is quite ambivalent about this new self. While on the one hand, the self in the era of Modest Prosperity is able to construct a prosperous world, on the other hand, this self is also able to destroy this prosperous world. In short, the self in the era of Modest Prosperity has become a crafty self, where the term “crafty” should be understood in its multifaceted sense meaning both skillful and devious.35 The self in the era of Modest Prosperity is fully equipped to build housing structures that keep out the cold, to cook food in ways that nourish the body, to engage in a variety of relationships that constitute a meaningful life, and to perform complex rites that bring the spirits down from above. This same self, though, is also fully equipped to plot and scheme against its relatives, to employ massive armies to overthrow a neighboring city, to labor for only itself, and to usurp, mis-perform, and even destroy the ritual tradition.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF LIVING IN A VULNERABLE WORLD The “Liyun” encourages its readers to ambivalently work toward constructing a prosperous world. This ambivalence stems from the vulnerability of such a world. In contrast to the era of Grand Unity when people lived in accordance with the Great Way, the era of Modest Prosperity is vulnerable to deviation from the Great Way. The era of Grand Unity may have been a less sophisticated time period with rather simple homes and limited social relationships, but it was a time period where the values of trust, solidarity, and longevity were

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realized. People lived healthy, hard-working lives in a society led by virtuous leaders. The period of Modest Prosperity, in contrast, was a time when people more fully engaged in a variety of relationships and when the performances of ritual supported a more prosperous lifestyle, but it was also a time where deceptive schemes were hatched, military action was prevalent, and people thought more about themselves than they thought about others. Moving to an age of Modest Prosperity meant leaving behind a way of life that worked, in exchange for one that had only a chance to work better. It meant transitioning from a safe and secure environment to one fragile and open to risk. In short, living in the age of Modest Prosperity meant living in a vulnerable world. Prosperity, in the era of Modest Prosperity, is vulnerable in several respects. Most importantly, prosperity is dependent on the proper performance of ritual. Ritual, however, in the era of Modest Prosperity is susceptible to being usurped, ignored, or otherwise misperformed. Ritual is no longer something people unreflectively did. Rather, as a named and externalized tradition people could manipulate it, or simply not perform it. Moreover, the growing complexity of ritual entailed an increase in the number of participants required to successfully perform ritual. Each participant relied on the proper performance of the other. The officiator of a ceremony relied on artisans to construct ritual implements in proper dimension and kind, the party sponsoring the ceremony relied on those raising animals to provide them at the right time for the right sacrifice, and those offering sacrifices in the ceremony relied on those arranging the sacrificial area to equip the area with the necessary clothing and ritual instruments. If any of these people failed to properly perform their role, the ritual could fail. Ritual success, in this light, became complicated in the etymological sense of the term “complicate”—the agencies involved in the event are “entangled” or “folded together.”36 As such, the demands of developing ritual give way to more sophisticated rituals; and more sophisticated rituals turn out to be more vulnerable rituals. These growing points of fragility heighten the risk involved in ritual performance—the larger number of agents involved increase the number of agencies contributing to the event. Ritual, in the era of Modest Prosperity, is a contingent affair. Prosperity, as such, is contingent on not only more complex ritual performances, but also on human beings whose sense of self has become more complex as well. The figure of Confucius, in the “Liyun,” does not assert that the era of Grand Unity is the ideal state of humanity. Human society in the era of Modest Prosperity has become differentiated; and while a differentiated society may not be “Grand,” only a differentiated society will enable

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large-scale “Prosperity.” In this regard, it is not that humanity cannot go back to life as it was lived in the period of Grand Unity—we have not necessarily lost this capacity nor are we ontologically separated from this era. Rather, our selves have been transformed in such a way that we no longer desire to live in an undifferentiated society; and instead we seek after a prosperous world.37 This, then, is the ambivalent moment as far as human civilization is concerned—humanity can go back to the era of Grand Unity, but rather than returning we choose to live in a vulnerable world. Carrying out the intricate practices of ritual seeks to limit the flaws of this world, yet at the same time they also reproduce the conditions of vulnerability.

THE “LIYUN” AND THE UNAMBIGUOUS WORLD The opening passages of the “Liyun” demonstrate a profound ambivalence about the world—the only way to create a prosperous society is to allow for the possibility that humanity might ruin society. This ambivalence challenges some common assumptions held by contemporary scholars in the field of Chinese thought. Most notable is the view put forth by interpreters such as David Keightley that those in the Eastern Zhou and Han dynasties—and in particular those who claimed to follow Confucius—offered an “optimistic” view of a world “untrammeled by ambiguities.”38 More specifically, Keightley explains that in this worldview “the virtuous man would be rewarded here and now—by promotions, honors, and status. Cause and effect in the universe were rigorously fair; the moral prospered, the wicked did not. The subversive thought that the best intentions might lead to chaos and regret— not, as in the cases of Confucius or Qu Yuan, because those in power were too unenlightened to employ them, but because there was something flawed in the human condition itself—was rarely dramatized.”39 Keightley contrasts this view with the classical tradition in the West—by which Keightley means certain strains of Greek and Mesopotamian thought— where the assumption was that “the human condition is tragic and poignant, that the best and most heroic deeds may lead to unwished-for consequences, and that even heroic virtue must be its own reward. People, [in this view], live in a quirky, unpredictable, and ironic world that is by no means responsive to human values and desires.”40 Keightley is not alone in making these comparisons.41 The “Liyun” presents an interesting contrast to arguments such as Keightley’s. The reading of the “Liyun” laid out in this chapter highlights the complexity of creating a prosperous world. Virtuous people in the world of Modest Prosperity are not necessarily rewarded with promotions since positions of leadership (or at least the highest position of leadership) are

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passed down by lineage rather than merit; the heroic deeds of the sages in creating ritual and more sophisticated living conditions may indeed lead to unwished-for consequences; and the flawed human condition, where selfconcern allows for both the realization of more relationships and the possible neglect of these same relationships, is perhaps not cause for regret, but is certainly cause for ambivalence in leaving a more sure past behind. The “Liyun” also challenges Keightley’s claims, which he makes in other places, that choices are usually understood to occur between good and bad in the Chinese context rather than between two goods; and that human action, in a Confucian worldview, is usually seen as “straightforward in its consequences.”42 Indeed, what we find in the “Liyun” is the description of a bittersweet world where prosperity is possible but also uncertain since prosperity is obscured by the complexity of an interdependent society. The choice between Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity is not a choice between good and bad, but rather a choice between some good being realized and more good possibly being realized. While Keightley does recognize that his comparisons do have exceptions and are largely generalizations, the “Liyun” is significant because of its prominence at various points of Chinese history. Besides being included in the first canon of Confucian texts in the Han Dynasty, it was also a central text during the establishment of the Republic of China in the late 19th and early 20th century. Figures such as Sun Yat-sen invoked the phrase tianxia weigong 天下為公, which he took to mean “the world belongs to all,” as a rallying cry for Chinese to support the emerging Republic that would belong to all citizens rather than to the ruling elite; and Kang Youwei, political reformer contemporary with Sun Yat-sen, wrote an entire text entitled Datongshu《大同書》(The Book of Grand Unity) as an explanation of the kind of society the new government was meant to establish.43 While Kang and Sun’s interpretations of the “Liyun” do not necessarily square with the reading of the text laid out in this chapter, the fact that some have tried to render the text meaningful for modern China speaks to the lasting power and significance of the “Liyun.”

CONCLUSION The “Liyun” chapter depicts the transition of humanity from a crude and barbaric state, to a simple and peaceful state in the era of Grand Unity, then to a more complex, yet flourishing, state in the era of Modest Prosperity. There are a number of developments associated with this account including the differentiation of family relationships, the invention of homes and fire, the rise of defense fortifications and armies, the coming forth of thieves and

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bandits, the creation of a new mode of choosing leadership, and the advent of a more crafty self. Ritual, and the emergence of a ritual tradition, is central to this narrative. Ritual began with the mundane acts of eating, drinking, and living in simple dwellings, and culminated in the intricate performances of the era of Modest Prosperity. According to the “Liyun” ritual is the sole means of generating a prosperous society; and as such, human beings should strive to properly perform ritual. At the same time, the “Liyun” recognizes the vulnerability of ritual. As society becomes more complex, the rituals required to order society become more complex as well. Crafty human beings are able to create the sophisticated implements necessary for proper ritual performance. They are also able to manipulate, forget, and misperform the ritual tradition. Despite the risk involved in establishing a prosperous society, the “Liyun” encourages its readers to accept this narrative, and ambivalently pursue the conditions of Modest Prosperity. Contrary to contemporary interpreters such as David Keightley, who describe early Chinese worldviews as optimistic and untrammeled by ambiguities, the “Liyun” is fraught with a tension between leaving behind a reliable past where society lived as one family and embracing a prosperous future where individuals are capable of destroying any chance for prosperity.

NOTES 1. The zha 蜡 ceremony is a series of state-sponsored sacrifices offered in the twelfth month of the year. The “Jiaotesheng” 郊特牲 chapter of the Liji speaks of the zha 蜡 ceremony as the culmination of other similar sacrifices offered earlier in the year, with offerings made to the spirits of the harvest, the spirits associated with animals, and the spirits associated with the control of water, among others. Lau, Liji, “Jiaotesheng,” 11.21–11.22. Portions of this chapter build on Ing, The Dysfuntion of Ritual, 105–128. 2. In this chapter I take figures such as Confucius and Ziyou as literary figures constructed for didactic purposes rather than historical personages. Within the tradition, however, where they are taken as historical figures, several problems with the account provided in the “Liyun” are recognized. One such issue is that Confucius was supposedly fifty-three years old when overseeing the performance of rituals in the state of Lu. Ziyou, according to tradition, is forty-five years younger than Confucius making him only eight years old at the time. For more on this and related problems see Yang, “‘Liyun’ Chengpian yu xuepaishuxing deng wenti”《礼运》成篇与学派属性等问题. For an overview of the textual history of the “Liyun” see Wang, “ ‘Datong,’ ‘xiaokang,’ yu ‘Liyun’ de chengpian niandai” “大同”, “小康” 与《礼运》的成篇年代. For a textual history of the entire Liji see Wang, Liji Chengshu Kao《禮記成書考》. 3. Lau, Liji, “Liyun,” 9.1. All translations are my own, unless noted.

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4. Lau, Liji, “Liyun,” 9.1. 5. Traditional commentaries suggest several possible reasons for why the Great Way became obscure. Sun Xidan 孫希旦 (1736–84), for instance, attributes the shift from an era of Grand Unity to an era of Modest Prosperity to a change in the qi 氣 that constituted the world. Qi 氣 in the era of Grand Unity was more thick than in the era of Modest Prosperity. The transformation from Grand Unity to Modest Prosperity, therefore, “was caused by the times” 時為之也. For more on Sun’s view see Lin, Liji Renwenxue Tanjiu《禮記》人文學探究, 236–7. Other commentators such as Chen Xiangdao 陳祥道 (fl. 1067) explain that people performed the rituals of antiquity (guzhili 古之禮), but no longer understood the reasons why they were performed (weizu yide guren weilizhiyi 未足以得古人為禮之意); see Wei, Lijijishuo《禮記集說》, 54.6a–b. Another popular explanation is the change from leaders chosen by merit to leaders chosen by lineage. For more on this view see Liang, Guodian zhujian yu simeng xuepai《郭店竹简与思孟学派》, 158–83. 6. Liang Tao suggests that the creation of weapons correlated with the rise of rulers chosen by lineage—people now needed weapons to overthrow evil rulers. Liang Guodian zhujian yu simeng xuepai《郭店竹简与思孟学派》, 162–3. 7. The “Liqi” 禮器 chapter of the Liji employs ji 紀 as a metaphor for ritual. It states, “In performing ritual the profound person must be vigilant. [Ritual] is the bind [ji 紀] of the people. If the binding loosens, the people will be scattered” 是故君子之行禮也, 不可不慎也; 眾之紀也, 紀散而眾亂. Lau Liji, “Liqi,” 10.20. 8. The second passage of “Liyun” chapter explains, “Ritual is the means by which the early kings continued the Way of Heaven” 夫禮, 先王以承天之道. Lau, Liji, “Liyun,” 9.2. 9. The editors of the Liji Zhengyi《禮記正義》provide a similar interpretation of this passage: “The Five Emperors [from the era of Grand Unity] took the Great Way as their standard (ji 紀); but the Three Kings [from the era of Modest Prosperity] employed ritual and rightness as their standard” 五帝以大道為紀, 而三王則用禮義為紀. Shisanjing zhushu《十三經注疏》, 13.772. 10. Chen Yun, a contemporary scholar, builds on the account of li 禮 presented in the preface of the Liji Zhengyi to speak about three stages in the development of li 禮—the first stage where the “principles of ritual” 禮理 existed but people did not perform ritual, the second stage where people performed the “activities of ritual” 禮事 but did not recognize them as ritual, and the final stage where the “term ritual” 禮名 came about. Chen does not, however, explicitly situate this in the narrative about Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity. See page 60 of Chen, “Datong, xiaokang yu liyueshenghuo de kaiqi” 大同, 小康与礼乐生活的开启. 11. See, for instance, Wei, Lijijishuo《禮記集說》, 54.14a–b. This reading emerges as the dominant reading of the “Liyun” in contemporary times. For instance, Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, saw the Republic as the means of reinstituting the era of Grand Unity. See Tang, “ ‘Datongxue’ he ‘Liyunzhu’ ” “大同学” 和《礼运注》. 12. Lau, Liji, “Yueji,” 19.1. The Analects, of course, can also be read as casting the notion of tong 同 in a less than positive light—“The profound person harmonizes [with others], but does not unify (tong 同) [with them]; whereas the

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petty person unifies [with them], but does not harmonize [with them]” 君子和 而不同, 小人同而不和. Lau, Lunyu zhuzi suoyin《論語逐字索引》, 13.24. 13. Legge, The Chinese Classics, 495–8. The translation is my own. The Shijing poem continues, replacing xiaokang 小康 with xiaoxiu 小休, xiaoxi 小息, xiaokai 小愒, and xiaoan 小安 in subsequent stanzas. Each of these terms refers to a period of rest. In other Shijing poems kang 康 seems to refer reaping the rewards of hard work (sometimes in the context of harvesting), see for instance “Gong Liu” 公劉, “Tian Zuo” 天作, “Chen Gong” 臣工, and “Lie Zu” 烈祖 in Legge, 483–9, 574, 582–3, and 634–5. Duan Yucai claims that kang 康 originated from the character kang 糠, and defines the latter as the husk of grain. See Jiang, “Datong Xiaokang” Suyuan “大同小康”溯源, 59. Xiaokang 小康, as such, may refer to the harvest and the period of rest following the harvest. Coincidentally, the image of the harvest is central to passage 35 in the “Liyun” where li 禮 is likened to the plow the sages use to cultivate the field of “human disposition” 人情. 14. Coincidentally the “Xi Shuai” 蟋蟀 poem in the Shijing uses the notion of dakang 大康 in a way that classical interpreters take as being less than positive. Zhu Xi, for instance, glosses dakang 大康 as “going beyond [proper] delight” 過於樂也. Xiaokang 小康, in this sense, maybe actually better than dakang 大康. Zhu, Shijing Jizhuan《詩經集傳》, 68. 15. Fung Yu-lan states this quite succinctly in his History of Chinese Philosophy. In introducing the “Liyun” he explains, “Later Confucianism received considerable Daoist influence. In the political and social philosophy of one part of the Confucian school, this influence is well represented in the section entitled ‘The Evolutions of Li’.” He then goes on to state, “This idea [of Grand Unity and Modest Prosperity] is one plainly borrowed from the social and political philosophy of the Daoists.” Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, Volume I, 377–8. Liang Tao also quotes several similar statements made by earlier commentators in Guodian zhujian yu simeng xuepai《郭店竹简与思孟学派》, 165. Many of these views read the “Liyun” in light of the eighteenth section of the Daodejing《道德經》, which explains that virtues such as rightness (yi 義) and filial piety (xiao 孝) emerge only after the Great Way has been cast aside. Chen, Laozi jinzhu jinyi ji pingjie《老子今註今譯及評介》, 120–1. 16. For more background on this interpretation see Wang, “ ‘Datong,’ ‘xiaokang,’ yu ‘Liyun’ de chengpian niandai” “大同”, “小康”与《礼运》的成篇年代, 68. Xu Shen in the Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》glosses yun 運 as yixiye 迻徙也 (“movement/migration”); see Xu, Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》, 40. The “Tianyun” 天運 chapter of the Zhuangzi《莊子》seems to employ yun 運 in the sense of the “ever-changing” circumstances of the world. In this light, liyun 禮運 suggests a notion of ritual that should be ever-changing or perhaps evolving. The title of a text in early China does not always reflect the content of the text. Many texts were named for the first figure or the first words to appear (such as the “Tangong” 檀弓 chapters of the Liji); and these names were often given to the text long after its creation. The “Liyun,” however, appears to be named after a major theme of the text. 17. Lau, Liji, “Liyun,” 9.5–7.

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18. Lau, Liji, “Liyun,” 9.7–9.9. 19. In comparing this description of the coming forth of ritual with Xunzi’s account in the “Lilun” 禮論 chapter of the Xunzi《荀子》, both texts see humanity as living in a deplorable condition (luan 亂) without ritual. The “Liyun” is silent as to whether uncontrolled desires (yu 欲) are the cause of the chaos or simply a lack of knowing how to create a better condition. These positions, of course, are not mutually exclusive. For Xunzi see Wang, Xunzi Jijie《荀子集解》, 346–78. 20. Yang, Xinyi Kongzi Jiayu《新譯孔子家語》, 430–50. The Kongzi Jiayu account also does not use the label “Modest Prosperity”; instead, it uses no label at all for the period after Grand Unity. An account of the primitive era does appear in the “Wenli” 問禮 chapter of the Kongzi Jiayu suggesting that some schools of thought took these as two separate accounts. 21. Lau, Mozi zhuzi suoyin《墨子逐字索引》 , 1.6. While the “Ciguo” 辭過 chapter credits the sages with creating the implements necessary to civilize humanity and uses much of the same language as the “Liyun,” it notably does not discuss the inventions of the sages in terms of li 禮. Rather, a central purpose of the chapter is to critique those who have added to these inventions (i.e., Confucians constructing a ritual tradition)—making clothing, meals, and homes ostentatious, and adding a heavy burden on society while doing this. Some interpreters of the “Liyun” have argued for a Mohist influence on the text— besides employing much of the same language in describing the pre-civilized state of humanity it also discusses the era of Grand Unity as largely a simple era, which can be seen as kind of a Mohist utopia. For more on this, see Gong, “ ‘Liji Liyun’ pian de zuozhe wenti”《礼记－礼运》篇的作者问题, 48. 22. For an explanation of this, see Yang, “ ‘Liyun’ Chengpian yu xuepaishuxing deng wenti”《礼运》成篇与学派属性等问题. 23. For an alternative reading of this chronology, see Michael Puett, “Ritualization as Domestication.” Puett takes the era of Grand Unity as the time where people were living in caves and nests. See also the ninth and tenth pages of Yang, “‘Liyun’ Chengpian yu xuepaishuxing deng wenti” 《礼运》成篇与学派属性等问题. Yang chronologically situates the accounts, but, following the Qing scholar Wang Yinzhi 王引之, he understands the era of Grand Unity to extend until shortly before the time of Confucius—a time when, according to Yang’s reading, the Great Way became obscure. 24. While early commentators are not uniform in their accounts, many use labels such as “early antiquity” (shanggu 上古), “mid-antiquity” (zhonggu 中古), and “late antiquity” (xiagu 下古) to make sense of these various periods. See Wei, Lijijishuo《禮記集說》, 54.37b–40a, 41b–42a, and 44a–45b. 25. For a historical account of the development of artisans in early China see Barbieri-Low, Artisans in Early Imperial China. 26. In this light, it is no coincidence that the Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》, a dictionary compiled about 200 years after the Liji, glosses “distinction” (bian 辨) as “anxiety” (you 憂). Xu, Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》, 219. 27. The Zhengyi commentators advocate a similar view in Shisanjing zhushu《十三 經注疏》, 13.771. “The Five Emperors [of the era of Grand Unity] performed

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acts of virtue but did not consider them ritual [li 禮]. The Three Kings [of the era of Modest Prosperity] performed ritual as ritual. This is why [the portion of the text that speaks about] the Five Emperors does not mention ritual, while [the portion of the text that speaks about] the Three Kings says that they considered it ritual” 五帝猶行德不以為禮, 三王行為禮之禮, 故五帝不言禮, 而三王云 ‘以為禮’ 也. A similar point is also made by the Song dynasty commentator Zhou Xisheng 周希聖 in Wei, Lijijishuo《禮記集說》, 54.39a–40b. 28. In some regards we can say that people began to “theorize” about ritual. For more on the notion of “theory” in the early Chinese context see Campany, “Xunzi and Durkheim as Theorists of Ritual Practice.” 29. Chen, “Datong, xiaokang yu liyueshenghuo de kaiqi” 大同, 小康与礼乐生活的 开启, 60. “Principle,” as I am taking it, bears no relation to the Neo-Confucian notion of li 理, which is often translated as “principle.” 30. This theme is developed in various parts of the text where li 禮 is described as a means of ordering human disposition (zhirenqing 治人情). See Lau, Liji, “Liyun,” 9.2, 23, and 35. 31. Xu Shen, for instance, in Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》, 271, explains that ji 紀 borrows the ji 己 radical for its sound. 32. Some critics avoid this translation because of concern with importing notions of the English word “self ” into the concept ji 己. For more on this issue see David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the Han. Xu Shen in Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》, 309, defines ji 己 as a pictograph of the stomach area of a person. 33. Rendered above as “everything under the heavens was commonly shared.” 34. Rendered above as “everything under the heavens became the property of individual families.” 35. This idea was sparked by reading the Song dynasty commentator Jiang Junshi’s 蔣君實 remark that “craft and conscious effort had not taken shape” 巧偽不形 during the early era of human society. See Wei, Lijijishuo《禮記集說》, 54.43a, see also 13a. 36. Oxford English Dictionary, online entry “complicate.” 37. While this point logically follows from my reading, the text is remarkably silent on the ability of human beings to return to a state of Grand Unity. 38. Keightley, “Early Civilization in China,” 20. 39. Ibid., 20. 40. Ibid., 17. 41. In making these claims Keightley is following after a long tradition of interpreters such as James Robert Hightower, Max Weber, and more recently Thomas Metzger. For Hightower’s view see “Chinese Literature in the Context of World Literature,” Comparative Literature, especially p. 120. For Weber see The Religion of China, especially pp. 228–36. For Metzger see “Utopianism and Confucius’ Humanism,” “Some Ancient Roots of Modern Chinese Thought,” and A Cloud Across the Pacific, especially pp. 701–4. Keightley reaffirms his position more recently in “Epistemology in Cultural Context.” Michael Puett

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develops a critique of views such as Keightley’s and Kwang-Chih Chang’s (“Ancient China and Its Anthropological Significance”) in pp. 1–15 of The Ambivalence of Creation. 42. Keightley, “Early Civilization in China,” 44 and 51. See also Keightley, “Clean Hand and Shining Helmets,” 41. 43. Kang, Ta t’ung shu.

WORKS CITED Barbieri-Low, Anthony J. Artisans in Early Imperial China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. Chang, Kwang-Chih. “Ancient China and Its Anthropological Significance,” in Archaeological Thought in America, edited by C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, 155–66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Campany, Robert F. “Xunzi and Durkheim as Theorists of Ritual Practice,” in Discourse and Practice, eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy, 197–231. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992. Chen, Guying 陳鼓應. Laozi jinzhu jinyi ji pingjie《老子今註今譯及評介》. Taibei 臺北: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan 臺灣商務印書館, 1997. Chen, Yun 陈赟. “Datong, xiaokang yu liyueshenghuo de kaiqi—jianlun ‘liyun’ datong zhi shuo zai shenme yiyishang bushi wutuobang” 大同, 小康与礼乐生活 的开 启——兼论《礼运》 “大同” 之说在什么意义上不是乌托邦. Fujian luntan – Renwen shehuikexueban 福建论坛——人文社会科学版 6 (2006): 58–63. Fung, Yu-lan. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Two volumes, trans. Derk Bodde. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Gong, Min 龚敏. “Liji Liyunpian de zuozhe wenti”《礼记－礼运》 篇的作者问题. Guji zhengli yanjiu xuekan 古籍整理研究学刊 1 (January 2005): 46–50. Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1998. Hightower, James Robert. “Chinese Literature in the Context of World Literature.” Comparative Literature 5. 2 (Spring 1953): 117–24. Ing, Michael D. K. The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Jiang, Jianshe 姜建设. “ ‘Datong Xiaokang’ Suyuan” “大同小康”溯源. Xinyang Shifanxueyuan Xuebao 信阳师范学院学报 14.4 (December 1994): 59–64. Kang, Youwei 康有為. Ta t’ung shu: The One-world Philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei. Trans. Laurence G. Thompson. London: Allen & Unwin, 1958. Keightley, David N. “Early Civilization in China: Reflections on how It Became Chinese,” in Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Paul S. Kopp, 15–54. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Keightley, David N. “Clean Hands and Shining Helmets,” in Religion and the Authority of the Past, ed. Tobin Siebers, 13–52. Ann Arbor, MI : University of Michigan Press, 1993. Keightley, David N. “Epistemology in Cultural Context: Disguise and Deception in Early China and Early Greece,” in Early China/Ancient Greece, eds. Steven

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Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant, 119–54. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Lau, D.C. 劉殿爵, ed. Mozi zhuzi suoyin: A concordance to the Mozi《墨子逐字索引》 . Chinese University of Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Studies, Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series 香港中文大學中國文化硏究所先秦兩漢古籍 逐字索引 叢刊. Xianggang 香港: Shangwu yinshuguan 商務印書館, 2001. Lau, D.C. 劉殿爵 and Fong Ching Chen 陳方正, eds. Liji zhuzi suoyin《禮記逐字索 引》. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Studies, Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series 香港中文大學中國文化硏究所先秦兩漢古籍 逐字索引叢刊. Taibei 台北: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan 台灣商務印書館, 1992. Lau, D.C. 劉殿爵, Ho Che Wah 何志華, and Fong Ching Chen 陳方正, eds. Lunyu zhuzi suoyin《論語逐字索引》. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Studies, Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series 香港中文大學中國文 化硏究所先秦兩漢古籍逐字索引叢刊. Xianggang 香港: Shangwu yinshuguan 商 務印書館, 1995. Legge, James, trans. The Chinese Classics: The She King or The Book of Poetry. Taibei: SMC Publishing Inc., 1991. Liang, Tao 梁涛. Guodian zhujian yu simeng xuepai《郭店竹简与思孟学派》. Beijing 北京: Zhongguo renming daxue chbanshe 中国人民大学出版社, 2008. Lin, Suwen 林素玟. Liji Renwenxue tanjiu《禮記人文學探究》. Taibei 臺北: Wenjin chubanshe 文津出版社, 2001. Metzger, Thomas A. “Some Ancient Roots of Modern Chinese Thought: Thisworldliness, Epistemological Optimism, Doctrinality, and the Emergence of Reflexivity in the Eastern Chou.” Early China 11–12 (1985–7): 61–117. Metzger, Thomas A. “Utopianism and Confucius’ Humanism,” in Toward A Global Community: New Perspective on Confucian Humanism, eds. Martin Lu et al., 227–42. Gold Coast, Australia: The Centre for East-West Cultural and Economic Studies, 2004. Metzger, Thomas A. A Cloud Across the Pacific: Chapters on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. Oxford English Dictionary. www.oed.com (accessed July 14, 2011). Puett, Michael J. The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 2001. Puett, Michael J. “Ritualization as Domestication: Ritual Theory from Classical China,” in Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, eds. Axel Michaels et al., Vol I, 359–70. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010. Shisanjing zhushu《十三經注疏》. Beijing北京: Beijing daxue chubanshe 北京大学出 版社, 2000. Tang, Renze 汤仁泽. “ ‘Datongxue’ he ‘Liyunzhu’ ” “大同学” 和《礼运注》. Shilin 林 4 (1997). Wang, E 王锷. “ ‘Datong,’ ‘xiaokang,’ yu ‘Liyun’ de chengpian niandai” “大同” “小康” 与《礼运》的成篇年代. Xibeishidaxuebao 西北师大学报 43.6 (November 2006): 68–71. Wang, E 王鍔. Liji Chengshu Kao《禮記成書考》. Beijing 北京: Zhonghua Shuju 中 華書局, 2007. Wang, Xianqian 王先謙, ed. Xunzi Jijie《荀子集解》 . Beijing 北京: Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局, 1996.

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Weber, Max. The Religion of China. Trans. Hans H. Gerth. New York: The Macmillian Company, 1964. Wei, Shi 衛湜, ed. Lijijishuo《禮記集說》 . Taibei 臺北: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan 臺灣商務印書館, 1983. Xie, Bingying 謝冰瑩, ed. Xin yi si shu du ben《新譯四書讀本》. Taibei: 臺北: Sanmin shuju 三民書局, 2002. Xu, Shen 許慎. Shuowen Jiezi《說文解字》. Beijing 北京: Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局, 2004. Yang, Chaoming 杨朝明. “ ‘Liyun’ Chengpian yu xuepaishuxing deng wenti”《礼 运》成篇与学派属性等问题. Zhongguo Wenhua Yanjiu《中国文化研究》1 (2005). Yang, Chunqiu 羊春秋, ed. Xinyi Kongzi Jiayu《新譯孔子家語》. Taibei 臺北: Sanmin shuju: 三民書局, 1996. Zhu, Xi 朱熹. Shijing Jizhuan《詩經集傳》. Shanghai 上海: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe上海古籍出版社, 1980.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Morality Without Moral Reasoning: The Case of Heshanggong MISHA TADD

Generally, we consider ignoring moral aspects of a situation amoral, but what if one could avoid moral reasoning and still be moral?1 This is the paradoxical position proposed by Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing.2 Also known as Daodezhenjing Zhu 道德真經注,3 it remains the oldest extant and complete commentary on the classic, dated loosely to the Later Han (25–220 CE ).4 Presented to ordained Daoists as early as the fifth century as the primary commentary,5 it played a key role in Daodejing interpretation for much of Chinese history. Rather than employing Heshanggong to interrogate the meaning of the original text, this chapter will treat it as its own coherent and novel intellectual product. Interlaced between the lines of the Daodejing, Heshanggong espouses his own vision of Daoism. Mainly emphasizing the Dao as the key to both cultivating the body and ordering the state, it also presents an ostensibly contradictory moral universe. This commentary rejects moral education, strictures, and prescriptions, deeming them a threat to social harmony, while it simultaneously valorizes the moral virtues of its time, such as benevolence, righteousness, and honesty. How can morality be at once a peril and a worthwhile attainment? How can one achieve morality without moral education or moral reasoning? More importantly, what do the answers to these questions tell us about Heshanggong and Early Chinese thought?6 113

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I. HESHANGGONG ON MORALITY The Daodejing explicitly dismisses moral virtues: “Reject benevolence (ren 仁) and discard righteousness (yi 義)” (Ch. 19). Heshanggong hints at his own misgivings in Chapter One’s opening comment, contrasting the natural Way with contrived classical arts (jingshu 經術) and political instructions (zhengjiao 政教). This unfavorable comparison reveals his dislike for the Confucian text-based moral tradition’s origins in wen 文, whose levels of meaning as writing, culture, and designs are all suspect. He elaborates in Chapter Three: Do not exalt the worthy, The term “worthy” refers to the worthies of common society who debate and illuminate texts, diverge from the Way by employing power dynamics, and discard simple substance by creating wen [culture/ literature/designs]. “Do not exalt” means to not honor them with official salaries or dignify them with official positions. So the people will not contend. They will not contend for merit and fame, but will just be self-so.7 The concern with wen is due to its artifice. In contrast, zhi 質 (simple substance) refers to something’s true nature, what the Way has given.8 Adding designs and patterns of behavior to this core disrupts the basic unity of one’s substance. Prescribed behaviors, like culturally promoted morals, also fall into this category. These wen (patterns), often propounded in Confucian classics (wen in the form of writing), divert one from the Way, the ultimate source of proper behavior. Such is the power of patterns that proper behavior, when identified by external social markers like “good” and subsequently lauded, becomes immoral or even dangerous. Everyone knows goodness as goodness. There is accomplishment and fame. This is not good! It is what people struggle over. — Ch. 2 This passage frames “goodness” in an unexpected light: instead of being an inherently positive quality, it is now dependent on others’ commendations. This practice of evaluating actions as “good” or “not good” generates a differentiated set of values and mores. These moral standards are the antithesis of the original and undistinguished simple substance, which produces truly

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proper, but unremarkable, behavior. However, during the Han, when the text was written, identifiable “proper behavior” held significant social cachet. It was not uncommon for “worthies” to rely on their moral reputations to gain official positions. Rather boldly, the passage critiques the contemporary political system by suggesting that explicit prescriptions for “goodness” generate competition, thereby encouraging desire, the origin of immorality.9 This comment also slyly implicates Confucians who, under the guise of moral teaching, fan an unhealthy public appetite for accolades by placing such astronomical values on societal reputation. The political and social remunerations associated with this valuation can lead to the multitudes’ adoption of trickery and disingenuous behavior, which corrupts society at large. Ironically, codification of proper behavior produces the opposite of its intended effect—unnatural desires that lead to improper actions, conflict, and immorality. By knowing “goodness as goodness,” the goal of “goodness” is lost. The previous quotations criticize the establishment of standards for goodness and morality, but concurrently reveal the existence of Heshanggong’s own moral code. By calling for a cessation of rewards for wen, he implies that the “simple substance” lost in the process of becoming a “worthy” has a higher worth; by associating “accomplishment and fame” with “struggle,” he cautions that the desire to be externally identified as good brings about toil and resort to power dynamics, thereby undermining the true attainment of goodness. Through these negative definitions of values, one can infer that to be truly good, one should embrace simplicity, non- competition, and nondesire. Thus, the challenge emerges. How can Heshanggong dismiss the use of standards while also appearing to present his own? The solution lies in his implicitly moral cosmology and what he perceives to be the True Way. The True Way allows one to develop goodness not through pattern-based moral instruction that delineates proper behavior, but via access to the hidden morality of the universe achieved through meditation. The practice, called Holding the One, has two intertwining facets.10 The first begins with the active removal of desire, which deracinates the source of the adept’s immorality and leads to the singular focus of his mind. The second unifies the mind and body and connects the adept to the supreme morality of the cosmos, a force of goodness that purges desire.11 As a cosmological entity, the One is the essence of the Way and the originator of all order, including the normative order. Therefore, by becoming internally harmonious with its “true” Way, the adept is freed from desire to act according to cosmic goodness instead of the goodness delimited by models of behavior in the classics. But what sort of goodness does the One make accessible to the practitioner? The following passage elucidates its relation to all things:

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Embrace the One, can you keep it from leaving! This means those who can embrace the One and keep it from leaving their body extend their existence. The One was born of the Way’s beginning and is the essential qi of Great Harmony. Thus the One unfolded and named throughout the world. Heaven obtained the One and became clear. Earth obtained the One and became stable. The nobles and kings obtained the One and became orderly and peaceful.12 The One moved inward becoming the mind and moved outward becoming action. Unfolding and enacting it became virtue. Bound and named they become One. The reason for calling it the One is its singular undivided intent. — Ch. 10 Firstly, this passage legitimates the One by identifying its birth with the beginning of the Way itself. As the “essential qi of Great Harmony,” it is the very spirit of order, uncovering and naming the previously unknowns of the world. If embraced, it helps to maintain the myriad things it has created. As the source of spiritual power, it can extend the longevity of the body by enhancing its vital capacity. For Heaven and Earth, only after attaining it did they become what we understand Heaven and Earth to be: clear and stable, respectively. Similarly, rulers like nobles and kings are transformed into “orderly and peaceful” figures in harmony not just with each other, but the world. Such alignment into perfection is due to each thing’s realization of the true universal order as created and sustained by the One, whose single intent permeates all. In this way, natural beings as dramatically different in scale as Heaven and Earth and the individual body can be made perfect and complete, both within the unity of a larger cosmological context and in the unity of each individual thing. When something joins with the One, the unified intent of the cosmos awakens the unadulterated intent of the thing’s true self, and it becomes selfso (ziran), a key Daoist ideal shared by Heshanggong: Study the unstudied. The sage studies what others cannot. People study knowledge and trickery, while the sage studies what is ziran. People study regulating the world, while the sage studies regulating his body-self and securing the Truth of the Way. Restore what the multitudes have exceeded. The multitudes’ knowledge is all backwards. They exceed the root and work at the branches, exceed the fruit and work at the flowers. “Restore” means to make them return to the root and the fruit.

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Support the myriad beings to be themselves, Teach people to return to the root and fruit, in hope of supporting the myriad beings’ own individual nature.13 — Ch. 64 Both the original text and commentary urge the reader to choose the opposite of what the multitudes have chosen. We are given the example of the sage who valorizes ziran over the knowledge related to wen. A development from the lone adept in previous passages, however, the sage is not only focused on his own attainment of goodness. He takes on the responsibility of leading others to the same end, but in contrast to teachers in the Confucian tradition, he advises people to return to ziran, the un-excessive, “unstudied” self. This unschooled self is similar to the aforementioned simple substance (zhi) in that it is a positive alternative to the negative associations of “trickery” and knowledge woven into the sophistry of wen. Ziran here is also correlated with the root ben 本, which Heshanggong equates elsewhere with the Way and the One (Ch. 1; Ch. 40). In this botanical analogy, cultivation in the literal and metaphoric sense must always occur at the root, not at the branches that represent the regulated standards of morality and systems of cultural knowledge created by scholars. To fully excavate the metaphor, moral virtues at the branch-level are not necessarily bad, in so far as they harbor some aspect of goodness and are at least part of the whole; however, focusing on the branches leads people away from the root, the locus of proper cultivation. After all, branches are not essential to the tree, and the methods associated with them are not integral either. They encompass a mere fraction of the totality of goodness and true proper behavior, and should preferably be ignored for what is more fundamental and whole. To further clarify the relationship between the partiality of man-made morality and the completeness of the Way: . . . [I]n the age of Great Peace, benevolence is unknown; people are totally desireless, so frugality is unknown; everyone is pure by themselves, so chastity is unknown. Thus in the age of the Great Way, filial piety and parental affection are extinguished, and benevolence and righteousness fall away. This is just like when the midday sun is at the height of its brilliance, the manifold stars are undetectable. — Ch. 18 While this passage acknowledges commonly celebrated moral virtues like benevolence, frugality, purity, chastity, filial piety, and righteousness, it also explains their ultimate obsolescence: when Great Peace and the Great Way

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prevail, such virtues do not appear because their opposites do not exist. For if everyone were to embody all of these “good” qualities, there would be no cruelty, impurity, et al, by which to define their “goodness.” Without such contrast, they and the moral system they uphold become insignificant. Yet, Heshanggong does not disavow them all together. In the best-case scenario of Great Peace, it is a case of the perfection of the Way’s outshining their more crude apparatus. Just as the stars not seen during daytime are still in the sky, individual morals and virtues, however small in comparison, are still part of the vast goodness of the Way. But in a less ideal scenario, the total goodness of Great Peace cannot manifest while a system of limited particulate morality is in play. Harking back to the desires incurred by competition for labels of “goodness,” such a system actually brings into being the opposite of what it values. Ironically, through its stigmatization and thus perpetuation of the non-virtuous, it thwarts progress toward complete goodness. Just as stars only appear in darkness, so, too, do those who emphasize particular morals keep the world in benighted ignorance of the brilliant sun. So far, we have seen Heshanggong proclaim a perfect, cosmic morality that supersedes moral systems based on wen. He has also called for a return to naturalness, en masse. But how does the sage lead others to this perfect goodness and naturalness without using standards that sabotage the ultimate goal? He applies the ideal of flexibility exemplified by an element dear to Daoism: The greatest good is like water. The people of greatest good resemble water’s nature [. . .] Water has the ability to be both round or square, curved or straight following the form it meets.” — Ch. 8 Rather than getting mired in rigid notions of what is good and not good, the sage should, like other greats, emulate water’s supple reception of any situation.14 When engaging with a non-realized society attached to its wen, he must be adaptive. Yet, just as water can accommodate other forms without losing its own essential quality, he can accept others’ values without conflating them with the transcendental good of the One. While practicing flexibility, he may appear to lack consistency: The sage lacks a constant heart and mind. The sage stresses change and values adaptation and so seems to lack his own heart and mind.15 He takes the hearts and minds of the various families as his heart and mind. What the various families’ hearts and minds consider convenient, the sage follows accordingly.16

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The good, he considers good. When the various families are good, the sage accordingly treats them as good. The Bad, he also considers good. When various families are bad, the sage transforms them, making them good. [Then their] virtue is good. The various families transform their virtue because the sage is good. — Ch. 49 Unlike Confucian teachers who promote fixed values, the sage does not impose his norms or explicitly instruct others. Instead, he seems to follow what the people consider convenient or good, even to the extent of sharing judgments set down in their wen. But the sage stands apart from the inflexibility of the people’s binary value system by also working with what is considered “bad,” instead of stigmatizing and shunning it outright. In his worldview, by treating “good” and “bad” alike with goodness, he moves people away from the particulate morality that prevents progress towards total goodness. His deft embrace of the circumstances at hand, good and bad, allows his natural charisma to transform those who are not good. Out of pragmatism, he may initially follow dominant social norms, but does not confuse them with his ideals. It is through agile influence, not hard-line confrontation that the greater goodness he espouses rooted in the all-encompassing Way can prevail. Nevertheless, exactly what type of goodness described here is not clearly defined. It is so vague that it could be anything, even the good that drives people to compete for spotless reputations famously castigated in earlier passages. Is that not the kind of popular idea of good that the sage, in his magnanimity, should be able to take in stride? When Heshanggong does give concrete examples of virtues, they seem contradictory to some of his key arguments and disconcertingly familiar: Therefore the sage is always good at saving others. The reason that the sage is always instructing people to be honest and filial is because he wants to save people’s moral natures and lifespans.17 And thus there are none who go unused. He causes the noble and base to each receive their proper place. — Ch. 27 Honesty and filial piety are canonized in Confucian teachings and the classical arts. How can the sage’s instruction of people in these virtues avoid the previously identified pitfalls? Further confounding this challenge is the

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passage’s acknowledgement of social divisions in the “noble” and the “base,” distinctions that fracture cherished philosophies of unity and simple substance. A comparable conflict arises out of the birth of virtue from actions guided by the One.18 The inception of virtue seems to also recognize the existence of non-virtue, which brings us back to dualistic definitions indicative of standardized morals. Do these various instances not fall into the prescriptive traps of wen? Heshanggong does present myriad paradoxes. He rejects systemic approaches to social values and norms only to construct his own, appearing to be guilty of certain practices he has condemned in others. But thanks to his upholding of overarching, sublime ideals that manifest differently at different levels and in various contexts, his system is illuminating and powerful in its maintenance of continuity within a contradictory vision. His system is not the oft-propounded vision of contextualist Chinese thought where proper behavior is determined by circumstance.19 It is also not exactly the system of foundational natural law that R.P. Peerenboom argues is the key to Huang-Lao thought, where a pre-determined order or law is dictated by nature, unchanging, and universally applied.20 Instead, it is a merging of the two axes—not a meeting at the midpoint, but a bending of their polarities into a circle. This results in a transcendent moral system with the power of self-subversion.

II. IDEALS AND MANIFESTATIONS The claim that Heshanggong advocates a system founded on transcendent ideals may meet with some resistance. There is much scholarship arguing against transcendence in China.21 Even Peerenboom, who supports a transcendent Huang-Lao normative system, says it is an anomaly in Chinese thought.22 Yet, Heshanggong’s thought is not anomalous, considering that he heavily influenced Daodejing studies for much of Chinese history. Earlier, we have seen him fail to avoid the use of a normative system. The important difference between his system and others lies in the claim that his system comes directly from the Dao itself and is therefore not an artificial construction. By experiencing the One, the creator of natural order, the adept directly discovers the norms contained therein, all of which are based on qualities of the Dao. Most preeminent are emptiness, naturalness, desirelessness, simplicity, silence, and non-action. Really, these ideals represent different forms of the single reality of the One that enables an individual to perfectly follow their own role, and not force anything contrary to the ideals of the Way. They transcend circumstance and never change because they are of the root, but their manifestations can be myriad, depending on the context. The root cannot move but the branches can sway with the winds of time.

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This flexible system allows for a range of moral permutations that do not fully concord, granting it a level of pragmatism not possible in many other systems. The following passages come from Chapter 38 and discuss a graded range of governing styles ranked by their accordance with ideals of the Way. Reprising the tree metaphor, progression through the spectrum resembles moving from the fundamentally good roots to the more compromised branches, then to the even less exemplary flowers, and shows how these disparate parts can comprise the same tree. First Heshanggong establishes the paradoxical dynamic of virtue. Those of superior virtue are not virtuous, “Those of superior virtue” refers to the nameless rulers of great antiquity, whose virtue was great without superior, and thus they are called those of superior virtue. “Not virtuous” means they did not use virtue to teach the people, but only accorded with naturalness and nourished human nature and life. Their virtue was not seen, and thus they are called “not virtuous.” Therefore they have virtue. This indicates their virtue united with Heaven and Earth, harmonious qi moved and flowed, and the people obtained completion. Those of inferior virtue do not lose virtue, Those of inferior virtue” refers to the rulers given posthumous titles. Their virtue did not reach the level of superior virtue, and thus they are called “those of inferior virtue.” “Not lose virtue” means that their virtue could be seen, and their deeds praised. Therefore they lack virtue. This is because they attained fame. — Ch. 38 This shows the familiar division of the seen (recognized merit) and the unseen (unrecognized good) brought about by the problem of wen. The importance of the unseen comes from the invisible quality of the Way and relates to its emptiness and stillness. These attributes not only point to the non-assertive nature of Daoist governance, but also the “empty” meditative state that enables such a superior style of rulership. This governance operates on the level of morality without demonstration: the best ruler is good and nurturing, but people do not even notice. In stillness, he affects all with a cosmic, subtle morality. Fidelity to the use of this indirect power means these rulers of superior virtue become “nameless” because the tradition of literary records (wen) finds no wonderfully “moral” actions to record.23 Unfortunately, it is those of inferior virtue who are still known to us. The ruler who has

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preserved his name through fame is imperfect because his virtue was seen and celebrated, which disrupts naturalness and silence. Nevertheless, this level of lordship, though beneath that of the superbly virtuous, is above the rest. Another notch along the scale is a leader who while still holding on to some notions of perfection has forsaken non-action. Those of superior benevolence take action. “Those of superior benevolence” refers to the rulers who act with benevolence. Their benevolence is without superior, and thus they are called “those of superior benevolence.” “Take action” means they act with benevolence and compassion. But have no ulterior motives for acting. They do their deeds, and establish affairs, but do not proclaim their actions. Heshanggong places benevolence near the top of his order as a valued moral virtue, likely because it is rooted in the ideal of selflessness: true benevolence has no ulterior motive or self-interest. Selflessness arises from non-desire and equates with properly enacting through non-action, one’s prescribed cosmic role. But there is the rub—the ruler of greatest benevolence portrayed above takes action. Even if it is superlative benevolent action, he is going against the Way and will be considered inferior to lords of non-action. Even worse, active accomplishment and management of affairs make their morality visible, yet another affront to Daoist sensibilities. However, this level of leadership ranks fairly highly because benevolence and selflessness are central to it. The final echelon where ideals of the Way still manifest in some form is defined by active righteousness: Those of superior righteousness act on it. This means they used righteousness to eradicate harms. But have ulterior motives for acting. They act for themselves. They kill24 others to gain majesty, and tax their subjects to enrich themselves. In one sense, the moral virtue of righteousness helps to keep objective order in society by eliminating harmful and dangerous elements. But here the introduction of ulterior motives taints the picture: desire for fame and wealth encourages more violence, which, even when committed by those of “superior” righteousness to help others, endangers social order in the long

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run by promoting violence and power as keys to success. Moreover, this perpetuation of violence is a far cry from the ideal of non-action: Heshanggong denounces this regime all the more because it uses destructive action to reap personal benefits like majesty and wealth. Thus, though righteousness contains selflessness in the public service of protecting others, it is tarnished by its engagement in action, the violent character of the action, the ulterior motives and desire for recognition, and the resulting visibility of its “virtue.” Last and least is the governmental method that unequivocally contradicts the Way: Those of superior ritual act on it. This refers to the ruler of superior ritual. His rituals are without superior, and thus they are called “those of superior ritual.” “Take action” means to enact rituals as controlling standards, and create order by the majesty of the rites. But none respond. This indicates that when ritual’s floweriness flourishes, the fruit withers. Its artificial ornaments are excessively various. Because it is active, it separates from the Way. As such, there are none who respond to it. So he reaches out his arms to seize them. This indicates that because this excessive variety does not gain a response, the superiors and subordinates struggle bitterly. Therefore, [the ruler] reaches out his arms to seize and guide them. Ritual sums up all the problematic aspects of wen and runs counter to nearly every Daoist ideal. It relies on man-made, text-based traditions, and uses the honoring of decoration and design to differentiate the status and worth of things that, in the totality of Daoist goodness, would be indistinguishably valued. Though Heshanggong’s Way also creates distinction through the order of the One, the differences do not reveal themselves. This means social position does not become an object of competition because no one is aware of it. Ostentatious and contrived ritual holds the opposite position. It is bent on controlling (regulating) things through the exploitation of their purported differences concretized in wen. Since its machinations lack all the ideals of the Way, e.g., non-action, invisibility, naturalness, selflessness, unity, et al, Heshanggong proclaims it a failed approach to government. It incites those high and low in the social structure to constantly fight for prominence, which then requires brute force to maintain a semblance of order and goes further astray from the Way. Traversing these levels, from that of superior virtue to unnatural ritual, we chart increasing degrees of desire, action, and showiness, which all

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together illustrate Heshanggong’s gradient system of attainment.25 Though explicit with values and judgments in this outline, his framework also affords an elastic, varied richness that helps to demystify challengingly ambiguous situations. Delving into its numerous layers helps to elucidate a sometimes confusing mix of prescriptive and anti-prescriptive positions. In Heshanggong’s handling of the topic of warfare, he uses the principle of context adaptation to decipher Laozi’s embracing of military strategy, saying: “Laozi lived in a time of crisis when soldiers were employed, and thus he relies on an existing [saying] to establish his sense of righteousness.” (Ch. 69). Laozi, even with his sagely level of attainment, could not ignore the realities of the Warring States period. He was not operating on the “righteousness” level described above, but was manifesting that moral virtue through the application of Daoist ideals as best he could, given the situation. Thus, the goodness of the root (the Way) can ultimately bind together morally incompatible actions.26 This belief also untangles how Heshanggong can outrightly support the use of force, even though he says: “The soldier’s way and the gentleman’s way are opposed and what they value are different” (Ch. 31). Later, he resolves the conflict by filtering it through the ideals of the Way. If the situation requires one to fight, he says: I dare not to advance an inch, but will retreat a foot.” Invading territory to profit from others’ wealth and treasure is considered “advancing.” Sealing the gates and guarding the walls is called “retreat.” — Ch. 69 The parsing of this position generates a context where the ideal of nonaction takes on the form of non-aggression. Defensive warfare is permissible, vis à vis offensive warmongering that is driven by desire, the origin of all conflict. Though peace and non-action are usually paramount, they do not mean pacifism to the point of self-sacrifice. The wish for a higher attainment of ideals still tempers Heshanggong’s acceptance of violence, even under further challenging conditions. He expresses confidence that once a sage has reached a higher level of cultivation, his manifestations of hidden qualities of the Way like goodness and virtuous power will be strong enough to win over the enemy, resulting in a less ugly victory (Ch. 68). In other times that require more direct methods, the effects of connecting with the One, including the channeling of its innate goodness, helps a beneficent ruler to gain the support of the people who will fight whole-heartedly on his behalf (Ch. 67). Therefore, in addition to the more

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immediate, crisis-born practicality he has accepted in Chapter 69, Heshanggong’s system also communicates a long-term vision for a positive growth cycle where subtle influence and unnamed moral actions will help to end wars. When wars end, much of the complexity of government can be eliminated and that world can move closer to the ideal state of peace and morality of non-action. It is worth noting that this room for potential improvement through following the Way means his system of ideals is not purely absolutist or utopian. Discernibly, the end goal is utopian; by allowing action in contexts that demand their moral manifestation, Heshanggong demonstrates how he can value what goes beyond and apparently against morality, and morality itself. The nuanced exposition of his ideals and standards testifies to his ability to work with more than just the highest level. But this inclusiveness must not be mistaken for a contextualist morality defined by circumstance. For at the foundation of Heshanggong’s limber system is a solid connection to the ultimate, transcendent goodness of the One or the Way, which supersedes the world of men and wen. Neither should this cosmological morality be conflated with the universally applied, never-changing HuangLao law delineated by Peerenboom. The flexibility and largesse of Heshanggong’s vision do not quite fit its stricter dicta. If anything, Heshanggong’s guided fluidity and inclusiveness free him to maximize the ideals of the Way, no matter how agreeable or dire the situation. Even his personal interpretation of elevated virtues like desirelessness and namelessness is a marriage of the lofty and modest. After all these centuries, as if emulating the superbly virtuous kings of old, his identity has remained successfully hidden; his nom de plume, now serving as posthumous “title,” yields little information and even less pretention.

III. SIGNIFICANCE OF HESHANGGONG’S VISION To understand Heshanggong’s moral system is to unveil a new vision of Early Chinese morality. This in turn leads us to two preliminary investigations concerning the consequences for Early Chinese thought. First, it resolves an incongruity broached by Mark Edward Lewis’ study of violence and morality. Second, it provides incisive insight into the persistent controversy over transcendence in China. This last issue also relates to broader discussions about morality. Earlier, Heshanggong contrasts the way of the warrior and the way of the superior person or ruler (junzi). This opposition also appears to be Lewis’ perspective in his study of violence in ancient China. He notes that the tradition of military texts, which he relates to Huang-Lao Daoism, distinguishes between

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acceptable forms of behavior for those in the civil administrative context and those in a military context. Lewis interprets the militarists as lacking consistent morals because military teachings value trickery, not the direct honesty integral to bureaucracy. On the other hand, he deems the Confucians to have unbending moral precepts on account of their zero-exception approach to benevolence (ren). To his mind, this adherence to ren makes them categorically moralistic and anti-militaristic.27 In Lewis’s dichotomy of militarists and moralists, Heshanggong would more closely conform to the philosophy of the militarists. Yet, the commentator would more likely consider himself moral, if not openly so. His adaptive approach towards morality allows us to see how the militarists’ behavioral code is in fact compatible with that of everyone else. First of all, though he values ren as a moral virtue, it is not the arbiter of proper action. Ren is only one of many possible branches grown from the root, which as the One embodies the total goodness and ideals of the Way. These ideals are first principles that can transcend and encompass behaviors normally divided by moral systems. Consider the ideal of emptiness, which includes both the qualities of desirelessness and adaptivity. The first quality arises from lacking, or being “empty” of desire, and the second develops out of emptiness as unlimited potential. When approached from a superior moral principle like emptiness, the seemingly erratic or immoral behavior of the warriors reconciles with everyday goodness through a commonality of underlying virtues. We still see the graded levels of moral attainment discussed in Section II , where violence is a less ideal manifestation of the Way’s principles, but it is undeniably under their rubric. Therefore, what seems like trickery and dishonesty is really following the Way’s principles of subtlety and adaptive emptiness. These actions include a greater share of morality if one engages these tricks for defensive purposes, thus embodying the desirelessness of non-aggression. An even more complete moral approach to military affairs is to, in the midst of defensive maneuvers, use the power of virtue to try and avoid fighting at all.28 All of these are extraordinary manifestations of the broad moral, emptiness, whose desireless nature in other contexts would lead to the selflessness of benevolence. By choosing the primacy of emptiness over surface variant behaviors, Heshanggong is able to unify incongruous behaviors and standards, and place them in a consistent normative order. This is the power of his gradient and adaptable moral system founded on transcendent principles of the One. This normative system of transcendent adaptive ideals found in Heshanggong closely resembles the one R.P. Peerenboom deems unique to Huang-Lao. Peerenboom’s primarily asserts that the newly unearthed texts at Mawangdui reveal an unusual system he calls “foundational natural laws.” He claims that Huang-Lao holds a singular place in Chinese thought because

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it features transcendent absolutist norms that reside in an unchanging Way. The term, “foundational natural laws,” establishes that law and morality are related, and derived from nature.29 In his readings, he also finds “the One,” something similar to what we have seen in Heshanggong. Peerenboom describes it as the unity of natural order that lays the basis for transcendent law. This is not a law that is outside of nature, but a universal, eternal law seen in nature.30 According to his research, the authors of the Mawangdui texts claim to access this order through stillness and emptiness, which also recalls Heshanggong’s Holding the One. Due to the authors’ meditative techniques, Peerenboom infers that they are engaging in objective perception of reality.31 That there could be such an objective perception implies that such an objective reality exists. For Peerenboom, associated with this stable reality is the constancy of the “laws” set down by the Way. Unlike what he sees in Laozi, there is no unfolding of the Way as a spontaneous process. Neither is there the circumstantial pragmatism preferred by Confucians with the aim of balancing social forces for the creation of the most harmonious society.32 In the place of those philosophies, he reads Huang-Lao texts as having an already-existent order of forms and names, laws and principles.33 We have seen a similar outlook in Heshanggong, for the One names everything and establishes the true and the false. Thus, Peerenboom’s primary assertion of the uniqueness of the Mawangdui texts is untenable. I have previously identified Heshanggong with Huang-Lao Daoism, which, if simply true, would accord with Peerenboom’s theory, but the commentator’s vision of transcendent order differs in important ways from that proposed by Peerenboom. In Heshanggong, the term “law” does not encapsulate the author’s view of the cosmic order, for it barely appears in the text. Instead, there are, as we have seen, the many foundational concepts that could be interpreted as laws of the Way. Heshanggong resists this reading because, unlike the texts Peerenboom analyzes, he does not attempt to develop a legal system based on his transcendent norms. Such a legal system would fall into the same trap as delimited moral virtues. This is why I have contrasted Heshanggong’s transcendent morality, where there is a base of morality without moral reasoning, with “foundational natural law.” Regardless of this important divergence, both of these transcendent systems of ideals or laws are striking claims for Early China. After Peerenboom’s book was published, he was attacked for projecting Western cultural presumptions onto Chinese cosmology. This was especially evident in a formal book review by Carine Defoort, where she criticized his application of transcendent law.34 According to my interpretation, Heshanggong also invokes transcendent ideals. I do not consider this a projection of Western perspectives, for

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Heshanggong’s moral system is quite different from the moral codes seen in Western religion and philosophy. Even so, building on Peerenboom’s discussion of the One as a source of law, I make a few preliminary points about commonalities of these supposedly incompatible East and West systems. I tentatively propose that describing Western culture as one of moral law versus Chinese culture as one of contextual morality is not a beneficial division. In the case of Heshanggong, we can see how fixed principles manifest in different ways depending on circumstance. This is similar to the functioning of divine law. In both cases, we can derive a constant rule or principle from the higher source, which then needs to be interpreted in specific contexts. This is why Jewish and Muslim traditions of jurisprudence exist. These complex applications of law to different situations inevitably involve adaptation, yet we do not term them as relativistic or contextualist. Why then should Chinese traditions be solely so labeled? I simply propose, that instead of contrasting Eastern and Western morality as contextual vs. transcendent, we investigate more closely the differences between the source of the transcendent principles or laws, and the different ways they are applied and adapted to the varieties of experience. This investigative intent brings us back to the question of morality without moral reasoning. When a sage connected to the One is moved by the Way to act in a manner that contradicts what is considered moral, is the ultimate “moralness” of his action not a context-based judgment? This would be our answer if Heshanggong did not break his own rules. But he reveals that there are principles at work even when the sage is just Holding the One and not considering the consequences or variables of moral calculus. This resolution of an apparent conflict is not context-based because there is an order in the world that is constant, even if only at the most fundamental level. Heshanggong lets us see the moral reasoning of the Way, which gives perfect silent answers to those who hold the One.

NOTES 1. For the purpose of this chapter, I naïvely define morality as good and proper behavior. It signifies both certain personal qualities or moral virtues such as benevolence and righteousness that lead to proper behavior, and social norms that delimit proper behavior. Implicit in this discussion is the question of how one should act and how one learns to behave properly. 2. Heshanggong is the purported author of this eponymous commentary, but his historical existence is largely suspect. In the preface to the Sibu Congkan version of this text, attributed to the Daoist Ge Xuan (164–244 CE ), this figure is described as a semi-divine hermit, and simply identified as “the old man by the river” (Heshanggong) who transmitted his commentary on the Daodejing to

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Han Wendi (r. 179–157 BCE ). Perhaps it is because we only have his sobriquet that we find no such person in the historical record. In this chapter, I will not be delving into the question of authorship. Instead, the focus will be discovering what the text itself, which possesses a coherent and seeming consistent voice, has to offer. Even so, for expedience’s sake, I will operate as though Heshanggong is the “author” in order to avoid the awkwardness of expressions like ‘authorial voice.’ For more on the issue of authorship, see Misha Tadd, “Alternatives to Monism and Dualism: Seeking Yang Substance with Yin Mode in Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 2013), 9–27; Chan, Two Visions of the Way, 107–118. 3. This text is readily found in the Daoist Canon identified as DZ 682, though Wang Ka and D.C. Lau have also published reliable modern editions. Wang Ka, Laozi Daodejing Heshanggong zhangju (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1993); D.C. Lau, Laozi zhuzi suoyin (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1996). 4. Alan Chan, Two Visions of the Way (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 118. 5. Yoshioka, Yoshitoyo, “Ro ¯shi kajo ¯ko ¯ hon to do ¯ykyo ¯,” Do ¯ kyo no so ¯go ¯teki kenkyü, ed. Sakai Tadao (Tokyo: Kokusho kanko ¯kai, 1977), 314–19. 6. Based on my previous research of this text and its contents, I accord with Alan Chan’s categorization of it under the broad term, “Huang-Lao.” This form of Daoism flourished from 206–122 BCE in the Han courts. Yet, it is not the purpose here to prove such an assertion, especially since the parameters of Huang-Lao remain controversial, but this term at least vaguely situates the text within the marked constellations of Chinese thought. See Chan, 118. 7. This commentary format presents the original text in italics and the interlinear commentary in roman. All translations are original, following the Daozang edition, with occasional emendations from the Sibu Congkan edition marked as SBCK. 8. “Only the Way is elusive and indistinct. Within its midst there is the One that manages transformations, and establishes simple substances according to people’s qi” (Ch. 21). 9. “Do not display the desirable, By banishing the songs of Zheng and keeping beautiful women at a distance, Then the mind will not be confused. There will be no deviance or debauchery.” (Ch. 3) 10. For a thorough overview of this practice’s history, see Livia Kohn, “Guarding the One.” In Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques, ed. Livia Kohn (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies University of Michigan, 1989). 11. “When people are constantly without desire they can observe the essential sublime Way. The essential is called the One. The One manifests, establishes, and names for the Way, and helps order and clarify the true and the false [. . . It] remove[s] emotions and desires and maintain[s] centered harmony. This is called knowing the essential sublime gate of the Way.” (Ch. 1) 12. These three sentences are quoted from Chapter 39’s original text, but that passage also includes the examples of the gods and the valley, which are omitted here. 13. 性 is added in SBCK at the end of the sentence.

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14. Lest this should sound like a severe corrosion of order, he who has connected to the One and gained insight into its implicit normative order will always act according to that order. Consequently, his actions will be in harmony with the cosmos, not chaotic and disruptive. To revisit the quotation from page 116: “[When one has embraced the One, it] moves inward becoming the mind, and moves outward becoming action . . . Bound and named they become One.” (Ch. 10) 15. SBCK has 自無心. 16. SBCK has 聖人因而從之. 17. Here 性 is translated as “moral nature” here because Chapter 67 explains one’s Heaven bestowed nature as including morality. 18. See the Chapter 10 quote above. 19. For the preeminent example, see David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995). 20. R.P. Peerenboom, Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993), 19. 21. Julia Ching, “The Mirror Symbol Revisited: Confucian and Taoist Mysticism” in Mysticism and Religious Traditions. Ed. Steven T. Katz. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 241; Angus C. Graham Disputers of the Tao (La Salle, IL : Open Court Publishing, 1989), 213; H.G. Creel, What is Taoism? and Other Studies in Chinese Cultural History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 3; Chad Hansen “Guru or Skeptic? Relativistic Skepticism in the Zhuangzi” in Scott Cook ed. Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourses on Zhuangzi (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003), 139. 22. Peerenboom, 19. 23. One of the consequences of this vision is that morality then becomes a state instead of an action. The ruler is moral because he connects to the Way through his mind. That is the ultimate moral state of virtue and does not need specific behavior to be such. Put more technically, in contrast to rule or act deontology, this represents an unusual type of virtue ethics. 24. SBCK has 殺 instead of 救. Killing makes sense in light of the previous line, and the violent punishment sense of righteousness. 25. The gradient system can also be read as a loose doxography. The highest level is the Daoists, followed by the more internally focused traditions of Confucianism. Then there is what could be Legalism or militarism, and lastly are the ritualistic Confucians. 26. This raises the difficult problem of what would be a proper, moral response. The very question is contrary to Heshanggong’s system, for he feels such analysis is detrimental. Also, it is not important because the system supports anonymous morality, and thus how one’s actions are labeled is unimportant. All that matters is holding the One. 27. Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), 125.

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28. The “Binglue” chapter of the Huainanzi has a passage that gives three different layers of military employment (HNZ 15/145/1–7). At the top, the ruler does not use the military at all, but its purpose of maintaining order is achieved solely through his power and perfection. On the bottom-most level is actual killing as a last defensive resort. This is striking in its parallel to how Heshanggong uses ideals to connect different strata of moral action. 29. Peerenboom, 20. 30. Ibid., 21, 52, 83. 31. Ibid., 39. 32. Ibid., 119, 172. 33. Ibid., 84. 34. Carine Defoort, “The ‘Transcendence’ of Tian,” Philosophy East and West 44, No. 2 (Apr., 1994): 347–68.

WORKS CITED Chan, Alan K.L. Two Visions of the Way. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. Daode zhenjing zhu 道德真經注. (with Heshanggong 河上公 commentary) Daozang ed. (DZ 682). Daozang 道藏. Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1977. Defoort, Carine. “The ‘Transcendence’ of Tian.” Philosophy East and West 44, No. 2 (Apr., 1994): 347–68. Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995. Huainanzi zhuzi suoyin 淮南子逐字索引. ICS Ancient Chinese Text Concordance Series. Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992. Kohn, Livia. “Guarding the One,” in Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques. Ed. Livia Kohn. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies University of Michigan, 1989. Lau, D.C. Laozi zhuzi suoyin 老子逐字索引 (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1996). Lewis, Mark Edward. Sanctioned Violence in Early China. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990. Peerenboom, R.P. Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993. Sibu Congkan 四部叢刊. Taibei: Wenyi (reprint of 1920, 2 ed.), 1965. Tadd, Misha. “Alternatives to Monism and Dualism: Seeking Yang Substance with Yin Mode in Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing.” Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 2013. Wang, Ka. Laozi Daodejing Heshanggong zhangju 老子道德经河上公章句. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1993.

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CHAPTER SIX

Nothingness and Selfhood in the Zhuangzi DAVID CHAI

There appears to be much discord over the concept of self in classical Daoist philosophy. Do the ancient Chinese even have a concept of self that reflects the typical Western notion of the term? How are we to frame the self? Should it be seen as a historical construct, a social or political identity, the mind or body, the embodiment of particular religious beliefs, or any of a dozen more traits? As will be shown in the first section of this chapter, there really is no consensus on how to define the ancient Daoist idea of selfhood. The heart of the problem lies not with the texts themselves but, rather, with whomever is writing about these texts. We search for the Chinese term(s) that closest approximates the notion of “self ” in Western thought and assign it to an overarching framework through which it will be discussed. In the case of the Daoist text Zhuangzi, the phrases that most readily stand out are loss of self, forgetting self, and without self. These are then taken as pointing the way to freedom or soteriology. There is more to the story than this however. The Zhuangzi is a text rich in allegory and metaphor. Its philosophy tests the imagination and any seemingly straightforward concept such as the self must be inspected with great care. Indeed, if we are to render the notion of selfness and personhood into language faithful to the spirit of the text, we must locate it firmly within the onto-cosmological framework of Daoism. Doing so will eliminate any erroneous understanding of the self while, at the 133

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same time, paint a new picture of what the Daoist self actually entails. In light of this, I shall argue that the Zhuangzi views the subjective self (i.e., the ethical, political, and historical self) to be little more than a trace and as such, it is disgenuine. To uncover the foundational self—the traceless self— one must conjoin with Dao via the proxy of nothingness. Our Dao-self is thus neither illusionary, dualistic, or an exterior other; rather, it is a mode of thinking about being sustained by the openness of nothingness. This authentic self is hence a reflection of the nameless, formless flourishing of Dao.

I. Before we uncover how the foundational self is traceless and consanguineous with Dao, let us take a moment to review what others have said about the Daoist self. During the heyday of postmodernism, David Hall read Daoism as espousing a doctrine of no-self that speaks directly to its pluralistic goals; indeed, the aesthetic consciousness of the postmodern self, Hall writes, not only lends credence to the Daoist idea of no-self, it actually benefits Daoism through said association.1 Several years later, Chris Jochim took the opposite stance, arguing that Hall was in fact misled by the erroneous translations of Victor Mair, Burton Watson, and A.C. Graham in that Zhuangzi’s use of the terms “self ” (ji 己, wo 我) and “no-self ” (wuji 無己) were “only to identify traits that obstruct one’s carefree flowing with the world of living things.”2 In order to counter Zhuangzi’s apparent nominalization of the self, Jochim finds a ready substitute in “body” or “personhood” (shen 身). His justification for this semantic switch is that the term shen “designates something that one should ‘cultivate’ (xiu 修) and it is almost always a bad idea to lose or to forget one’s shen, and the same goes for putting it in danger or taking it lightly.”3 Based on this, Jochim confidently states there is “no reason to take any of the other ways of negating ji 己 in Zhuangzi—by ‘losing’ (shi 失), ‘emptying,’ (xu 虛), ‘discarding’ (qu 去), or ‘forgetting’ (wang 忘) it—as implying that one ‘has a self ’ and must get rid of it.”4 As we shall see, this line of reasoning is not convincing for it still clings to the idea that we possess multiple selves, one of which must be transcended or dissolved: “cultivation of the person involves letting go of certain bad habits that make life unsatisfactory . . . abandoning the (false) self in order that one can discover a deeper and truer no self ‘self.’ ”5 The notion of a true and false self was also picked-up on by Wu Guangming who spoke of the self in terms of an “authentic transcendental cogito” and “an identifiable, objectifiable self.”6 This dualistic way of thinking about the self was given a more mystical tone by Judith Berling when she wrote that it is the spiritual, true inner self that punches through the armor of the outer

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social self.7 Robert Allinson likewise spoke of the transformation of self in religious language, saying: “Forgetting the self and transforming the self are more or less the same thing.”8 Wang Youru, however, defends the doctrine of no-self as being the “deconstruction of the identity of self or the self-identity of the human subject.”9 Tying it to the dyad of continuity and change, Wang is thus able to deconstruct the deconstructed self into three primary elements: the physical self, which is inescapably bound to change; the emotional self, which is also subject to daily transformation; and the thinking self, whose own subjectivity is an illusion.10 For Mark Berkson, a quartet of themes is utilized to exposit the self—nature, time, society, valuation11—while the noself is a justifiable notion insofar as the “Confucians put forth an understanding of ‘self ’ and Zhuangzi, since he denies precisely what the Confucians assert, can be seen as having a position of ‘no-self.’ ”12 The no-self is hence not something one strives for but involves a process of self-ridding through deconstructive language, meditative techniques, and skillful absorption.13 Finally, there is Zhao Guoping who intimates there is actually more to no-self than first meets the eye. He writes: “[Zhuangzi’s] notion of the self is not no-self, per se, but a self as non-being, a self whose ego and consciousness is dissolved in the pre-ego wholeness, a self that cannot set itself up in reflection and recognition, a self that cannot be in this sense . . . transcending all limited entities and beyond all boundaries and yet generating, completing all things.”14

II. Against the backdrop of the above explanatory models, it is quite apparent that most scholars view the idea of selfhood as being particular to the human subject, regardless of whether or not we are born with it. The human self is something we grow into or manipulate if we are to realize its true potential; its perfected state is procured through constant action, even if said action takes the form of restraint by way of meditation. What none of the aforementioned authors has thought to consider is the meontological self— the self qua the trace of Dao. Framing the self in terms of nothingness is not to make it a transcendent god-like entity, as Zhao Guoping does, but allow the self to persist in its true form as the non-self of Dao. In this section it will be argued that the Zhuangzi upholds the belief of a unitarily cosmological self whose tracelessness means it cannot be gotten rid of, transcended, overcome, and so forth. On the contrary, we all possess the same fundamental selfhood, one built upon the characteristics of Dao. Whenever it describes selfhood, the Zhuangzi favors terms that convey constancy, emptiness, and oneness within multitude. The foundational self

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is not generated from without nor does it arise from within; we deceive ourselves in thinking that it is either one of these when in fact it is neither. The genuine Dao-self is always already present in Dao and as such, does not phase in and out of existence in accordance with the wishes of humanity. We can see as much in one of the text’s favorite analogies—still versus moving water: 常季曰: 彼為己, 以其知得其心, 以其心得其常心, 物何為最之哉? 仲尼曰: 人莫鑑於流水, 而鑑於止水, 唯止能止眾止。 Chang Ji said, “In focusing on himself, he uses his knowledge to reach his heart-mind, and uses his heart-mind to reach the constant heart-mind. Why do other things hold him in such high regard?” Confucius said, “Men do not mirror themselves in moving water but in water that is still. Only the still can use stillness to still others.”15 Flowing water distorts the calm water below. Whilst the water at the surface is noisily creating and recreating itself, the water deep below is silent and still. The water at the surface is supported by that beneath it without knowing as such; the constancy of the depths is hence the wellspring from which the reality of the shallows comes to be. In the above passage, Chang Ji’s description of Wang Tai as using what is limited to his humanity (i.e., his heart-mind) so as to grasp what his humanity cannot limit (i.e., Dao) is akin to looking past the rushing water on the surface to the still clarity of the depths below. Although water can be spoken of as having different layers, each with their own unique properties, it is nevertheless a self-constituting and indivisible whole. In and of itself, water represents being in its most fundamental guise; it is being yet to be despoiled and indeed, can never become so. This is why Daoism views water as analogous to Dao. When Wang Tai peers into the darkly deep pool, he experiences two things: an inner calmness in realizing that the true nature of things lies not in their outward busyness but with their quiescent heart-mind (xin 心) and second, that there is a mutual dependency between inner and outer, dark and light, stillness and motion that extends through all things via the principle of oneness within multitude. If he had only recognized his reflection on the water’s surface as representing his true nature, Wang Tai would have been unable to reach the constant heart-mind of Dao; he would have remained stuck at the level of his own humanity. Since he realized that the reflection on the water’s surface was the result of an underlying stillness, he took that as a cue for how to look upon his own presence of being. By stilling his heart-mind he could conjoin with Dao and in being one with Dao, others

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became affected by him. Stillness is thus a catalyst for change but it is a change brought about via non-deliberate doing (wuwei 無為). Unmoving in his quiescent presence of being, the sagacious person of Daoism is held to be efficacious because he uses the unending depths of his Dao-self to illuminate the shallowness of the disgenuine selves of others. The virtue of the sage thus draws the non-virtuous towards him by mirroring himself in the face of others without retaining any of the impurities being reflected to him. Sage and non-sage encounter one another and in the process, the latter becomes absorbed into the former, much like adding muddied water to that which is clear. In their comingling, the two strata of identification—impure and pure—have no bearing upon the inborn nature of that which makes them so. In the case of Wang Tai, his humanity, while in the case of his reflection being clear or not, the water into which he gazes. And yet, even these—humanity and water—are strata in their own right. What makes them so is Dao and what makes Dao so is nothingness. As I have discussed Daoist nothingness vis-à-vis the language of meontology elsewhere, I shall not go into its fundamentals here.16 As for how it is related to the aforementioned, and to the idea of selfhood in particular, let us look at the following passage from the Zhuangzi: 大人之教, 若形之於影, 聲之於響。有問而應之, 盡其所懷, 為天下配。 處乎無響, 行乎無方。挈汝適復之撓撓, 以遊無端, 出入無旁, 與日無始, 頌論形軀, 合乎大同, 大同而無己。無己, 惡乎得有有! 睹有者, 昔之君子; 睹無者, 天地之友。 The teaching of the great man is like the shadow following a form, an echo following a sound. He answers only when questioned, exhausting all of his thoughts and in so doing blends with the world. He dwells where there is no echo and moves where there is no direction. Grasping your hand as you hustle back and forth, he takes you wandering in what has no beginning and enter what has no boundary. He appears ageless like the sun and his bodily form blends with the great unity. Blending with the great unity, he is selfless. As he is selfless, how can he possess things as his own! To fix one’s eyes on things is the way of the gentleman of old; to fix one’s eyes on nothingness is the way of the companion of heaven and earth.17 The previous quotation ended with the expression “only the still can use stillness to still others.” Despite appearing many chapters earlier than the passage given above, the connection between them is quite apparent. Stillness is the primary trait of the great man, the sage, but what is still is not his body

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but his heart-mind—his spirit if you will. Embracing tranquility, the sage becomes vast in his emptiness, like a shadow. What is unique about the shadow is its ability to absorb other shadows without losing its self-identity. Shadows coalesce into a penumbra and together they are cast forth by the object of their creation.18 The echo is likewise an empty trace of its root; it is a reverberating resonance whose self-identity is as hard to pin down as that of the shadow.19 But shadows and echoes are dependent upon movement for their sustainment—the former on its light source, the latter on the transmission of sound. Without said groundings, both will dissipate into the nothingness from which they arose. Indeed, nothingness undergirds everything in the Daoist universe, including Dao. Nothingness added to movement results in stillness; when added to brightness it results in darkness; when added to clarity it results in profundity; when added to sound it results in silence. These pairings are not oppositional but complimentary insofar as they bring balance and harmony to the world. If the sage is to rectify the shortcomings of the common people, should he not embody the traits they fail to cultivate? The common people of the world crave things that are tangible. They dizzily fall over themselves in pursuit of the correct standard of color, tonality, taste, and virtue.20 These standards are then applied to the notion of personhood and the world falls into disarray as a result. To judge things from the perspective of sight, sound, or taste is to merely focus on their transitory qualities whilst neglecting that which perpetually supports them. To make known the genuine condition of being, the sage must take your hand and embark on a journey into the realm of mystery, the abode of Dao. Having no temporal or spatial qualities, the sage wanders within the milieu of nothingness completely carefree for it is here where all things blend into one, becoming identity-less in the thoroughfare of perfect unity. To no longer identify with things via their physical or moral attributes is to behold them in their foundational state of being; it is to conjoin stillness with stillness, emptiness with emptiness, quietude with quietude, and darkness with darkness. The Dao-self of the sage is hence a selfless self, a self that identifies with none other than the non-self of Dao and is why Zhuangzi believes “there is no north or south, so he dissolves himself in the four directions and becomes lost in the immeasurable. To him, there is no east or west, so he begins with dark profundity and returns to the great throughway.”21 To wander in the limitless possibilities of that which is beginningless is indeed the objective of the entire Zhuangzi; here, however, the focus is squarely on seeing the self in its true form. As the sage wanders carefree in the midst of Dao, he becomes one with things. In being one with the myriad things of the world, the sage thus unites with them in a grand awakening.

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Zhuangzi spoke of a double awakening in his parable of the butterfly dream but in this case, the grandeur is not directed toward an undoing of rational thought but the notion that selfhood is attainable by way of Dao. The perpetuity of Dao occurs because of the constancy of nothingness; it is within this milieu of endless creative possibility that transient beings emerge. Dark profundity is the way of Dao, and such mysteriousness ensures its sustainability by acting as the great throughway. For the sage to assume an ageless aura he must constantly create himself anew. This recreating is, of course, metaphorical insofar as he follows along with the daily transformation of things. Such willingness to change necessarily entails that he no longer identifies with himself as a self and so is selfless. Selflessness hence leads to great unity amongst things and being one with the world is to see things through with Dao. This is our first comprehensive notion of what it means to be selfless. It is, as Zhuangzi says, to no longer look upon the world as a stratification of possession wherein the more one accumulates the greater is one’s sense of self; rather, Zhuangzi asks us to introspectively gaze upon our root in ontological nothingness, thereby conjoining and befriending heaven and earth. Daoist oneness is not an event limited to the being of selfhood for it cannot be genuine oneness without taking into account its complementary opposite in nothingness. Refusing to take ownership of things, in whatever philosophical sense we might choose, does not imply transcendence or some other trick of circumventing the issue, but portrays a willingness to let things be and in so doing, preserve their inborn bond to Dao. Attachment to self thus results in a one-sidedness to living that is more akin to the life-praxis of Confucius or Mozi than to Zhuangzi. This is because one-sided living stems from one-sided thinking and thought that is guided by ambition, or allied to it, is blind to the true ways of Dao. To be clear in thought is to look past the surface of the pool of water to its still depths while to be clear in vision is to look past the face of selfness into the selflessness of Dao. The heart-mind of the selfless person thus becomes the heartless-mindlessness of Dao wherein one returns to one’s original nature without discarding or disavowing it as such. The Zhuangzi explains thusly: 夫至人……審乎無假而不與利遷, 極物之真, 能守其本, 故外天地, 遺萬 物, 而神未嘗有所困也。 The ultimate person . . . examines what has no falsehood and so is unmoved by profit. In seeking the ultimate truth of things he can guard their root. Thus, he puts heaven and earth outside himself and abandons the myriad things and in this way, they never weary his spirit.22

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And in another passage we read: 夫大備矣, 莫若天地; 然奚求焉, 而大備矣。知大備者, 無求、無失、無 棄, 不以物易己也。反己而不窮, 循古而不摩, 大人之誠。 Regarding perfection, nothing is comparable to heaven and earth, but when have they ever sought it out? He who knows perfection does not seek, lose, or reject it and so does not change himself on behalf of things. By returning to himself he discovers the inexhaustible; by following antiquity he discovers the imperishable. This is the sincerity of the great person.23 From the above, a number of observations can be made. To begin, Zhuangzi tells us that for the sage, truth in its ultimate form (i.e., Dao) lies not in the corporeality of things but in that which makes them so. The that-by-which, however, is not a thing of the world, which would limit its truthfulness to the facticity of things; rather, it incorporates the partiality of truths comprising our knowledge of said things into a singularity of experience known as the root. Since Dao qua the root escapes the clutches of nominal, empirical, and instrumental knowing insofar as it is the gate or pivot through which one conjoins with the mysteriousness of Dao,24 the sage must protect it from misappropriation. To accomplish this, his self needs to partake in the grand unity of Dao’s holism by shedding its pretense of autonomous individualism by embracing the truth of its own selflessness. This, we are told, occurs when the sage puts heaven and earth outside himself by abandoning any and all differentiation from the myriad things therein, thereby returning to the root. The assumed here-ness of the self is not a self-referential claim whose truth lies in distinguishing it from the there-ness of heaven and earth, nor is it a nod to monistic reductionism; on the contrary, we can understand Zhuangzi’s phrase “to put heaven and earth outside one’s self ” as indicating the exact opposite. It is the reverse in that there is nothing beyond heaven and earth, which, after all, are synonyms for Dao. If heaven and earth are to be taken as symbolizing Dao, and assuming there is nothing not covered by Dao, the act of putting Dao outside of oneself is in fact a misnomer. We are always already one with it, forever privy to its possibilities by way of nothingness. Thus, the there-ness of Dao’s otherness is not seen as oppositional to the here-ness of our selfhood but is its own internally superior truth. One stops thinking of the self in possessive terms and as a thing-in-itself that must be relinquished, transcended, transformed, and so forth, and gazes upon the world and its myriad selfless selves as simply a collectivity of that-from-which’s.

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If Dao is the ultimate that-by-which, then whatever it gives rise to can be taken as a that-from-which. This by-from relationship is not only codependent and co-arising, it guarantees the cosmos remains in a state of perpetual harmony and balance. In light of this, we can understand why Zhuangzi thus wrote that the sage does not change for things but with them and is why his spirit never wearies over them. To put the world outside oneself is to no longer think of it as being apart or estranged from one’s inborn nature. Indeed, what alienates us from our genuine Dao-selves is our need to delimit being from our own non-being. This is because we view being only in terms of what is seen, never in light of what is invisible and unknown. Hence, the call to rethink what it means to live and be a being of Dao’s doing is an entreating by Zhuangzi to see the non-self that is our true Dao-self as an onto-phenomenological entity in its own right. By bracketing the word self, it loses any self-importance and limitations, becoming inexhaustibly imperishable. With an undivided non-self now at his disposal, the sage roams the world carefree, walking in fire without being burned and wading into water without getting wet,25 not because he has become a transcendent figure but because he no longer identifies with the difference between his presence-of-being and that of the object being encountered. In other words, the ultimate person is one who does not hold the view that between two objects, including the self and no-self, one must hold greater value while the other is of lesser value; rather, he comprehends the world as the perpetual unfolding of Dao’s wondrous potentiality. To be selfless, Zhuangzi says, is to forgo viewing things as separate from one’s self, as lesser or greater in importance, thus preserving one’s spirit intact whilst realizing one’s intellectual and moral sincerity. The crux of this attitude, however, is that the paradigmatic individual does not regard himself as having received anything in return for his ability to selflessly subsist: 無為名尸, 無為謀府, 無為事任, 無為知主。體盡無窮, 盡其所受於天, 而無見得, 亦虛而已。至人之用心若鏡, 應而不藏, 故能勝物而不傷。

而遊無朕, 不將不迎,

Do not be a presider of names, do not be a treasury of schemes, do not be a bearer of affairs, and do not be a master of wisdom. Embody completely what is inexhaustible and wander where there is no trace. Take to completion all you receive from heaven without thinking you have received anything. Be empty, nothing more. The ultimate person uses his heart-mind like a mirror: neither transmitting nor receiving anything, responding without storing. He can thus excel with things without injury.26

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As we saw earlier with the example of the pool of water, it is still emptiness that reflects the purity of selflessness. What Zhuangzi adds to that scenario are the qualities of namelessness, formlessness, and ignorance. If we read him carefully we will see that his target is not language, deeds, and knowledge per se but, rather, our authoritative claim to them. Language is but the natural utterance of sounds and is common to all living things; behavioral matters are likewise also seen throughout the natural world, as is the innate knowledge of said world by the myriad things dwelling therein. However, humans have coopted the foundationally natural way of being and turned it into something exclusive. Indeed, we even come to define and identify our life-world with the realms of names, schemes, affairs, and wisdom. So, what then, are we to do about this? Zhuangzi’s response of “embody what is inexhaustible and wander where there is no trace” implies a transcendental encounter whereby one’s self must literally be discarded but that is actually not the case. Embodiment of the limitlessness of Dao is only possible when one simultaneously wanders in the tracelessness of nothingness. Sensible as this may sound, it is not apparent how one can proceed to do so without disavowal of the self. In fact, we are told the solution one sentence later: “Take to completion all you receive from heaven without thinking you have received anything.” It is of paramount importance to stress the fact that what we receive from heaven is not the self, but the empty potential through which the self then mutates and flourishes. We are born with the virtue of Dao, a selfless thread that strings all things together into a harmonious unity. The authentic self hence has a disposition to be true to itself and in being true to what comes to itself naturally, it is thus true to Dao. Wandering in the that-by-which no trace is left is to roam in the mysteriousness of nothingness, and to take refuge there is to no longer speak, see, act, or think of oneself as being different from anything at all. The sage is thus tracelessly traceless, onto-phenomenologically speaking, because he no longer frets over what is bestowed to him by heaven and what is not. He has only to look upon his own presence-of-being to understand the way of Dao and yet, the way of Dao is no-way. Since the way of Dao is applicable only to itself, to claim one has received something from it is to make the gravest of errors. It is erroneous insofar as Dao is empty, as are we. To be empty is thus to embody the most esteemed of Daoist virtues because only in empty nothingness can the self-identifying heart-mind reach a mirror-like state of transparent reflectivity. As for why Zhuangzi says the sage does not transmit or receive things but responds emptily, we can say this: to do otherwise is to lend credence to the claim that human agency is the highest form of self-identity in the world. To

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put it into clearer terms, transmission implies a degree of authority and attached to authority is a self-assuredness that lifts one’s view of oneself beyond the plane of holistic unity to that of dominator. Transmission also entails the capitulation of one’s Dao-self to the human-self that is arbitrarily molded by speech, sights, actions, and calculative thinking. Wherein genuine transmission arises is through non-transmission, the act of letting-be and letting-go, such that things are allowed to follow their own life-course unhindered. In this way, what is transmitted is not the tangible facticity of being but the intangible profundity of Dao. And so, the sage selflessly transmits the non-transmittable and in so doing receives nothing but responds to things with quiet emptiness. This is why Zhuangzi writes that the sage injures none yet successfully interacts with all. With all of the above in mind, we can summarily state that Zhuangzi’s vision of selfhood is more introspective than outwardly directed, driven by inclusion rather than exclusion, endeavors to embody spontaneity over moralistic conformism, and so forth. In other words, the picture of the self as painted by Zhuangzi is one that decries our adherence to the very word “self ” for it is but a trace of what, in its authentic state, is otherwise traceless: 吾所謂臧者, 非仁義之謂也, 臧於其德而已矣; 吾所謂臧者, 非所謂仁義之 謂也, 任其性命之情而已矣; 吾所謂聰者, 非謂其聞彼也, 自聞而已矣; 吾所謂明者, 非謂其見彼也, 自見而已矣。夫不自見而見彼, 不自得而得 彼者, 是得人之得而不自得其得者也, 適人之適而不自適其適者也。 What I call good is not what is called benevolence or righteousness; goodness is just one’s Dao-given virtue and that is all. What I call good is not what others call benevolence or righteousness; goodness is just the state of one’s allotted fate and that is all. What I call good hearing is not what I call listening to others; good hearing is just listening to oneself. What I call good vision is not what I call seeing others; good vision is just seeing oneself. The person who does not see himself but sees others, who does not grasp himself but grasps others, is simply grasping what others have obtained without grasping what he himself has obtained; he thus takes comfort in the comfort of others without taking comfort in what comforts himself.27 True goodness is no more to be found in others than is the authentic self. To claim that the self is knowable through sensory experience or analytic thought is to believe that the beclouding of our Dao-self can be unveiled through the appropriation of what others claim to be true. The authentic self might be unknowable but that does not mean it is unrealizable. As we

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shall see, Zhuangzi offers a number of methods by which to let-go of the inauthentic self so as to shine light upon the genuineness of selflessness. It is these accounts of letting-go of the self in order to push forward our inner no-self that have shaped the scholarly debate outlined in the opening section of this chapter. However, in light of the preceding descriptive analysis of what Zhuangzi takes to be the self, our interpretation of the passages offered below will demonstrate that what is meant by forgetting or losing the self should not be construed in its literal sense but as a rethinking of our traditional association of self with being into one whereby the self symbolizes the non-self of Dao. Only then can we grasp the import of the paradigmatic individual and his unique tendency to wander carefree in the world without being affected by the things therein.

III. Having looked closely at some of the more informative depictions of selfhood in the Zhuangzi, it is time to address the question of selflessness and to what extent it steers our thinking from self qua being towards a more foundational encounter in the form of self qua nothingness. As was mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Zhuangzi uses a pair of terms to set the stage for his doctrine of no-self: losing one’s self (shiji 失己 or sangji 喪己) and forgetting one’s self (wangji 忘己). Interestingly, these two notions are synonymous, not semantically, but owing to the fact that both are imbedded in Zhuangzi’s life-praxis of non-deliberate doing (wuwei 無為).28 Paradoxically, releasement of the inauthentic self cannot take place without wuwei and wuwei cannot be utilized wherein presence of self endures. Skipping such circularity and going straight to the desired outcome of no-self would make wuwei tautological and no-self soteriological; such arguments have already been put forward, as we have already seen, however, both fail to account for the role played by nothingness, to which we now turn. Let us begin with the shortest of the three examples we will examine pertaining to the loss of self: 喪己於物, 失性於俗者, 謂之倒置之民。 To lose one’s self to things and lose one’s inborn nature to vulgarity, such people are referred to as being upside-down.29 Although written in the context of two types of joy man receives—the genuine joy of following along with Dao and the fleeting joy experienced

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through the accumulation of fame and wealth—the sentence cited above that concludes said discussion is nevertheless pertinent to our analysis of personhood and selflessness in that it attests to the feebleness of what we call the self. Indeed, the joy we derive from fleeting sensory encounters is incomparable to the constant joy one feels whilst in unison with Dao. Zhuangzi’s point is that identifying the self with what is inherently transient and morally corrupting is not as good as associating the self with what is perpetually good and life nourishing. To lose one’s self in the latter is hence to fuse one’s inborn nature and fate to that which endlessly changes and transforms itself for itself; to recognize the futility and destruction that arises from allowing the heart-mind to lust after superficialities is to lose sight of what is genuinely foundational in nature. It is for this reason that Zhuangzi states he who gives priority to things over one’s authentic Dao-self, and vulgarity over one’s genuine Dao-nature, is topsy-turvy. Inverting one’s self such that it is topsy-turvy stems from an inversion of the heart-mind; to have an inverted heart-mind is to furthermore define one’s life-world in resistance to one’s inner self-unfolding. Unfolding into one’s inner Dao-given nothingness, the self loses its subjectivity and claims of association, both towards its own trace-presence and that of the myriad things too. We can thus conclude that to live in an upside-down manner by following the patterns of propriety and wisdom whilst clinging to the ways of benevolence and righteousness destroys the Dao-self by blinding our heart-mind to what it means to be selfless. Indeed, to lose one’s self is not the root of our concern—such concern falls to the notion that fame, wealth, and the like, are the ultimate realm of joy—instead, loss of self in the comfort of nothingness is liberating, not to mention transformative. Zhuangzi coined a phrase to represent this metamorphosis—withered wood and dead ash: 南郭子綦隱机而坐, 仰天而噓, 荅焉似喪其耦。顏成子游立侍乎前, 曰: 何居乎? 形固可使如槁木, 而心固可使如死灰乎? 今之隱机者, 非昔之隱 机者也。子綦曰: 偃, 不亦善乎, 而問之也! 今者吾喪我, 汝知之乎? Nanguo Ziqi sat behind his desk, exhaled and turned his head towards the sky, his expression stupefied, his relational self seeming to have left him. Yancheng Ziyou, who stood in attendance before him said, “What is this? Can the body appear like withered wood and the mind like dead ash? How is it that your sitting behind your desk now is not the same as when you sat here previously?” Ziqi said, “Yan, the question you ask is a very good one! Just now I forgot myself, do you understand?”30

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We can say two things about the connection between wood-ash and bodymind and the mystery behind Ziqi’s losing his self. First, the self, as we have said, is a trace-like shadow of the genuine Dao-self; the relationship between withered wood and dead ash operates in a similar context—the disgenuine self that we associate with the being of our body and the vainglory pursuits of the heart-mind succumbs to the weathering and toil of such endeavors and so degenerates into a withered form of its former self; it becomes little more than dead ash, a trace of what previously existed. Common men of the world are enamored with and bedazzled by the physical world of things and the emotional value we invest in them. The sage, however, cares not for such things and so remains impervious to their destructive allure. He is indifferent because he sees the value inherent in ash whereas the wood, withered as it might be, still remains in the world of corporeal things and norms tied to the flesh of being. To elaborate, dead ash does not simply mark the end of the wood’s existence but is a signpost for the regeneration and renewal of life; as is said over and again in Daoism, life cannot exist without death and vice-versa,31 therefore, dead ash cannot come into being without first having gone through the state of withered and healthy wood. It is a self-fulfilling cycle of generation and regeneration, of nothingness and being, of no-self and self. The factor common to wood and its ash, the body and its heart-mind, is that they all trace their root to Dao and Dao’s tracelessness is sustained by nothingness. For Ziqi, a disciple of Confucius but here presented as a paradigmatic person of Daoism, the act of becoming selflessly traceless is indescribable other than saying “I have lost myself.” Part of the confusion of those scholars mentioned at the start of this chapter stems from their disvaluing of the term “lose”; they take it to be a deliberate discarding without giving consideration to the accidental, involuntary loss that takes place when one’s mind is distracted or otherwise engaged.32 In other words, Ziqi losing himself is not a purposeful course of action but rather the outcome of letting-go of what is ostensibly not his to begin with. Ziqi, a sage, has no use for names or things and so takes shelter in the nameless formless abode of Dao. His ash-like self is but a husk of his true Dao-self and so he loses it as easily as a cicada molts or a snake sheds its skin. Owing to this, we can appreciate Zhuangzi’s observation that those persons who cling to their husk-like self live as if inverted; lacking Dao, they cannot comprehend or appreciate the marvelous arts of Dao or how said arts constantly and mindlessly inform the nature they are themselves born with. How can Yancheng Ziyou possibly make sense of such profundity! To put the idea of losing oneself into more accessible language, Zhuangzi writes:

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故樂通物, 非聖人也; 有親, 非仁也; 天時, 非賢也; 利害不通, 非君子也; 行名失己, 非士也; 亡身不真, 非役人也。 Hence he who tries to share his joy with others is not a sagely man; he who shows his feelings is not benevolent; he who adheres to the time of the seasons is not worthy; he who views profit and injury as different is not a gentleman; he who takes action on behalf of names and loses his self in the process is not erudite; and he who loses his body in an unauthentic manner is not fit to be of service to others.33 The above passage has much to offer but what is most interesting is the negative formulation used to portray the esteemed person. Indeed, the opening clause has been taken to paint followers of Daoism as pseudoautomatons devoid of emotions and moral rectitude. Correcting such an inaccurate and unflattering understanding is beyond the scope of this chapter however. Needless to say, it must be noted that what Zhuangzi is arguing is not the uselessness of emotions such as joy and compassion but that our justification for the time and place of their employment is unnatural and prevents the self from attaining its complete potential in the cosmic collectivity of selfless oneness. Upholding the idea that nothing surpasses Dao, any endeavor to claim otherwise will prove futile. There is no joy richer than that of Dao, no time that supersedes the non-temporality of Dao, no name that encompasses the myriad things more so than the namelessness of Dao, no wisdom more profound than the unknowing emptiness of Dao, and no self more complete than the traceless nothingness of Dao. Therefore, the scholar of the arts of Dao does not seek anything that is not already at hand in his inborn nature— still, empty quietude—and so he returns to what has no beginning, dwells in what has no boundary, and takes peace of mind in knowing that the mystery of oneness is unsolvable and so stops there. Wandering in the wilds of unknowability is to engage in the equalization of gain and loss, leave the world to its own devices, and drift with the transformation of things. Such is the course of the sagacious individual for he dissolves the titles of king and ruler, darkening himself in the imperturbable wholeness of Dao and its virtue. When it comes to forgetting the self, one might at first blush take it to be a meditative event. If, however, we employ the language of loss to approach self-forgetting, as opposed to forgetfulness in general, the case can be made that the two are in fact equivalent. Take the following passage as an example:

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其動, 止也; 其死, 生也; 其廢, 起也。此又非其所以也。有治在人, 忘乎 物, 忘乎天, 其名為忘己。忘己之人, 是之謂入於天。 Men have their moving and stopping, death and life, decline and arising—of these he can do nothing. And yet, there are those who believe the governance of such things lies with man. He who can forget things and forget heaven shall be called a forgetter of the self. For those men who have forgotten the self, we can say they have entered heaven.”34 We can supplement it with Zhuangzi’s statement that “in clinging to outward form I have forgotten my own body, just as staring into muddied water has misled me into taking it for a clear pool.”35 These, however, are not the most famous examples—that honor falls to the dialogue between Confucius and his beloved pupil Yan Hui: 顏回曰: 回坐忘矣。仲尼蹴然曰: 何謂坐忘? 顏回曰: 墮肢體, 黜聰明, 離形去知, 同於大通, 此謂坐忘。 Yan Hui said: I can sit in forgetfulness. Startled, Confucius asked: What is this thing you call sitting in forgetfulness? Yan Hui replied: I smash up my limbs and body, drive away wisdom and perception, discard my form and expel knowledge, thus conjoining with the great thoroughfare. This is what I mean by sitting in forgetfulness.36 Forgetting the self is not something that comes easily—one has to work at it. Does this make it meditative? Perhaps, but not in the traditional sense, for the target of one’s pondering is an object that is neither exterior nor interior to the self but the stratum undergirding it. In other words, the task of forgetfulness is not to annihilate the self but release it from the chains of rational thinking so readily affixed to it by humanity. Selflessness through forgetfulness is thus a productive, not reductive, process as the goal is to openly meld with the mundane things of the world in oneness rather than seek out a divine overlord. The thoroughfare of which Zhuangzi speaks is hence the means by which Dao imbues its traceless non-self in the world, and owing to its non-ness, the throughing of Dao occurs via nothingness. What is more, this threading of things together with nothingness means that Daoist meontology is not nihilistic but onto-generative.37 Yan Hui’s claim to sit in forgetfulness is thus translatable as: Yan Hui does not sit down and then forget his self but rather, he is already selfless at the moment of his sitting. Being carried along the great thoroughfare of Dao makes him selfless; were he still with self, he would be unable to intuit it. Of

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course, the great thoroughfare is but a pseudonym for Dao, an alias that protects its mysteriousness through selflessness. Thus, to forget things and heaven alike is to be without self, and that which enriches the cosmos selflessly may be said to have entered heaven. But how can one forget heaven and yet still enter it? The answer is that one does not need to literally enter it, for that would make Zhuangzi’s philosophy soteriological. It is, on the contrary, an imaginary sojourning, a wandering in the throes of meontological coherence during which the artificial, calculative self dissipates into its own selflessness. Our muddied vision of ourselves henceforth clears and we are able to cast our sight into the dark depths of Dao. What is forgotten is the need to forget and with the absence of a need to cast things away, we at the same time rid ourselves of the need to remember, to cling to names and their uprightness. No longer do we depend upon the solidity of the earth to support and shelter us in the everydayness of our being but, conversely, we can take to the air, riding atop the clouds as if Liezi.38 Our starting and stopping, rising and sinking, breathing coarsely or sighing gently, these are the revolutions of Yin and Yang, the rotations of being and nonbeing. There is nothing more natural than these so why should we see the transition from self to non-self any differently? With the twitch of a muscle we blink an eye but does that change the inborn nature of the eye? With the slightest vibration of air we can hear sound but does that change the inborn nature of the ear? With the smallest of words we can acquire knowledge but does that change the inborn nature of the heart-mind? Each of these sensory experiences depend on something else to stir them into action and yet, when left alone, they are empty and silent. This is their authentic nature, the true condition of their selfhood; indeed, everything in the world is, at its root, in such a state of perpetual ease and calmness. Sights, sounds, and words stir them up however, causing them to be self-muddied and muddled, unaware that formerly they were simple and unadorned. This is why Ziqi was dumbfounded when Yancheng Ziyou’s composure became one of withered wood and dead ash. Ziqi saw in his friend what he himself possessed but could not comprehend because the self of being had veiled and distorted his ability to access his inner non-self. To restore the balance between himself and the world he was required to forget both, to return to the time of his birth when the notion of self had yet to take hold of him. It is because of this, Zhuangzi says, that the sage, in “returning to himself discovers the inexhaustible; in following antiquity he discovers the imperishable.” What remains to be seen is how Zhuangzi frames the correlation between no-self and the endlessly shifting creations of Dao, an issue to which we shall now turn.

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IV. Before beginning our look into the importance of no-self for Zhuangzi, and indeed Daoism as a whole, we would be well served by first turning to a diagram that illustrates how the subject frees itself of selfhood by getting rid of the need to possess things:39 A Person A Physical Object Possession Loss of Possession

→ → → →

The Subject The Self Control of the Subject by the Self Subject Freed from Control by the Self

Regarding the first level, this chapter has already shown the correlation between personhood and subjectivity; indeed, this is true of the second level wherein the self is established via our sensory faculties of sight, hearing, and speech. On the third level, that whereby possession of things leads to the self exerting control over its own subjectivity, we have made the case that it is not quite so black and white; what Zhuangzi calls mental blindness—of the sensory sort but also arising from the erroneous belief in the authority given benevolence, righteousness, etc., which comprise the Confucian concept of virtue, but more significantly, blindness to the gift of nothingness due to the plundering of thinking at the hands of being. As for the fourth level, abandoning the need to possess things is certainly a vital element but it goes beyond that as we saw with the story of Yan Hui and Confucius. Freedom is not contingent on loss of possession being equal to loss of control of the self but, rather, it results from one’s conjoining with Dao through nothingness, and the embracement of nothingness can only arise when one has returned to the root of being, and by implication, to a rethinking of being: 泰初有無, 無有無名, 一之所起, 有一而未形。物得以生, 謂之德; 未形者 有分, 且然無間, 謂之命; 留動而生物, 物成生理, 謂之形; 形體保神, 各有 儀則, 謂之性。性修反德, 德至同於初。同乃虛, 虛乃大。 In the great beginning there was nothingness, nonbeing, and namelessness. From it arose the One, an oneness that was without form. When things obtained it they were thus born and this was called virtue. Before there were forms and divisions, they were innumerable though without separation, and this was called the order of things. From this flowing and moving things were born and once they became complete they gave birth to principles that were called forms. These forms and their bodies contained spirits, each having its own qualities and regulations and this was called the inborn nature. When the inborn nature is cultivated one will return to virtue, and virtue at its ultimate is identical to the beginning. Being identical it is empty, and being empty it is great.40

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Although this passage is clearly addressing Daoist cosmogony, it nevertheless sheds light on the meontological nature of selflessness. Indeed, what is most striking about the above account is the lack of any mention of selfhood; things have their inborn nature but this is not equivalent to the self. To extend the inborn nature to the world at large is to risk losing it hence one must preserve it by returning to the pure virtue of Dao. Dao’s virtue, its inborn nature, is still quietude; it is perfect emptiness, one that delimits the beginning of all things as a state of imperturbable selflessness. To be without self is to identify with the living nothingness of the universe that is imbued with the potentiality of Dao. Associating oneself with nothingness means one no longer sides with being but with nonbeing, with the namelessness of formless possibility. Put into such terms, the question of thinking about being becomes one of thinking through nonbeing; it is an event whose horizon lies not in the distant future but the atemporal perpetuity of Dao symbolized via its traceless trace. The concept of no-self is hence neither denial of the self— as in there is literally no self, or no possessive claims to the self exist—rather, the authentic self is a not-self, a non-self whose groundlessness defines it as such. It is, in other words, a non-reified self whose belonging to the world stays the path of constant equanimity within the ever-changing milieu of Dao’s own mystery. It is why Zhuangzi said: “The ultimate person is without self, the spiritual person is without attainment, and the sage is without name;”41 “the person of Dao does not make himself known, ultimate virtue is unattainable, and the great person is without self.”42 He who is great is unfamiliar with the value of selfhood while he who is petty knows only how to cherish it. Since the self is not an innate feature of one’s inborn nature, how can one dismiss it as if it were? We constantly battle with ourselves to be cloaked in self-assurance and familiarity, an act of deception so intimate we are none the wiser of what has transpired. To free our self from ourselves requires nothing more than embracing the truth that we are all impregnated with the selflessness of Dao; it is our inborn nature to be as such. There is no quest for transcendence, no search for divine salvation, no requirement to divide ourselves into multiple others; what our life entails is to simply be as we were meant to and let the world be as it was meant to. To be without self is to be free of the anxieties that plague the minds of those who impose selfness upon themselves; to be without self is to be free of the labors that tax the bodies of those who are beholden to such a narrow and naïve manner of thinking of existence. All that is required is to model oneself after Dao; such modeling is as natural as can be and when naturalness is the only guide one employs to live out one’s years, of what use is the self? There is thus no higher ethical standard that selflessness because there is no higher example of what selflessness can accomplish than Dao and

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yet, Dao is always already within us. If we can overcome our blindness to our selfhood we can conjoin with the root of selfhood, a root that meontologically flourishes before our very eyes.

V. In this chapter we have surveyed the arguments for and against the postulation of selflessness as a viably attainable construct. We thenceforth delved into the variety of ways in which selfhood is envisioned and its connection, however tenuous, to Dao. This allowed us to gain a complete feel for what it means to be selfless and how, having acquired said state of mind, one could succeed in cultivating a genuine state of no-self. Throughout all of this, we witnessed Zhuangzi’s unique and fascinating manner of philosophical argumentation and creativity, both of which truly endeavor to stimulate a reformulation of the traditional identity of self with being to one whereby freedom of non-self is fed by the ontological gift of nothingness. The spirit of Daoist meontology thus vibrantly celebrates the usefulness of all that is taken for granted; it relishes wandering in the dark mystery of Dao’s unknowability and therein finds bliss of the highest order. Such is its ethical vision, a way of partaking in and thinking about the world and humanity’s place therein, that turns everything upside down and in so doing, somehow makes it right.

NOTES 1. See Hall, 230–2. 2. Jochim 1998, 36. 3. Ibid., 47. 4. Ibid., 54. 5. Ibid., 68. 6. Wu 1990, 16. 7. See Berling 1985, 112–13. 8. Allinson 1989, 195. 9. Wang 2000, 352. 10. Ibid., 352–3. 11. Berkson 2005, 300. 12. Ibid., 296. 13. Ibid., 308. 14. Zhao 2012, 149. 15. Zhuangzi, ch. 5; see Guo, 192. 16. See Chai 2010, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2014d.

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17. Zhuangzi, ch. 11; see Guo, 395. 18. See Zhuangzi’s story of the penumbra and shadow in chapter 2. 19. See Zhuangzi’s parable of the breath of the earth and the various sounds it produces in chapter 2. 20. “When men cherish their vision then the world will not prove dazzling. When men cherish their hearing then the world will not prove wearying. When men cherish their knowledge then the world will not prove deceptive. When men cherish their virtue then the world will not prove depraved. 彼人含其明, 則天下不鑠矣; 人含其聰, 則天下不累矣; 人含其知, 則天下不惑矣; 人含其德, 則天下不僻矣”。Zhuangzi, ch. 10; see Guo, 353. 21. Zhuangzi, ch. 17; see Guo, 601. The Chinese reads: 無南無北, 奭然四解, 淪於不測; 無東無西, 始於玄冥, 反於大通。 22. Zhuangzi, ch. 13; see Guo, 586. 23. Zhuangzi, ch. 24; see Guo, 852. 24. For more on the gateway in the Zhuangzi, see ch. 23; for more on the pivot, see ch. 2. 25. See Zhuangzi, ch. 6; see Guo, 226. 26. Zhuangzi, ch. 7; see Guo, 307. 27. Zhuangzi, ch. 8; see Guo, 327. 28. See Slingerland 2007. 29. Zhuangzi, ch.16; see Guo, 558. 30. Zhuangzi, ch. 2; see Guo, 43–5. 31. See for instance Zhuangzi, ch. 2. 32. To the aforementioned list of scholars we can add Edward Slingerland who writes: “Metaphorically, then, Zi Qi’s meditative technique has allowed him (the Subject) to escape the control of the Self—which is a common way to understand Zhuangzian spiritual attainment.” See Slingerland, 2004: 335. 33. Zhuangzi, ch. 6; see Guo, 232. 34. Zhuangzi, ch. 12; see Guo, 428. 35. Zhuangzi, ch. 20; see Guo, 698. The Chinese reads: 吾守形而忘身, 觀於濁水而 迷於清淵。 36. Zhuangzi, ch. 6; see Guo, 284. A similar account also appears in ch. 11; see Guo, 390: “You have only to rest in inaction, and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless. Undo the mind, slough off spirit, be blank and soulless, and the ten thousand things one by one will return to the root—return to the root and not know why.” 37. Zhuangzi, ch. 23; see Guo, 800 says: “The gate of heaven is nothingness and it is from here that the myriad things emerge. Being cannot use being to create being, it must arise from nonbeing; however, nonbeing is itself nothingness.” The Chinese reads: 入出而無見其形, 是謂天門。天門者, 無有也, 萬物出乎無 有。有不能以有為有, 必出乎無有, 而無有一無有。

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38. See Zhuangzi, ch. 1. 39. Slingerland, 2004: 335. 40. Zhuangzi, ch. 12; see Guo, 424. 41. Zhuangzi, ch. 1; see Guo, 17. The Chinese reads: 至人無己, 神人無功, 聖人無名。 42. Zhuangzi, ch. 17; see Guo, 574. The Chinese reads: 道人不聞, 至德不得, 大人無己。

WORKS CITED Allinson, Robert. Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation: An Analysis of the Inner Chapters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. Berkson, Mark. “Conceptions of self/no-self and Modes of Connection: Comparative Soteriological Structures in Classical Chinese Thought” Journal of Religious Ethics, 33.2 (2005): 293–331. Berling, Judith. “Self and Whole in Chuang-Tzu,” in Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values, ed. Donald Munro. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985. Chai, David. “Meontology in Early Xuanxue 玄學 Thought” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 37.1 (2010): 91–102. Chai, David. “Nothingness and the Clearing: Heidegger, Daoism and the Quest for Primal Clarity ” Review of Metaphysics, 67.3 (2014a): 583–601. Chai, David. “Meontological Generativity: A Daoist Reading of the Thing” Philosophy East and West, 64.2 (2014b): 303–18. Chai, David. “Zhuangzi’s Meontological Temporality ” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 13.3 (2014c): 361–77. Chai, David. “Daoism and wu 無” Philosophy Compass (Chinese Comparative Philosophy section), vol. 9 (2014d): 663–71. Guo, Qingfan 郭慶藩, ed. Collected Explanations to the Zhuangzi (Zhuangzi Jishi 莊子集釋). Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1997. Hall, David. “To Be or Not to Be: The Postmodern Self and the Wu Forms of Taoism,” in Self as Person in Asian Theory and Practice, eds. Roger Ames, et al. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Jochim, Chris. “Just Say No to ‘No Self ’ in Zhuangzi,” in Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, ed. Roger Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998: 35–74. Slingerland, Edward. Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Slingerland, Edward. “Conceptions of the Self in the Zhuangzi: Conceptual Metaphor Analysis and Comparative Thought,” Philosophy East and West, 54.3 (2004): 322–42. Wang, Youru. “Philosophy of Change and the Deconstruction of Self in the Zhuangzi,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 27:3 (2000): 345–360. Wu, Guangming. The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang-Tzu. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. Zhao, Guoping. “The Self and Human Freedom in Foucault and Zhuangzi,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 39:1 (2012): 139–156.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Han Fei’s Rule of Law and its Limits ALEJANDRO B Á RCENAS

“至治之法術已明矣, 而世學者弗知也.”1 — Han Feizi, Chapter XIV Han Fei’s ideas and his attempt to elaborate what some scholars consider to be an early formulation of a rule of law2 are intrinsically linked to his own historical and political circumstances. By the time Han Fei was reinterpreting the works of other philosophers and constructing his own system as an alternative to the ideas defended by the literati3 of the third century BCE , the independent territories that constituted China had seen more than five centuries of ruthless conflict. This was the violent context that framed the problematic of not only Han Fei’s thought but also of several generations of ancient Chinese philosophers. As they witnessed how the old social order crumbled, they struggled to see a way of ending this era of disorder. The general chaos of the period was triggered by the defeat of the house of the Western Zhou (周) and the destruction of its central capital by barbarian hordes in 771 BCE . After the capital was forced to move to Luoyan, the central power steadily declined and the rulers of the feudal states found themselves free to ignore their allegiance and to abandon their respect for Zhou order.4 This was fertile ground for the pursuit of selfinterest and narrow political ambition that enhanced the general tendency of the time to render the ancient institutions obsolete. Zhuangzi, who lived 155

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during that period of pervasive disorder, described the general feeling of the era with the following words, “the world is in great confusion, the sages and worthies are benighted, dao and excellence have lost their continuity, and there are many in the world who offer their cursory assessment to celebrate themselves.”5 One of the literati’s main predicaments was how to reanimate what they perceived as the harmonious past of order and excellence achieved during the early days of the Zhou dynasty. If a return to the Zhou order could be accomplished, then they believed that stability and peace could come back to their own time and the population could enjoy the prosperity that existed centuries earlier. It was during this period that the literati envisioned a society organized in terms of li (禮) as suggested by their main source of inspiration, Confucius himself. Although the term li tends to be commonly translated as “rites” or “ritual” it is unlikely that this was the meaning that Confucius intended for it. One of the reasons to suspect this lies in the fact that, in the Analects, Confucius felt compelled to explain on many occasions what he meant by the term li. Throughout the Analects his disciples repeatedly requested their master to clarify the term and its use. In addition, they tended to inquire from different perspectives, which reinforces the possibility that Confucius was probably using li with a greater diversity of connotation than the one commonly understood at the time.6 Taking into account how the text discusses the issue, it is quite probable that Confucius meant by li something closer to a process that lays down the paths of conduct that constitutes the fabric of relations within a community. Society, thus, was seen by Confucius as a creative achievement of its members. Hence by reforming the conventions of the time, Confucius did not consider li to be a fixed set of customs or ceremonial rituals but as something in a continual process of personal construction and, for that matter, never devoid of personal participation.7 But, Confucius’ call for a return to the spirit of the Zhou was initially formulated during the fifth century BCE , some two hundred years after the fall of the Western Zhou. By then, the deterioration of the ancient institutions was irreversible. Their structure and authority steadily continued to fade away with the passing of time. An additional two hundred years passed and in spite of the literati’s best efforts to reinterpret and adapt Confucius’ teachings, the process of deterioration continued to advance without an end in sight. As Hsiao-po Wang notes, “with the progressive disintegration of ‘feudalism’ during the last half of the Zhou dynasty, the old political arrangements became increasingly ineffective as well as irrelevant.”8 In short, nothing seemed to put an end to the downward spiral of war and chaos.

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THE LAW AND ITS FEATURES However, something was changing in the political environment of the third century BCE . One of the independent states that came into existence due to the fragmentation of the Zhou feudal system, the land of Qin, was gradually growing and accumulating vast amounts of military power. As a consequence, Han Fei’s home territory as well as many of the other neighboring states were facing utter destruction at the hands of Qin. Neither Han Fei nor his people could afford to wait any longer for the success of the literati. In Han Fei’s view, an alternative approach needed to be conceived since the application of past formulas was failing to reform society and bring peace. He expressed his concern in the following way: If people were to praise the dao of Yao, Shun, Tang, Wu, and Yu in the present age, they would be laughed at by the new sages. Indeed, sages do not follow antiquity nor do they take as their model constant laws. They examine the affairs of their age and prepare to respond accordingly.9 Han Fei was very critical of the use of the past as a rigid model to be applied indiscriminately in the present.10 Even if the ancient rulers were successful during their lifetime, it did not mean that the same acts, determinations or, in more general terms, their dao, could be applied to the present circumstances. Instead, the path of action needed to be guided by a close examination of imminent affairs in order to understand and design proper solutions to the specific problems at hand. In addition to the misleading advice of the literati with regard to the use of the past, Han Fei considered in the examination of his own period that disorder and weakness was due to a pervasive sense of selfishness manifested in all levels of society. Han Fei thought that an order of things designed to overcome such egoism could only come into being in his lifetime with the application of a system of laws (fa 法)11 where proper punishment and rewards were effectively incorporated into the government.12 Interestingly enough, Han Fei was not alone in classical antiquity in thinking that instituting a legal system was the proper means to channel negative inclinations—such as selfishness—in the natural tendencies of humans. Plato, for instance, wrote in book IX of the Republic, that the unnecessary appetites and pleasures could be “kept within bounds by the laws.”13 The legalist thinker also defended the possibility of channeling negative appetites by application of the laws in order to provide guidance and set straight the needs of the members of a society in crisis. In fact, Han Fei recommended, “educating the mind with laws” with the clear intention

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that laws will eventually bring about meaningful moral changes to those who obey them. This affirmation seems to imply that he desired to implement a system that was meant to go beyond achieving compliance to rules external to the individual or relying on contingent subjective standards.14 In addition to controlling negative inclinations, Han Fei seems to imply throughout his writings that virtue itself is not innate but can be taught. If neither virtues nor defects are innate or inherent to individuals then, in order to achieve some degree of moral transformation, there is a need for the use of external guidance.15 Since people seem to act according to circumstances and not according to either fixed good or bad natural tendencies, thus, Han Fei argued that the only reasonable means to channel and guide them appear to be external until, gradually, the social environment improved. Han Fei disagreed with the literati on the way one can guide a person to a moral life in part because his own reading of history taught him that transforming individuals according to internal means is a long process with an uncertain end. Morality, therefore, cannot be based on the uncertainty of subjective contingent grounds. In order to have a well-ordered and peaceful society Han Fei proposed—taking into consideration a state of constant war and chaos—the alternative of establishment of an objective system of laws that rewards and punishes people according to their acts.16 Furthermore, it is probable that for Han Fei, the laws presented a series of additional advantages to achieve a strong state with political stability when compared to li. On one side, when considered broadly, fa incorporated some of the social and moral conventions of li. In effect, those are the kind of conventions that usually serve as the basis for particular legal structures.17 But on the other side, fa had the potential to complement certain deficiencies of li by going beyond the limits of such conventions.18 For instance, Han Fei considered crucial that the laws put an end to the pervasive aristocratic privileges during his time and, for that matter, that the law became equally applicable to all members if society. The law (fa 法) does not favor people of high status like the plumb line does not bend to accommodate a crooked place in the wood . . . when faults are to be punished, the highest minister cannot escape; when good capabilities are to be rewarded, the lowest person must not be neglected. Hence for correcting the fault of superiors, questioning the excesses of common people, deciding between effective government and chaos, exposing envy, regulating negative conduct and channeling the people, nothing can compare to the laws.19

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The application of a system of laws seemed for Han Fei to be capable of providing everyone with a safety net against the arbitrariness of the decisions taken by people in power and capable of providing an equal status to all members of society—at least before the law. But also, and just as important, the laws provided protection against the abuses of some potentially detrimental social conventions. As Han Fei indicated in the previous passage, among those social conventions that needed correction were the privileges of the “people of high status” or feudal lords who at the time occupied either positions of local power or served in the courts as ministers. In this regard, as Wang points out, it is important to be aware that since the beginning of legalism “the feudal-aristocratic class strenuously opposed any fa jia [legalist school] sociopolitical reform.”20 This was, without doubt, a distinct sign that legalist philosophy was touching a sensitive fiber in the political and social environment of the period. At the same time, it was also a period in which the aristocrats were being challenged by a new class of intellectuals called shi (士) who sought advancement on the basis of merit. In order to bring awareness about the nature of this controversial proposal and the possible consequences of carrying out his reforms, Han Fei remembered the gruesome story of Wu Qi (吳起), a military strategist and reformer who instructed his king in the state of Chu (楚) to abolish hereditary privileges after the third generation. In the past, Wu Qi taught King Dao (悼) of Chu about the customs of his state by saying: “When chief ministers are too powerful and public officials too numerous, they will pressure the ruler and oppress the people which is the path to impoverish the state and weaken the army. Therefore, you should dismiss the ranks and benefits of public officials after the third generation of their successors, reduce the salaries and advantages of the magistrates, and eliminate branches of government that are not of urgent need in order to have well-chosen and well-trained literati.” King Dao, after enforcing this policy for a year, passed away, and Wu Qi’s limbs were dismembered in Chu.21 In Han Fei’s eyes the political order based on li had lost its original intentions and now it seemed as if it was only at the service of creating and perpetuating privileges for a bureaucratic aristocracy. Considering that Han Fei was the only major philosopher of the Warring States period who came from a noble class background, he had an existential relation to those privileges and for that matter was well aware of their meaning. Even if those privileges benefited him as an individual, in being consistent with his philosophical principles, Han Fei recognized that those advantages were against the

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improvement of the society as a whole and, consequently, needed to be abolished. One of the main problems with aristocratic privileges seemed to have been the common practice of receiving rewards from the ruler simply by virtue of occupying a position in society. Han Fei, thus, posed the following question: If those who receive rewards do so only by their inherited position, then what would motivate people who have no prospect of sharing in the benefits? Han Fei addressed the situation by proposing the following: When laws and prohibitions are clear and manifest, officials will follow the laws. A ruler makes reward and punishment definite. When reward and punishment are not biased, then people will follow them. If people follow the laws and officials govern effectively, then the state will become rich.22 Moreover, as the passage also suggests, Han Fei defended the promulgation of clear laws because it aided the process of shattering the system of hierarchical traditions. In this regard he proclaimed, “as for the laws they [should] be kept in compiled books, displayed in government offices and promulgated among the hundred surnames.”23 As one can sense by his words, it was important to him that through the public promulgation of regulations and prohibitions, the law was going to be understood as what we would call “objective,” meaning no group would be outside of its scope and that its application would become, as a consequence, uniform and equal.24 In this way, both the people and the nobles will have to equally attend to the laws. Han Fei expanded upon this idea in the following passage: As for the law, regulations and decrees should be displayed at government offices, punishments and penalties should be regarded as certain in the mind of the people, rewards should exist for those who act in accordance to the law, and punishments should be given to those who offend the decrees. The law is what the ministers take as a model.25 For Han Fei, the public promulgation of the laws—with the intention of providing the model of conduct to all levels of society—was a necessity for society to bring awareness of not only the existence of legal principles pertaining to all, but of their content. With regard to their content, the promulgation of the law by itself was not enough: in a legal system promulgation was inseparable from the need for clarity. Han Fei expanded on the theme of clarity of the laws in the following way:

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In our time, the laws are enacted for the masses in such terms that they are hard to understand even for the most knowledgeable, so the people have no way to comprehend them. When people cannot find even coarse rice to fill them, they would not think of wine and meat, and just as those who do not have rags to wear would not think of silk and embroidered garments . . . to long for terms which are hard to understand even for the most knowledgeable is to do the very opposite to governing effectively. Therefore, subtle and mysterious discourse goes against the actual circumstances of the people.26 As the unstable environment of the third century BCE taught Han Fei, life in general tends to be very rough and aimed mostly at surviving. An effective government must have the sensibility and awareness of the harsh conditions of existence, so if the law was to be universally applied, it must also be universally understood—even if the aesthetic cost was to simplify its language to the level comprehended by most people. Finally, when referring to the interpretation and application of the law, Han Fei used an intriguing but effective image: the law should be clear like a mirror and reliable like a scale, and in such way, the law would have the constancy of the dao. If a mirror is kept clean and without obstructions, then the beautiful and the ugly can be compared; if a scale is kept straight and without obstructions, then the light and the heavy can be weighed. Indeed, by shaking a mirror one cannot obtain clarity and by shaking a scale, it cannot stay even. The same can be said about the laws. Therefore, the early kings took the dao as the constant standard, and the law as the root [of government].27

THE DAO OF GOVERNMENT As the previous pages attempt to show, Han Fei went to great lengths to explain the necessity for a legal system to have certain defining features in order to successfully transform detrimental prejudices in favor of a better society: public promulgation, clarity and universal application. But perhaps its most important attribute—in order to achieve a stability that went beyond individual affairs—was the need to have a government based on legal principles in harmony with the dao. As Han Fei wrote in Chapter XXIX , “if one follows the dao to fulfill the law, then those of noble rank will be delighted and great villainies will be rectified.”28

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In this regard, Han Fei’s political philosophy seems to be embedded in the processual cosmology that dominated classical Chinese philosophy during the period.29 In effect, Han Fei made an explicit effort to avoid the same mistake he attributed to the literati of the time—that of creating a set of ossified standards that could not be adapted to changing circumstances. “With times changing, if ways of bringing proper order do not keep pace, there will be chaos,” Han Fei wrote in Chapter LIV, “therefore, the sage in governing the people effectively makes the laws move with time.”30 But, as we have seen, in order to be effective a legal system needs constancy. In this regard, fa and dao were, for the legalist thinker, considered to be correlative in both their “unchanging” and “changing” features. In the political arena, the harmony of the laws with the processual nature of the dao translated into their adaptability to the changing circumstances of history. As Wang explains: Governing by fa does change, but it must update itself to the objective conditions of a particular era as well as to the objective tendencies of human nature for that particular era . . . While fa must move with time in order to be appropriate to the objective conditions of a particular historical phase, it must nevertheless remain constant for that particular phase in history to secure an orderly process of government which, in turn, is the prerequisite for an orderly society.31 In other words, Han Fei understood that the essence of philosophical thought is not frozen in time. Life, as the object of philosophy, is temporally situated and develops historically. Therefore, philosophers should not be afraid of the contingency of history and should realize that it actually thrives when is in harmony with its own circumstances. In this sense, philosophical concepts such as fa must be revised with each era to reflect the times (or to use a Hegelian metaphor, fa must be revised to grasp its own time in thought). But if the system of laws was to be in harmony with the higher order of things, then, Han Fei’s call for the equal application of the law and the standardization of rewards and punishments would also have to pertain to all the “myriad things” and that meant including the ruler as well.32 With regard to ministers and common people, Han Fei was quite explicit throughout his writings, for instance in Chapter VI he stated, “when faults are to be punished, the highest minister cannot escape; when good capabilities are to be rewarded, the lowest person must not be neglected.”33 All levels of society receive equal treatment as a result of the impartial application of the law: punishment and rewards go to those who deserve them, regardless of their status.

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Furthermore, in an effective government, rulers—like ministers and common people—are also subject to a “model” of order.34 Because rulers hold a higher position in society, as such their acts have great consequences. Hence given their position, Han Fei concluded that their political acts should respond to the highest source of order: they attend to the patterns of the “grand model” of things.35 “Dao is the beginning of the myriad things,” Han Fei explained in Chapter V, “the guideline of what is to be preferred and what is not. Because of this, the enlightened ruler abides by the beginning in order to understand the source of the myriad things, and studies the norms of effective government to understand the first sprouts of efficacy and failure.”36 Furthermore, in order to learn the source of the myriad things, in Chapter VIII Han Fei made a series of recommendations for rulers as a means to remain within the “tendency of the dao” in such way that they can become “the abode of the dao.” To remain empty and tranquil and practice non-coercive action is the tendency of the dao. To compare and check is the shape of affairs. [That is to say,] to compare with concrete events and check against empty assertions. Where the root and trunk of affairs are unshaken, motion and rest will not cause any loss of its original status. Whether you move or rest, practice non-coercive action. If you show delight, affairs will multiply; if you show hatred, resentment will appear. So, discard both delight and hatred and with an empty mind become the abode of the dao.37 As the passage suggests, for Han Fei rulers should leave their personal preferences aside and guide the state according to the patterns of the dao. By having the highest source of order as their model, rulers must understand that the law is not an instrument for their own selfish preferences.38 Rulers who let themselves be guided by their unruly tendencies and promulgate laws based on their selfish ends, will find themselves in conflict with the order of things. Han Fei comes to the conclusion that “calamities and prosperity arise from the dao and the law, and not from [the ruler’s] loves and dislikes.”39 In other words, the proper outcomes of government—aimed at a well-ordered society—are not the result of random actions or events. On the contrary, they have clear patterns: on one side, catastrophic results come out of acting in an arbitrary way, that is to say, by basing state decisions on impulse and raw inclinations—as Han Fei clarified when he wrote, “to be greedy, stubborn and fond of profit, is the source of a state’s destruction and the demise of its ruler.”40 On the other, order and prosperity arise from the application of laws in accordance with the dao. Hence effective government

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is the result of the agreement with the order of things and the implementation of the law in harmony with such order. In Chapter XXIX , there is a significant passage that illustrates the scope of Han Fei’s political imagination. In this passage Han Fei allowed himself to picture the kind of society that could result if a ruler followed his advice and governed by being dao-like. Thus, when the era has great peace, the law is like the morning dew: pure, simple, and not scattered. Within the mind [of the people] there are no tied up resentments and in their mouths there are no vexing words. Thus, cart-pulling horses are not exhausted by remote journeys [into battle], and [war] banners and flags do not become disordered in the great marshes. The myriad people do not lose their lives by invading armies, and talented people do not cut short their life spans among the banners [of war].41 Once again, this is a meaningful passage because Han Fei wishes us to see the kind of society resulting from a ruler who, as he wrote in Chapter XXIX , “did not go against the pattern of tian”42 and who “maintains established patterns and accords with self-spontaneity.”43 By following Han Fei’s advice, rulers can become “great persons,” namely, those who extend their relations and actions to make the largest contribution to society. “Great persons,” Han Fei wrote in the same chapter, “by patterning after the features of tian and the earth, provide the myriad things, and, by applying their mind to the study of mountains and oceans, they have a rich state.”44 In this way, Jullien writes, rulers are “like the dao, the ultimate term in the great process of things, of which nothing is known except that ‘they exist’.”45 As these passages suggest, Han Fei’s insistence on government principles in accord with the dao and tian as well as his picture of a well-ordered and peaceful society suggest the sense that there are moral boundaries and ends in his political philosophy. Peter Moody, who also suggests this reading of Han Fei’s political philosophy affirms the following, “Han Fei develops his system in order to promote certain values, particularly political stability.”46 Political stability is the result of peace and order, which are the moral ends that undergirds a system laws in harmony with the grand scale of things. “If rulers are not as great as tian,” Han Fei reminds his readers, “they will not be able to embrace all inferiors; if their mind is not like the earth, they will not be able to support everything that is.”47 Here, the legalist philosopher introduces an additional value besides stability: if the ruler is going to follow tian and the dao, then, apart from bringing stability and peace for the state as a whole, the ruler and the legal system should be inclusive and supportive

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of all the members of society, in particular of the weak. In this regard, a society should have a structure that allows the edification of stable standards against the powerful. This might be one of the most important features of Han Fei’s political philosophy: it is not enough to have a stable society if there is no sense of protection for the weak. In other words—to use a more current terminology—Han Fei proposed that a society has to be not only well-ordered but it also has to be just in order to have the characteristics of the grand model of things. To be just and supportive—like the earth itself—both weak and powerful need to be governed by the same system of laws. But, to build such equality in front of the laws, greater attention needed to be taken with regard to the powerful. Throughout his writings, Han Fei repeatedly used the image of a tiger (hu 虎) to refer to those whose power is abused and, hence, needs to be harnessed. For him “tigers” represented local lords, imperial clans, feudal families, or even the rulers themselves, whose “claws” are the instruments of power that enable them to use others for their own benefit. Still, Han Fei believed that a legal system would limit their damage to society, because “when rulers enforce the laws, even great tigers will become afraid; when rulers inflict penalties, even big tigers will become calm. When laws and penalties are followed tigers turn into ordinary human beings, that is, they revert to their proper state.”48 In other words, without the laws, rulers will be incapable of enforcing order and preserving their rule. Still, the legal system might not end all types of crime, but for Han Fei it should be particularly designed with the “tigers” in mind, because they cause greater damage to society than common people. Thus, Han Fei concludes that, “building a cage will not provide against rats, but will enable the weak and timid to subdue tigers.”49 Apart from “tigers,” Han Fei also referred to these dangerous individuals with another term which, in effect, could be used interchangeably: he called them literally “heavy persons (zhong ren 重人),” in the sense of “powerful persons.” In the same manner as the so-called “tigers,” “powerful persons ignore decrees and act arbitrarily, benefit themselves by offending the laws, help their families by consuming state resources, and have enough power to manipulate their ruler. Such are the so-called ‘powerful persons’ (重人).”50 As the legalist philosopher suggests, the defining essence of the “powerful persons” was acting in a way that brought benefit exclusively to them. That is the reason why, Han Fei adds, “the witches of the ruler are, without doubt, powerful persons, who are only competent in the practice of selfishness (si 私),”51 and, as a consequence, are a plague to society. As we have seen, Han Fei proposed that the role of the law is to take action and remedy the presence of these damaging individuals in a society.

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As Wang explains, “the critical function of fa is to effectively regulate and channel the general tendency of human nature toward personal welfare, in order to realize the principal goal of good government, namely, public interest in an orderly society.”52 “Public interest,” as Wang suggests, is the key term used by Han Fei in order to understand how to address the antisocial behavior of those who act against the benefit of the community as a whole. Han Fei contrasted the term “public interest (gong 公)” to the “pursuit of selfish interest (si 私)” of those who act either like “tigers” or “powerful persons,” as we saw before. He did not consider himself the creator of this dichotomy. On the contrary, he traced the origin of the two terms—gong and si—to the literary tradition in order to provide his analysis with the authority of the past. Han Fei attributed the origin and meaning of these two opposing terms to Cang Jie, the mythological creator of writing. In ancient times, when Cang Jie invented writing, he assigned the element “self-centered” to the character “private” and combined the elements “opposite to” and “private” to form the character “public.” The opposition between “public” and “private” was well understood by Cang Jie. To regard them both as being quite similar at the present time is to suffer from a lack understanding.53 It is worth noting that Han Fei made an interesting linguistic analysis of the terms, which allowed him to understand what seemed to be a source of confusion at the time. Even though people might think that “private”— which actually has the sense of being and acting in a “self-centered” way, as Han Fei points out—and “public” interests are identical, they are only speculating about a society that cannot subsist because, by equating the terms, they are showing an inability to comprehend what conduct is worth pursuing for the greater good. Furthermore, there is a difference between what should coincide, but in actuality is divergent. In effect, based on Han Fei’s observation and analysis of the social and political environment of his time, people’s public and private interests were on opposite sides. Without such realization, that is, the realization of the nature of the problem, a solution is impossible to formulate. This is the first epistemological step taken by Han Fei: the recognition of the true content of the problem. Han Fei provided his readers with a sample of his observations with regard to the contradiction of interests in Chapter XLIX that deserves to be quoted at length. By neglecting those who respect the superior and revere the law of the people and by maintaining gangs of wandering selfish horsemen, it is not

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possible to attain a strong effective government. When the state is peaceful, literati and horsemen are both supported; when there are great difficulties, armed officers are taken into service. Thus, those who are useful are not used; those who are used are not useful. For this reason, those who attend public affairs simplified their duties, while wandering scholars increase in numbers. That is why the age has been led into chaos.54 It is possible to sense from his anguish that Han Fei thought that the world was operating upside down. Still after describing how, in effect, those who acted for themselves served ends opposite to the public benefit, Han Fei extended the distinction to what he called public and private appropriateness55 and argued in favor of ending the latter. The dao of the enlightened ruler is to make clear the distinction between public and private interests, to enact clear laws, and get rid of private favors. To enforce what is ordered and stop what is prohibited is the public appropriateness of rulers. To practice selfishness and argue in favor of friends, and not to be encouraged by any reward nor to be discouraged by any punishment, is the private appropriateness of ministers. If private appropriateness is enforced, then there is chaos; if public appropriateness is enforced, there is effective government: hence the need to distinguish between public and private interests. Ministers have both selfish minds and public appropriateness. To practice self-cultivation, become pure, practice public creeds, and follow straight acts, is the public appropriateness of the minister. To corrupt his conduct, follow his desires, secure his personal interests, and benefit his own family, is the selfish mind of the minister. If the enlightened ruler is on the throne, ministers will discard their selfish minds and practice public appropriateness. If the chaotic sovereign is on the throne, ministers will discard public appropriateness and follow their selfish minds.56 Rulers too are not exempt from acting in accordance to the same principles that they are going to regulate. They cannot pursue their private interests, because, to act in such way has consequences, not only a breakdown of the legal order, but also for the moral order itself understood in a more general way. In other words, Han Fei wrote, “when the ruler abandons the law and acts using his own selfish interests, then the proper order between superior and inferior will not exist.”57 Hence rulers cannot lower themselves by acting in a selfish way: their position of great responsibility demands from them to be, as we saw before, in harmony with the great order of the world.

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As one can sense from the previous passages, it might be misleading to affirm that, “self-interest is not inherently reprehensible in Han Fei’s view.”58 In effect, contrary to this line of interpretation, Han Fei considered that the purpose of establishing a legal system is to have it designed, not to promote, but to regulate against, self-interest. As Han Fei writes on Chapter XLV, The purpose of enacting laws and decrees is to abolish selfishness. Once laws and decrees are put into practice, the dao of selfishness comes to an end. Selfishness introduces chaos into the law . . . Hence I say: “Effective government is in place because of the laws, chaos is in place because of selfishness. When the laws are enacted, no selfish act can be practiced.” Hence the saying: “the dao of selfishness leads to chaos, the dao of the laws leads to effective government.” If the superior misses the dao, clever men will use selfish words and worthies will follow their selfish mind, the superiors will confer selfish favors, and the inferiors will pursue selfish desires.59 As we have seen, for Han Fei, the natural tendencies of people make them sometimes lean towards selfishness. History and experience shows that is how people act, so one cannot simply pretend to destroy such tendencies; hence there is a need to deal with them as they are and not as they should be. As we have seen, the channeling is done through external means, namely, a legal system that places guidelines to lead people to behave with a public end in mind that benefits the society as a whole. In this regard, it is possible that the introduction of the notions of the public and the private seems to have been Han Fei’s attempt to dissociate the state from the ruler and to give the laws an end in themselves different from just preserving the political advantage (shi 勢) of the ruler per se. In this sense, Moody explains, “the point of [Han Fei’s] legalism is the power of the state, not the private advantage of the ruler.”60 In effect, the private pursuits of the ruler bring extremely damaging effects on the state because: Other ‘satisfactions’ sought by the ruler run counter to the interests of the state: a desire to be admired and loved . . . comfort, pleasure, leisure; the reinforcement of his vanity and the assurance he somehow merits the privileges he enjoys; any other tastes or inclinations he has as a regular human being that might distract from his control over the state. Han Fei has no illusions about any mystique adhering to kingship or anything else implying that rulers are other than frail human beings.61

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As a consequence, Moody also adds, since rulers are as fragile as any other person “there is no reason to think the good of the ruler, as the ruler perceives it, will correspond with the public good, the requisites of order; so the ruler must be controlled, induced to choose the public good as his own good.”62 Thus, as we have already mentioned, Han Fei realized that the search for personal profit by rulers must be also channeled and guided, as it is done by every member of society, but in their case, they should not only be bound by the law, but they ought to pattern themselves according to the highest source of order. In Chapter XXIX Han Fei allows himself once again to envision a society based on such patterning. If rulers are not as great as tian, they will not be able to embrace all inferiors; if their mind is not like the earth, they will not be able to support everything that is. Mount Tai maintains its height without establishing a difference between desirable and undesirable; rivers and oceans maintain their abundance without choosing between small tributaries. In the same manner, great men provide the myriad things by patterning after tian and the earth and make a state wealthy by studying mountains and oceans. The superior shows no harm to those who express anger; the inferior does not conceal resentment at anybody. Thus, high and low live in community and take the dao as their abode. As a result, long-term benefits are gathered up and great achievements are accomplished; one achieves recognition and leaves [the quest for Confucian] excellence behind. Such is the height of effective government.63 Moreover, if rulers model themselves on the dao, political rule is carried out through a government in accordance to the patterns of the “myriad things.” One could even speculate, based on the noticeable absence of the language of reward and punishment in passages such as the previous one that, when Han Fei spoke about the highest point of effective government, the legalist philosopher might have thought that ruling solely based on the so-called “two handles” was insufficient. In particular, if one takes into account that his aim was a government that “reaches the four quarters, but its source is the center . . . [where] events have their proper place, talents are given their proper use. [Thus], when all are in their proper place then superior and inferior will act without coercion (wuwei).”64 In this regard, it appears as if Han Fei wished that the genuine function of government should be, in the best of cases, to provide standards and serve just as a guide that ultimately let things settle by and for themselves. But, given Han Fei’s premises, could it stay that way?

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THE PROBLEM OF THE SINGLE RULER In addition to the previous discussion on the function and structure of government, I would like to point out that there is an issue inherent to all forms of “legalism” that remained implicit and, in spite of all efforts to expand his notion of the law, it never became explicit for Han Fei. The issue itself comes down to the following: there seems to be some sense of “Aristotelian” justice in all legalists’ writings with all its virtues and vices. As argued by Aristotle, in a legalist context, justice takes the form of lawfulness.65 This sense of justice originates from upholding the law as the highest and only moral standard and from the necessary outcome that all members of society are compelled to obey the law under all circumstances. This way of thinking was not unique to Han Fei or Aristotle but has had a long existence—in the West, at least from the time of the Ancient Greeks— and has in Cicero perhaps one of its most important representatives: for Cicero justice, in a general sense, came down to the following maxim, “legibus parere summa libertas est (the greatest liberty consists in obedience to the law).”66 First, it is important to be aware that in the sense of justice as lawfulness there is a tacit implication that laws must be just. In effect, accepting and defending the opposite would be an aberration of the moral standards that Han Fei—and others within this tradition—seemed to defend. As we have seen, a system of laws with what he conceived to be proper moral ends was Han Fei’s solution to his environment of war and chaos. Still, based on Aristotle’s insights an important question arises: is a society just because it has a legal system in place and is it always just to follow such laws? In his discussion of justice—understood as δικαιοσύνη—in book V of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explained “since the lawless person is unjust and the lawful person just, it is obvious that everything lawful is in a way just.”67 This argument is the foundation for his understanding of justice as lawfulness. So, the consequence of Aristotle’s criteria of justice as defined in the previous passages is that a lawful person is just “in a way (πως),” which means that, following Kraut’s interpretation, justice seems to admit some qualification of “degree.”68 Thus, it appears that, depending on the social order, any person living under a system of laws would live in a society with some “degree” of justice. But with regard to such “degree”—Aristotle explained—the law must meet some standards of decency by “producing and preserving happiness and its parts of the political community.”69 Such a standard of decency is a necessary requirement of justice because, after all, there are such things as unjust laws as Aristotle himself explained in book III of the Politics.70 With regard to Han Fei, as we have seen, he was also

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concerned with those standards of decency for the laws (for instance, public promulgation, clarity and universal application of the law, as well as the application of proportional punishments and rewards according to the actions themselves, and so on) and, one might even conclude that, as limited and imperfect as Han Fei’s proposed system of legality might have been, it can be considered under Aristotle’s inclusive criteria to some extent just. Nonetheless, when Han Fei’s rulers serve as lawmakers, they will be legislating within a monarchical system and while he placed limits and guidelines to try to channel their selfish impulses, they still remain as the sole source of power. In this regard, Han Fei himself seemed to be unaware of an important political limitation of his project. Because his philosophical emphasis was on how to achieve political stability and not on the nature of political knowledge, he was not able to make the epistemological move made by Aristotle in Book II of the Politics of placing the nature of a regime prior, not only to the order of the family but also to the laws.71 Hence Han Fei could not redefine the nature of his political regime and envision a society in any other form but one ruled by a single individual.72 It is also worth noting that Han Fei also reverted to the application of the image of the tiger, which as we saw before, he used for the most part to refer to those abusing their power, to speak about the ruler. Rulers need claws and fangs, Han Fei thought, to be able to enforce their rule and preserve their political advantage (shi 勢). In Chapter LII , he explained: The tiger and the leopard can overcome people and catch the hundred beasts by virtue of their claws and fangs. If the tiger and the leopard lost their claws and fangs, they would surely fall under control of people. Now, the political advantage of powerful people, the ruler and princes exist in virtue of their claws and fangs, in this sense, they fall under the same category as the tiger and the leopard.73 From this perspective, punishment, rewards, and even the laws themselves might end up serving as the “claws” and “fangs” of power. Thus, the risk always exists that they become instruments for “controlled violence.” In such situation, since absolute rulers do not have the people to regulate them,74 they are quite susceptible to becoming administrators of violence. If that is the case, then Han Fei’s ruler might act out of necessity against the moral principles that the legalist philosopher was trying to defend.75 The intended depersonalization of the state might turn wuwei, instead, into a position of withdrawal where the one in command does not show his own hand (wuxian 無見) and instead holds his ministers accountable for formulating and enforcing policy (xingming 形名).76 Thus, under these

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conditions, ministers become agents of coercion and the ruler ends up administering an “economy of violence.”77 Jullien also agrees that, “the limitation of the [legalist] system lay in its failure to dissociate totally the state from the ruler.”78 This is where Han Fei’s vision seemed to find its ultimate limits: its limits lie in the very nature of his political system. After all, the laws he envisioned were designed to serve under a monarchical regime. For this reason, if one takes into account Leo Strauss’ insight in this matter, “the cause of the laws is the regime . . . [the] regime is the order, the form, which gives society its character,”79 then one realizes that the laws will always be subservient to the monarchical regime and not the other way around. So unless Han Fei could envision, not just laws, but an entire regime that was appropriately directed, constructed and ordered in accordance with the goals he proposed of equality and justice, his project was quite possibly doomed to fail. Hence, although Han Fei’s intention appears to have been to envisage a state of law, the result of the application of his ideas most likely might be a state ruled by law, where the law would be at the service of the one in power.80 As I have tried to argue, Han Fei tried to elaborate a net of limitations and guidelines, for both rulers and subjects. In this sense, his efforts to depersonalize government and limit the power of a monarch resemble the efforts made by others in the West in later centuries. But, it is important to clarify that Han Fei never came to the conclusion that monarchy was the best form of government—as it was done, for instance, by Thomas of Aquinas81— but assumes rather than it is the natural form of organization. So, at the end, Han Fei’s government is ruled by a single monarch and as a result, following Jullien, the legalist philosopher became another manifestation of one the “essential differences between China and the West, [that is,] no form of political regime other than royalty was imaginable.”82 As I mentioned before, still there seemed to be a genuine attempt on the part of Han Fei to have a political philosophy that “let things settle themselves” and to give laws an end in themselves in order to advance the depersonalization of the ruler. Thus, by pushing the depersonalization of power Han Fei tried to design a more abstract and autonomous notion of the state so that the quality of the ruler did not need to be a consideration in its continuing success. In such way, Pines concludes, Han Fei was telling rulers that “the price for their omnipotence is refraining from exercising their limitless power.”83 But it seems at the end, in spite of all efforts, under Han Fei’s ideal regime, it is quite possible that the subjects had no real power to prevent kings from passing laws that end up serving their own particular interest. The only restraint to prevent enacting laws and ruling for selfish benefit—that is, against the dao—was that doing so would be going against

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the order of things which might conduce, sooner or later, to utter destruction. This destruction will be originated both from within and without and will come upon the ruler from the “myriad things” themselves. One final element must be mentioned with regard to Han Fei’s effort to reform the society of his time. Ultimately, Han Fei was conscious of the possible dire consequences (not to mention the difficulty of overcoming social inertia) of attempting to make deep changes in any society. In effect, among many reforms, limiting hereditary privileges and most of all attempting to provide guidelines and limitations on the power of a king was, to say the least, a dangerous enterprise. So, in some sense, he was aware that, like others before him, his words might bring him terrible punishments or even death at the hands of those who were opposed to such radical changes.84 One might even speculate that he almost predicted his own death—which was ordered by the king of Qin under the recommendation of Li Si—when Han Fei remembered the tragic destiny of Wu Chi and Shang Yang. The state of Chu, did not use Wu Qi and fell into chaos; Qin, practicing the laws of Shang Yang, became rich and strong. Although the two philosophers’ words were appropriate, how is it possible that Wu Qi was dismembered and Shang Yang was torn into pieces by chariots? It was because the main ministers resented the laws and the petty people disliked effective government. In the present age the main officials yearn for power and the petty people are content with chaos, those social conditions are more intense than the ones that existed in Chu and Qin. If rulers do not listen to filial piety and public interest or follow the laws and techniques as it was done by King Dao of Chu, then how could the scholars [of today] ignore the dangerous outcome that happened to the two philosophers by making their principles of law and techniques clear? This is the reason why the age has fallen into chaos and has no authoritative ruler.85

NOTES 1. “The law and techniques of the most effective government are clear enough. Yet scholars of the era do not understand them.” All references to the Han Fei are from Fu Wuguang 傅武光 and Lai Yanyuan 賴炎元, ed., Xinyi Han Feizi 新譯韓非子 (Taibei: Sanmin Shuju, 2003). Citations include the name of the work followed by the chapter. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 2. See Wang Hsiao-po, “The Significance of the Concept of ‘Fa’ in Han Fei’s Thought System,” Philosophy East and West 27.1 (1977): 35–52; Kenneth Winston, “The Internal Morality of Chinese Legalism,” Singapore Journal of Legal Studies (2005): 313–47; Qiang Fang and Roger Des Forges, “Were

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Chinese Rulers above the Law? – Toward a Theory of the Rule of Law in China from Early Times to 1949 CE ,” Stanford Journal of International Law 44 (2008): 101–46 and Arabella Lyon, “Rhetorical Authority in Athenian Democracy and the Chinese Legalism of Han Fei,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 41.1 (2008): 51–71. I agree with Peerenboom that in spite of being a contested concept, “at its most basic, rule of law refers to a system in which law is able to impose meaningful restrains on the state and individual members of the ruling elite, as captured in the rhetorically powerful if overly simplistic notions of a government of laws, supremacy of the law, and equality of all before the law.” Randall Peerenboom, China’s Long March Toward Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 2. 3. After the fall of the Zhou, a certain group of “officials” or “literati,” known as shi (士), who filled the middle and lower rank of the civil government became known as ru (儒). Although after the time of Confucius this group of literati became loosely associated with Confucianism, recent studies on the subject suggest that by the time of Han Fei the ru included a quite broad spectrum of people, from experts in social life, discourse and religious rituals to professional artists and advisors. See, Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 17–21; Nicolas Zufferey, To The Origins of Confucianism: the Ru in pre-Qin Times and During the Early Han Dynasty (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 155–7; Lee Dian Rainey, Confucius and Confucianism: The Essentials (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 120–1 and Nicolas Zufferey, “On the Ru and Confucius”, in Michael Nylan, ed. and Simon Leys trans., The Analects: A Norton Critical Edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), 129–40. 4. See Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E. (Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 3. 5. “天下大亂, 賢聖不明, 道徳不一天下, 多得一察焉以自好.” Zhuangzi 莊子, Xinyi Zhuangzi du ben 新譯莊子讀本, ed. Huang Jin Hong 黃錦鋐 (Taibei: Sanmin Shuju, 2005), chapter XXXIII . 6. “Li, which were norms of behavior, traditionally believed to be established by sage-kings but which more probably emerged from practices socially sanctioned over time, as well as codified prescriptive rules imposed by rulers on subjects and coercively enforced.” Sor-hoon Tan, “The Dao of Politics: Li (Rituals/Rites) and Laws as Pragmatic Tools of Government,” Philosophy East and West 61.3 (2011): 473. 7. For a more on the notion of li, see Derk Bodde, Chapters on Chinese Civilization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 178–80; Chenyang Li, “Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation between Li and Ren in Confucius’ Analects,” Philosophy East and West 57.3 (2007): 311–29; Kurtis Hagen, “The Propriety of Confucius: A Sense-of-Ritual,” Asian Philosophy 20.1 (2010): 1–25; Sungmoon Kim, “Before and after Ritual: Two Accounts of Li as Virtue in Early Confucianism,” Sophia 51.2 (2012): 195–210; Hagop Sarkissian, “Ritual and Rightness in the Analects,” in Dao Companion to the Analects, ed. Amy Olberding (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 95–116 and Geir Sigurðsson, Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015), 10–13. 8. Wang, “The Significance of the Concept of ‘Fa’,” 35.

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9. “今有美堯、舜、湯、武、禹之道於當今之世者, 必為新聖笑矣. 是以聖人不期脩 古, 不法常可, 論世之事, 因為之備.” Han Feizi, chapter XLIX . 10. See, Derk Bodde, “The Legalist Concept of History,” Chinese Studies in History 8.1 (1975): 311–15 and Alejandro Bárcenas, “Han Fei’s Enlightened Ruler,” Asian Philosophy 23.3 (2013): 236–59. 11. The notion of fa (法), as Hansen suggests, should be considered in Han Fei’s text “in combination with a number of terms and the compound use makes more sense if we keep the meaning of fa general.” Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 349–50. Fa can be also translated as “objective standards,” but “what is important is its measurement-like character.” Chad Hansen, “Fa (Standards: Laws) and Meaning Changes in Chinese Philosophy” Philosophy East and West 44.3 (1994): 479. What seems to be clear is that Han Fei used fa in broader sense than lu (律). See, Bodde, Chapters on Chinese Civilization, 175 and Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, 350. 12. Nylan concludes that the compulsive power of the laws in Han Fei has as its aim overriding the desire of most people to gratify all their impulses. See, Michael Nylan, “On the Politics of Pleasure,” Asia Major 14.1 (2001): 82. 13. “κολαζόμεναι δὲ ὑπό τε τῶν νόμων.” Plato, Republic, 571b. All textual references are from John Burnet, ed. Platonis Opera (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903). 14. “法 教 心.” Han Feizi, chapter XXVII . Han Fei seems to be addressing a section of Book of Rites that later became the Doctrine of the Mean when in the same section he quotes: “古之人曰: 其心難知, 喜怒難中也” [the ancients said: ‘it is difficult to know the mind. It is difficult to balance joy and anger’].” See, Lee A. Rainey, Confucius and Confucianism, p. 126. 15. See, Alejandro Bárcenas, “Xunzi and Han Fei on Human Nature,” International Philosophical Quarterly 52.2 (2012): 135–48. 16. Based on Kant’s classification, Han Fei’s approach could be considered an empirical moral system deriving its ethics from outer grounds. See, Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften 27: Vorlesungen über Moralphilosophie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978), 1405. 17. See, Rogert T. Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study of Ancient Chinese Political Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 116 and Sor-hoon Tan, “The Dao of Politics: Li (Rituals/Rites) and Laws as Pragmatic Tools of Government”: 473 18. Graham writes, “for the Legalists the li have no significance except as the customs current at the time.” A.C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle: Open Court, 1989), 270. 19. “法不阿貴, 繩不撓曲 . . . 刑過不避大臣, 賞善不遺匹夫。故矯上之失, 詰下之邪, 治亂決繆, 絀羡齊非, 一民之軌, 莫如法.” Han Feizi, chapter VI . 20. Wang, “The Significance of the Concept of ‘Fa’,” 36. 21. “昔者吳起教楚悼王以楚國之俗曰: 「大臣太重, 封君太眾。 若此, 則上偪主而下虐民, 此貧國弱兵之道也。不如使封君之子孫三世而收爵祿, 絕滅百吏之祿秩, 損不急之枝官, 以奉選練之士。」悼王行之期年而薨矣, 吳起枝解於楚.” Han Feizi, chapter XIII .

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22. “法禁明著, 則官法; 必於賞罰, 賞罰不阿, 則民用。民用官治則國富.” Han Feizi, chapter XLVI . 23. “法者, 編著之圖籍, 設之於官府, 而布之於百姓者也.” Han Feizi, chapter XXXVIII . 24. See Wang, “The Significance of the Concept of ‘Fa’,” 40. 25. “法者, 憲令著於官府, 刑罰必於民心, 賞存乎慎法, 而罰加乎姦令者也, 此臣之所師也.” Han Feizi, chapter XLIII . 26. “今為眾人法, 而以上智之所難知, 則民無從識之矣。故糟糠不飽者不務粱肉, 短褐不完者不待文繡 . . . 慕上知之論, 則其於治反矣。故微妙之言, 非民務也.” Han Feizi, chapter XLIX . 27. “故鏡執清而無事, 美惡從而比焉; 衡執正而無事, 輕重從而載焉。 夫搖鏡則不得為明, 搖衡則不得為正, 法之謂也。故先王以道為常, 以法為本.” Han Feizi, chapter XIX . 28. “因道全法, 君子樂而大姦止.” Han Feizi, chapter XXIX . 29. See, David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, “Rationality, Correlativity and the Language of Process,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 5.2 (1991): 85–106 and David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth and Transcendence (Albany: State University of New York, 1998), part III . 30. “時移而治不易者亂 . . . 故聖人之治民也, 法與時移.” Han Feizi, chapter LIV. 31. Wang, “The Significance of the Concept of ‘Fa’,” 42–3. 32. As a consequence, Han Fei’s system could be seen as a government de jure, that is, instituted to preserve common interest, in contrast to a government de facto, in which the laws are made to protect the interest of an individual. See, Maurizio Viroli, From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics 1250–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 127. 33. “刑過不避大臣, 賞善不遺匹夫.” Han Feizi, chapter VI . 34. In this sense, rulers are also subject to punishment when they break the law. Han Fei, for instance, praised the moment in which the crown prince of the state of Chu was punished for violating the “law of the inner gate.” See, Han Feizi, chapter XXXIV. 35. Graham attributes this to the daoist influence on Han Fei. See Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 285–92. However, the notion that there was an intimate relation between the cosmos and the political order was not unique to the daoist but was a pervasive idea in ancient China. Cf. Aihe Wang, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 36. “道者, 萬物之始, 是非之紀也。是以明君守始以知萬物之源, 治紀以知善敗之端.” Han Feizi, chapter V. 37. “虛靜無為, 道之情也; 參伍比物, 事之形也。參之以比物, 伍之以合虛。根幹不革, 則動泄不失矣。動之溶之, 無為而改之。喜之則多事, 惡之則生怨。故去喜去惡, 虛心以為道舍.” Han Feizi, chapter VIII . 38. See, Eirik Lang Harris, “Is the Law in the Way? On The Source of Han Fei’s Laws,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38.1 (2011): 76. 39. “禍福生乎道法, 而不出乎愛惡.” Han Feizi, chapter XXIX

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40. “貪愎喜利, 則滅國殺身之本也.” Han Feizi, chapter X. 41. “故至安之世, 法如朝露, 純樸不散, 心無結怨, 口無煩言。故車馬不疲弊於遠路, 旌旗不亂於大澤, 萬民不失命於寇戎, 雄駿不創壽於旗幢; 豪傑不著名於圖書, 不錄功於盤盂, 記年之牒空虛。故曰: 利莫長於簡, 福莫久於安.” Han Feizi, Chapter XXIX . This passage, among others, might help some interpreters realize that Han Fei was far from defending what Kuang-ming Wu calls the “four fatal defects” of Fajia: “shallow pragmatism with no ultimate goal/ ground, crafty/secretive, distrusting people to exploit them, and external legal coercion to ruin them.” Kuang-ming Wu, “Realism (Fajia 法家), Human Akrasia, and the Milieu for Ultimate Virtue,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 2.1 (2002): 25. 42. “不逆天理.” Han Feizi, chapter XXIX . 43. “守成理, 因自然.” Han Feizi, chapter XXIX . 44. “故大人寄形於天地而萬物備, 歷心於山海而國家富.” Han Feizi, chapter XXIX . Perhaps a reference to Analects 6.23. 45. François Jullien, La propension des choses: pour une histoire de l’efficacité en Chine (Paris: Seuil, 1992), 52. 46. Peter R. Moody, “The Legalism of Han Fei-tzu and its Affinities with Modern Political Thought.” International Philosophical Quarterly 19.3 (1979): 328. 47. “上不天則下不遍覆, 心不地則物不必載.” Han Feizi, chapter XXIX . 48. “主施其法, 大虎將怯; 主施其刑, 大虎自寧。法刑（狗） 〔苟〕信, 虎化為人, 復反其真.” Han Feizi, chapter VIII . 49. “故設柙, 非所以備鼠也, 所以使怯弱能服虎也.” Han Feizi, XXVI . 50. “重人也者, 無令而擅為, 虧法以利私, 耗國以便家, 力能得其君, 此所為重人也.” Han Feizi, chapter XI . 51. “人主之蔡嫗, 必其重人也。重人者, 能行私者也.” Han Feizi, Chapter XXXIV. 52. Wang, “The Significance of the Concept of ‘Fa’,” 42. 53. “古者蒼頡之作書也, 自環者謂之私, 背私謂之公。公私之相背也, 乃蒼頡固以知之矣。今以為同利者, 不察之患也.” Han Feizi, Chapter XLIX . 54. “廢敬上畏法之民, 而養遊俠私劍之屬。舉行如此, 治強不可得也。國平養儒俠, 難至用介土, 所利非所用, 所用非所利。是故服事者簡其業, 而游學者日眾, 是世之所以亂也.” Han Feizi, chapter XLIX . Lewis explains that the “wondering horsemen (you xia 遊俠)” traveled among states seeking employment as mercenaries. They were in charge of avenging at all costs a slain or disgraced master. See, Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 80. 55. Although there are alternatives to translate these terms, I have chosen to maintain Han Fei’s own words intact in an attempt to respect his desire to clarify that there is a difference between the public duties and private interests of those who serve in government by relating the terms gong and si to yi. For Han Fei, when someone occupies a position of public service, it is not appropriate to pursue personal interests. In other words, what is appropriate for personal gain is not appropriate for the benefit of the society as a whole. As

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Han Fei suggests, the dao of the ruler is to clarify this distinction among those who serve in government. 56. “明主之道, 必明於公私之分, 明法制, 去私恩。夫令必行, 禁必止, 人主之公義也; 必行其私, 信於朋友, 不可為賞勸, 不可為罰沮, 人臣之私義也。私義行則亂, 公義行則治, 故公私有分 人臣有私心, 有公義。脩身潔白而行公行正, 居官無私, 人臣之公義也; 汙行從欲, 安身利家, 人臣之私心也。明主在上, 則人臣去私心, 行公義; 亂主在上, 則人臣去公義, 行私心.” Han Feizi, chapter XIX . 57. “人主釋法用私, 則上下不別矣.” Han Feizi, Chapter VI . 58. Paul R. Goldin, “Han Fei’s Doctrine of Self-interest,” Asian Philosophy 11.3 (2001): 152. For Moody, “the Legalist system does not really abolish private advantage, but, rather channels and directs it.” Moody, “The Legalism of Han Fei-tzu,” 329. But, as Erica Brindley explains, “gong denotes a larger conceptual ideal concerned with what is universal, fair, objective, unified, and whole.” Erica Brindley, “The Polarization of the Concepts Si (Private Interest) and Gong (Public Interest) in Early Chinese Thought,” Asia Major 26.2 (2013): 3. 59. “夫立法令者, 以廢私也。法令行而私道廢矣。私者, 所以亂法也 . . . 故本言曰: 「所以治者, 法也; 所以亂者, 私也。法立, 則莫得為私矣。」故曰: 道私者亂, 道法者治。上無其道, 則智者有私詞, 賢者有私意。上有私惠, 下有私欲.” Han Feizi, Chapter XLV. 60. Moody, “The Legalism of Han Fei-tzu,” 329. “Han Fei identifies the public interest with the wealth and power of the state. It is not the interest of the ruler as an individual person, but his interest in his capacity as a ruler.” Peter R. Moody, “Rational Choice Analysis in Classical Chinese Political Thought: The Han Feizi” Polity 40.1 (2008): 112. 61. Moody, “Rational Choice Analysis,” 113. 62. Ibid., 116. 63. “上不天則下不遍覆, 心不地則物不必載。太山不立好惡, 故能成其高; 江海不擇小助, 故能成其富。故大人寄形於天地而萬物備, 歷心於山海而國家富。 上無忿怒之毒, 下無伏怨之患, 上下交撲, 以道為舍。故長利積, 大功立, 名成於前, 德垂於後, 治之至也.” Han Feizi, chapter XXIX. 64. “事在四方, 要在中央 . . . 夫物者有所宜, 材者有所施, 各處其宜, 故上下無為.” Han Feizi, chapter VIII . 65. See, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V.10 and Rhetoric I.13. Justice conceived in its broadest sense as lawfulness was not unique to Aristotle, respect for the law was an idea widely supported in ancient Greece. See K.J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 184–7. 66. This passage seems to be part of a missing section of De Legibus. It was quoted during the Renaissance by Alamanno Rinuccini in his Dialogus de libertate. Cf. Nicolai Rubinstein, Studies in Italian History in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Political Thought and the Language of Politics (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004), 288. 67. “ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ὁ παράνομος ἄδικος ἦν ὁ δὲ νόμιμος δίκαιος, δῆλον ὅτι πάντα τὰ νόμιμά ἐστί πως δίκαια.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.1 1129b 11–12. All textual references are from Ingram Bywater, ed., Aristotelis Ethica Nicomachea (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894).

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68. For more on this issue see, Richard Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 115 and C.C.W. Taylor, “Ethics and Politics in Aristotle: A Discussion of Richard Kraut’s Aristotle: Political Philosophy,” in David Sedley, ed., Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XXIII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 269. My intention is to use Aristotle’s remarks to provide a very wide sense of justice in order to suggest that Han Fei’s political philosophy can be also thought on those terms. Still discussing this issue in detail goes beyond the scope of this chapter. 69. “ὥστε ἕνα μὲν τρόπον δίκαια λέγομεν τὰ ποιητικὰ καὶ φυλακτικὰ εὐδαιμονίας καὶ τῶν μορίων αὐτῆς τῇ πολιτικῇ κοινωνίᾳ.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, V.1 1129b 17–19. 70. According to Aristotle, laws can be δικαίους ἢ ἀδίκους. Aristotle, Politics, 1282 b1–9. Cicero, naturally, also follows Aristotle in this regard in De Legibus. “Most stupid of all, is to consider that everything decreed by the people’s institutions or laws is just. What about the laws of tyrants? (Iam uero illud stultissimum, existimare omnia iusta esse, quae sita sint in populorum institutis aut legibus. Etiamne si quae leges sint tyrannorum?)” Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Republic; On the Laws, ed. Clinton W. Keyes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928), I.42. 71. “καὶ πρότερον δὲ τῇ φύσει πόλις ἢ οἰκία καὶ ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ἐστιν.” Aristotle, Politics, 1253a1–19. All textual references are from Harris Rackham, ed. Aristotle: Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932). 72. As Elstein explains, Han Fei is not a republican, “but attempts to discourage the ruler from using his power capriciously in order to increase order and security in the state, which are his ultimate political values.” David Elstein, “Han Feizi’s Thought and Republicanism,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10.2 (2011): 167. 73. “虎豹之所以能勝人執百獸者, 以其爪牙也; 當使虎豹失其爪牙, 則人必制之矣。 今勢重者, 人主之爪牙也, 君人而失其爪牙, 虎豹之類也.” Han Feizi, chapter LII . 74. It is worth noting that Han Fei’s system lacks a notion of balance of powers as it occurred, for instance, in the republican constitution of Rome, between populus, magistratus and senatus. Chaim Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 17. 75. This is assuming that the one who governs has not become an “enlightened ruler” who exercises self-restraint and who abides by the patterns of the heavens. This premise, one might say, protects the whole system of laws from degenerating into despotism. But, as Han Fei himself argued, considering that the vast majority of rulers in history are mediocre, the administration of violence might, in actuality, end up becoming the most common situation. See Han Feizi, chapter XL and Bárcenas, Han Fei’s Enlightened Ruler, 247. 76. In this regard, Ames explains, “the ministers are integral, functioning and active components in the bureaucratic system; the ruler is not. Rather he is the human embodiment of the authority of the governmental machinery as a whole. As such any activity on his part violently disrupts the structure of the individual

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systems. Any intervention on his part with respect to the law, for example, introduces an arbitrary element into an otherwise automatically functioning system, seriously threatening if not undermining public conviction in the absoluteness of the law.” Ames, The Art of Rulership, 51. 77. Wolin uses the term in reference to Machiavelli, but it seems to be more fitting to apply it to Han Fei’s approach. See, Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 197. 78. Jullien, La propension des choses, 54. 79. Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 34. 80. See, Peerenboom, China’s Long March Toward Rule of Law, p. 34 and Winston, “The Internal Morality of Chinese Legalism,” 315–20. 81. See, Thomas of Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 28: Law and Political Theory, ed. Thomas Gilby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Q95.A4 and Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 53. 82. Jullien, La propension des choses, 44. The debates about the best form of government among ancient Greek authors generally focused between the options of the rule of one, a few or the many including some variations among them. See, for instance, Plato, The Statesman, 291d; Aristotle, Politics, book IV and Polybius, Histories, book VI .2. 83. Yuri Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009), 106. 84. See Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 276. 85. “楚不用吳起而削亂秦行商君法而富強。二子之言也已當矣然而枝解吳起而車 裂商君者, 何也？大臣若法而細民惡治也。當今之世, 大臣貪重, 細民安亂, 甚於秦、楚之俗, 而人主無悼王、孝公之聽, 則法術之士, 安能蒙二子之危也, 而明己之法術哉。此世所以亂無霸王也.” Han Feizi, chapter XIII . It is worth remembering that in ancient Greek philosophy “death scenes are almost always significant, and we can argue that everything written by a philosopher or, particularly, every detail of his way of living, can determine the exact form of his death.” Sergi Grau, “How to Kill a Philosopher: The Narrating of Ancient Greek Philosophers’ Deaths in Relation to their Way of Living,” Ancient Philosophy 30.2 (2010): 347–81.

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Bárcenas, Alejandro. “Xunzi and Han Fei on Human Nature,” International Philosophical Quarterly 52.2 (2012): 135–48. Bárcenas, Alejandro. “Han Fei’s Enlightened Ruler.” Asian Philosophy 23.3 (2013): 236–59. Bodde, Derk. “The Legalist Concept of History,” Chinese Studies in History 8.1 (1975): 311–15. Bodde, Derk. Chapters on Chinese Civilization. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Brindley, Erica. “The Polarization of the Concepts Si (Private Interest) and Gong (Public Interest) in Early Chinese Thought.” Asia Major 26.2 (2013): 1–31. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. On the Republic; On the Laws. Ed. Clinton W. Keyes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928. Confucius. The Analects: A Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Michael Nylan. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. Dover, K.J. Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994. Elstein, David. “Han Feizi’s Thought and Republicanism.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10.2 (2011): 167–85. Fang, Qiang and Roger Des Forges. “Were Chinese Rulers above the Law?—Toward a Theory of the Rule of Law in China from Early Times to 1949 CE .” Stanford Journal of International Law 44 (2008): 101–46. Goldin, Paul R. “Han Fei’s Doctrine of Self-interest.” Asian Philosophy 11.3 (2001): 151–9. Graham, A.C. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. La Salle: Open Court, 1989. Grau, Sergi. “How to Kill a Philosopher: The Narrating of Ancient Greek Philosophers’ Deaths in Relation to their Way of Living.” Ancient Philosophy 30.2 (2010): 347–81. Hagen, Kurtis. “The Propriety of Confucius: A Sense-of-Ritual.” Asian Philosophy 20.1 (2010): 1–25. Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. “Rationality, Correlativity and the Language of Process.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 5.2 (1991): 85–106 Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth and Transcendence. Albany: State University of New York, 1998. Han Feizi. Xinyi Han Feizi 新譯韓非子. Eds. Fu Wuguang 傅武光 and Lai Yanyuan 賴炎元. Taibei: Sanmin Shuju, 2003. Hansen, Chad. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Hansen, Chad. “Fa (Standards: Laws) and Meaning Changes in Chinese Philosophy.” Philosophy East and West 44.3 (1994): 435–88. Harris, Eirik Lang. “Is the Law in the Way? On the Source of Han Fei’s Laws.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38.1 (2011): 73–87. Jullien, François. La propension des choses: pour une histoire de l’efficacité en Chine. Paris: Seuil, 1992. Kant, Immanuel. Gesammelte Schriften 27: Vorlesungen über Moralphilosophie. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978. Kim, Sungmoon. “Before and after Ritual: Two Accounts of Li as Virtue in Early Confucianism.” Sophia 51.2 (2012): 195–210.

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Kraut, Richard. Aristotle: Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Lewis, Mark Edward. Sanctioned Violence in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. Li, Chenyang. “Li as Cultural Grammar: On the relation between Li and Ren in Confucius’ Analects.” Philosophy East and West 57.3 (2007): 311–29. Lyon, Arabella. “Rhetorical Authority in Athenian Democracy and the Chinese Legalism of Han Fei.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 41.1 (2008): 51–71. Moody, Peter R. “The Legalism of Han Fei-tzu and its Affinities with Modern Political Thought.” International Philosophical Quarterly 19.3 (1979): 317–30. Moody, Peter R. “Rational Choice Analysis in Classical Chinese Political Thought: The Han Feizi” Polity 40.1 (2008): 95–119. Nylan, Michael. “On the Politics of Pleasure.” Asia Major 14.1 (2001): 73–124. Olberding, Amy, ed. Dao Companion to the Analects. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014. Peerenboom, Randall. China’s Long March Toward Rule of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pines, Yuri. Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E. Honolulu, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002. Pines, Yuri. Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Plato. Platonis Opera. Ed. John Burnet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903. Rainey, Lee Dian. Confucius and Confucianism: The Essentials. Malden: WileyBlackwell, 2010. Rubinstein, Nicolai. Studies in Italian History in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Political Thought and the Language of Politics. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004. Sedley, David, ed. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy XXIII. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Sigurðsson, Geir. Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Strauss, Leo. What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Tan, Sor-hoon. “The Dao of Politics: Li (Rituals/Rites) and Laws as Pragmatic Tools of Government.” Philosophy East and West 61.3 (2011): 468–91. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 28: Law and Political Theory. Edited by Thomas Gilby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Viroli, Maurizio. From Politics to Reason of State: The Acquisition and Transformation of the Language of Politics 1250–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Wang, Aihe. Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Wang, Hsiao-po, “The Significance of the Concept of ‘Fa’ in Han Fei’s Thought System,” Philosophy East and West 27.1 (1977): 35–52. Winston, Kenneth. “The Internal Morality of Chinese Legalism.” Singapore Journal of Legal Studies (2005): 313–47. Wirszubski, Chaim. Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950.

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PART TWO

Comparative Approaches

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Non-Impositional Rule in Confucius and Aristotle MATTHEW D. WALKER

Throughout the Analects, Confucius articulates and endorses a striking, nonimpositional model of political rule. On this model, the virtuous ruler—the junzi (君子) or gentleman—does not bring about order (primarily) through issuing commands, or through enforcing coercive restraints on his subjects. Instead, the virtuous ruler, qua virtuous, generates a kind of spontaneous order within his community. Such governance exhibits a kind of effortless action, literally, “non-doing” (wu-wei 無爲), on the ruler’s part. Such wuwei rule, Confucius suggests, invites comparison with, and even counts as an approximation of, the wu-wei governance visible in the orderly natural world. Meanwhile, in his ethics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, Aristotle distinguishes imperative rule from non-imperative rule. In particular, Aristotle portrays God—the Unmoved Mover—as a paradigmatic non-imperative ruler, i.e., as a causal principle that establishes cosmic order without issuing commands or instituting coercive restraints. Aristotle’s portrayal of the Unmoved Mover as a non-imperative ruler distinguishes Aristotle’s conception of the divine from others, such as Abrahamic conceptions, which depict God as a divine law-giver and command-issuer. At the same time, the non-imperative rule that the Unmoved Mover enacts shows a certain likeness to Confucian wu-wei rule. Yet for all that, Aristotle initially seems less sanguine than Confucius does about the prospects of non-impositional rule in political contexts. 187

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In what follows, then, I examine and compare Confucian wu-wei rule and Aristotelian non-imperative rule as two models of non-impositional rule. How exactly do non-impositional rulers, according to these thinkers, generate order? And how might a Confucian/Aristotelian dialogue concerning non-impositional rule in distinctively political contexts proceed? Are Confucians and Aristotelians in deep disagreement, or do they actually have more in common than they initially seem?

WU-WEI RULE IN CONFUCIUS’ POLITICAL THOUGHT How, according to Confucius, does wu-wei rule count as a form of governing or ordering in the first place? Through what mechanisms does a wu-wei ruler rule? To explore these issues, I begin with three passages from the Analects.1 [A] The Master said, “When the ruler is correct (zheng 正), his will is put into effect without the need for official orders (ling 令). When the ruler’s person is not correct, he will not be obeyed no matter how many orders he issues”. —13.6 [B] The Master said, “One who rules through the power of virtue (de 德) is analogous to the Pole Star: it simply remains in its place and receives the homage of the myriad lesser stars”. — 2.1 [C] The Master said, “Is Shun not an example of someone who ruled by means of wu-wei? What did he do? He made himself reverent and took his proper [ritual] position facing south, that is all”. — 15.5 In [A], Confucius identifies the primarily non-impositional and non-prescriptive character of the virtuous leader’s rule: “his will is put into effect without the need for official orders.” This aspect of the virtuous leader’s rule also displays itself in [B] and [C]. Here, the virtuous ruler simply takes his proper place; in response, subordinates naturally fall into line. This ruler’s very presence, in other words, somehow regulates the action of others. The virtuous ruler’s subjects modify their behavior in reference (and in deference) to the ruler. The idea is not, say, that the ruled exercise self-surveillance in the presence of panoptic carceral authority. Instead, the ruled respond positively to the

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ruler’s character. [A] emphasizes the ruler’s correctness of person (cf. 12.17). [B] emphasizes that the good ruler exhibits a certain potent virtue, or de, which commentators often liken to a kind of moral charisma, or even to a kind of magical power.2 The effect of such virtue on others is like the effect of the Pole Star on the other stars. For its part, [C] remarks on how, specifically, the ruler’s powerful virtue manifests itself. The ruler displays reverence, as well as ritual propriety; in response, order emerges around him as order emerges around the Pole Star in [B]. How, then, does the virtuous ruler rule without acting? As [A] through [C] suggest, the virtuous ruler elicits imitation in those whom he rules. The ruler qua virtuous stirs the ruled to make themselves like the ruler. By displaying qualities like reverence and propriety, then, the ruler spontaneously generates stable, cohesive social arrangements, as those whom he rules also seek to become reverent and proper.3 The thought that virtuous rulers generate order through eliciting imitation appears in various exchanges between Confucius and Ji Kangzi throughout the Analects. As Confucius advises Ji, “Oversee them with dignity, and the people will be respectful; oversee them with filiality and kindness, and the people will be dutiful; oversee them by raising up the accomplished and instructing those who are unable, and the people will be industrious” (2.20). To rid Lu of its rash of robberies, Confucius recommends Ji to consider his own character: “If you could just get rid of your own excessive desires, the people would not steal even if you rewarded them for it” (12.18). Further, Confucius points out to Ji that, in a good government, the ruler need not rely on executions to maintain order. Again, Ji should consider the model he sets: “If you desire goodness, then the common people will be good. The virtue of a junzi is like the wind, and the virtue of a petty person is like the grass—when the wind moves over the grass, the grass is sure to bend” (12.19). In his conversations with Ji Kangzi, then, Confucius suggests that the ruled end up mirroring the virtuous ruler’s character. When the virtuous ruler conducts his affairs and treats those whom he rules with dignity, filiality, kindness, and fairness, the ruled conduct their own affairs virtuously. When the ruler constrains his otherwise disruptive desires and exemplifies virtue, the people will follow suit. On these grounds, Confucius insists upon the irrelevance of harsh punishments. Virtuous rulers need not rely on such punishments to maintain order (cf. 2.3). Like blowing wind on blades of grass, the junzi’s virtue affects the common people. Blades of grass change their shape in response to the force of the wind. Similarly, those whom the virtuous ruler governs come to display a certain isomorphism of character with the ruler.4

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On behalf of this reading, I note that Confucius certainly identifies the junzi as a model whom we should seek to emulate. Thus, Confucius’ advice for self-cultivation: “When you see someone who is worthy, concentrate upon becoming their equal; when you see someone who is unworthy, use this as an opportunity to look within yourself ” (4.17). Likewise, in identifying how he finds a teacher, Confucius says, “I focus on those who are good and seek to emulate them, and focus on those who are bad in order to be reminded of what needs to be changed in myself ” (7.22). To be sure, Confucius is giving advice here for how one should act, not attempting to explain how people do act in the presence of virtuous rulers. But these passages indicate that, in Confucius’ view, a virtuous ruler promises to be an emulable exemplar. When paired with passages [A] through [C], Analects 4.17 and 7.22 suggest that when the junzi serves as a ruler, he is naturally such as to elicit imitation by the ruled (in a combined normative/descriptive sense). But then, we face a question: what specifically about the virtuous ruler’s character elicits such imitation? Simply to attribute magical powers to the virtuous ruler’s character would be to leave his ruling power under-explained. Why, in other words, does the virtuous ruler’s presence ultimately prove so affecting? In response, notice that when the ruled encounter the junzi’s virtue, they find themselves naturally inclined to strive for virtue and to take it on for themselves. Such a desire to imitate virtue is a natural response to virtue. But what features of virtue elicit this yearning? The answer, I suggest, has something to do virtue’s beauty. In The Great Learning 6, Confucius explicitly highlights this beauty: “If one is wealthy, one’s rooms will be beautiful. If one is virtuous, one’s self will [be] beautiful.” Similarly, in an exchange with his student, Zigong, Confucius emphasizes the ways in which a certain beauty is the aim of self-cultivation. As Zigong understands his teacher’s view, one should aim to attain a balanced character: hence, if one is poor, one should avoid obsequiousness; if one is rich, one should avoid arrogance. Confucius thinks that Zigong is right so far as he goes, except that Confucius emphasizes that one should also have positive dispositions: if one is poor, one should also be joyful; if one is rich, one should also love ritual. In aiming to understand Confucius’ view, Zigong appeals to a line from the Book of Odes: “As if cut, as if polished/As if carved, as if ground.” Confucius affirms that Zigong understands his meaning (1.15). For Confucius, virtue, like what is cut and carved, shows refinement and luster. It also shows an attractive symmetry, an internal structure manifest in the character and actions of the junzi, who avoids what is excessive and deficient (6.29; 11.16). As Amy Olberding observes, the virtuous person, according to Confucius, “looks good”: the virtuous possess “grace, decorum,

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poise, and. . . naturalness.”5 In the later Confucian tradition, Xunzi highlights this aspect of Confucius’ thought, emphasizing that in cultivating oneself, one beautifies oneself.6 Passages such as The Great Learning 6 and Analects 1.15 compare the beauty of virtue to the beauty of houses and ornate objects. Yet Confucius also—more importantly—compares the beauty of virtue to physical attractiveness: “I have yet to meet a man who loves virtue (hao de 好德) as much as he loves female beauty (hao se 好色)” (9.18; 15.13). Yes, some beauty is merely skin-deep, and perhaps akin to an optical illusion. Confucius warns us not to be taken in by it.7 Moreover, Confucius here bemoans that more people do not care as much about virtue as they do about physical attractiveness. Yet Confucius does analogize virtue to beauty, and he suggests that both virtue and physical beauty are potential objects of love. Just as those properly situated in relation to physical beauty are apt to be attracted by it, the same holds for those who are properly situated in relation to virtue.8 Like physical beauty, then, virtue, on Confucius’ view, is such as to elicit a certain desire in suitably situated beholders. Once such a beauty makes itself manifest, we naturally yearn to bring ourselves into its proximity. “Virtue is never solitary,” Confucius says. “It always has neighbors” (4.25).9 More strongly, I take Confucius to hold, we make ourselves virtuous as an expression of our yearning to bring ourselves into the proximity of virtuous beauty. The virtuous ruler, however, occupies a visible presence within his community. With his virtue manifest to all, the virtuous ruler stands as a conspicuously attractive object of emulation. When the common people, attracted by his virtue, emulate him by becoming virtuous, they spontaneously give rise to a harmonious social and political order.10 So far, I have considered Confucius’ remarks on wu-wei rule in political contexts. In the Analects, Confucius is characteristically reticent to engage in (meta-) physical speculation (7.21; 11.21)—perhaps out of sensitivity to the particular weaknesses of his students and a desire to keep them focused on their own ethical development. Yet as Analects 2.1 ([B] above) suggests, (something like) wu-wei rule is manifest throughout the wider natural world. In effecting order in an wu-wei fashion, the virtuous ruler invites comparison with the Pole Star, which generates order non-impositionally in the heavenly sphere. Indeed, just as the virtuous ruler provides a model for the common people to approximate, Confucius may even think that the Pole Star’s “rule” over other celestial bodies provides a model for the virtuous ruler. For instance, in Analects 15.5 ([C] above), King Shun faces south in apparent emulation of the Pole Star. Confucius, however, might think that while the same wu-wei rule is manifest in both natural/cosmological and political contexts, such ordering runs in parallel, as it were. On this latter reading, the

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Pole Star and the virtuous ruler are similar in respect of their bringing about order in an wu-wei fashion. But the Pole Star need not itself serve as the virtuous ruler’s model. Adjudicating this issue requires us to say something about how we should understand Confucius’ remarks on Heaven (tian 天) and the extent to which Heaven offers a general model for human beings. Heaven, alas, has multiple meanings in the tradition. In the Book of Odes, for instance, Heaven sometimes refers to the sky or heavens; yet it sometimes also refers to a quasipersonal benevolent figure. Similarly, one finds various senses of Heaven in the Analects. Heaven sometimes seems to be personified with a will (3.24). Yet, again, Heaven sometimes also has the sense of the sky or heavens (19.25).11 In one passage, Confucius explicitly identifies Heaven in the latter sense as a model that we should approximate. Thus, he praises King Yao’s greatness as a ruler: “So majestic! It is Heaven that is great, and it was Yao who modeled himself upon it (ze zhi 則之). So vast! Among the common people there were none who were able to find words to describe him. How majestic in his accomplishments, and glorious in cultural splendor!” (8.19). Like Heaven—by which, I take it, Confucius here means the celestial sphere— Yao is majestic and vast and splendid. So, Analects 8.19 indicates that Heaven provides a model of beauty to approximate. When read in conjunction with Analects 8.19, Analects 2.1 and 15.5 ([B] and [C] above) suggest that the Pole Star, perhaps as a particularly salient aspect of Heaven, provides a model for governing. The Pole Star exhibits various admirable and attractive features, including persistence and stability.12 Off-hand, the thought that the heavens, or certain of its parts, could offer an emulable model for human character and behavior might seem peculiar. Yet this thought is not unique to early China: one finds versions of this view in multiple traditions.13 Exploring this thesis requires space that I lack here. But one way to motivate this thought, or at least make it less counterintuitive, is to point out that celestial phenomena do possess a striking beauty. Such beauty, moreover, is readily available for all under Heaven to behold in the night skies (especially in an age before electric lighting). Suppose that the beauty of celestial phenomena exhibits certain generic features of beauty as such, features that we can imitate (not directly, but in translation, so to speak, i.e., in our behavior and character). If so, then celestial phenomena may well offer a certain useful model for us—not in virtue of being celestial, per se, but in virtue of being accessibly, conspicuously beautiful. To conclude this section, I note that one can ask whether Heaven (or the Pole Star as one of its central aspects) really does exhibit non-impositional rule. After all, Confucius suggests, the virtuous ruler of a community has authority insofar as that ruler has Heaven’s mandate (tian ming 天命,

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discussed in Analects 2.4; 9.1; 16.8). A mandate, however, might sound like an imperative or order. In response, “mandate” (ming 命) can have the sense of “imperative.” But we need not understand Heaven’s mandate as an order that Heaven issues, i.e., as a literal decree that confers governing authority on earthly rulers. (Confucius denies that Heaven speaks [17.19]. To that extent, Heaven does not issue literal decrees.) The thought could be, instead, that only when an earthly ruler models himself on Heaven will he possess the kind of virtue that enables him to rule authoritatively. Only when he assimilates the sorts of beautiful and attractive qualities that Heaven displays, in other words, can he effectively bring about order in his community.

NON-IMPERATIVE RULE IN ARISTOTELIAN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY Having discussed Confucius’ conception of wu-wei rule, I now consider Aristotle’s account of non-imperative rule. A key text for understanding Aristotle’s views on such rule is Eudemian Ethics VIII .3, which introduces the notion in a broadly moral-psychological context. Here, Aristotle considers the structure of the human soul, i.e., the hierarchical arrangement of capacities by which human beings are animate, living beings: So it is needful, as in other cases, to live by reference to the governing thing (to archon), and by reference to the state and activity of what governs (tou archontos), as a slave to the rule of the master and each thing to its appropriate governing principle (archên). But since a human being, also, is by nature composed of a thing that governs and a thing that is governed (ex archontos te kai archomenou), each too should live by reference to its own governing principle (archên). But that is of two sorts; for medicine is a governing principle (archê) in one way, and health in another; for the first is for the sake of the second. — 1249b6–1314 In this passage, Aristotle assumes, as background claims, that ruler/ruled relationships are pervasive throughout nature, and that where some system is well-ordered, that system is properly governed by its appropriate ruling principle (see Politics I.5, 1254a28–31). The human soul, however, has its properly governing and governed elements. But to understand what it means for an element to govern, Aristotle insists, we must distinguish two kinds of rule, which medicine (on the one hand) and health (on the other hand) display, respectively.

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As Aristotle goes on to suggest (at 1249b13–15), the former kind of rule is imperative: as an art, medicine prescribes regimens for patients to follow. The latter kind of rule, by contrast, is non-imperative. For health itself prescribes nothing; yet health still governs, teleologically, as the end for the sake of which medicine makes prescriptions. Health, as an end, serves as medicine’s regulative principle. Medicine’s practice and prescriptions, in other words, are fittingly delimited and defined by health’s aims and requirements. Aristotle’s remarks also suggest another distinction that we can draw between modes of rule. In what I call systemic rule, the governing principle, R, rules a whole system composed both by R and a set of elements subordinate to R. In non-systemic rule, by contrast, R rules some set of subordinate elements, but R and the subordinate elements need not themselves compose a system together. Given this distinction, we can say that the rulers of cities and households, insofar as they govern composite wholes, count as systemic rulers. Health and medicine, by contrast, do not form a composite whole together. Hence, although health regulates medicine as medicine’s telos, health does so non-systemically. Having distinguished imperative from non-imperative rulers and modes of rule, Aristotle posits that we can find such modes of rule in the human soul. Thus it is with the contemplative . For the god is a governor not in a prescriptive fashion (ou gar epitaktikôs archon), but it is that for which practical wisdom prescribes (epitattei) (but that for which is of two sorts—they have been distinguished elsewhere—since the god is in need of nothing). — 1249b13–18 The sort of subordination that holds between medicine and health also holds, Aristotle says, in the case of “the contemplative” part (to theôrêtikon). This passage is rife with ambiguities that I cannot address here. As I follow Aristotle, however, “the contemplative” part refers to the human intellect as such, i.e., to reason as a general power of the human soul, a power with both contemplative and practical aspects.15 On this reading, we should understand Aristotle’s reference to “the god” as a reference to God, a causal principle that exists outside the human soul as a principle of cosmic order (Metaphysics A.2, 983a5–11; Λ.7, 1072b13–14; Λ.10, 1075a11–19). God, then, is the non-imperative ruler for whose sake the human intellect imperatively rules non-rational desire and the other parts of the human soul. The human intellect, especially qua practically wise, issues its orders so that the whole human soul can contemplate God.

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On this reading, God—a kind of eternally active self-thinking thinking— serves as a non-imperative ruler for the human soul. God elicits and activates our thinking (Eudemian Ethics VIII .2, 1248a25–29; cf. De Anima III .5).16 God also appropriately regulates human activity: we should pursue external goods, for instance, to the extent they conduce to our contemplating God (Eudemian Ethics VIII .3, 1249b16–19). But God and the human soul do not thereby form a compound together. Hence, to use the distinction that I have just drawn, God serves as a non-systemic non-imperative ruler for the human soul. Yet in Metaphysics Λ.10, Aristotle concludes his discussion of divine thinking, and its order-conferring role within the cosmos, in the following terms: “The rule of many is not good; let there be one ruler.” (Homer, Iliad, II 204; cited at 1076a4). For Aristotle, God is the unitary principle of order within the cosmos. The cosmos is a cosmos—an order, as opposed to a heap—in virtue of God’s rule. As ruling principle of the whole cosmos, then, God also serves as the whole’s systemic non-imperative ruler.17 Yet how does God exercise systemic non-imperative rule? On Metaphysics Λ’s account, God serves as the ultimate source of motion within the cosmos. To explain this idea, Aristotle considers the eternal rotations of the heavenly bodies: There is, then, something which is always moved with an unceasing motion, which is motion in a circle; and this is plain not in theory only but in fact. . . .There is therefore also something which moves them. And since that which is moved and moves is intermediate, there is a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality. — Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072a21–26 Without being moved and without engaging in locomotion, God sparks the rotation of the heavens, which are in turn responsible for the motion of all else. In this respect, Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072a21–26 strikingly resembles Analects 2.1 and 15.5 (passages [B] and [C] above). For in all these passages, the motion of celestial bodies is explained by reference to an immobile, non-impositional governing principle. Confucius’ Pole Star initiates the rotation of the other stars in an wu-wei manner simply by assuming its position in the firmament. Aristotle’s God, meanwhile, initiates celestial rotation simply by thinking itself.18 Aristotle’s account thus raises some of the same questions that Confucius’ does. As an unmoved source of motion, God cannot also be in motion. For then, some further source of God’s motion would need to exist—ad infinitum, ad nauseum. So, how can God serve as an unmoved source of motion? In the passage above, Aristotle appeals to God’s “being eternal,

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substance, and actuality.” Off-hand, Aristotle’s point is fairly cryptic. How can those divine characteristics generate motion? Aristotle, however, says more: “And the object of desire and the object of thought move in this way; they move without being moved . . . [But] the kalon, also, and that which is in itself desirable are on the same side of the list” (Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072a26–27; 34–35). God, then, moves as an object of desire. To understand Aristotle’s point, we must clarify what Aristotle means when he identifies what is kalon as an unmoved mover. In ethical contexts, the term kalon is translatable as “noble.” Most neutrally, kalon can be translated as “fine” or “admirable.” But kalon is also translatable as “beautiful.”19 Thus, in Plato’s Symposium 210a–d, Socrates conveys Diotima’s teaching that one who completes a philosophical ascent, motivated by erotic desire, ultimately comes to contemplate a certain Form, Beauty Itself (auto to kalon). In the Symposium’s view, erotic desire is essentially motivated by, and directed toward, the kalon: the beautiful itself serves as the ultimate end of erotic striving. In Metaphysics Λ.7, Aristotle describes the cosmic Unmoved Mover as kalon (1072b10–11). The Unmoved Mover, then, plays a structural role in the Metaphysics analogous to the Form of Beauty’s role in the Symposium.20 How can God move as an Unmoved Mover? God sparks motion attractively: “Thus it produces motion by being loved (hôs erômenon), and it moves the other moving things” (Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072b1–10). Like the Platonic Form of Beauty, God moves hôs erômenon, as a beautiful object of erotic desire initiates motion. Whether Aristotle ultimately attributes erotic desire to the heavens, strictly speaking, or whether he thinks only that the heavens show an analogue of erotic desire, need not concern us. The point is, God serves as a cosmic Unmoved Mover—and rules the cosmos, generating both motion and order within it—not by issuing prescriptions or making commands, but simply by being kalon, i.e., fine and beautiful. The Unmoved Mover possesses such compelling kalon attractiveness in virtue of its eternally actual way of being. “Being eternal, substance, and actuality” are what make the Unmoved Mover kalon. If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s essential actuality is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God. — Metaphysics Λ.7, 1072b25–30

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God possesses—or, more precisely, is—a compellingly wonderful, maximally good, imperishable way of being. Heavenly rotation, then, counts as an expression of the heavens’ erotic desire for such a kalon existence. Rotational motion is how the heavens approximate the Unmoved Mover qua kalon. Unable to exist eternally in just the way God does, the heavens move in circles, engaging in a kind of “unceasing motion”—motion, that is, without obvious beginning or end (cf. 1072b8–11). The Unmoved Mover, however, serves as a systemic non-imperative ruler by eliciting imitative movement and by generating stable arrangement throughout the cosmos in other ways.21 Consider Aristotle’s remarks on biological reproduction: [F]or any living thing . . . the most natural act is the production of another like itself, an animal producing an animal, a plant a plant, in order that, as far as its nature allows, it may partake in the eternal and divine. That is the goal towards which all things strive, that for the sake of which they do whatsoever their nature renders possible. . . . — De Anima II .4, 415a27–b5; cf. Generation of Animals II .1, 731b31–732a1 Here, perishable being displays a primitive directiveness toward eternal persistence. Since living organisms cannot persist eternally as numerically identical beings, they “partake in the eternal and divine” so far as possible through reproduction. They maintain their species-forms even if they do not continue to persist as numerically distinct individuals. In this account of reproduction, Aristotle again follows the lead of Plato’s Symposium. There, Diotima accounts for reproduction as a means by which the mortal, impelled by erotic desire, seeks to attain immortal possession of the good and beautiful as far as possible (207c–208b). Thus, Aristotle turns out to accept, in cosmological contexts, a model of non-impositional rule that I have attributed to the Confucius of the Analects. Like Confucius, Aristotle—in cosmological contexts—suggests that we consider the relation between a ruling element’s beautiful/attractive qualities and the ruled elements’ desire for, or non-conscious directiveness toward, the ruler’s beautiful/attractive qualities. The ruled elements, in turn, fulfill this desire (or directiveness) by emulating the ruling element qua beautiful/ attractive. Order and arrangement emerge spontaneously as a result. At this point, we might wonder whether Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, even if a non-imperative ruler, is also an wu-wei ruler. An answer to this question depends on what Confucius means by wu-wei, or “non-doing.” On the one hand, the Unmoved Mover, on Aristotle’s view, is doing something.

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By thinking, the Unmoved Mover enjoys the most active kind of activity (Politics VII .3, 1325b14–29). On the other hand, the Unmoved Mover is unmoved—and unmoving. Hence, while the Unmoved Mover is the most fully active being in the cosmos, the Unmoved Mover is, for Aristotle, the least kinetic. For kinêsis—motion or change—consists in the actualization of a potential qua potential (Physics III .1, 201a9–10); and the Unmoved Mover, qua fully actual, lacks any unfulfilled potentiality. To this extent, then, the Unmoved Mover is an wu-wei ruler. Once more, the Pole Star example in Analects 2.1 is illuminating: the Pole Star’s mode of rule is an wu-wei one insofar as the star “remains in its place.”22

IMPERATIVE RULE IN POLITICS?: TOWARD A CONFUCIAN/ARISTOTELIAN RAPPROCHEMENT In defending wu-wei rule, I have argued, Confucius identifies nonimpositional governance as a leadership model in both the celestial and the political spheres. Aristotle, by contrast, thinks that non-impositional governance accounts for cosmic order. But at first blush, Aristotle seems to reject such governance as a model in political contexts. Aristotle seems, instead, to endorse imperative rule in politics. Unlike Confucius, after all, Aristotle offers a clear defense of the rule of law. The laws that political rulers issue to the city are roughly analogous to the orders that the human intellect issues to non-rational desire in the soul. As Aristotle says, “One who asks law to rule, therefore, seems to be asking god and intellect alone to rule, while one who asks man adds the beast. Desire is a thing of this sort; and spiritedness perverts rulers and the best men. Hence, law is intellect without appetite” (Politics III .16, 1287a29–33; cf. Nicomachean Ethics X.9, 1180a21–22). In the soul, appetite seeks immediate satisfaction, even if such satisfaction harms the whole soul. Hence, the intellect, which considers the soul’s overall benefit, is well suited to make decisions on behalf of the whole soul for the whole soul’s benefit (De Anima III .10, 433b7–10). Thus, the intellect properly issues prescriptions to non-rational desire. Similarly, within a political community, the ruling element of the city, qua wise, legislates on behalf, and for the benefit, of the whole city. The laws that such rulers enact, after much deliberation, offer impartial prescriptions free from the influence of the ruler’s non-rational desires (see, e.g., Politics III .16, 1287a41–b5; Rhetoric I.1, 1354a34–b11). By issuing enforceable laws, moreover, wise rulers aim to regulate the non-rational desires of the many (Nicomachean Ethics V.1, 1129b15–26; X.9, 1179b4–1180a24).23 In offering this defense of the rule of law, Aristotle might initially seem akin to Confucius’ Legalist critics. As such critics, most notably Han Feizi,

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later complain, Confucius and his followers are committed to an impractical ideal of rule by virtue. Confucians think that once a virtuous junzi becomes ruler, social order is apt to emerge as a matter of course. According to Han Feizi, however, the common people do not naturally love virtue; but they do naturally respond to fear of punishment.24 Social order depends on controlling licentiousness and covetousness; and controlling these vices requires inflexible, clearly delineated laws backed by harsh penalties.25 Rejecting the model of rule by virtue, the Legalists defend, instead, a model of rule by law: “the sage does not work on his virtue; he works on his laws.”26 Perhaps Aristotle agrees: for precisely insofar as the many do not love virtue’s kalon and pleasant features, but are receptive to fear, Aristotle thinks that enforceable laws play a proper role in government (Nicomachean Ethics X.9, 1179b11–16; 1180a4–5; a11–14).27 Still, Confucians and Aristotelians share strikingly similar views concerning non-impositional rule (and its mechanisms) in cosmological contexts. Further, their ethical views show other salient points of connection.28 Therefore, we should be surprised if these thinkers turned out to disagree fundamentally about the character of proper political rule. A full treatment of Aristotelian and Confucian views on these issues lies outside the scope of this chapter. Nor should we expect Aristotle and Confucius to have interchangeable views. Yet, in closing, I briefly suggest that Confucius and Aristotle share more common ground than they may initially appear. On the one hand, on the matter of legal punishment, Confucius is rather closer to Aristotle than Confucius first seems. As Analects 13.3 indicates, Confucius does not oppose punishment in principle. Instead, Confucius affirms that rectifying names will ensure that punishments and penalties hit their mark. To be sure, some suggest that Analects 13.3 may be an interpolation by later followers of Xunzi, who strongly influenced Han Feizi.29 Or barring that, maybe Confucius’ claim is ironic: when Confucius suggests that rectifying names will ensure that punishments and penalties will hit their mark, perhaps he means that such rectification will forestall punishments and penalties from being issued at all. But on a natural reading, Confucius thinks that punishments and penalties can be appropriate. For some people will be unresponsive to the attractions of virtue; accordingly, punishments are necessary as a second-best means to maintain social order. Confucius puts a primacy on wu-wei rule; but he reserves elements of impositional rule as a back-up.30 As the leading neo-Confucian commentator, Zhu Xi, suggests, wu-wei rule can still allow space for punishments and commands provided (1) that the ruler’s virtue remains a community’s principal source of order and provided (2) that a ruler’s punishments and commands follow from the ruler’s virtuous character.31

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On the other hand, for his part, Aristotle is closer to Confucius than Aristotle might first seem. For although Aristotle’s views on legal authority are nuanced, Aristotle is ultimately not a Legalist. Aristotle, after all, highlights law’s limitations.32 In Nicomachean Ethics V.10 (and in Politics III .15, 1286a9–16), Aristotle notes that law issues general imperatives. But such imperatives, in their very generality, admit of exceptions. Hence, the virtues of equity and practical wisdom appropriately regulate law’s prescriptions. In this way, Aristotle differs from Han Feizi, who seeks to replace the potential arbitrariness of private judgment with clear and inflexible laws.33 Further, Aristotle highlights the (merely) qualified goodness of legal remedies. “In the case of just actions, for example, just retributions and punishments derive from virtue, but they are necessary, and have the element of the kalon only in a necessary way (for it would be more choiceworthy if no man or city required anything of the sort)” (Politics VII .13, 1332a11–15). Penal law is choiceworthy only with qualification. To the extent we can do without it, we should. Like Confucius, then, Aristotle rejects reliance on enforceable laws as a first-best solution to the problem of maintaining order. Such skittishness about penal law and coercive mechanisms for ruling is rooted in one of Aristotle’s deep theoretical commitments. This is the view that what is forced is somehow contrary to nature (Physics IV.8, 215a1–3; cf. Physics V.6, 230a29–30; De Caelo I.2, 300a23; Generation of Animals II .4, 739a4, III .8, 777a18–19, V.8, 788b27; Eudemian Ethics II .8, 1224a15–30). Deviant regimes, such as tyranny, rely on force (Politics III .10, 1281a23–24); to this extent, such regimes are contrary to nature (Politics III .17, 1287b37–41).34 We should consider, then, Aristotle’s views on why punishment is required, to the extent it is. Aristotle thinks that penal law is necessary primarily for the many, who are unresponsive to rational exhortations to virtue, let alone to virtue’s intrinsic attractions. By instilling the fear of pain as a response to vicious actions, punishment aims to counteract excessive desires for pleasure. Punishment aims, then, to bring the souls of the many into a condition whereby they might be able to attain some measure of virtue. Punishment thus serves a remedial function, viz., to bring the many into a condition of receptivity to virtue qua kalon (see, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics X.9, 1179b23– 1180a5). For those who are well-bred, however, Aristotle denies that we should rely principally on law to make them good. Instead, we can rely on exhortation and the sense of shame that such people feel when they act wrongly, i.e., the sense that vicious actions are base and ugly (see, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics X.9, 1179b4–13). Ultimately, Aristotle suggests, we should lead people, though habituation, to discern and enjoy virtue’s kalon features, i.e., to be positively attracted to virtue.35 At this level of generality,

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then, Aristotle’s outlook coheres with Confucius’. Although Aristotle’s views on politics make (substantial) room for imperatives, enforceable and otherwise, Aristotle nevertheless gives a certain primacy to what is beautiful, attractive, and non-imposed.36

NOTES 1. I use Edward Slingerland’s (2003) translation of the Analects. Translations of The Great Learning are from Bryan Van Norden, in Van Norden and Tiwald (2014). I occasionally make minor stylistic emendations. I refer to Chinese texts available at ctext.org. 2. On de, see, e.g., Graham (1989: 13); Slingerland (2003: xviii); and Van Norden (2007: 67). 3. As Hall and Ames (1987: 157) describe the dynamic, “personal cultivation above inspires emulation below.” On emulation in the Analects, see, especially, Olberding (2012: 14; 33–6). Chan and Chan (2014: Section 6) highlight the ways in which the virtuous ruler’s inspiring qualities build trust in those whom he rules. Although my account has different emphases, it is consistent with theirs. 4. See also Analects 1.9 and 8.2, as well as Mengzi 4A20. 5. Olberding (2012: 91). On the ways Confucius links moral and aesthetic value, see Olberding (2012: 91–6). 6. See, e.g., Xunzi, “Discourse on Ritual,” lines 359–64. 7. See, e.g., Analects 1.3 and 6.16 on the specious beauty of the glib person. On beauty’s potential detachability from virtue, see Olberding (2012: 96). 8. For Confucius, Olberding (2012: 21) writes, “moral reasoning begins in seduction”—i.e., in the attractiveness of an admirable character. She views the authors of the Analects as “motivated by captivation with Confucius” (33). For his part, Van Norden (2007: 113) notes the ways in which beauty, on Confucius’ view, can be ethically inspiring. 9. Following the History of the Han, Slingerland (2003: 37–8) suggests that the passage refers to virtue’s attractiveness. As Slingerland notes, however, an alternative reading holds simply that developing virtue requires social interaction. I assume that the dual meaning is intentional. 10. Confucius, I hasten to add, denies that the virtuous person “shows off ” his virtue in the pejorative sense: see, e.g., Analects 8.1. 11. On Heaven (especially in the Odes), I have benefitted from Moon (2017: Section 3.2). See also Slingerland (2003: xviii; 239). 12. Other celestial phenomena also invite the virtuous ruler’s approximation. Cf. Analects 19.24: “Confucius is like the sun and the moon—it is impossible to surmount him. Even if a person wished to cut himself off from their radiance, what harm could he do to the sun and the moon?” On Heaven as a model, cf. Sim (2007: 91–2). 13. On pre-modern Chinese views concerning the sky as a model, see McLeod (2016: 89–91). On cosmology as a model for ethics in the pre-modern Greek,

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Hebrew, and Arabic traditions, see Brague (2003). For a salient example from the Greek tradition, see the preface of Ptolemy, Almagest (discussed in Brague 2003: 127–8), which suggests that the regularity, good order, harmony, and restraint of celestial bodies provide models for human behavior. 14. Translations of the Eudemian Ethics are from Michael Woods (1992). Other translations of Aristotle are from the Revised Oxford Translation (1984). As with Confucius, I occasionally make minor emendations. For the Greek, I refer to Oxford Classical Texts. 15. I defend this reading in more detail in Walker (2018: Section 7.1). Cf. Kenny (1992: 97–8). Woods (1992: 180–4) reviews interpretive options for Eudemian Ethics VIII .3, 1249b6–25. 16. See Kenny (1992: 80). 17. In Metaphysics Λ.10, Aristotle uses two analogies to describe the cosmos: (1) a military analogy, according to which the cosmos is like an army led by a general; (2) a household analogy, according to which the cosmos is like a household led by a father. But generals and fathers offer prescriptions, and (to that extent) display imperative rule. Given God’s status as a non-imperative ruler, then, I take these these analogies to be limited. With them, Aristotle simply highlights that the cosmos, like an army and like a household, shows a great deal of internal order in virtue of some key governing principle. On the limitations of Aristotle’s analogies, see Johnson (2005: 274–6). 18. For further discussion of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, see Kahn (1985) and G. Lear (2004: 73–80). 19. On the kalon’s aesthetic dimensions, see, especially, Sachs (2001: xxi–xxiv) and Kraut (2013). See also Metaphysics M.3, 1078a36–b1 and Topics V.5, 135a13, and the discussion in Rogers (1993: 355–7). 20. See Chang (2002). 21. Following Lear (1988: 294–6). 22. Slingerland (2003: 8) quotes Bao Xian, who highlights that the junzi, like the Pole Star, “does not move.” 23. I discuss these aspects of law in Walker (forthcoming). 24. Han Feizi, “The Five Vermin,” in Ivanhoe and Van Norden (2005: 341–2). 25. Han Feizi, “On the Importance of Having Standards (A Memorial),” in Ivanhoe and Van Norden (2005: 322–3). 26. Han Feizi, “On the Prominent Schools of Thought,” in Ivanhoe and Van Norden (2005: 357). 27. On Confucius vs. Aristotle on the value of the rule of law, see Sim (2007: 177–82). 28. For comprehensive comparative studies, see Yu (2007) and Sim (2007). 29. See, e.g., Waley (1938–21–22) and Van Norden (2007: 86). 30. See e.g., Hall and Ames (1987: 157–8; 169–70); Graham (1989: 14, 24n); Van Norden (2007: 115); Chan (2014: 13); Tiwald (2017: 53). For further discussion, see Walker (forthcoming).

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31. See Zhu Xi, Zhuzi yulei 23.533–534; 536–537, quoted by Gardner (2003: 117–20). 32. As Miller (1995: 82–3) and Yu (2007: 138) note. Yu argues that the legal theories of Confucius and Aristotle actually agree on key issues. 33. See Han Feizi, “On the Importance of Having Standards,” 323. 34. On Aristotle on the unnaturalness of coercion, see Keyt (1993) (to which I owe the references in this paragraph). 35. For fuller discussion, see Walker (forthcoming). But cf. Burnyeat (1980: 73–6). 36. I thank Alexus McLeod for his invitation to contribute to this volume. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at “Ideals of Leadership in Ancient Greece, Rome, and China,” an international workshop organized by Christine Habbard and Bart Van Wassenhove at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. My thanks to the participants in this workshop for their feedback.

WORKS CITED Barnes, Jonathan, ed. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Brague, Rémi. The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought. Trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. Burnyeat, M.F. “Aristotle on Learning to Be Good,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. A.O. Rorty, 69–92. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Chan, Joseph. Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Our Times. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 2014. Chan, Joseph and Elton Chan. “Confucianism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, eds. R.A.W. Rhodes and Paul ‘t Hart, 57–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Chang, Kyung-Choon. “Plato’s Form of the Beautiful in the Symposium versus Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover in the Metaphysics (Λ).” The Classical Quarterly 52 (2002): 431–46. Gardner, Daniel K. Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Analects: Canon, Commentary, and the Classical Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Graham, A.C. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. Chicago and La Salle IL : Open Court, 1989. Hall, David L. and Roger Ames. Thinking Through Confucius. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987. Hutton, Eric, trans. Xunzi: The Complete Text. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014. Ivanhoe, Philip J. and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds. Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2005. Johnson, Monte Ransome. Aristotle on Teleology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Kahn, Charles. “The Place of the Prime Mover in Aristotle’s Teleology,” in Aristotle on Nature and Living Things: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Allan Gotthelf, 183–205. Pittsburgh: Mathesis Publications, 1985. Kenny, Anthony. Aristotle on the Perfect Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

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Keyt, David. “Aristotle and Anarchism.” Reason Chapters 18: 133–52, 1993. Kraut, Richard. “An Aesthetic Reading of Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy, eds. Verity Harte and Melissa Lane, 231–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Lear, Gabriel Richardson. Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Chapters on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004. Lear, Jonathan. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. McLeod, Alexus. Astronomy in the Ancient World: Early and Modern Views on Celestial Events. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016. Miller, Fred D., Jr. Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Moon, So Young. “Early Confucian Ethical Reasoning between Generality and Particularity.” Ph.D. dissertation, Philosophy, National University of Singapore, 2017. Olberding, Amy. Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That. New York: Routledge, 2012. Rogers, K. “Aristotle’s Conception of To Kalon.” Ancient Philosophy 13 (1993): 355–71. Sachs, Joe, trans. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics. Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Publishing. 2001. Sim, May. Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2007. Slingerland, Edward, trans. and comm. Confucius: Analects. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing. 2003. Tiwald, Justin. “Punishment and Autonomous Shame in Confucian Thought.” Criminal Justice Ethics 36 (2017): 45–60. Tiwald, Justin and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds. Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy: Han Dynasty to the 20th Century, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing. 2014. Van Norden, Bryan W. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2007. Van Norden, Bryan W. trans. Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing. 2008. Waley, Arthur. The Analects of Confucius. London: Allen and Unwin. 1938. Walker, Matthew D. Aristotle on the Uses of Contemplation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Walker, Matthew D. “Punishment and Ethical Self-Cultivation in Confucius and Aristotle.” Law and Literature, special issue on “Law and Humanities in China,” ed. Marco Wan. Forthcoming. Woods, Michael, trans. and comm. Aristotle: Eudemian Ethics, Books I, II , VIII , 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Yu, Jiyuan. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge, 2007.

CHAPTER NINE

Other People Die and That is the Problem AMY OLBERDING

Western attitudes toward death are diverse and defy any ready characterization. Nonetheless, as historian Philippe Ariès argues, throughout much of history in the west, representations of death, both philosophical and artistic, focus on the individual, the one who dies. Indeed, death itself is understood as a distinctively individuating phenomenon, as that event in which “each man would discover the secret of his individuality.”1 There is much more that could be said about how death features in Western tradition, but where Western philosophical views of death are concerned, perhaps it suffices to gesture at Plato’s famous dictum and note that, in general, the tradition has largely operated as if philosophy is indeed training for death. Philosophy serves as one formidable strategy for reconciling oneself to mortality, whether by clarifying what death is and thereby rationally answering anxieties that awareness of mortality will awaken, or in promoting values that will stand one in brave stead when the time comes to die. Whatever the myriad particulars, Western philosophical tradition has pitched itself toward death as individual and individuating, toward that ostensibly most troublesome fact: I will die. Indeed, I suspect that for most Western trained philosophers it is taken as a brute given that the problem of death resides in the challenges posed by my own mortality: To talk about death philosophically just is to address the mortality of the individual. However obvious this construction of the problem may seem, it is nonetheless no 205

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given. To decide what sort of problem death poses is already to have concluded, or at least to have assumed, much. This is evident if we look outside Western philosophical tradition where we find death received as a rather different problem. Like their counterparts in the ancient west, early Chinese philosophers conceived wisdom to include managing death well. Strikingly, though, what most summoned their attention and drove even heated debate was loss and bereavement. In their formulation, the problem of death is not that I shall die, but that other people do. Indeed, the problem is not death, but deaths, the serial losses that accumulate in any life lived in companionship with others. To manage death is to manage loss. As in the West, there were in early China myriad ways of further specifying the problem, but I want here primarily to dwell on more general features that emerge from focusing philosophy on the deaths of others. My aims in this are several. Most basically, I think it good and fruitful to recognize that while death is universal, the problem it poses is not. Particular and contingent additional commitments, often unrecognized as such, influence what trouble death poses for us. It is to our good that we acknowledge this. Second, because of its almost exclusive focus on individual death, Western philosophy could profit from engagement with, and enrichment by, the early Chinese sources I will address. For while Western philosophical efforts have been adept at assaying individual death, they have little to offer the bereaved, little that brings the power of philosophy to bear on understanding and managing loss. Finally, as a Westerner, I confess that where problems regarding death are concerned, I find the early Chinese problem enviable. Given the inescapable influence of culture and tradition on how we will understand mortality, I do not imagine that we are truly free to “pick our problem” with death, to summarily decide how it will trouble us. Nonetheless, insofar as understanding can be shifted, movement in the direction the early Chinese philosophers take would be useful. For, as I will argue here, concern with the deaths of others may have redemptive and consolatory features that concern with my own end simply does not. As indeed I have already, I will throughout this chapter engage in some rather broad and gestural claims regarding general trajectories in thought and tradition. While these necessarily lack the precision and specificity more typical in contemporary philosophy, their purpose is not to do close justice to any body of ideas but to evoke philosophical atmospheres, to say something about the intellectual environments in which more particular arguments are made and find purchase. Generalizations of the sort I make can of course be problematic, and more often than not we have good reason to avoid them. Nonetheless, where the goal is to question whether we are treating as obvious and given what is neither, scrutinizing of particulars may

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well obscure. There is a rich variety of particular understandings of death in Western tradition, but despite this, the death in view is almost always my own, almost always the death of the individual as such. This uniformity in thought warrants critical consideration, not least because the existence of other styles of thought betrays its contingency. Many of my claims here, then, will be broad and general because the issue I seek to address is itself broad and general. In presenting early Chinese philosophical views, I will principally draw from two early Chinese philosopher-exemplars, Confucius and Zhuangzi. Both Confucius and Zhuangzi offer reflections on death, both operate within their respective traditions, Confucianism and Daoism, as exemplars of the ways of life they recommend, and yet they rather radically diverge regarding how they think we ought respond to death. Where Confucius and the tradition he inspires advocate prolonged ritual mourning for the dead, Zhuangzi heartily repudiates ritualized mourning. Indeed, Zhuangzi appears on occasion to reject even grief, the felt sorrows attendant on loss.2 Despite their deep disagreements regarding how loss ought be countenanced, Confucius and Zhuangzi strikingly converge in taking the deaths of others as the most demanding challenge death represents.3 I will thus employ them as standard-bearers for understanding the problem of death, however it may come to be addressed, as being the problem of loss. Before turning to what they offer, let me briefly forestall two skeptical worries my presentation may awaken and then canvass the western philosophical atmosphere against which I will contrast Confucius and Zhuangzi. Because Western philosophy does almost exclusively attend to individual death, it may incline those most influenced by it to skepticism regarding the source of pains associated with bereavement. Well primed to recognize the anxieties and fears awareness of my own mortality can prompt, we may be tempted to see the troubles of bereavement as often, if not always or exclusively, displaced anxiety about individual death. The death of another may trouble me because it stimulates awareness of my own fragility and eventual end, with the sorrows attendant on loss heavily leavened by unacknowledged anxiety for myself. Suspicions such as these are amplified where we also incline toward believing that many psychologically suppress acknowledgment of mortality. For denial of one’s mortality will be most difficult to maintain when the death of another coercively obliges attention and closes the psychic distance between oneself and the possibility of dying. To the extent that concerns such as these color Western accounts of death and mortality, they may incline Western interlocutors to suspect that early Chinese preoccupation with loss is a case of referred pain, with the bereaved’s fear regarding his own end the real source of malady.

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I cannot here provide any fulsome answer to such suspicions, yet I would insistently resist them. Were it the case that early Chinese treatments of bereavement are but elaborately indirect confessions of anxiety regarding personal death, we would expect to see significant evidence of this, indications that beneath grief for another lies anxiety for my own end. We would expect to see, for example, comments regarding the deaths of others containing betraying tells that indicate that it is the survivor’s own mortal fate that informs his sorrow for the dead. While I cannot of course aver that no such comments exist, I find it telling that the Chinese sources do evince a form of survivor anxiety, but that this anxiety appears sourced in loss. Rather than take the form of worrying that “I too shall die,” anxiety attaches to a future without the dead.4 It is worry for the self, not the mortal self but the lived self, the “me-without-you” who must go forward in bereavement. A second sort of skepticism may attach to my characterization of Western philosophical tradition as focused on individual death. This characterization may simply seem to underestimate the intended reach of many of the tradition’s arguments regarding death. After all, arguments concerning the nature of death, of which the tradition has many, apply universally, so while a rhetorical convention of speaking of death in terms of the one dying is prevalent, the arguments naturally extend to encompass loss. That is, discourse on the nature of death addresses both the dying and the bereaved, for the latter will presumably profit in managing loss from understanding death. This too, however, seems but to bury an unstated assumption, for it seems to settle pre-emptively what loss signifies. The loss in view here is again a phenomenon implicitly individuated: To understand loss is to understand what has happened to the dead individual. While there may be some consolation in explanation, in comprehending what has happened to the one who dies, the early Chinese sources would encourage us to comprehend death’s broader reach, to recognize, that is, that death happens to more than the one who dies. Before turning to this, however, let me briefly characterize the atmosphere that surrounds western philosophical treatments of mortality and their emphasis on the individual.

SINGULAR DEATH There is undeniably an individual character to death insofar as the biological cessation of life occurs for and to a single creature. But the singularity of the blunt biological event does not, at least necessarily, entail solitude of the sort most commonly evoked in western philosophical sources. Pronouncements along the lines of “We all die alone” are not remarks on biology but on the existential condition. Dying is experienced by the dying and death happens

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to him. In this, he is not only alone but also, as Ariès suggests, in solitude with himself, with his individuality in its most crystalline and distinct form. This is both a curse of sorts and a challenge: It renders dying the loneliest of events, one that is not and cannot be shared, but simultaneously opens space for the heroic, as the individual, beyond aid or reach of others, embarks alone with the opportunity to display his character and fortitude. It is death’s solitude and challenge that renders it akin to a test, a view perhaps most vividly captured by Seneca, who identifies the solitude of death with the loss of all pretense and prop, the character revealed in its individuated and lonely extremity: The showing which we have made up to the present time, in word or deed, counts for nothing. All this is but a trifling and deceitful pledge of our spirit, and is wrapped in much charlatanism. I shall leave it to Death to determine what progress I have made. Therefore with no faint heart I am making ready for the day when, putting aside all stage artifice and actor’s rouge, I am to pass judgment upon myself—whether I am merely declaiming brave sentiments, or whether I really feel them; whether all the bold threats I have uttered against fortune are a pretence and a farce.5 While Seneca’s views of course include distinctive Stoic commitments, the sense of dramatic revelation he assigns to the death seems an ineluctable element of accounts emphasizing the individual and individuating force of death. This is evident in exemplars who meet death well. In broad strokes, the tendency in Western tradition to emphasize the death of the individual is coupled with a commitment to the power of reason to overmaster fears and anxieties attached to death. Thus, it is figures such as Socrates who most potently serve as exemplars of managing death, and it is rational fortitude in the face of one’s own end that most summons admiration and attention. Socrates encounters his end in full command of himself, with dread or anxiety defeated by the subduing power of reason. The existential force of Socrates’ rational self-command is captured as, imprisoned and awaiting execution, he counsels Crito against distress by invoking the kind of person he has sought to be. Impending death, Socrates avers, ought not shift him from those values and rational commitments he has always endorsed. He cannot now that death is upon him fail to “value and respect the same principles as before.”6 The sense that the sort of person one is will be most definitively revealed under the individuating power of death colors examples of death met badly as well. One potent example of this is Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych.

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Ilych represents, in many respects, a person prodded along through life by the expectations of others, his career, family, and home all conforming to unexamined social norms he reflexively adopts as good. Once he is dying, however, he encounters himself in the isolation of illness and becomes all too aware of his existential condition. His failure to be an individual, to selfconsciously establish an identity that will stand him in good stead on dying, is inextricably linked with his having, throughout his life, succumbed to unthinking denial of his own mortality. In not anticipating the test of death, his loss of all prop and artifice, he has failed to make of himself something he can bear to behold in his last extremity. Because of this, the individuating loneliness of death is a visitation of horror. Strikingly, he simultaneously concedes the irrationality of having denied death while yet still protesting his own end. He recalls the well-worn and familiar syllogism he learned as a child: “All men are mortal. Caius is a man. Therefore, Caius is mortal.” Belatedly acknowledging that what is distributively true of all applies to him as well, is appalling. He abruptly and belatedly feels his individuality: For the man Caius, man in general, it was perfectly correct; but he was not Caius and not man in general . . . Was it for Caius, the smell of the striped leather ball that Vanya had loved so much? Was it Caius who had kissed his mother’s hand like that, and was it for Caius that the silk folds of his mother’s dress had rustled like that? . . . Caius is indeed mortal, and it’s right that he die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts—for me it’s another matter. And it cannot be that I shoud die. It would be too terrible. So it felt to him.7 As a case of death met badly, Ilych illuminates many of the perils against which philosophy focused on the individual’s mortal condition pitches itself. Failing to existentially acknowledge one’s mortality or living in dread of death may poison a life, a corruption that is of course bad in itself and rendered worse where it is belatedly discovered as one is dying. The psychological distortions invoked in Ilyich’s example are, I expect, familiar: Fearing one’s own inevitable end may, for example, compromise one’s enjoyment of the goods life afford,8 render developing virtues such as courage insurmountably difficult,9 or motivate one to pursuits one would not otherwise undertake.10 Most globally, however, insofar as encountering death illuminates the individual, what it discloses can have a tragic cast and indeed just as a sense of dramatic heroism may attach to death met well, so too dramatically tragic failure may attach to death met badly. While sorrows such as Ilyich’s are, I expect, well familiar to any acquainted with western philosophical treatments of death, what I wish to highlight here is the way in

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which both failure and success are marked by drama and underwritten by a commitment to a kind of exceptionalism. Despite the ostensible irrationality of Ilyich’s dejection at applying the standard syllogism regarding death to himself, his response to the logic betrays something of the dilemma posed by existentially individuated awareness of my own mortality. Ilyich’s protest painfully captures the implicit assignment of an exceptionalism to oneself where disquiet regarding one’s own end is concerned. Where individual death is concerned, we each feature to ourselves as “little Vanyas,” creatures enclosed by that which marks us out from others. It is this we meet in death and this, if we are wise like Socrates, that will inform our lives. Death comes for all, yet encountering it well entails treating myself as a thing apart, self-consciously deriving an individuated identity that stands me in good stead when all the props and artifice of living among others are removed. There is, put plainly, a selfish concern to which a focus on my own mortality makes me prey, a distorting separation of oneself from others that implicitly assigns to oneself a value and significance unmatched by valuations of others. Focusing on my own end, Robert Solomon observes, seems “but petty selfishness wrapped up in enigma . . . morbid solipsism, an image of death solely in terms of the self.”11 It may even be, as Zhuangzi suggests, rather silly. The mortal human being who would see himself as special, he contends, is akin to metal that rises up before the metalsmith to demand it be made into the finest sword, its importunate self-importance insensate to any wider context or concerns.12 What the Chinese philosophers most offer, I think, is a way to think of death that insistently resists just this exceptionalism, that implicitly challenges the assumption that reconciling oneself to mortality entails dramatic existential individuation.

DEATH AND SOLIDARITY In turning to early Chinese philosophy, it is perhaps important to observe at the outset that there clearly is in the tradition a presumption that exemplars will meet their own deaths well, absent dread, anxiety, or fear. Thus, when Confucius appears to be dying and one of his students asks permission to say special prayers on his behalf, Confucius simply replies, “I have already been praying for myself for a long time now” (Analects 7.35). Zhuangzi too is depicted as at ease with his own death and indeed is radically so. In anticipating his end, he cheerfully instructs his students to leave his corpse exposed rather than to bury him. In face of their protests against this, he blithely remarks that burying him would be but to arbitrarily favor the insects that would devour his corpse over carrion eating birds who will do

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the same (Graham, 125). In both exemplars, there is a sanguine attitude toward their own deaths. Confucius rather explicitly evinces an existential confidence that his life has been such that death holds no special anxiety in need of answer or remedy. Zhuangzi retains toward his own death the light-hearted, unconcerned comical sense that he elsewhere freely applies in more detached and abstract comments on mortality. Both are, in short, well with mortality as it applies to them. Strikingly, however, they are not so when it comes to the deaths of others. Meeting one’s own death is, put plainly, treated as easier than enduring the deaths of others. This owes to understanding death as not principally an individual or individuating phenomenon. And it owes to finding sorrow in the deaths of others to be good in ways that fears of my own end are not. Let me first focus on the shared, non-individuated character of death. The sensibility that most marks the philosophical atmosphere surrounding death in early China simply defies the starkly individuating focus found in much of Western philosophical tradition. The biological singularity of death does not here transmute into existential loneliness or solitude. What we find instead is implicit deployment of a distinction the undertaker Thomas Lynch articulates between the “death that happens” and the “death that matters,” between, that is, the biological event of death and the human assignment of meaning to the biological phenomenon.13 The death that matters happens to more than the one who biologically dies. This owes most foundationally to an understanding, shared across multiple early Chinese traditions, of the self as relationally constructed and identified. Who I am significantly derives from who I am with, to, and among others, and so the boundaries between self and others are soft. Others do not simply influence who I am or can be, but importantly give me myself, my relations to them structuring identity and self-understanding. The implications of this regarding mortality are most directly evident in Zhuangzi’s reaction to seeing the grave of his friend Hui Shi. Throughout the Zhuangzi, we find dialogues between Zhuangzi and Hui Shi, a logician who features at once as dear friend and philosophical nemesis.14 The conversational byplay between Zhuangzi and Hui Shi is marked by a feisty philosophical debate and congenial agon that bepeaks deep camaraderie. What we know of Zhuangzi’s response to Hui Shi’s death follows not on the death itself, but after some time has passed and Zhuangzi sees Hui Shi’s grave, a moment that gives rise to the text’s most melancholy reflection. Zhuangzi says: There was a man of Ying who, when he got a smear of plaster no thicker than a fly’s wing on the tip of his nose, would make Carpenter Shi slice it

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off. Carpenter Shi would raise the wind whirling his hatchet, wait for the moment, and slice it; every speck of the plaster would be gone without hurt to the nose, while the man of Ying stood there perfectly composed. Lord Yuan of Song heard about it, summoned Carpenter Shi and said, “Let me see you do it.” “As for my side of the act,” said Carpenter Shi, “I did use to be able to slice it off. However, my partner has been dead for a long time.” ‘Since [Hui Shi] died, I have no one to use as a partner, no one with whom to talk about things’. — Graham, 124 Here Zhuangzi poignantly articulates what I take to be the most profound challenge to treating death as principally individual. To aver that death happens to more than the one who dies is to acknowledge that, like the carpenter in Zhuangzi’s story, what we do and who we are in the world confess their origin in relation to others. The carpenter’s skill in slicing plaster from his companion’s nose is not his, but theirs. Zhuangzi without Hui Shi has no access to the language they shared, no access to skills that were never his alone. Hui Shi thus does not, in the way that matters, die alone, for each on his own is ever but “one side of the act,” with skill, language, experience, and indeed identity produced not in relation but by relation. Hui Shi’s passing extinguishes “the act,” an act by which Zhuangzi own self-conception is in part derived. This same sense of death’s ambitious reach informs Confucian reflections as well. When Confucius’ most talented student Yan Hui, a student he likens to a son, dies young, Confucius himself is transformed by grief. Most striking in the descriptions of Confucius’ bereavement is that, like Zhuangzi, it is with loss of a beloved other that his reactions markedly deviate from his more typical and thoroughgoing self-command. While Confucius is throughout the Analects depicted as emotionally self-regulated, at the death of Yan Hui he weeps uncontrollably, a reaction so aberrant that his students remark it and query him in confusion about what it bodes (Analects 11.10). Likewise, while Confucius generally describes Heaven as his ally and the source of his virtue (Analects 7.23), the loss of Yan Hui elicits a sense that he has been not only deserted, but destroyed by Heaven (Analects 11.19). These uncharacteristic reactions and protests against Heaven find their logic in how the Analects describes the relation between Confucius and Yan Hui. Confucius without his Yan Hui is altered by death. He is no longer able to teach with the economy of words, in the easy silence of full mutual understanding he shared with Yan Hui.15 Without the student who loves

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learning, the teacher is changed, lost. Selves are, in this context, shared achievements and thereby dependent on far more than any individually defined agency, activity, skill, or indeed self-understanding. The death of one here refracts as ending for more than he who dies. It likewise ends more than a present self-conception for the survivor. As a socially and relationally shared phenomenon, death entails a rather radical fragility, one in which present is ruptured and a desired future is foreclosed. For it is not simply the self as presently constituted that is damaged by loss, but also any anticipated future in which that self featured or through which desired new iterations of the self may have developed. Thus, when Confucius suffers the loss of Yan Hui, he is bereft of a self he reasonably would have aspired to become: the teacher of the renowned philosopher, Yan Hui.16 Without Yan Hui, he is left akin to a Socrates predeceased by his Plato. The self afflicted by loss is thus not one without an other, but a self bereft of its own identity, present and future. The one who survives death endures his own existential death, burdened to go forward not simply without his companion, but without himself as was and as would have been. Where we understand ourselves as enjoying identities deeply embedded in our relations with others, mortality resists representation as an individuating and individualized problem. The challenge of death consists in the way it unmakes what companionship with others makes. Understood in this way, death is not an anticipated and radically singular event that concludes my life, but a phenomenon that, throughout my life, renders me bereft of those I love and consequently renders me bereft of myself. My task, then, if I am to live well, is to achieve some manner of managing the repeated and injurious losses a life with others will entail. The bereaved cannot go on as always but must go on, and the struggle is to go on in ways that stand as credit to what is lost. This in part explains why, for example, the early Confucians endorse prolonged and elaborate mourning, the ritual activities of grief serving as a mechanism that jointly registers the profound change death has wrought and provides a program aimed at cultivating whatever adjusted identity must, for the survivor, come next.17 It is likewise what motivates Zhuangzi to insistently rehearse the pervasive fluidity of change, his repudiation of ritual mourning informed by privileging a way of life in which well being is constituted through rapid adjustment. Training oneself to accommodate change in all its guises operates as a therapy for accepting even profound changes in oneself as those on whom one depends for identity are lost. My focus here, however, is less on these philosophers’ distinctive strategies for managing death’s encompassing reach than on emphasizing this reach itself.

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Most basically, the early Chinese philosophers challenge any easy separation between life and death. This is not simply, or even primarily, a conceptual point, but a matter of how death is experienced. Confucius, for example declines to speculate regarding spirits or to address the nature of death as such, insistently re-directing interest in these toward lived issues: Serving other people should precede serving any spirits and understanding life should precede seeking to understand death (Analects 11.12). As his many injunctions regarding mourning of the dead make clear, neither “spirits” nor death are things apart, targets for special speculation or interest, but instead are included in the business of living, for while we live, we will suffer the absence of our dead as a potent source of sorrow. In Zhuangzi’s idiom, life and death constitute a “single strand” (Graham, 79), not simply conceptually linked but experientially joined, as companionship will entail experiencing the exchange between life and death as surely as it entails experiencing the exchange between natural seasons (Graham, 123). Life will engage us with death, and when I survey my life, the death that affects me will not be my own. The challenge is to live and to live well with the deaths of others. Conceiving the “problem of death” as principally located in the mortality of beloved others may initially appear only to amplify the risk of anxiety. In some respects, this may be so. I will have more to fear here insofar as the death that matters most will not be a singular event to be dreaded, but a serial visitation to be endured again and again. However, once we appreciate the shared quality of death, mortality becomes both more pervasively a problem and less my problem. Or, rather, the kind of problem it is shifts. Configuring the “problem of death” to be the predicament of loss does not, to be sure, render the problem soluble, wholly dissipating the pain and anxiety engendered by self-conscious awareness of mortality. I do wish to suggest, however, that such lends our awareness of death redemptive qualities unavailable where I construe my own mortality as the principal challenge. I may yet, that is, fear death, especially for others, but there will be compensatory elements to such fears. Perhaps the principal advantage that obtains where one focuses on the mortality of others is the relative practical power that accrues to such a posture. Understanding the problem of death to be the problem of loss affords resources for “taming” death, for rendering it subject to some modest control and thereby finding some consolation.18 Most immediately, where the death of a beloved other is anticipated, I may assume some measure of command by aiding her in death. While I do not have power over death, I may yet retain some capacity to ease another in her dying, providing material aid and companionship that will render her death a better death. Confucius

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acknowledges this species of power in a tender scene with one of his most obstreperous yet loyal students, Zilu. Zilu has organized his peers into masquerading as attendants at Confucius’ deathbed, hoping that this ruse will mislead visitors into seeing Confucius as higher status than he in fact is. Confucius, however, will have none of this and affectionately protests, “[W]ouldn’t I rather die in the arms of my students than in the arms of some retainers? Even though I do not get a grand state funeral, I am hardly dying by the roadside” (Analects 9.12). Zilu, Confucius here avers, has the power, without artifice and in simple friendship, to afford Confucius comfort in his death. Some deaths, Confucius intimates, are worse than others, and the person who dies among friends enjoys a comfort no conventional measure of success can offer. So too, it is significant that the several passages in the Zhuangzi depicting sagely exemplars playfully at ease with death do not feature solitary sages—that is, Zhuangzi’s cheerful sages die among friends.19 Indeed, I suspect that part of what renders Zhuangzi’s stories of death lightheartedly met compelling is the presence of companions in these scenes, the fact that good cheer is realized in company and shared. The good death, both Confucius and Zhuangzi suggest, is good precisely because it happens with others, in the company of attentive, affectionate others. Thus, so long as we retain our capacity to attend to our others, we hold some influence and power where making good a death is concerned. A second species of power resides in the capacity of the living to remember the dead. One considerable source of grief consists in the way that death may read as erasure of the life that is lost, the dead denuded of the power they enjoyed in life. That is, death not only ends a life, it risks ending the traces of that life. Where the living relation provided a valued influence, affection, and pleasure, the severing of the relation in death entails that the living can no longer enjoy ready recourse to such features of the relation. However, insofar as such awakens anxiety, the anxiety finds some answer in the ability of the living to preserve the dead, through force of memory, as an active element in the future they cannot share. The dead are lost, but not utterly so, for the living exercise considerable power to summon what they offered as an ongoing and enriching element of life. This is, of course, a formidable element informing Confucius’ recommendations for mourning, with ritual serving jointly to recall the dead and to retain affection through memorial activity. Part of what commends the early Chinese philosophers’ concern with bereavement is simple prudence, the ability to distinguish that which I can influence from that which I cannot, and focus my energies accordingly. My own death is significantly out of my control and many of the anxieties that may stem from reflectively dwelling on it are unanswerable. However, where

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the death that catches my imagination and concern is the deaths of others, there is much I can do to ameliorate despair and indeed to actively aid others. Such is not only a reason to adopt concern with the deaths of others, it forms a potent reason to forego some significant measure of concern for my own. Because the power afforded me in response to the deaths of others is contingent on my accessing and utilizing it, concern with my own end may reduce my capacity to do this by schooling me too exclusively in that domain where my powers are of no avail. Likewise, to the extent that anxious preoccupation with my own end inhibits my capacity to encounter dying others, it will inhibit my ability to use the powers I have. These are all rather practical aspects of focusing on the deaths of others, but there is, I think, a more foundational, conceptual benefit to such a focus.

CONSOLATIONS Philosophy, rather inevitably, invites acute and close awareness to whatever subjects it targets. Yet acute and close awareness to my own mortality, treating this as the problem of the death, may be, to borrow Seneca’s phrasing, a problem better scorned than solved.20 Encouraging instead a close and acute awareness of the deaths of others, treating these as the problem, in contrast, may be edifying. While there are practically empowering aspects to identifying the problem of death with the deaths of others, what most commends this view is that it resists just that atmosphere of drama that surrounds so much of discussion of death in western philosophical accounts. It represents an escape from the high stakes existential self-concern that often attends treating my own death as singularly challenging. That is, such a view does not merely empower us to make better the deaths of others, but also to make better our own relation to mortality. Where I am acutely aware of my own mortality, my life cannot but assume the character of a high stakes drama, all of my activities and pursuits operating as pledges against the day when my life will become a completed and finished totality. This may of course promote anxiety as I struggle to live in ways that will sustain my dying well or, worse, as I seek to flee from open acknowledgement of my mortality and retreat into forgetting. Yet even in cases where awareness of my mortality “works” for me, leading me to live in successfully self-conscious ways, awareness is accompanied by the seductive allure of heroism, the sense that I am making ready for the day. To borrow phrasing from Henry James, awareness of death here follows a “beast in the jungle” model, wherein the shape of life is contoured in readiness for the singular and dramatic occasion, the moment when the beast at last springs.21 Death lurks and one lives in ways ready to meet it when it does.

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To locate the “problem of death” as residing in the sorrows that issue from the loss of those we love, however, resists representation as drama of this sort. There is a quality insistently ordinary to loss. This quality originates, in some measure, in the relationships that are its genesis. Children who enjoy the guidance provided by their parents rue the loss of this potent influence; spouses who share the daily intimacies of a mutual life rue the loss of that life; friends who sustain each other rue the loss of nourishing companionship. The qualities we prize in such relations are made manifest across a shared calendar of prosaic days. The losses we suffer when these relations are severed by death reflect this. When Confucius undergoes the loss of Yan Hui, what he misses is their abiding habit of interaction, the undramatic routine of gentle exchange and shared understanding the two men enjoyed. Zhuangzi without his Hui Shi melancholically misses conversation within a shared vocabulary no longer accessible to him alone, he misses, most plainly, what they together could do. Despite the fact that the loss registers as momentous in the life of the survivor, what is lost is the modest stuff out of which profound relation is made. To await such a loss with heroic ambitions about how it can be countenanced is to betray the banality from which it finds its value. Attention to the deaths of others also better promotes a forthright relationship to mortality, one that gives far less purchase to denial or dissembling. For where I cast my attention outward, away from my own death in favor of apprehending its purchase in the fates of others, I am obliged to acknowledge death with new immediacy. My own death lies on a horizon dimly glimpsed, but the deaths of others are a pervasive feature of experience. I thus have far less recourse here to the psychological dissembling that can provide a false comfort easily undone or to the complacency that undermines any effort to accept mortality. Where a focus on my death as a “special case” can afford some tenuous escape, a focus on the deaths of the others will provide simply too many “special cases” to sustain. Those I love will age, decline, and die, and such will frustrate any strategies of easy denial. They will keep death in view, obliging me to greater frankness and such is to my good. In this regard, it is important to observe the manner in which the early Chinese philosophers attend to death. In presenting both Confucius and Zhuangzi, I have emphasized their own griefs, their responses to the deaths of particular others, rather than any more abstract or general remarks they make about death. This owes in no small measure to the ways in which the sources speak and what they tend to neglect is, I think, as important as what they affirmatively offer. While steering us to recognize and attend to the deaths of others, neither Confucius nor Zhuangzi invite attention to the universality of death or recommend that

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we acknowledge the deaths of others by apprehending the general rule to which all people and creatures, even our loved ones, are subject. The syllogism that so exercises Ivan Ilyich’s anxiety of course does have rational traction here: Just as “All human beings are mortal” applies to me, so too it applies to those I love. While Zhuangzi gestures as something like the universality of death in his close attention to operations of natural process, processes that embed endings even as they inaugurate beginnings, it is not the broadly universal reach of these processes to which he most attends, but the particular ways in which they feature in our experience.22 When Confucius’ inclines toward greater generality and abstraction in his remarks on death, his eschewing of the universal is more striking still. His more general remarks do not invoke death’s universality but instead favor broad categories of human relationships, the relationship between parents and children in particular (see, e.g., Analects 4.21, 17.21, 19.17). Abstraction here features as generalization regarding forms of human relationship and invokes that form of sorrow most likely to feature in any human experience, the deaths of one’s parents. My own sense is that in the early Chinese sources, just as my own death, relative to the deaths of others, is simply not counted very interesting, neither is the universality of death. This too, indirectly, recommends a framing of the problem of death that will resist efforts at denial and reduce drama by insistently rendering death ordinary. It is deceptively easy to assent to the universality of death—we all must die, of course we must—but intellectual assent to the indubitable can fail, precisely in its generality, to reach the felt personal quality of specific deaths. This is of course Ivan Ilyich’s trouble, as he retracts in horror from substituting his own name for Caius’. Reasoning via the universal risks luring one into the false reassurance of accepting death rationally denuded of the particular features it will have in one’s own lived experience. It is thus significant that both Confucius and Zhuangzi invite consideration not of death, but my mother’s death, my father’s death, my friend’s death, each of them, for me, a particular and definite loss. In so doing, they deny us flight into the safe territory of generality and insist that any peace to be found must sustain encounter with the conditions of our lives as we actually live them. The species of generality Confucius offers is perhaps the most potent on this score. Again, he, and the early Confucians more generally, do not focus on losses that are exceptional or unusual, but upon those most likely to feature in any life, the loss of parents, surely the most ubiquitous of human sorrows. There is, in the deaths of parents, nothing exceptional, nothing tragic, nothing we can with justice protest. Death is thus at once thus familiar and close, but also banal and most ordinary.

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Finally, my relation to the prospect of my own death may be fruitfully influenced where the deaths of others are my principal concern. There may be aid for accepting my death afforded by not making it my focus, by declining it my special attention and not equating the problem of death with my own mortality. Most basically, where death is understood as shared and I have mindfully endured the bereavements typical in a life, death is more familiar and so too are the dead. The generational sensibility that so marks Confucian understanding is especially potent here. To die is to do as my ancestors have done. Even absent any fanciful imaginings that they await me beyond the grave—imaginings that early Confucianism largely abjures—that they have gone before operates as softening consolation. Rather than a radically individuated consciousness—one risking a psychology that pretends my death unprecedented in its individuality, as if I am, for myself, the first ever to die—in my dying, I here do what those who came before have done. My path toward death is not only well-trod by others, the footsteps I trace are familiar. More potently, in its incorporation not only of what has gone before, but of what will come next, a generational sensibility activates and promotes longings that can encourage acceptance of one’s end. Perhaps the most direct expression of this is to confess my own gestalt regarding death upon the birth of my daughter. One day during her infancy, as she slept in my arms, I entertained thoughts I expect many new parents do, wondering what she would do and become, how the fullness of her life would go for her and where it would take her. It quickly descended upon me that if I am lucky, I will never know. We will both die, but my dying first and without ever seeing what finally she makes herself will be the finest good fortune I could wish, a death I can earnestly and without reservation welcome in place of its only alternative. There are, to be sure, deep philosophical commitments undergirding the early Chinese philosophers’ treatments of death, commitments more particular that I have not here assayed. Likewise, some of the strategies they endorse for managing sorrow may seem quite alien—after all in a cultural context in which bereavement leave is at best measured in mere days, Confucian ritual mourning spanning months and sometimes years is likely to register as bizarre. However more ambitious or culturally contingent some of the commitments and however alien some of the remedies, though, I suspect that the general sensibility regarding death the early Chinese philosophers recommend already enjoys some purchase even in western cultural contexts where the individuality of death receives our most concentrated philosophical attention. The early Chinese philosophers capture and assign extraordinary attention to the ways many commonly speak of loss. However, much philosophies in

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the West privilege my own death, the death of the individual, the ways in which people remark the deaths of others often contain intimations of the early Chinese view that the trouble with death is far from individual. After years of observing American mourners, undertaker Thomas Lynch concludes that grief simply and perhaps inevitably follows love, a “romance in reverse.”23 That loss unmakes the living is well captured in C.S. Lewis’ remembrance of his wife. He likens grief to suspense and explains its origins in the dislocation in losing the ordinary, familiar exchanges of marriage: It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there’s an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many culs de sac.24 In similar fashion, Joan Didion describes seeing herself differently following the death of her husband. His death ages her, not because the experience is a trial, or not simply so, but because she cannot relate to herself in the same way. She writes, “Marriage is not only time: it is also, paradoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John’s eyes. I did not age. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine I saw myself through the eyes of others.”25 Perhaps most directly, poet W.S. Merwin’s exquisitely terse “Elegy” betrays sentiments the Chinese philosophers would find familiar. It reads simply, “Who would I show it to?”26 The bare line captures the sense that the living without their dead have lost a language, even for elegy, in losing the one to whom they would speak. In short, poets, undertakers, and ordinary people, I think, see what philosophers in the west largely have not. My contention, then, is not that there is something radically and existentially new to us in what the early Chinese philosophers offer, but that we in the west have under-philosophized death. We have in our philosophies forwarded understandings of death that, where human experience is concerned, rarely get past the trivially true biological singularity of death, the death that merely happens to the one dying. We make existential drama of this, imagining the beast to lurk beyond the horizon, all the while inattentive to perils much nearer to hand. In this, we not only leave profound lacunae in what philosophy can offer, we get death experientially wrong. There is, the early Chinese philosophers would have us recognize, human

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solidarity to be had in death. We do not die alone. Rather, our dead take us out when they go. This is the problem of death.

NOTES 1. Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes Toward Death, trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 110. 2. Zhuangzi’s views on grief are complex and do not permit tidy summary. In brief, while he offers many stories of sages apparently free of grief at the loss of companions, he himself both displays grief at loss and treats it as natural. For more on this complex issue, see Amy Olberding, “Sorrow and the Sage: Grief in the Zhuangzi,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6:4(2007): 339–59. 3. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to make an elaborate argument for seeing Zhuangzi as more preoccupied by loss than by individual death, my principal reason for treating him so is the simple fact that while he comically and rather casually speaks of individual death, he is brought up short upon encountering loss. That is, Zhuangzi himself appears to have little trouble with dying, but it is upon the deaths of others that he appears to struggle and to be unable to summon the comic, light-hearted tone that so pervasively marks both his more abstract comments on death and his stories of sages at ease with death. 4. E.g., this clearly informs Confucian injunctions regarding that sons ought not depart from the ways of their fathers for three years following a father’s death. See, e.g., Analects 4.20. 5. Seneca, Moral Epistles, trans. Richard M. Gummere (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1917) XXVI .5. 6. Plato, Crito 46b. 7. Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, trans., The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 70–1. 8. See, e.g., Lucretius’ argument, framed in the voice of nature, to the effect that life’s pleasures are corrupted by anxiety regarding their end (Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, trans. Martin Ferguson Smith (Indianapolis, IN : Hackett Publishing Company, 1969), III .33ff. 9. See, e.g., Seneca’s treatment of how suppression of anger owing to fear of death inhibits the possibility of courageously responding to indubitably immoral outrages, in Seneca, de Ira, in Moral Chapters, Vol. I, trans. John W. Basore (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1928), III .XIV.2. 10. Here too, Seneca provides example in his account of Pompey, who is motivated to host spectacles of ever escalating violence and novelty because this demonstration of his power and wealth insulates him from recognizing his own mortality (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae, in Moral Chapters, vol. 2, trans. John W. Basore (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), 13.6–7. 11. Robert C. Solomon, “Death Fetishism, Morbid Solipsism,” in Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon, eds., Death and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1998), 175.

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12. A.C. Graham, trans., Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters (Indianapolis, IN : Hackett Publishing Company, 1989), 88–9. 13. Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (New York, Penguin Books, 1997), 21. 14. See, e.g., Graham, 46–7, 100, 102. 15. François Jullien offers a compelling analysis of the economy of language that characterizes the unusually close understanding between Confucius and Yan Hui. See Jullien, Detour and Access, trans. Sophie Hawkes (New York: Zone Books, 2000), chapter 9. 16. See, e.g., Analects 9.22, where Confucius implicitly likens Yan Hui to a plant that never flowers and flowers that never bear fruit and Analects 6.3, where Confucius responds to a query regarding which of his students love learning by remarking wistfully, “There was one Yan Hui who truly loved learning. He did not take his anger out on others; he did not make the same mistake twice. Unfortunately, he was to die young. Nowadays, there is no one—at least I haven’t come across anyone—who truly loves learning.” 17. This is one reason Confucius urges children not to depart from the ways of their parents until the three-year period of mourning has passed. See, e.g., Analects 1.11 and 4.20. I read these claims as issuing from a concern that the fragility of bereaved render them ill-equipped to navigate their new reality without recourse to the established and familiar patterns of the past. 18. I borrow this terminology, albeit with modified meaning, from Philippe Ariès. For his distinction between “tamed” and “wild” death, see Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), esp. Chapter 1. 19. See, e.g., Graham, 87–90. 20. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistles, trans. Richard M. Gummere (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1917), XLIX .6 21. The inspiration for this characterization derives from Henry James’ short story, “The Beast in the Jungle,” in The Great Short Novels of Henry James. New York: Dial Press, 1944. 22. See, e.g., Zhuangzi’s account of his own experience engaging in a kind of vain intellection as he observes creatures hunting each other only belatedly to realize that he himself is being pursued by a gamekeeper (Graham, 118). 23. Lynch, 25. 24. C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1961), 47. 25. Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 197. 26. W.S. Merwin, “Elegy,” in The Carrier of Ladders XXX .

WORKS CITED Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998.

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Ariès, Philippe. The Hour of Our Death. Trans. Helen Weaver. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Ariès, Philippe. Western Attitudes Toward Death. Trans. Patricia M. Ranum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Graham, A.C., trans. Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters. Indianapolis, IN : Hackett Publishing Company, 1989. James, Henry. “The Beast in the Jungle,” in The Great Short Novels of Henry James. New York: Dial Press, 1944. Jullien, François. Detour and Access. Trans. Sophie Hawkes. New York: Zone Books, 2000. Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1961. Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Trans. Martin Ferguson Smith. Indianapolis, IN : Hackett Publishing Company, 1969. Lynch, Thomas. The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. New York, Penguin Books, 1997. Merwin, W.S. “Elegy,” in The Carrier of Ladders. New York: Atheneum, 1978. Olberding, Amy. “Sorrow and the Sage: Grief in the Zhuangzi.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6.4 (2007): 339–59. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Epistles. Trans. Richard M. Gummere. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1917. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Moral Chapters. Trans. John W. Basore. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1928. Solomon, Robert C. “Death Fetishism, Morbid Solipsism,” in Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon, eds., Death and Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 1998. Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

CHAPTER TEN

The Problem of Anxiety in the Zhuangzi as Contrasted with Indian and Hellenistic Views ALEXUS MCLEOD

“To serve your own mind, so that sorrow and joy aren’t constantly revolving in front of you, knowing what you can’t do anything about and accepting it as though it were destiny, is the perfection of virtue. As a subject or a child, there will certainly be things you can’t avoid. As long as you stick to the actual job and forget about yourself, what leisure do you have to love life or hate death? You’ll be able to do it.” — Zhuangzi 4.3 The Zhuangzi is often read as sharing a particular motivation and view in common with Indian schools such as Buddhism and the Upanishads, which we also find in Hellenistic Philosophy (particularly Stoicism and Pyrrhonian Skepticism). This is the view that one of the central aims of the philosophical project is to eliminate painful, unpleasant, or otherwise negative mental states, and achieve a kind of “peace of mind.” I argue in this chapter that though the Indian and Greek schools mentioned do share such a position, the Zhuangzi does not. Many scholars, I argue, have misread the Zhuangzi, 225

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likely due to the influence of Buddhism on later Chinese thought, and other undeniable parallels between Zhuangist views and those of the Indian and Greek schools mentioned. I focus here on the views of these schools concerning anxiety. Our familiarity with Indian and Greek positions on the problem of anxiety, I argue, contributes to our reading of the Zhuangzi as having a concern with this problem. Although there is a problem of anxiety in the Zhuangzi, it is not the same problem of anxiety that we find in the Indian and Greek texts. I argue here that looking at the claims concerning anxiety in the Zhuangzi, in connection with the view developed in the text concerning value and the “use of the useless,” we can understand the problem of anxiety in the Zhuangzi as one concerning knowledge of the proper and improper application of anxiety, rather than the problem of the existence of anxiety, as we see in the Indian and Greek traditions. The order of the chapter is as follows: I first look to the Indian and Greek traditions to explain the problem of anxiety we find there. I argue that these traditions view anxiety as a problematic mental state that contributes to lack of wellbeing. The answer to the problem of anxiety in these traditions, I show, is elimination of anxiety and other negative mental states. I then turn to the Zhuangzi, arguing that in a number of passages, we find a more ambivalent view concerning anxiety, and can even find endorsement of anxiety in the “Cook Ding” passage from Chapter Three. I show how a view of anxiety as useful or valuable in certain situations is consistent with the general view central to the Zhuangzi that valuation and devaluation leads us to reject certain things as useless and miss the variety of perspectives from which and situations in which such “useless” things are useful. Finally, I suggest that the influence of Buddhism in China, with its concern with problematic mental states, is part of the reason that the problem of anxiety in the Zhuangzi is often understood as being the same as the problem of anxiety in the Indian and Hellenistic traditions. I focus on anxiety in particular for a few reasons. It is an affective state that is clearly problematic in the Greek and Indian traditions, and is mentioned in these traditions as particularly worrisome and in need of overcoming. In the Zhuangzi, however, we find a marked ambivalence about anxiety. While in certain situations it is unhelpful, obstructing, or otherwise negative, we also see situations in which it is useful or even seemingly required. The story of Cook Ding in Chapter Three of the Zhuangzi in particular stresses the usefulness of anxiety. I look closely at this passage, comparing it with others elsewhere in the text. Zhuangzi, continuing with the theme we see throughout the text, refuses to reject anxiety as a disvalue, and instead holds that the person who understands dao will understand the possible value of anxiety, like any other state. Such a person will be able to properly use anxiety when it is called for. The view that anxiety is “unskillful” (to use a Buddhist term)

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across the board, something that is always and inevitably a bad thing (as we see in much of the Indian tradition), would be according to the Zhuangist just another form of shi-fei (discriminating right and wrong) that creates a “useless” and which disallows us from seeing the potential value in what we deem “useless” after such a valuation. To fully appreciate the Zhuangist view on anxiety, we have to look to the Zhuangzi’s claims about the activity and mental life of persons attuned to the dao, who are the most effective and thriving persons, according to Zhuangists (like other Daoists).

ANXIETY AND CONCEPTS OF ‘PEACE-OF-MIND’ IN INDIAN AND HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHY The view that mental ease or peace-of-mind is a result of proper understanding in the Zhuangzi is a faulty one, and is due to the influence of Indian thought in the interpretive tradition (through Buddhism). I believe we can find in numerous Indian and Hellenistic traditions a notion of calm, ease, or dispassion as the natural result of proper understanding. Just such a position is often attributed incorrectly to the Zhuangzi, in part because of apparent similarities between the claims of Zhuangzi and these other traditions on states such as anxiety. One of the major similarities between the Zhuangzi and numerous Indian and Hellenistic schools is that in the Zhuangzi, like in these schools, there is a “problem of anxiety.” It is not, however, the same problem of anxiety that is discussed in Zhuangzi and these other traditions. They differ concerning just what they find problematic about anxiety, as well as in the solutions they offer to their problem with anxiety. Numerous schools in the Indian and Hellenistic traditions discuss concepts of a kind of mental ease, relaxation, or peace of mind.1 These concepts tend to be major components of the systems advanced by the schools and texts in which they are discussed. Concepts like ataraxia (peace of mind) in the Hellenistic tradition are central—the main stated aim of schools such as the Stoics and Pyrrhonian Skeptics. Ataraxia for these schools is that at which the entire ethical system aims—an equivalent of the thriving (eudaimonia) of Aristotle or culmination of virtue and social harmony for Confucians.2 One of the key features of the state of ataraxia for both Stoics and Pyrrhonians is its association with freedom from anxiety, fear, or mental distress. Sextus Empiricus discusses the goal of skepticism in his Outlines on Skepticism, claiming that the skeptic, through suspending judgment and thereby avoiding belief, aims at “freedom from disturbance with respect to matters of belief and also moderate states with respect to things that are matters of compulsion.”3 He goes on to explain that the Skeptical suspension of judgment itself can only lead to complete peace of mind concerning epistemological issues. The Skeptic

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will not form unease or anxiety concerning the truth of any given statement, as she has simply suspended belief, on the basis of the numerous skeptical modes. But still, Sextus considers, even a skeptic will certainly have other problems that lead to “disturbance” in terms of other unpleasant, stressful, or otherwise negative mental states. The Skeptic can still be in a state of pain or hunger, for example. Sextus admits that this kind of thing will still be cause for disturbance in the mind of the Skeptic. But even these things, he argues, will be less unpleasant for the Skeptic than they are for others. He writes: Even in these cases, whereas ordinary people are distressed by two circumstances—by the states themselves and no less by the belief that the circumstances [under which the states are experienced] are bad by nature—the skeptic, by rejecting the additional belief that each of these is not only bad but bad by nature, will escape with more moderate states.4 Thus, Skepticism has as its aim an elimination, where possible, or a reduction, where elimination is impossible, of mental anguish, of the kind associated with states like fear, anxiety, dread, and even pain, hunger, and other mental distress related to physical states. As Sextus points out here, part of what is distressing about pain or hunger is one’s mindset concerning one’s state. Pain is intrinsically unpleasant, but our reflective mental states based on our belief that pain is bad and to be avoided is a further source of mental distress. Since the Skeptic is able to eliminate such beliefs, then even in the case of pain, the Skeptic will have less mental distress than the non-Skeptic. That is, for the developed Skeptic, pain and hunger will be less distressing. In Stoicism, the piece of mind of ataraxia is connected to the state of apatheia. The person who follows the Stoic way of life attains a freedom from mental disturbance, akin to what we see in the Skeptic case. But for the Stoics, this is understood primarily in terms of freedom of disturbance from affective states. What does not disturb the Stoic is passions. The Stoic has become able through cultivation to undermine the development of the kinds of emotions that generally cause us mental distress. For the Stoic, this process happens along somewhat similar lines to the process of suspension of belief that the Skeptics discuss. The main difference is that in the case of the Stoic, the “suspension” involves the construction of affective states. There are multiple parts of the process of creating emotions, and the Stoic “withholds assent” at a critical stage in the construction that subverts the process. Andrew Holowchak, explaining the Stoic view, writes: . . . emotions are impulses to which the soul assents. Nonetheless, sometimes even a sage will be nudged by emotion—for instance, first

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motions concerning sexual arousal or sorrow—but he will not assent to them. Instead, he will quickly gain his composure so that the initial motion does not lead to a second and third. Therefore, though a sage will sometimes be momentarily moved by impressions, failing to assent to them, he will not experience genuine emptions. That is Stoic apatheia.5 The Upanishadic and Buddhist traditions have similar aims. The liberative concepts in these schools, such as moksha in the Upanishads and nirvana in Buddhism, involve a complete elimination or at least reduction of the kind of psychic distress often identified with states like fear, anxiety, or dread. The liberated person, according to both the Upanishads and early Buddhism, is one who does not feel affective states like anxiety, because she has eliminated the attachment and desire that creates states such as anxiety. Just as in the case of the Stoics and Pyrrhonians, these schools admit that the liberated person will still feel pain, hunger, and other inevitable “negative” mental states. But also like the Hellenistic schools, these schools argue that such mental states for the liberated person are less unpleasant, involving less suffering (or for the Buddhist no suffering) than they do for the unliberated person. The Buddhist concept of upeksha (equanimity) seems to play a similar role to the Stoic apatheia. The Buddhist sage retains an even and unperturbed mind, unhindered by passions or attachments that create states of mental unease such as anxiety or dread. The suffering the Buddhist discusses in the early Pali suttas (and which remains central to Buddhism in later schools and texts) is a result of the kind of attachment to things without which states such as fear and anxiety are impossible. Upekkha, as Buddhist commentators are careful to point out, does not entail a kind of emotional withdrawal from the world or complete circumvention of affective states, just as this is also not the case for apatheia in Stoicism. Indeed, both schools admit that it would be impossible to attain such a state. The enlightened person, according to the early Buddhists, is still able to feel emotions, and is still able to be moved to action by compassion for his or her fellow beings, just in the same way the enlightened person is still able to feel pain. The difference between the enlightened and unenlightened person is that these affective states do not occasion the further states associated with existential distress or concern. So, while the enlightened person can be moved to compassion, and can be annoyed, the enlightened person cannot have existential fear, anxiety, or dread. A passage from the Samaññaphala Sutta explains anxiety as one of the “hindrances” to enlightenment, and describes the affective states of the cultivated person (and presumably the enlightened person):

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Abandoning covetousness with regard to the world, he dwells with an awareness devoid of covetousness. He cleanses his mind of covetousness. Abandoning ill will and anger, he dwells with an awareness devoid of ill will, sympathetic with the welfare of all living beings. He cleanses his mind of ill will and anger. Abandoning sloth and drowsiness, he dwells with an awareness devoid of sloth and drowsiness, mindful, alert, percipient of light. He cleanses his mind of sloth and drowsiness. Abandoning restlessness and anxiety, he dwells undisturbed, his mind inwardly stilled. He cleanses his mind of restlessness and anxiety. Abandoning uncertainty, he dwells having crossed over uncertainty, with no perplexity with regard to skillful mental qualities. He cleanses his mind of uncertainty.6 Both the Buddhists and Stoics see the primary problem as not painful states in themselves, but the suffering attached to these states. For the Buddhists, when we extract the suffering from painful states through relinquishing attachment to non-painful states (in part through the recognition of impermanence and insubstantiality of such states, and that they don’t belong to a “self ”7), they cease to be negative or otherwise problematic. This is similar to the Stoics, who held that the various mental disturbances (pain, pleasure) are irrational states. The rational person does not experience pain or pleasure, but instead experiences caution and joy, which are the rational counterparts to these states.8 Diogenes Laertius discusses the Stoic view on the distinction between these states, and the lack of problematic states that the cultivated person will demonstrate: There are also three good states [of the soul], joy, caution, and wish. And joy is opposite to pleasure, being a reasonable elation; and caution to fear, being a reasonable avoidance. For the wise man will not be afraid in any way, but will be cautious.9 A passage in the Majjhima Nikaya of the Buddhist Pali Canon also suggests a similar position. The enlightened person has painful feelings (and pleasant ones), but does not feel them in the same way as the unenlightened person, as they are “detached” from the feelings. If he feels a pleasant feeling he understands: ‘It is impermanent; there is no holding to it; there is no delight in it.’ If he feels a painful feeling, he understands: ‘It is impermanent; there is no holding to it; there is no delight in it.’ [. . .] If he feels a painful feeling, he feels it detached.10

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Fear and anxiety can be stages in the path to enlightenment, but the arahant, the one who has arrived at enlightenment, will not feel them. In MN 39.3 (Maha-Assapura Sutta), the Buddha enjoins his monks to have fear of wrongdoing, as this is helpful in generating avoidance of wrongdoing: And what, bhikkhus, are the things that make one a recluse, that make one a Brahmin? Bhikkhus, you should train thus: “We will be possessed of shame and fear of wrongdoing. For the Buddhists, however, this is a means to the end of enlightenment, in which such mental states will not arise. The arahant has gone beyond shame and fear in this way. They can be seen primarily as upaya (skillful means) to help attain enlightenment. Many traditions have offered religious responses to anxiety that have as their aim the reduction or elimination of the state. Theologian Paul Tillich identified anxiety with a negative reaction to non-being, created by the human situation of finitude or mortality. Tillich explains that anxiety is not a constant feature of human life, even though our understanding of our finitude is. Anxiety is created only within certain situations. Understanding of our finitude is a necessary condition for this anxiety, however. He writes: Anxiety, one says, appears under special conditions but is not an everpresent implication of man’s finitude. Certainly anxiety as an acute experience appears under definite conditions. But the underlying structure of finite life is the universal condition which makes the appearance of anxiety under special conditions possible.11 As to what those special conditions are, it is unclear. Conditions, we might imagine, that force home our finitude, or show us the results or import of this finitude, perhaps? While a neurotic anxiety certainly might be caused by such a situation, it need not be, and I think we have reason to think that there are far more common additional sources of debilitating or neurotic anxiety. We see one such famous example in the Bhagavad Gita, which shares with the Zhuangzi a focus on anxiety as it arises in the seemingly impossible or “no-win” situation (as I will discuss below). The source of anxiety for much of the Indian and Hellenistic traditions is also different from what we will see in the case of the Zhuangzi. Like Tillich, the kind of anxiety the Indian and Hellenistic traditions are largely concerned with is existential anxiety.12 This anxiety is problematic, according to these traditions, in part because it is massively unpleasant and can be considered a form of suffering, and also because it can become debilitating. The suggestion

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that we find in the Upanishads is that it is reflection on mortality that can create this kind of debilitating anxiety. In the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (3.1) the king of Videha, trying to determine which of the priests he has employed for a ritual is wisest, asks them a number of questions surrounding mortality and suffering that reveals his own concern with these issues. The first question he asks is telling: When this whole world is caught in the grip of death, when it is overwhelmed by death, how can the patron of a sacrifice free himself completely from its grip?13 In the Chandogya Upanishad (8.12), in a conversation between the god Prajapati, god of creation, and Indra (described here as “not yet” a god, but a human), Prajapati explains the unsatisfactoriness of life that leads to anxiety: This body, Maghavan [Indra], is mortal; it is in the grip of death. So, it is the abode of this immortal and non-bodily self. One who has a body is in the grip of joy and sorrow, and there is no freedom from joy and sorrow for one who has a body. Joy and sorrow, however, do not affect one who has a body.14 Here again, we see that it is finitude of the type discussed by Tillich that is the source of sorrow, as well as joy, and all the human affective states. And we also see the claim here that the solution to this is to gain something like the Stoic apatheia—to simply be outside of the grip of both joy and sorrow, of anxiety and calm. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (4.4.22), there is an explanation of what the realized person will be like—and it turns out that such a person will be entirely free of problematic states like anxiety: A man who knows this [the nature of atman], therefore, becomes calm, composed, cool, patient, and collected. He sees the self in just himself and all things as the self. Evil does not pass across him, and he passes across all evil. He is not burnt by evil; he burns up all evil. He becomes a Brahmin— free from evil, free from stain, free from doubt.15 Such an account of the realized person is common throughout the Upanishads, and, as we have seen, later Indian traditions as well, such as Buddhism. The idea that these traditions and the Hellenistic traditions of Stoicism and Skepticism (at least) share is that certain mental states are stains—unvaluable,

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“useless,” wholly negative or objectively undesirable, and that any aversion to such states is natural and justified. The problem is simply that we don’t know how to get rid of these states, not that we don’t know whether or not they are good or can be valuable. The Upanishads assume that we know and are right about where we want to end up, it’s just a matter of getting there. The Indian and Hellenistic traditions discussed here are mainly concerned with the possibility that we will be buffeted by states like anxiety, and thus they aim to undermine them. As I show below, this is not the concern of the Zhuangzi. There is indeed a problem of anxiety to be found in the Zhuangzi, but it is not, I argue, this problem. Indeed, in many parts of the Zhuangzi we see either Zhuang Zhou himself or another important character carried away by a powerful emotion of a certain kind, including anxiety, with the suggestion that these emotions are acceptable in certain circumstances. We simply have to know the right occasions in which they are acceptable, and when to employ them—and this is a matter of understanding dao. The problem with humans in general is that we often confuse things and employ emotions, concepts, etc. in the wrong places and at the wrong times.

READINGS OF ZHUANGZI ON ANXIETY This kind of reduction of psychic distress, the elimination of affective states seen as problematic, such as anxiety, restlessness, and other states that “disturb” the mind is often taken by scholars to be a feature shared between the abovementioned traditions and the thought of the Zhuangzi. Part of the issue here may be that the Zhuangzi has had over a thousand years of interpretation in China through the lenses of Buddhist thought. Indeed, Zhuangism itself influenced a number of Buddhist movements in China, including that of Chan (Zen) Buddhism. Chinese Buddhists also adopted a number of terms from Zhuangism to explain Buddhist concepts in a Chinese context. So, it is little wonder that many interpretations of the Zhuangzi have been highly influenced by Buddhism. This Buddhist-flavored interpretation comes out in many contemporary readings of the Zhuangzi as well. There have been numerous interpretations of the Zhuangzi that argue that one of the main purposes of the Zhuangist program is to eliminate “negative” mental states like anxiety and create a kind of Skeptic, Stoic, or Buddhist “peace of mind” or “equanimity.” This can be seen in even the most recent work on the Zhuangzi. Steve Coutinho writes: Like the Skeptics, Zhuangzi also seems to aim for emotional tranquility. He is concerned with how to cultivate an emotional state that enables us to deal with life’s difficulties, no matter how dire, without emotional turmoil.16

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William Theodore de Bary offers a very similar view, writing: “Zhuangzi seeks to free us from the life-depleting anxiety wrought by an overwrought insistence upon you-wei action.”17 Even scholars who reject such a view, such as Paul Kjellberg, generally reject it on the grounds that it is false because attaining peace-of-mind is “not all he [Zhuangzi] is after,”18 not on the grounds that Zhuangzi is not concerned with peace-of-mind in the Indian or Hellenistic sense at all. Part of the reason these traditions are read into the Zhuangzi is that there is a problem concerning anxiety in the Zhuangzi, and because these Indian and Greek views are most familiar to us when considering the problem of anxiety, we overlook the different problem of anxiety in the Zhuangzi. In addition, because of the influence of Buddhism in China and the use of Daoist and Zhuangist ideas to express Buddhism in an East Asian context, even Chinese thinkers became prone to understanding the problem of anxiety in the Zhuangzi in terms of the Indian and Greek problem of anxiety as mentioned above. Here is a place where comparative work leads us astray. But it is also through careful comparison that we can unravel the bind that has kept us from sufficiently appreciating this important aspect of the Zhuangzi. We should not, the Zhuangist enjoins, spend our time and energy attempting to get rid of mental states like anxiety, fear, and dread. Rather, in understanding dao, in grasping the tian li manifest in the world, we can come to gain an understanding of when anxiety is called for and when it is not. And we can then learn to employ it where it is effective, and let it go where it is not. If there is a major goal for the Zhuangist, it is efficacy and its role in thriving, rather than the elimination of certain mental states. Justin Tiwald writes, in a recent chapter on well-being in Daoism: Zhuangzi thinks . . . that our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are moderated by the heavenly point of view even as we appreciate human obligations, purposes, and concerns well enough to pursue them. Zhuangzi illustrates this combination in several different stories, often featuring people who outwardly conform to inherited social customs but inwardly maintain a cool, dispassionate attitude toward them—the sorts of people who participate in mourning rituals but don’t have feelings recognizable as grief or sorrow, or who strive to master some profession but do not truly care whether they succeed or fail.19 Tiwald references a number of stories in the Zhuangzi to support this position.20 I think there are better ways to understand what is going on in these passages, that has nothing (or little) to do with ridding the mind of disturbances and unease, and more to do with effective action, spontaneity

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(ziran) and the “genuine” (zhen). The reading of these and other stories in the Zhuangzi, presenting them as offering a picture of how we eliminate or dampen problematic affective states and attain a dispassionate attitude akin to apatheia or upekkha, is in essence a Buddhist reading of the Zhuangzi. While such a reading has a deep history in Chinese scholarship, dominant since the rise of Buddhism and the adoption of Daoist concepts to understand Buddhist doctrine (a process that continued long after the explicit use of terminology called geyi in early Chinese Buddhism)21, this reads Buddhist concerns into Zhuangism where they do not exist. The Zhuangists were not, I contend, concerned with reducing unpleasant or disturbing affective states as themselves problematic. Rather, they were concerned with effective and genuine action, mirroring the dao. Sometimes, according to Zhuangists, such action requires elimination or dampening of obstructing affective states. But sometimes it requires creation of such states. In those passages of the Zhuangzi where there is endorsement of elimination or dampening of states like fear, anxiety, and dread, it is never because there is something problematic about these mental states in themselves. It is not that there is, as in the Buddhist, Stoic, and Pyrrhonian cases, disvalue in the mental anguish felt by one who suffers these emotions. Rather, the problem is that for one who has failed to understand and mirror the dao, such affective states can arise where they don’t belong and serve as obstacles to the kind of genuine, spontaneous and ultimately effective action exemplified by that of the sage. While we can find in the Zhuangzi passages in which states such as anxiety are rejected, the Buddhist reading of the Zhuangzi is too quick to determine this as due to a view on which a Zhuangist goal is the reduction of mental disturbance, the attainment of something like ataraxia, apatheia, or upekkha. This view is problematized by passages in the Zhuangzi in which we find endorsement of states the Buddhists and Stoics find problematic, such as fear and anxiety, or sometimes neutral positions on these states. Such passages tend to be neglected in interpretations of the Zhuangzi, in part because they do not fit with the Buddhist interpretation. If the Zhuangzi enjoins us to attain equanimity or peace of mind, then how can we make sense of apparent claims that the genuine person or Daoist sage sometimes feels anxiety or unease as part of their effective and genuine action? One of the keys here, I argue, is to understand this aspect of Zhuangist thought independently from Indian or Hellenistic schools. Although it does have much in common with those schools, this is one point on which there is significant divergence. Readings of the Zhuangzi as similar on this issue to Indian and Hellenistic views is not completely unmotivated or unjustified, as there are many striking similarities between these traditions and the Zhuangists in related areas,

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including their view of the best kind of life. According to Diogenes Laertius, the Stoics aimed to “live consistently with nature,” and held that such a life would issue in “a smooth flow of life, whenever all things are done according to the harmony of the daimon in each of us with the will of the administrator of the universe.”22 This echoes the position on action consistent with dao that we find in the Zhuangzi. While there is no appeal to a divine agent anywhere in Daoist literature, dao does play a similar role to the “administrator of the universe” in Stoicism. And it is certainly action in accord with nature, including human nature, that the Zhuangist argues will lead to thriving. Dao is associated with nature in a number of passages in the Zhuangzi, including one I look at more closely below, 5:22–24, in which Zhuangzi tells Hui Shi: “Dao gives him this appearance, tian gives him this physical form. . .”23 It is also the case that we should follow or attempt to live in some way in adherence to this dao associated with nature. Zhuangzi in 6:10 claims that the zhen ren 真人(Genuine Person) does not use the mind to resist or move away from dao. These parallels are largely shared between Zhuangism and Buddhism as well, and I think this is a large part of the reason that the Zhuangzi is read as also sharing a position concerning anxiety and equanimity with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Stoicism. I have argued in other works for the wider adoption of what I call an “analogical method” of comparative philosophy to clarify difficult points in historical texts,24 but I think we must also be careful in drawing analogies between traditions where there is evidence of divergence. We also have to be aware of where traditions or texts that parallel each other in some ways diverge, and why. Thus, one way of seeing my project in this chapter is as the opposite side of my project of developing analogical approaches to comparative philosophy. Here, I point out where the analogy between Zhuangism and Indian and Hellenistic schools is overstretched, and argue that there is good reason to see a divergence between the schools on the issue of “disturbing” mental states.

THE REAL PROBLEM OF ANXIETY IN THE ZHUANZI In the Zhuangzi, where we see most concentration on anxiety is not in consideration of mortality, as in numerous Indian and Hellenistic texts, but in considerations of seemingly unavoidable dilemmas, in which there will be a bad result no matter which path one takes. This should right away tip us off to the fact that the interest with such mental states in the Zhuangzi has less to do with their role in mental disturbance or peace-of-mind than with their role in effective and genuine action. While the Zhuangzi is certainly a

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unique text and there is much disagreement between Zhuangists and other early Chinese schools and thinkers, one point on which the Zhuangists agree with the Confucians and Mohists is that thriving is not a matter of having or lacking certain affective mental states, but of both reliably producing effective action and having proper motivations and attitudes. The questions of pleasure vs. pain, or disturbance vs. ease receive relatively little attention from early Chinese thinkers, in comparison to those of Indian and Hellenistic traditions. This is one of the main stumbling blocks for Westerners approaching these texts. We tend (perhaps because of our own influence by soteriological systems) to understand texts enjoining self-cultivation as having to do with creation or maximization of pleasant mental states and elimination of unpleasant ones. In the Zhuangzi, however, as in other early Chinese texts, consideration of anxiety based on seemingly impossible decisions is taken as difficult and problematic not because of its contribution to mental disturbance, but because it makes a precarious situation in which the greatest care and concentration is required even harder to successfully navigate. The seemingly impossible decision is discussed at a number of points throughout the Zhuangzi text, but comes up most often in Chapters 3 and 4 of the text. Below, I discuss two instances of it in Chapter 4, and a closely related “difficult spot” passage in Chapter 4, all of which have in common their focus on action and the efficacy of action as the source of anxiety. Perhaps the reason that the “seemingly impossible decision” as a source of anxiety does not come up often in Indian and Greek texts (the central problematic of the Bhagavad Gita being a notable exception) is that such a problem is not one that rulers or elites would be expected to worry about. Indeed, in the Mahabharata, there is the suggestion that even dharma (sacred duty) can be abrogated on the prerogative of the ruler. The Zhuangzi doesn’t appear to have rulers, or at least primarily rulers, however, as its audience. And its characters and examples are hardly ever of the ruling classes—other than those people it chooses to ridicule. The characters preferred by the Zhuangzi, especially those praised as the most genuine persons, are at the margins of society—hermits, madmen, rogues, the physically deformed, and at best laborers such as butchers and carpenters. The kind of anxiety these people might be expected to have given their situations could be very different than what rulers and Brahmin priests could be expected to experience. We see particularly problematic anxiety reveal itself throughout the Renjianshi chapter of Zhuangzi. In one of the vignettes of the chapter, Zigao, having been given an official mission by the king, comes to see Confucius (or the Zhuangist version anyway), looking for advice. He says:

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王使諸梁也甚重, 齊之待使者, 蓋將甚敬而不急。匹夫猶未可動, 而況諸 侯乎! 吾甚慄之。[. . .] 吾食也, 執粗而不臧, 爨無欲清之人。今吾朝受命 而夕飲冰, 我其內熱與! 吾未至乎事之情, 而既有陰陽之患矣; 事若不成, 必有人道之患。是兩也, 為人臣者不足以任之, 子其有以語我來! The king has given me a heavy mission. The people of Qi treat envoys with great respect but are slow to make any concessions. Even the ordinary folk there are unbudgeable—how much more so the feudal lords! I am quite terrified. [. . .] I am a man who has no special dietary needs, and even when drinking a steaming broth I normally have no need for a cooler, but look at me now: I got my orders this morning and already I am sucking on ice chunks this evening, as if my insides were on fire! I have not yet begun the actual task and already my yin and yang are out of whack. And if the mission turns out to be a failure, I’ll surely be menaced by the people around me. Given these two problems, it is just not worth it to be employed as someone’s underling! Please give me some advice!25 Here is a particularly debilitating anxiety, occasioned by being given a seemingly impossible task. Throughout the Zhuangzi, it is suggested and sometimes explicitly claimed that part of the problem with action in the project of civilization is that society doesn’t have the individual’s interest at heart, and to be employed in the project of civilization is to be used as fodder, ground up, faced with impossible choices (just as we see with Arjuna in the Gita!). How do we possibly get free of the kind of inability to act that such anxiety leaves us with? The response given to Zigao here is instructive. In some ways, it mirrors the response Krishna offers Arjuna in the case of the Gita—a response stressing dharma, relinquishing the fruits of action, and how this is the key to both success and to true thriving. But the Zhuangist response isn’t completely continuous with this. That is, it seems to accept that anxiety in the face of situations like this is acceptable and ought somehow to be used to more effectively make one’s way through such difficult situations rather than reduced or eliminated. In a sense, Zhuangzi is telling Zigao “anxiety isn’t your problem—your problem is your inability to see past this anxiety, so as to see how to effectively use it!” Zigao’s inability see past the anxiety is due to his failure to give up the kind of conceptualization, the process of 是非 shi-fei (this/not-this, right/wrong, etc.) that the Zhuangzi expresses as problematic throughout the various chapters. What happens, however, when one stops engaging in the process of shifei, which is continuous with “sitting and forgetting (忘 wang) the self ” and “fasting of the mind” (心齋 xin zhai) discussed in Chapters 3 and 4?

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Zhuangzi’s version of Confucius tells Zigao that what he should do is simply concentrate on performing the task, and not on the self, a reward, or a particular conceptualization of the way things should be.26 The idea here seems to be that it is the inability to act that is the problem, rather than the anxiety. In certain situations, anxiety may be the proper response. The Zhuangist spontaneity (自然 ziran) cannot be carelessness. The key is to be able to channel this anxiety into the kind of care that is necessary if one is to hope to navigate these seemingly impossible situations. The conversation between Yan He and Peng Boyu later in Chapter 4, concerning a prince whom Yan He has been employed to instruct, offers a similar lesson. Yan He describes his own impossible situation, similar to that of Zigao, involving the attempt to train his intransigent pupil. He’s likely to be crushed whatever he does, because if he allows his student free reign, his vicious character will result in disaster to the state, while if he constrains the student, he puts himself in danger. Here is a critical tradeoff—one’s life, or the welfare of society?27 Peng Boyu, interestingly, advises caution (慎 shen). What Yan He needs to do, he suggests, is to engage in external compromise while maintaining inner harmony. That is, he can most effectively act by following along with the natural propensity (天理 tian li) of his student’s action, guiding him without confronting him, redirecting him efficiently. This compromise has to remain hidden, according to Peng, or one is in danger.28 There is a focus here on care or caution, but notably not on ease. The task of navigating through impossible situations is one that can be done, but takes skill and extreme care. This itself is the kind of thing that could cause anxiety. Peng likens the skill of dealing with rulers to taming tigers—one has to understand and use the natural propensities of the tiger’s behavior, avoiding arousing their bloodlust by giving them live animals to eat, for example. Of course, the application of caution in itself may not entail that we should be expected to have states such as anxiety. According to the Stoics, the state of fear is an irrational one that becomes caution when the rationality is applied and our emotions are controlled. The Stoics certainly thought it was possible to be cautious while without fear or anxiety, whether they were correct or not. But what this passage (as well as the previous one) does seem to show is that the emphasis in the Zhuangzi, at least here, is squarely on efficacy of action rather than dissolution of unpleasant or otherwise problematic mental states. Zhuangzi’s verion of Confucius is silent on the fear/terror (慄 li) of Zigao, and whether this can or should be undermined. Elsewhere, however, the Zhuangzi seems more clear in expressing the position that even the sage is not completely free of anxiety, and should not be. The clearest example of this is in the famous story of Cook Ding in

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Chapter 3. Even Cook Ding, close to the Zhuangist ideal if anyone is, and one who in his own words has “gone beyond skill” and gained the ability to avoid conceptualization (shi-fei), admittedly feels anxiety when he acts. And the suggestion in the passage is that this anxiety is somehow necessary to the efficacy of his action. In his explanation of his amazing ability to carve oxen without ever replacing his knife, Ding first gives his account of how he does not see oxen at all, but rather the natural joints, and allows his knife to take up the empty space such that the meat falls apart as if on its own. This is where most accounts of Cook Ding’s skill stop (as my own used to as well!). But Ding’s account does not end here. He discusses what happens when he reaches a difficult point in the carving: 雖然, 每至於族, 吾見其難為, 怵然為戒, 視為止, 行為遲. When I reach a difficult point, and I see it will be difficult, I anxiously (怵然 chu ran) employ caution (wei), my vision comes to a stop, my movement slows.29 This shift enables Ding to make his way through the difficult spot with but a subtle motion of the knife, thus maintaining the sharpness of his blade. Part of what seems to be expressed here is the view that anxiety can be effective at helping us achieve certain goals. It is part of the explanation of Cook Ding’s ability that he anxiously employs caution. He does not just employ caution. That is, at least, if the author is being careful here, and chu ran isn’t simply a throwaway comment or something meant to serve as emphasis for the seriousness of the situation. It seems unlikely that this would be an insignificant comment, given that the author could easily have ended the passage where many discussions of it end, at the seemingly natural point after Ding explains how he does not see oxen. But the author continues here to explain what happens in difficult cases. Connecting this to the passage above concerning Zigao and the recalcitrant prince, it seems that a common theme that emerges in the Zhuangzi is the generation of anxiety or dread in cases in which one faces difficult circumstances in the way of completing one’s actions, or in which one’s actions have a high probability of failure. In the Zigao passage, there is no suggestion as to whether or not the mental state of fear is one we ought to aim to undermine, but in the Cook Ding passage, the suggestion is that the anxiety one feels on beginning a difficult task is part of the explanation of the skill of the sagely person, which Ding certainly is intended to represent.

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The suggestion here seems to be that the kind of caution that gets one through the seemingly impossible situation (tutoring the tyrannical prince, cutting through an ox without dulling one’s blade where no empty space presents itself) requires anxiety. So clearly, we are not dealing here with something like the Upanishadic notion that the anxiety attached to the problems it aims to solve will be dissolved with these solutions—a position echoed in the Buddhist tradition that grows out of the intellectual background of the Upanishads. The term translated here as “caution,” jie 戒, occurs in a number of other passages that can also help to make the case that Zhuangzi sees anxiety as a necessary part of such caution in certain cases. It is linked with adherence to actions based in ming 命 (allotment, destiny) and yi 義 (righteousness, appropriateness) in the story of Zigao and the recalcitrant prince in Chapter 4, which, as we have seen, is connected to anxiety and fear. It is also raised in the conversation between Yan He and Qu Boyi directly following the Zigao story in Chapter 4. Yan He, having a similar unenviable mission to instruct and reform the uncultivated and vicious son of the duke of Wei, asks Qu Boyi to help him determine how to proceed. Qu Boyi twice tells Yan He to 戒之慎之 (“cautiously go, carefully go”). He stresses the caution here, using not only the term jie, but also shen 慎. The term I translate “anxiety” here, chu 怵 occurs only a single time in the Yangshengzhu chapter (Chapter 3) that contains Ding’s story. It only appears in one other place in the inner chapters, in Yingdiwang, in the context of an imagined conversation between Yang Ziju and Lao Dan (a story copied in the Tiandi chapter). There, chu is described as something undesirable or negative. The only other use in the Zhuangzi as a whole that seems to come anywhere close to that in Yangshengzhu is in the Daozhi chapter.30 Thus we can see that chu is not in general seen as a desirable or acceptable state (unlike rational states such as caution for the Stoics), and there are indeed passages in which the Zhuangist author(s) enjoin us to get rid of it. The same construction is used in the Yingdiwang chapter and the Tiandi chapter (from the so called “Outer Chapters”): 勞形怵心者也 (one with toiling in body and anxiety of mind). In both cases, such persons are seen as lacking understanding. Chu, or anxiety, is not then an unqualifiedly good or useful thing according to the Zhuangists. It is for this reason that we cannot simply liken chu to a less unpleasant of more acceptable kind of anxiety akin to the pain that the enlightened person still feels, according to the Buddhists, or the “caution” rather than fear that the wise person feels, according to Stoics. But at the same time chu should not be rejected as a wholly negative and “useless” state either. The Cook Ding passage suggests this, but further support can be found in a general position that the Zhuangzi adopts concerning the “use of the useless”.

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The Renjianshi chapter closes with a general claim concerning those things that are conventionally deemed useless or disvalued: 山木自寇也, 膏火自煎也。桂可食, 故伐之; 漆可用, 故割之。人皆知有用 之用, 而莫知無用之用也。 The trees of the mountain invade it—the fire of the grease fries it. Cinnamon can be eaten, and thus the cinnamon tree is cut down. Lacquer is useful, and thus the lacquer tree is sliced. Everyone knows the use of the useful, but no one knows the use of the useless.31 The Zhuangists here are emphasizing a point they argue for throughout the text of the Zhuangzi. When we value things and devalue other things (the two inevitably go together), we render ourselves incapable of seeing the possible value of the disvalued things. Because the world is undergoing constant transformation (wanwu zhi hua), standards are constantly changing—what is useful at one time in one place is not useful at a different time and place. Everything, then, has some value, but the only way we become able to see the value of a thing is to be able to shift perspectives. That which we deem “useless” is “useful” from some other perspective (or in some other situation). The problem, according to Zhuangzi, is not that we have the wrong things or that we strive for the wrong states, but rather that we have the mindset so as to discriminate things into right and wrong, useful and useless, in the first place. The Zhuangzi focuses on the way in which rejection of the “useless” leads to our missing the hidden value of things. This suggests just the kind of position toward states such as anxiety that we see in the Cook Ding passage and others mentioned above. To reject anxiety as something to be avoided, to be eliminated completely in exchange for the “peace of mind” at the center of the Indian and Greek schools discussed, would for the Zhuangist be a kind of shi-fei, and rejection of the state as wholly useless. This would of course be to miss the ways in which these states themselves can be useful (yong). One of the key features of the Zhuangist program is that things (wu) can only be deemed useful or useless from within some perspective, and there is nothing that is useful or useless from every perspective. There is no universally valuable or valueless thing or state, including anxiety. To hold that there is would fundamentally undermine the Zhuangist message that dogged commitment to certain things and values and wholesale rejection of others (a mistake made by Confucians, Mohists, and others) inevitably undermines one’s own projects, and makes true thriving impossible. In the stories concerning things that are “useless” that comprise the second half of the Xiaoyaoyou chapter (Chapter 1), concerning Jieyu, the “madman of Chu,” Hui Shi’s enormous gourd, and the so-called “useless tree” (shu),

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Zhuangzi takes pains to point out that the reason certain things are deemed useless and rejected as having value is the valuation of things we insist on making, and our inability to get outside of the perspectives created by those valuations. Hui Shi sees no use for the enormous gourd because he’s stuck in the perspective that takes gourds as only useful to drink from or hold liquid. Likewise, the tree is deemed useless when one is stuck in the perspective of seeing trees as useful only for timber. I think we can generalize this to other areas, including mental states such as anxiety. To see anxiety, even neurotic anxiety, as something we need to get rid of, is to devalue it absolutely, engaging in the kind of shi-fei that takes anxiety as valueless and the lack of anxiety, or ease, as valuable, always and forever. But it is just this kind of thinking, according to Zhuangzi, that blinds us to the tian li (natural propensities), gets in the way of efficient action, and leads to “impossible situations” like those of Zigao, Yan Hui, and Yan He in the Renjianshi chapter.

CONCLUSION We have seen that two key differences between the Indian and Greek traditions focusing on the problem of anxiety and the Zhuangzi are 1) what they consider the relevant source of and problem with anxiety, and 2) how they respond to these different problems of anxiety. The Indian and Hellenistic traditions focus on reducing or perhaps eliminating it through a proper understanding of the source and cause of anxiety, which is ultimately false belief. The Stoics, Skeptics, Buddhists, and the authors of the Upanishads all offer similar solutions. Once we understand the true source, cause, and identity of anxiety, we can take the necessary steps (which in some cases is just this recognition) to eliminate it. The Zhuangzi instead focuses on appreciating the possible value of anxiety as well as its limits. The ability to properly use anxiety comes through the understanding of natural propensity through deconceptualization, and the movement between perspectives this allows. Thus, the Zhuangzi and the Indian and Hellenistic schools discussed offer two different responses to anxiety, one focused on the unsatisfactory nature of anxiety as a mental state, and the other focused on effectiveness of action primarily. It is in part due to this difference in focus that the prescription each gives for the debilitating nature of anxiety is different.

NOTES 1. I do not, of course, intend to make the stronger claim that all Indian and Hellenistic schools adopt a conception of peace-of-mind as central. The schools discussed here, however, share such a feature, and Indian and Hellenistic schools tend to think about peace-of-mind in very similar ways.

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2. For both Aristotle and the Confucians, the quality of mental states in terms of pleasure or pain, joyfulness or disturbance, does not seem to have been a major issue. This may be in part because both were concerned with the development of certain kinds of character. 3. Inwood and Gerson, Hellenistic Philosophy, 307. 4. Ibid., 308. 5. Holowchak, The Stoics, 51. 6. Samannaphala Sutta, Digha Nikaya 2, Thanissaro trans. 7. Buddhists refer to these three positions, insubstantiality, impermanence and suffering, and non-self, as trilak a a (Pali, tilakkha a), the “three marks of existence” or “three dharma seals”. 8. Diogenes Laertius 7.108–14. 9. Diogenes Laertius 7.116 (Hellenistic Philosophy, 198). 10. MN 140.23–24 (Dhatuvibhanga Sutta). 11. Church, The Essential Tillich, 24. 12. There are notable exceptions to this, such as the Bhagavad Gita, in which Arjuna’s anxiety arises mainly from his seemingly impossible situation, being caught between two sacred duties. Even here, however, there is an aspect of existential anxiety, as part of what he is upset about is the impending deaths of his family and friends if he carries out his duties as a ksatriya warrior. 13. Olivelle trans. Upanishads, 35. 14. Ibid., 174–5. 15. Ibid., 68. 16. Coutinho, “Conceptual Analyses of the Zhuangzi,” in Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy, 180 17. William Theodore de Bary, Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics, 82. 18. Kjellberg 1996, 10. Justin Tiwald adds, concerning Kjellberg’s claims: “As Paul Kjellberg has pointed out, of the many uses of skepticism depicted in the Zhuangzi, anxiety and emotional disturbance are sometimes the least of the author’s concerns, and peace of mind is frequently a means to other ends.” (Tiwald, “Well Being and Daoism,” 63 in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being). 19. Justin Tiwald, “Well-Being and Daoism,” in Fletcher, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, 2016, 62. 20. Ibid., ch.3: 52–3; ch. 6: 88–9, ch. 19: 205–6. 21. Victor Mair challenged the idea that geyi was ever a major organized attempt outside of a few individuals, but the influence of Daoism in Chinese Buddhist thought cannot be reduced to direct translation of Sanskrit Buddhist terms in Daoist terms. Conceptual similarities between Chinese Buddhism and Daoism are abundant and clear, and Daoist ideas pop up with great in Buddhism in its Chinese context, especially the Chan tradition. Indeed, Buddhism and Daoism are linked as similar in spirit and message as early as the Han dynasty, in what is one of the first mentions of Buddhism in Chinese literature, Xiang Kai’s

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memorial at the court of Emperor Huan, in which the teachings of “Futu” (Buddha) and those of “Laozi” are mentioned as having the same ends. 22. Inwood and Gerson, Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings, 191–2. 23. 5:23 (Ziporyn trans.). 24. “Ritual in Xunzi and Mimamsa,” “Methodology in Comparative ChineseIndian Philosophy,” Theories of Truth in Chinese Philosophy. 25. Zhuangzi, 4, Ziporyn, 28. 26. Zhuangzi, 4. 27. Ibid., 4. 28. Ibid., 4. 29. Ibid., 3. 30. Chu is a rare term in the Zhuangzi as it is, with only five occurences in the entire text (counting those of Yingdiwang and Tiandi as a single occurrence, given that one is a duplication). 31. Zhuangzi, 4.

WORKS CITED Church, F. Forester, ed., The Essential Tillich: An Anthology of the Writings of Paul Tillich. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Coutinho, Steven. “Conceptual Analyses of the Zhuangzi”, in Liu, ed. Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Hong Kong: Springer, 2015. De Bary, William., ed. Finding Wisdom in East Asian Classics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Inwood, Brad, and Lloyd Gerson, eds. Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings. (2nd ed.), Indianapolis, IN : Hackett, 1998. Holowchak, Andrew. The Stoics: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008. Kjellberg, Paul. “Sextus Empiricus, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi on ‘Why Be Skeptical?’ ” in Kgellberg, ed. Chapters on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996. Mair, Victor. “What is Geyi, After All?” in China Report 48 (1–2), 2012. McLeod, Alexus, “Methodology in Comparative Chinese-Indian Philosophy ”, in Tan, ed. Bloomsbury Handbook on Chinese Philosophy Methodologies. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. Olivelle, Patrick, trans. Upanishads. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Thanissaro Bhikkhu. “Samannaphala Sutta: The Fruits of the Contemplative Life” (Digha Nikaya 2). Access to Insight (Legacy Edition) 30 November 2013, http:// www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.02.0.than.html Tiwald, Justin. “Well Being and Daoism”, in Fletcher, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being. New York: Routledge, 2016. Ziporyn, Brook, trans. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings. Indianapolis, IN : Hackett, 2009.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Son of Heaven”: Developing the Theological Aspects of Mengzi’s Philosophy of the Ruler JOSHUA R. BROWN

INTRODUCTION Although research into early Confucian political philosophy has received an almost stunning amount of attention recently, there is at least one central concept often lost in the shuffle: the Confucian philosophy of ruling, specifically ruling agency.1 This chapter develops how the Warring States Ru 儒 Mengzi understood the attitude and agency of the ruler. I argue Mengzi’s approach is neatly represented by the Zhou imperial appellation, Tianzi 天子, or “Son of Heaven.”2 Specifically, I mean Mengzi sees good or virtuous ruling as grounded in a filial attitude toward Tian. The chapter argues that Mengzi adopts the general Confucian understanding of how filial (xiao 孝) sons consider “possessions” and applies it to the ruler as “Son of Heaven,” i.e., the virtuous ruler does not see himself as possessing the empire, but being its steward for Tian. Furthermore, I demonstrate this 247

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adoption appears forcefully in Mengzi’s defense of the ancient sage-king Shun 舜, who I treat as Mengzi’s Tianzi model. Additionally, I argue properly interpreting Mengzi’s political philosophy requires the willingness to recognize and account for its “theological” elements. As a Catholic systematic theologian, I am sensitive to the complications of applying this terminology to Warring States thought. In arguing for theological aspects of Mengzi’s philosophy, I do not mean to imply a strong systematic doctrine of God reminiscent of the Catholic approach, although I think Mengzi does have a natural theology worth examination and imitation. I do mean that Mengzi’s account of the ruler is located within a web of convictions about transcendence and human action in light of or in concert with the transcendent, and to ignore these features impedes hearing what Mengzi wishes to say about proper ruling. This chapter cannot adequately serve to defend my presupposition that there is transcendence in Mengzi’s thought; hence, the first section of the chapter contextualizes my reading rather than offer a thoroughgoing apologia. After this, I proceed to offer an analysis of Mengzi’s political philosophy informed by political theology, which I develop in three parts. First, I show the Confucian approach to filial devotion and how it is manifested in the son’s attitude towards possessions. Second, I then use Mengzi’s account of Shun to show how his philosophy of rulership takes up these aspects in a filial model. Third, I briefly show how Mengzi’s filial model informs his political philosophy in general, by showing its application in his advice to King Hui and King Xuan in Mencius 1A and 1B.

THE NEED FOR A THEOLOGICAL VALENCE IN INTERPRETING MENGZI’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY In studies of Chinese philosophy, there is a certain allergy to the term “theology,” not least due to David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames’ campaign against the “transcendental pretense” of Western philosophy and Western readings of Chinese thought.3 Thankfully, several scholars have offered sufficient grounds to question and/or dismiss the fully immanentized vision Hall and Ames, et al. provide, showing that there is indeed a transcendent, even divine element in Confucian philosophy.4 Doubtless I, a Catholic theologian, and Mengzi, a Warring States Ru, think of the transcendent differently, but that is immaterial on this score: early Confucians did not live as ardent materialists, and certainly not Mengzi, who considers Tian an active force rather than a quaint euphemism for merely immanent phenomena.5

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If we take this point seriously, it leads us to revisit the shape of contemporary scholarship on Confucian political philosophy. An overview of current discourse on Confucian political philosophy shows a tendency to attempt a rapprochement between Confucian and modern Western political theories. On the one hand, scholars such Sor-hoon Tan, Sungmoon Kim and A.T. Nuyen have done a great service in showing the relevance of Confucian ethics to a globalized world, especially the democratic West.6 These authors in particular show Confucian philosophy is capable of identifying and possibly remedying the fundamental problems that are ensconced in Western political theory due to the individualistic anthropologies that have reigned since the Enlightenment, even if some point out important difficulties still lie ahead.7 However, this discourse also has obvious shortcomings. In an attempt to make Confucian ethics relevant to an age where political philosophies are constructed on a secular, humanistic, or at best, agnostic public sphere radically separate from talk of God and ultimate meaning, this discourse necessarily trades off some rather essential features of Confucian political reflection. Case in point, it is difficult to reconcile transcendental concepts like Tian with this discourse without making them watered down or wholly immanentized versions only modestly imitating the early Confucian meaning. Consequently, not only is there a risk of neglecting philosophical principles important to early Confucians like Mengzi (such as the ruler’s attitude toward possessing the empire), but also of dislocating those principles we deem worthwhile from the convictions and beliefs that give them meaning. Such risk is evident in at least one negative example, the critical work of Liu Qingping. Liu has spilled much ink arguing Confucianism is an ethic built on “consanguineous affection” (xue qin lun li 血亲伦理) rather than universal humanism.8 Consequently, he does not think Confucianism is suited to the modern world and its political needs. Yet there are several presuppositions that Liu bears that undergird this judgment. First, is that the general concern for others is a priori preferable to the particular care for one’s family. This is in turn dependent upon a rather flat distinction between the two options. For Liu, the concern is simply which kind of concern best or most clearly benefits the modern secular society, without any transcendental measure of right and wrong, good or bad to inform the relationships in question. If the choice were simply between loving just one’s family or being kind to as many people as possible, Liu would have good footing. However, his argument runs aground because he does not consider the substructure of convictions that lead Confucius and Mengzi to emphasize familial affections. This emphasis presupposes several convictions about the cosmos (and

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beyond it) that sharply diverge from the apparently materialist world Liu presumes. Among them are the existence of ancestors after death; an anthropology where the family is not simply a vessel for individuals, but is central to the meaning of human existence; and of course the force of Tian that both prescribes (in the sense of Tian ming 天命) and grounds familial affections. It is precisely the fiercely religious or theological complex grounding Confucian thought that provides the bedrock for the proposition that familial obligations can supersede universal concern for others. Lauren F. Pfister has recently shown the fruit of this corrective against readings such as Liu’s. Pfister reads Shun’s hypothetical concealment of his father’s crime through a Kierkegaardian lens of the transcendentally grounded “teleological suspension.”9 He claims such a reading “overcomes previous ethical debates” because it allows reaffirmation of “the significance of religious orientations in Shun’s life.”10 Pace Liu in particular, Pfister argues that neglect of these “religious” aspects of Shun’s life make Liu unable to genuinely understand the nature of the decision Shun makes, and his motivations for doing so.11 Extending this point, I argue that without recognizing the transcendent, religious, or theological elements of texts like the Mencius, we fail to truly understand their political philosophy. Consequently, we ultimately fail to see how and why the Confucian political approach is such a staunch opponent of individualist political philosophies, and risk becoming incapable of diagnosing and treating their maladies of the latter. For the remainder of this chapter, we will focus on the theological elements of Mengzi’s account of the ruler, which I argue is modeled in the sage king Shun. The theological element is summarized in the notion that the virtuous ruler is the “Son” of Heaven. For Mengzi, this is not merely a title, but names the proper attitude of the ruler toward the ruled: the empire is not the personal possession of the ruler, but belongs to Tian. As such, the king is primarily steward and protector and the tyrant perverts his mandate. Antecedent to this point, we must develop a brief account of how the image of “sonship” involves this attitude towards possessions as a conviction Mengzi employs in his political philosophy of the ruler.

FILIALITY AND POSSESSIONS IN THE CONFUCIAN TRADITION Texts such as the Analects and Mencius only lightly touch on the relationship between sons and possession, but this theme is explicit in writings like the Liji. Although our topic primarily concerns the Mencius and many texts I cite in this section come historically after it, I think these later developments

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simply make explicit what was present yet undeveloped in earlier texts, and hence part of the Confucian worldview in which Mengzi lived. Like the Analects, Mengzi most often exhorts being filial (xiao 孝) without defining the term’s meaning. This is unsurprising: neither the Analects nor Mencius is meant as a guide to family life or comprehensive philosophical system. However sparing, these definitions tend to be illuminating. In Mencius 4B:58, Mengzi discusses five forms of unfilial conduct. Each form of conduct can be succinctly summarized as follows: unfilial conduct occurs when the son manages himself, material, and/or non-material goods in a manner that impedes or obstructs carrying out his material and immaterial duties to his parents. According to Mengzi, the son is not free to decide for himself what he will do with his time and goods. He must rather negotiate his possessing in light of his parents. Mengzi teaches the son ought not “love goods and wealth, or have selfish attachment to his wife and child (si qi zi 私妻子)” and so neglect caring for his parents.12 The word si 私 means something like “personal” or “private,” which suggests the son ought not hold his wife and child as merely his. Hence, the son ought not cherish his own immediate family—over which he exercises authority—as something private and distinct from what he owes his parents. Mengzi’s formulation implies the son’s attitude toward what is his is still subject to the rules of propriety and filial devotion. As such, the son cannot freely discharge his resources or direct his familial relations according to his own private desires, but within the context of his ancestral lineage. In the Qu Li I chapter of the Liji, this hermeneutic is developed explicitly in terms of wealth. “The xiao son will not attempt things in the dark, nor ascend dangerous heights, for he is afraid of humiliating his parents. While his parents live, he will not swear to die with a friend, nor have private wealth (si cai 私財).”13 Just as the son’s body is not his private possession, neither are his material goods. Undoubtedly, socio-economic concerns ground this, having to do with the management of the household, which ideally would include adult children and their families with the father as administrator of all of the family’s wealth and holdings.14 At the least, it shows the son neither considers himself nor his possessions as solely his, but references this to his parents. The root of this attitude toward possessions lies in the Confucian link between the body and filiality. In the Ji Yi chapter of the Liji, Zengzi teaches, “the body is what our parents have left behind (yi 遺).”15 This foundation explains why the filial son refers all of his conduct back to his parents. His behavior at home, his service to the ruler, his management of subordinates, his friendships, and his battlefield conduct all become seen as either fulfilling or failing xiao. Through the Xiaojing, this concept is made central to the

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Confucian canon. Here, Confucius instructs Zengzi that because our bodies are received from our parents, xiao begins in caring for the body. From this root, xiao extends into making a name for future generations and the “establishment of one’s self ” (li shen 立身). In the scope of this passage, the son’s body, name, and even career are not considered simply his, but also as received from his parents. Thus, he does not treat anything that he possesses as though it was merely his to control. Rather, he exercises his possession of his body, name, and career as more of stewardship, caring for what is his parents as much as his. The Yangzi Fayan provides important commentary on this theme, saying the mother and father are a child’s Heaven and Earth. Without the generosity of one’s parents, the child has neither life nor form (xing 形), and thus children cannot be truly “generous” (yu 裕) to their parents in serving them.16 Hence, the requisite care for the body and the attitude toward possessions is grounded in the prior movement of the parents to give life. A xiao son does not think he has made life or success for himself, but refers all that he possesses to the generosity of his parents. I contend that Mengzi applies this filial hermeneutic in thinking of the ruler as Tianzi. Specifically, Mengzi’s defense of Shun demonstrates his conviction that the virtuous ruler does not consider himself as possessing the empire for his own sake. Rather, the virtuous ruler is more of a steward or manager of Tianxia 天下, cognizant of his agency in light of Tian. This both makes him Tianzi and identifies proper ritual enactment and care for the people as primary marks of virtuous ruling. We will now turn to demonstrate these principles in Mengzi’s reading of Shun.

SHUN AS “SON OF HEAVEN”: POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MENGZI’S DEFENSE OF SHUN In Mencius 5A, Mengzi’s student Wan Zhang raises five questions regarding the veracity of traditional claims of Shun’s exemplary xiao, his prudence, and his sense of justice. Mengzi’s defense of Shun offers essential insight into his view of Shun’s agency as ruler and thus is politically significant. First, Wan Zhang narrates an episode in which Shun wailed in a field, which he suggests was a sign of Shun’s dissatisfaction with his parents; he then states that a xiao son is free of complaint of one’s parents.17 The second objection concerns Shun’s neglecting to secure his parents’ permission to marry Yao’s daughters, which would normally constitute a serious breach of filial responsibility.18 Responding to these apparent contradictions in Shun’s actions against his honored status as filial exemplar, Mengzi ardently maintains that Shun never

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abandoned his xiao. First, Mengzi argues that Shun, while given everything by Yao, considered himself impoverished because his parents were not in accord with him.19 Mengzi contends Shun’s xiao was so comprehensive and determinative that, although he was given the kingdom, beautiful wives, and abundant wealth, Shun grieved because he “desired his parents to the end of his life.”20 As for Shun’s nuptials, Mengzi argues that neither Yao nor Shun informed the latter’s parents because, if they had, the parents would have not allowed the marriages. Shun avoided telling them so that (a) they would not unjustly stop him from forming “the greatest of human relationships,” and (b) so Shun could avoid enmity toward his parents for depriving him of this relationship.21 According to Mengzi, Shun’s xiao was preserved in both cases, even though his devotion for his parents required complex (and not completely satisfying) moral calculus. In both responses, Mengzi recognizes it is not Shun’s filial devotion simpliciter directing his moral choices. Shun does not merely place his affect for his parents guide his life. Rather, because of his parents’ actions and attitudes, Shun requires a complex moral hermeneutic of filial piety, embedded in a “theological” view of Tianming. It is on this basis that Shun determines how a lesser form of filial disobedience allows for a higher form of xiao service. Shun does not simply follow his emotions, but he considers whether it would be better to marry in an unfilial way or to abstain from his filial duties to have children. According to Mengzi, Shun knew that failing to have children was the worst form of unfilial conduct, and so decided to preserve this xiao form.22 The aspect of Shun’s life that allows such a hermeneutic to be present is ensconced in his view that human life and relationships are established by (and perhaps in) Tian, and ordered by Tianming. Hence, how and in what ways he can accommodate the relationship with his parents while remaining xiao depends upon this theological context. Here we have reason to question Liu Qingping’s conviction that emotion or affection lies at the heart of Confucian philosophy.23 Shun’s saga includes the undeniable fact that Shun is truly hated by his parents, and that they had attempted to kill him. Similarly, it is plain his parents truly did not wish for Shun to be happy and/or prosperous in marriage. In this light, Shun’s xiao is not merely reciprocal affectus, but is also based on a rational understanding of what Tianming requires—Shun is devoted to his parents because he knows it is right as much as it is natural for him as a son to love his parents. For Mengzi, Shun is sad not simply because his parents treat him poorly—rather, Shun grieves because he knows the relation ought to be one of harmony. Likewise, his decision to marry Yao’s daughters is not out of what might make either himself or his parents happy in a shallow emotional sense, but what a xiao son ought to do for his parents as prescribed by Tianming.

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The theological aspects of this complex filial hermeneutic are profoundly significant for Mengzi’s defense Shun as a prudent and just ruler. In another criticism, Wan Zhang recalls that Shun made his brother Xiang a prince rather than executing him, although Xiang had also tried to kill Shun. If that was not bad enough, Shun had executed a number of other people for a lack of ren 仁. Wan Zhang asks, “is a ren man really like this?” Mengzi responds that Shun indeed was a ren man, for Shun did not hold anger towards Xiang, but held a deep love for him, and desired him to be noble and wealthy. Mengzi concludes that if Shun had allowed Xiang to be a commoner while Shun was Son of Heaven, could he be said to have had affection for his brother?24 This case is closely tied to the Mencius’ version of the concealment case, especially in Liu’s critiques. In Book 7A, Mengzi teaches that Shun would have preferred to abandon the throne and take his father into hiding rather than dispense the laws of justice against him.25 According to Liu’s reading, these two cases show that Confucian philosophy prioritizes the private or particular over the political. To him, Shun abdicates his fatherly role toward the people to be merely a son for his own father. With Xiang, Shun abandons his general sense of justice for the sake of his brotherly affection. Hence, the blood relations are honored above the wider social commitments.26 Again, what is missing from this reading is the theological context of Mengzi’s interpretation. According to Mengzi, what makes Shun such an exemplary ruler, rather than a tyrant or despot, is that he does not consider the accrual of political power or material wealth as the highest good. In his explanation of Shun’s hypothetical concealment case, Mengzi clarifies that Shun would have been willing to give up the kingdom for the sake of his father, and so abandon power as “discarding a broken sandal.”27 Elsewhere, Mengzi teaches that Shun alone was able to reckon the entire empire’s admiration of him “as but a bit of grass.” This is because Shun believed that “if he was unable to obtain his parents’ affection, he could be a man; if he could not live in harmony with his parents, then he could not be a son.”28 In other words, Mengzi thinks it is of fundamental importance that Shun sees his ruling agency as filling a role, but Shun does not think he is intrinsic to that role. Shun does not believe the flourishing of the empire depends upon him, though he can be instrumental in its flourishing. Implicitly, Shun knows that Tian upholds the empire, and he holds no delusions that he is strictly necessary to the empire’s success. Moreover, in Mengzi’s eyes, Shun recognizes that if he were unable to properly live out his familial obligations, this would prevent him from being able to live out his wider social obligations as ruler. Thus, Shun sees his success as ruler to stem not from his own considerable talent, but from his moral rectification (zheng 正) and his harmony with Tianming.29

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This is confirmed as the Mencius continues. According to Mengzi, Shun completely fulfilled his service to his parents as much as possible, and eventually Gu Sou settled in ease with his son. When that happened, “All under heaven was transformed,” and “fathers and sons throughout the empire established their relationships properly.”30 Shun’s xiao, concern for Tianming and resultant “holding loosely” to the empire thus brought about real political and social improvement. Shun’s recognition that he must attend to the rectification of his own family leads to the rectification of the empire. Mengzi is not suggesting an absolute priority of blood relations; rather, he is locating familial and political success within a schema of being zheng in light of Tian. With the case of Xiang, the same point is clear: if Shun had desired to revenge himself upon his brother, or view him dispassionately, this would have had an effect on the people and the brotherly relations throughout the kingdom. In Mengzi’s eyes, then, Shun’s filial and brotherly devotion do not constitute a consanguineous foundation that overrides all other obligations. Rather, this devotion is part of a hermeneutic of devotion to Tian in which the familial and political obligations are given form, measure, and significance. It is Shun’s need to first be zheng before he can be of use to the empire that grounds the priority on filial and brotherly love. This is particularly expressed in Shun’s thinking of the empire as though it were a sandal to be discarded. This is not to say Shun did not value his role as ruler or the empire, but rather to note he did not consider himself the “possessor” of the empire. Rather, he enacted Tianming as best he could, and for this reason his ruling role had no self-aggrandizing effect. Indeed, his concern to gain the love for his parents and to grieve without it in spite of being wealthy and empowered to rule show how Shun saw his ruling agency as part of his filially-formed devotion to Tian.

YAO’S PRESENTATION OF SHUN My thesis that Shun’s devotion to Tian is both filial and comprehensive in Mengzi’s portrait of him is strengthened when he discusses Yao’s “presentation” of Shun to Tian. Especial clarity about the distinctive theological aspects Mengzi’s account appear when compared to Sima Qian’s narrative.31 According to the Shiji, Yao had reigned for seventy years and sought an heir. After contemplating various possibilities and propositioning one person who declined, Yao heard of Shun. Yao then employed Shun in government for twenty years, and “presented him to Tian” (jian zhi yu tian 薦之於天). In the Shiji, this means Yao commissioned or employed (shi 使) Shun to harmonize the five relationships, to organize the gate guards and the reception of

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visitors, and to navigate his way through rough terrain amid violent wind and thunderstorms. After this time, Yao concludes Shun is indeed “holy” (sheng 聖), and proclaims the following, “for three years, your plans have been of service, and your speech leads to achievement. You shall ascend to the emperor’s seat.”32 Of most importance for our purposes is the active role of Yao serves in the Shiji. Yao puts Shun to the test, and then decides on his own wisdom Shun should rule. At the conclusion of Shun’s trials, Yao is depicted as passing the throne down to Shun. Sima Qian uses the word shou 授 to describe the succession, a word meaning to “hand over” or transmit by hand. Hence the agent of succession is Yao, who has decided the proper heir and now passes on the empire. At any rate, Sima Qian does not think it necessary to neatly distinguish between “presenting one to Tian” and “handing over” the throne. Yao’s role in the presentation and succession narrative in the Shiji starkly contrasts with Mengzi’s account. Wan Zhang asks, “Did Yao give the throne to Shun?” Mengzi replies, “Of course not. The Tianzi cannot give the All under Heaven to another person.” Wan Zhang then asks if Shun indeed had the throne, but Yao did not give it to him, whence did he come by the throne? Mengzi replies, “Tian gave (yu 與) it to him.” Now we come to the essential point as Wan Zhang pushes for further distinction, asking whether Tian announced its appointment of Shun. Mengzi replies in two parts. First, Tian does not speak, but shows itself through conduct and service. Second, he clarifies that the Son of Heaven may present a man to Tian, but he cannot cause Tian to give the throne. In other words, Tian solely chooses and establishes the one who will rule, though through the people.33 As we saw above, the Shiji discusses the presentation of Shun in terms of pragmatic service. Mengzi has a distinct conception of what this presentation means. According to Mengzi, Yao presented Shun by having him serve in two ways. First, Shun is assigned with directing the sacrifices (zhu ji 主祭); because the spirits enjoyed Shun’s sacrifices, “Tian accepted (shou 受) him.” Second, Shun is assigned to conduct the affairs concerning the people (zhu shi 主事). Under his leadership, the people found comfort and accepted Shun. Thus both Tian and the people gave Shun the throne.34 Where the Shiji says Yao handed on (shou 授) to Shun, Mengzi uses the word shou 受 to describe Shun’s acceptance by Tian. The word does not mean simply “find acceptable” but literally conveys the taking possession of a thing, receiving it for oneself. Shun does not take possession of the empire; rather Tian takes possession of him, receiving him as son, and for this reason, Shun becomes enthroned. Underscoring this point, in Mengzi’s narrative there is a profound if subtle suggestion that perhaps neither Yao nor Shun are actually aware of Shun’s being “presented” to Tian, but merely his being

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employed in necessary service. In other words, Mengzi’s Shun seems to not see himself as preparing to rule, but simply as performing rituals properly and caring for the people as Tian mandates. Corollary to this, Shun does not seek out the throne, he simply seeks to do what is in harmony with Tian. In Mengzi’s eyes, Shun holds loosely to the office of the emperor and does not seek the aggrandizement of that role as would many after him. Rather, Shun sees his purpose to serve the rites and the people for their own sake,35 and this fundamental attitude is ratified as true filial devotion to Tian in his enthronement. Moreover, this fundamental attitude of filial devotion to Tian is the essential characteristic of virtuous ruling. As emperor, Shun does not seek to expand his own glory, but to continue to secure and enable the rites and proper care for the people. Put theologically, he desires to have the empire follow Tianming, rather than prop himself up as grandiose. To Mengzi, Tian “receives” Shun because he will not possess the empire in such a way that it can be “handed down.” Above all, Shun’s filial devotion to Tian means he knows the empire is not his, and his role either as assistant to Yao or as ruler himself is to serve Tian and the flourishing of the empire.

SHUNS’S ASCENSION: A STRUGGLE OF FILIAL MODELS The final panel of our triptych regarding Shun’s filial agency as Son of Heaven is the story surrounding Shun’s ascension to the throne. While the previous section explored the connection between Shun’s presentation and his election by Tian, we are concerned here with the account of the ascension process. Specifically, I focus here on the juxtaposition between Yao’s natural son and Shun as different filial models of rulership. We shall see that Mengzi provides a view of the ruler as Son of Heaven contrasted to blood sonship as a foundation for ruling. First, we turn again to the Shiji’s narrative in order to provide contrast. According to Sima Qian, Yao faced the aforementioned crisis of a successor. His aide Fangqi suggests Yao’s son Danzhu, which Yao quickly rejects. Yao observes Danzhu is obstinate and wicked, and therefore is of no use.36 In this depiction, Yao’s decision regarding Danzhu is primarily conceived in terms of the latter’s moral failings. Significantly, Yao’s own moral rectification and excellence enable him to recognize the true nature of Danzhu’s character, and judge him unworthy to ascend the throne. While certainly grounded in the moral qualifications of each, Mengzi’s presentation allows for a more vivid juxtaposition between types of filial agency in ruling models. Mengzi teaches that after Yao’s death, Shun withdrew “from Yao’s son” to south of Nan river. Though not explicitly

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stated, the suggestion is that Shun assumes Yao’s son is heir, and perhaps removes himself from service so as to pose no challenge to the new ruler. Whatever the motivations, Shun does not expect to become the emperor. However, the legal workers of the kingdom turn not to Yao’s son, but to Shun, and the musicians sing not of Yao’s son, but of the lowborn Shun. According to Mengzi, this proves to Shun that Tian had given him the throne, and thus he takes the seat of the Son of Heaven.37 Significantly, Mengzi does not once name Danzhu in his presentation, but simply refers to him as “Yao’s son.”38 Moreover, whereas Sima Qian emphasizes Danzhu is the adoptive son of Yao (si zi 嗣子), Mengzi offers no such qualification. This suggests that for Mengzi, the juxtaposition is not simply between Danzhu’s moral failings and Shun’s moral excellence, but there is a logic of filiality and rulership at stake. If Danzhu had succeeded the throne, it would have been due to his being Yao’s son, i.e., Yao would be understood as the foundation of good ruling. But Mengzi does not think this is the case: it is not enough to be the son of a king to rule; one must also (or instead) be a son of Tian. Shun proves to have this filial character, and the people are drawn to him as they are not to Yao’s son. They recognize Shun is the true Son of Heaven, whereas Danzhu is merely the son of Yao. Again, we see how Liu’s options between consanguineous affection and universal concern are far too flat to account for Mengzi’s political philosophy. For Mengzi, blood relations are significant, but they are also contextualized. The blood relation simpliciter is insufficient to secure election of Tian to rule. Rather, intrinsic to true and virtuous ruling is a filial devotion to Tian that then grounds and makes sense of blood relations. Notice that Shun takes blood relations as neither absolute nor insignificant. His withdrawal suggests that he recognizes blood relation is important, should be honored, and ought not be lightly cast aside. However, Mengzi shows that the blood relation of Yao’s son is insufficient, precisely because the moral failures of Danzhu constitute his failure to be a son of Tian. Strikingly, Shun’s filial devotion to Tian is expressed again as a “holding loosely.” Shun does not battle to take what he conceives as rightfully his. Presumably, he knows of Danzhu’s shortcomings, yet retreats anyway and gives him space to take the throne. Is this because, as in Liu’s eyes, Shun is willing to abdicate his responsibility? Quite simply, no. Mengzi’s account suggests it is down to the fact that Shun does not regard the empire as his, just as he does not think it will be in grave peril should he not ascend to the throne. Tian will guide the empire, and the fact that Shun is elected by Tian to rule seems incidental to whether Shun will follow Tianming or not. In fact, such a filial attitude of not possessing the empire is what, in Mengzi’s eyes, precisely makes Shun most fit to rule.

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CONFIRMING THE HERMENEUTIC To demonstrate how Mengzi applies this filial model of rulership gleaned from Shun, we can briefly turn to two examples of his counsel. In Mencius 1A:3, King Hui of Liang complains to Mengzi that though he pursues wisdom, his people are not more prosperous than those of the neighboring kingdom where the ruler strives less to improve himself. In response, Mengzi first points out that if King Hui would simply obey the rhythms of the harvest seasons, the natural resources would be more than sufficient for his people. Then, Mengzi points out that King Hui gives his dogs and swine human food, but Hui cannot discern the questionable morality of this action. Meanwhile, King Hui allows his people to die from hunger, but he does not provide for them from his own granaries. Mengzi concludes, observing that when King Hui sees people dying, he blames the season, and not himself.39 According to the hermeneutic of filial rulership, Mengzi does not criticize King Hui for failing to act out a “universal ethic,” at least not in these simple terms. Rather, King Hui fails to exercise virtuous rule because he sees his governance of the state as means to his own aggrandizement as a successful ruler. This becomes evident for Mengzi in the fact that King Hui has tried to establish success in his own policies over-against a rival, rather than paying attention to the rhythms and contours of Tiandao: the movement of the seasons, the proper time for harvest and consuming particular wildlife, and the contours of natural relationships and love within families. If King Hui would see himself as serving these movements and not “disobey” them (bu wei nong shi 不違農時), he would indeed cultivate success as ruler. It is King Hui’s desire to blame Tian rather than follow it that has caused his ignorance in regard to the right course of action. The importance of this is especially evident when Mengzi speaks of the ruler’s way of caring for the people. Mengzi does not mean to merely suggest King Hui ought to be kind to the people, or simply assert a priority of humans over animals. Rather, Mengzi critiques King Hui because he has dispensed of food as if it were merely his, to give to his dogs and swine. He has failed to understand his task is to enable the flourishing of the people. As such, King Hui’s cultivation of “wisdom” falters because it comes from seeking to see himself as wise. Mengzi seems to say that if King Hui would simply forget about his reputation and focus on how to help his people, he would find his problems resolved. Consequently, Mengzi’s advice to King Hui is that his failure as a ruler stems from his lack of filial devotion to Tian and in its place, seeing the state as his possession, for the purpose of building up himself, rather than the people. A second example of this filial hermeneutic in action is from 1B:9, where Mengzi lends counsel to King Xuan of Qi. King Xuan asks whether it is true

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that King Wen had a park of seventy li 里. After Mengzi confirms this, King Xuan comments on the large size of Wen’s park, and Mengzi replies, “the people thought it was small.” King Xuan, stunned by this comment, notes that his own private park is only forty li, and yet the people see it as large. Mengzi replies that what distinguishes King Xuan from King Wen is that Wen allowed free access to his park for harvesters and hunters, and shared it with the people (yu min tong zhi 與民同之). King Xuan, however, imposes strict rules on his park that prevent its use by the people, even going so far as to institute capital punishment for slaying deer. Consequently, the people see Xuan’s park as a “snare” (jing 阱) in the middle of the kingdom, and for this perilous reason see it as large. As with King Hui, Mengzi’s counsel to King Xuan is a critique of his failure to cultivate the correct attitude toward possessing the empire. Because King Wen held loosely to his possessing the empire and his park—a feature of filial devotion—the people did not think his rule was oppressive. King Wen believed the park was his expressly for the purpose of sharing it with the people, an extension of the fact that he could justly rule over-against the Shang tyrant because Wen would serve Tian and not himself. The people ratified this in Wen because they were given a share in the resources of the kingdom and treated them as they are: sources of life and flourishing for the people. When one of King Wen’s commoners saw a deer in his park, he saw a meal or a sacrificial animal, i.e., the means to continue life and serve Tianming. When one of King Xuan’s commoners saw a deer in his park, he saw a reminder of the threat of his own life and the importance of the king’s possessions over his own livelihood. Put differently, King Xuan’s commoners recognized their king’s park as an obstacle to Tianming, as what must be avoided if the flourishing life is to be secured. As such, it is clear that King Wen’s attitude of sharing and thus not tightly possessing his park is expressive of filial devotion to Tian, while King Xuan’s policies extend from his desires of self-aggrandizement over-against his service to Tian.

CONCLUSION I have endeavored in this chapter to examine Mengzi’s philosophy of the ruler, with attention to its transcendent aspects. The foundation of Mengzi’s philosophy of rulership is his conviction that the true ruler is Tianzi, or “Son of Heaven.” As we have seen, for Mengzi this is not merely a title given to the one who happens to rule. Rather it is a state, a disposition toward Tian that makes the ruler what he is. This disposition is clearly displayed in the sage-king Shun, whose rule is established upon his filial devotion to Tian. Especially (though not solely) in Shun’s attitude of possessing the empire, his

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filial love and service to Tian emerge and form the foundation of his benevolent government. Likewise in the counsel given to King Hui and King Xuan, we see that to Mengzi, tyrannical government (or what will lead to it) is established in the tight possessing of things, i.e. the lack of filial love and service to Tian. For Mengzi, then, it is intrinsic to excellent governance that rulers understand their relation to Tian, love and serve Tian, and not consider their service as a means to aggrandizement, but to enable the flourishing of the people. To neglect, mute, or ignore these theological elements intrinsic to Mengzi’s philosophy of the necessary disposition of the just ruler as Tianzi is certainly possible, but it also leaves us with something very different than Mengzi’s philosophy. By attending to these aspects, we can see that Mengzi sees good ruling not as a merely pragmatic endeavor, but as part of a cosmic drama whereby human society and goods stand in relation to Tian. Moreover, we find that Mengzi does not simply think rulers ought to be concerned about the people or be kind to them, but that these aspects of good ruling flow out of and participate in a rich theological conception of the political that stands in drastically stark contrast to the secularist presuppositions of most modern political philosophies.

NOTES 1. Notable exceptions include Roger Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1994), and Julia Ching, Mysticism and Kingship in China: The Heart of Chinese Wisdom (Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1997). 2. Mark Edward Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (Cambridge, MA : Belknap of Harvard, 2007), 185. According to Lewis, the sacrificial cultus and religious life of the Warring States underwent a shift in attempts to undermine Zhou rule. As he puts it, “Ancestral worship . . . was supplanted in the Warring States by cults to cosmic divinities or important natural sites . . . This reflected the need of rulers to marginalize the Zhou monarch, who remained the apical figure of ancestral worship and the cult of Heaven . . .” This provides a historical context suggesting Mengzi, who was as a Ru interested in recovering rather than supplanting Zhou life, would have good reasons for reading ruling agency in light of the Zhou appellation. The historical narrative of this is beyond the scope of this chapter; it merely suggests the topic is not without historical relevance. 3. David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1995). Hall and Ames are certainly not the only thinkers who argue for a “closed” metaphysic or a-metaphysical world of early Chinese thought, but their Anticipating China is the most programmatic version I have seen.

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4. See inter al. Robert B. Louden, “ ‘What Does Heaven Say?’: Christian Wolff and Western Interpretations of Confucian Ethics,” in Bryan W. Van Norden (ed.) Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 73–93; John H. Berthrong, All Under Heaven: Transforming Paradigms in Confucian-Christian Dialogue (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1994), 69–102; Sarah A. Queen, From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn, according to Tung Chung-shu (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Paul R. Goldin, Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1999), 39–54. 5. We cannot deny immanent features of Mengzi’s Tian, or similar features in the natural theologies of Plato or Aristotle. The presence of immanent aspects does not negate, however, that Tian is also transcendent in several respects, or the possibility these immanent aspects depend upon such notions of transcendence. 6. See e.g., Sor-hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2004); Antonio L. Rappa and Sor-hoon Tan, “Political Implications of Confucian Familism” Asian Philosophy 13 nos 2/3 (2003): 87–102; A.T. Nuyen, “Confucianism and the Idea of Equality ” Asian Philosophy 11 no. 2 (2001): 61–71; Nuyen, “Confucianism and the Idea of Citizenship” Asian Philosophy 12 no. 2 (2002): 127–39; Nuyen, “Confucianism and the Idea of Globalization”; Sungmoon Kim, “Beyond Liberal Society: Confucian Familism and Relational Strangership” Philosophy East and West 60 no. 4 (Oct. 2010); Kim, “Filiality, Compassion, and Confucian Democracy ” Asian Philosophy 18 no. 3 (November 2008): 279–98. 7. E.g., Wu Genyou, “On the Idea of Freedom and Its Rejection in Chinese Thought and Institutions” Asian Philosophy 16 no. 3 (November 2006): 219–35, and David Elstein, “Why Early Confucianism Cannot Generate Democracy ” Dao 9 (2010): 427–43. 8. Liu Qingping has stirred quite the controversy in China, resulting in a recent volume containing several of Liu’s chapters and responses. See Guo Qiyong, ed. A Collection of Contention about Confucian Ethic 儒家倫理爭鳴集 (Wuhan: Hubei Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2004). Liu has also published much of his argument in English language journals. For the basics of his approach, see the following: Liu, “Filiality Versus Sociality and Individuality: On Confucianism as ‘Consanguinism’” Philosophy East and West 53 no. 2 (April 2003): 234–50; Liu, “On Confucius’ Principle of Consanguineous Affection: A Reading of the Dialogue about the Three-Year Mourning in the Lunyu,” Asian Philosophy 16 no. 3 (Nov. 2006): 173–88; Liu, “To Become a Filial Son, a Loyal Subject or a Humane Person?—On the Confucian Ideas about Humanity,” Asian Philosophy 19 no. 2 (July 2009): 173–88. For responses to Liu, see the volume above; in English, consult An Yanming, “Family Love in Confucius and Mencius” Dao 7 (2008): 51–5 and Guo Qiyong, “Is Confucian Ethics a ‘Consanguinism’?” Dao 6 (2007): 21–37. 9. Lauren F. Pfister, “Sublating Reverence to Parents: A Kierkegaardian Interpretation of the Sage-King Shun’s Piety,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 40 no. 1 (March 2013): 50–66. 10. Ibid., 61. 11. Ibid.

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12. Mencius, 4B:58. All translation of Chinese texts are mine, and are cited according to the format of the texts as they appear at http://www.ctext.org. 13. Liji, Qu Li I, 19. 14. See Hugh R. Baker, Chinese Family and Kinship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 10–21. 15. Liji, Ji Yi, 26. 16. Yangzi Fayan, 13.2. 17. Mencius, 5A:1. 18. Ibid., 5A:2. 19. Mencius, 5A:1.3. For example, Shun’s father Gu Sou and his step-mother tried to kill him on multiple occasions. 20. Ibid., 5A:1. 21. Ibid. 5A:2.1–2. 22. Ibid., 4A:26. Here, Mengzi directly invokes the case of Shun’s marriage to argue that not having children “wu hou 無後” is the greatest form of unfilial coduct. 23. See Liu, “Emotionales Versus Rationales: A Comparsion Between Confucius’ and Socrates’ Ethics” Asian Philosophy 23 no. 1 (2013): 86–99; Liu, “Filiality Versus Sociality and Individuality ”; Liu, “To Become a Filial Son.” 24. Mencius, 5A:3. 25. Mencius, 7A:35. 26. Liu, “Confucianism and Corruption: An Analysis of Shun’s Two Actions Described by Mencius” Dao 6 (2007): 1–19. 27. Ibid., 7A:35. 28. Ibid., 4A:28. 29. See Ibid., 4A:20. 30. Ibid., 4A:28. 31. See Shiji, Annals of the Five Emperors, 13–17. 32. Ibid., 14.2. 33. Mencius, 5A:5. 34. Ibid., 5A:5. 35. Chan Sin Yee, “The Confucian Notion of Jing 敬 (Respect)” Philosophy East and West 56 no. 2 (April 2006): 229–52. Though subtle, such a depiction of Shun bears much in common with Chan’s recent argument that jing involves both seriousness of mind and singleness of purpose. Since jing marks especially filial li, this resonance can, if present, reaffirm my filial agency thesis. 36. Shiji, Annals of the Five Emperors, 13. 37. Mencius, 5A:5.7. 38. Danzhu seems to me the only possible referent here, though I admit a historical investigation may prove otherwise. 39. Mencius, 1A:3.

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WORKS CITED Ames, Roger. The Art of Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994. An Yanming. “Family Love in Confucius and Mencius.” Dao 7 (2008): 51–5. Baker, Hugh R., Chinese Family and Kinship. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Berthrong, John H. All Under Heaven: Transforming Paradigms in ConfucianChristian Dialogue. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994. Ching, Julia. Mysticism and Kingship in China: The Heart of Chinese Wisdom. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1997. Elstein, David. “Why Early Confucianism Cannot Generate Democracy.” Dao 9 (2010): 427–43. Goldin, Paul R. Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi. Chicago and La Salle, IL : Open Court, 1999. Guo Qiyong, ed. A Collection of Contention about Confucian Ethics 儒家倫理爭鳴集. Wuhan: Hubei Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2004. Guo Qiyong. “Is Confucian Ethics a ‘Consanguinism’?” Dao 6 (2007): 21–37. Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1995. Kim, Sungmoon. “Filiality, Compassion, and Confucian Democracy,” Asian Philosophy 18 no. 3 (November 2008): 279–98. Kim, Sungmoon. “Beyond Liberal Society: Confucian Familism and Relational Strangership,” Philosophy East and West 60 no. 4 (Oct. 2010). Lewis, Mark Edward. The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han. Cambridge, MA : Belknap of Harvard, 2007. Liu Qingping. “Filiality Versus Sociality and Individuality: On Confucianism as ‘Consanguinism.’ ” Philosophy East and West 53 no. 2 (April 2003): 234–50. Liu Qingping. “On Confucius’ Principle of Consanguineous Affection: A Reading of the Dialogue about the Three-Year Mourning in the Lunyu.” Asian Philosophy 16 no. 3 (Nov. 2006): 173–88. Liu Qingping. “To Become a Filial Son, a Loyal Subject or a Humane Person?—On the Confucian Ideas about Humanity,” Asian Philosophy 19 no. 2 (July 2009): 173–88. Liu Qingping. “Emotionales Versus Rationales: A Comparsion Between Confucius’ and Socrates’ Ethics,” Asian Philosophy 23 no. 1 (2013): 86–99. Liu Qingping. “Confucianism and Corruption: An Analysis of Shun’s Two Actions Described by Mencius,” Dao 6 (2007): 1–19. Louden, Robert B. “ ‘What Does Heaven Say?’: Christian Wolff and Western Interpretations of Confucian Ethics,” in Bryan W. Van Norden (ed.) Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (New York: Oxford, 2001), 73–93. Nuyen, A.T. “Confucianism and the Idea of Equality,” Asian Philosophy 11 no. 2 (2001): 61–71. Nuyen, A.T. “Confucianism and the Idea of Citizenship,” Asian Philosophy 12 no. 2 (2002): 127–39. Nuyen, A.T. “Confucianism and the Idea of Globalization”.

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Pfister, Lauren F. “Sublating Reverence to Parents: A Kierkegaardian Interpretation of the Sage-King Shun’s Piety,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 40 no. 1 (March 2013): 50–66. Queen, Sarah A. From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn, According to Tung Chung-shu. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rappa, Antonio L. and Sor-hoon Tan, “Political Implications of Confucian Familism” Asian Philosophy 13 nos 2/3 (2003): 87–102. Sin Yee, Chan. “The Confucian Notion of Jing 敬 (Respect)” Philosophy East and West 56 no. 2 (April 2006): 229–52. Tan, Sor-hoon. Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2004. Wu Genyou. “On the Idea of Freedom and Its Rejection in Chinese Thought and Institutions.” Asian Philosophy 16 no. 3 (November 2006): 219–35.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Justifying Human Rights in Confucianism MAY SIM

Commentators who maintain that Confucianism is compatible with human rights practices fall into three main categories. (i) They argue that the Confucian focus on social relationships can offer a justification of the second generation economic, social and cultural rights, unlike the Western focus on autonomous individuals which is more suitable for justifying the first generation civil and political rights. I call this the “conservative” approach. (ii) Although Confucianism is known for emphasizing harmony and ritual propriety, subordinating the individual to the collective, it has the resources for justifying individual rights, or is compatible with the required modifications for the assertion of individual rights. I call either of these alternatives the “liberal” approach. (iii) Finally, Confucianism has the resources for asserting both the second generation economic, social and cultural rights, as well as the first generation civil and political rights. This last option is what I would term the “intermediate” approach. Even though numerous commentators have argued for some version or another of the three approaches to Confucianism and human rights outlined above, exactly which rights are sought, which are consistent with their philosophy and what reasons are offered for justifying Confucian rights are in dispute. I examine some of these rival approaches that represent either a sole focus on the first, or second generation rights, or attempts to unify them. I explain their shortcomings and make a case for a viable account that is consistent with Confucianism. I begin with the conservatives. 267

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Randall Peerenboom argues against the compatibility of Confucianism and the notion of freedom of thought so important to liberal democracy in the West in his “Confucian Harmony and Freedom of Thought: The Right to Think Versus Right Thinking.”1 Westerners, according to Peerenboom, value freedom of thought as a prerequisite for self-realization as it allows them a choice of lifestyles, social orders and who they want to be—choices which are essential to being moral (CHFT 234). Peerenboom explains that the right to free thinking is also essentially bound up with liberal democracy since democracy requires that individuals choose the kind of social order they want as well as the policies by which they are governed. In contrast, he maintains that Confucianism is about right thinking rather than the right to think. Instead of the individual’s freedom of thought, plurality of social orders, ways of living, and goods from which to choose, Peerenboom asserts that the Confucianism propounded by the Chinese Communist Party, the New Conservatives, and foreign academics advocates a limitation of freedom of thought. Whether it is the Chinese Communist Party’s fear of “wholesale Westernization” which might undermine its power, the New Conservatives’ attribution of the Asian Dragons’ economic success, stability, and strong political authority to Confucianism, or the foreign academics’ championing of Asian Values embodied in Confucianism as an antidote to the ills of radical individualism in Western liberal democracies, Confucianism has become an alternative political model according to Peerenboom. He says, “Certain East Asian nations, Singapore being the most notable, continue to support paternalistic governments that actively pursue a substantive normative agenda and limit individual freedom of thought and expression in the name of promoting common values” (CHFT 235). In place of a political system that relies on a set of procedures, such as those embodied in the judicial system and election process to settle differences that stem from pluralism, Peerenboom explains that Confucianism rejects conflicts between individuals and the state, along with the pluralism. He holds that Confucians believe that individual interests are subordinate to the common good of the state, and rulers are moral exemplars who aim to achieve a social and cosmic harmony. More specifically, rulers harmonize the people and the state by providing the right ideology, mediated by ritual proprieties and secured by their moral virtues. Consequently, Peerenboom asserts that the first generation civil and political rights, “conceived of as anti-majoritarian devices to protect the individual against the collective, that is, as trumps on the will of the majority, the good of society, [and] the interests of the state” play no part in Confucian China (CHFT 238). Peerenboom argues against the compatibility between Confucianism and the first generation civil and political rights by contrasting Confucian rites or

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ritual proprieties (禮) with rights. In his view, even an updated Confucianism, elaborated in his China Modernizes, though flourishing in economic and social rights, would limit or even deny certain civil and political rights.2 This book retains his earlier position which states: “The presence of second generation type welfare concerns arguably implicit in such notions as the people as the basis (minben) and Heaven’s Mandate (tianming)—whereby the ruler who failed to serve the interests of the people lost the Mandate of Heaven and the right to rule—need not and in fact did not entail first generation civil and political liberties, such as freedom of thought” (CHFT 248).3 To understand Peerenboom’s separation of the first and second generation rights, let us examine his account of some contrasts between rites and rights. Rites are unlike rights for Peerenboom; whereas the former provides culturally relative norms of behavior for harmonizing different relationships in a society upon which morality is based, the latter are legal rather than moral, and protects individual freedom of thought and choice over the social good.4 Rights, according to Peerenboom, are based on individual equality whilst rites are based on hierarchical relations. Rites privilege rulers who are supposedly moral rather than freedom of thought for everyone. Peerenboom maintains that rights emphasize law and the individual over social relationships and moral values, resulting in individualism and litigiousness which are destructive of community. He cites Confucius’ Analects 2.3, which criticizes the reliance on law instead of ritual propriety for social order. Confucius points out that laws will lead people to avoid punishments but unlike ritual propriety, cannot instill shame or lead them to order themselves by becoming virtuous. Because rites are not legal according to Peerenboom, they are also not enforceable. Nevertheless, he claims that rites and their values did exert some influence on the laws in China, and they played a role in dispute resolution where individuals used rites to justify their claims. Because of the prominent role of rites in China’s social and political culture, in addition to their unenforceability, Peerenboom notes that one of the weaknesses of China’s list of rights in her constitution, consistent with the charges commonly levied against it, is that it is programmatic rather than enforceable. The most important difference Peerenboom observes between rites and rights is that whilst rights perform an anti-majority function, protecting individuals and the minority against the majority or the state, rites perform a harmonizing function, reconciling individual interests with the state by cultivating the right values in individuals who are realized through the state. A further reason why, for Peerenboom, even rights in China fail to protect individuals against the state stems from how China conceives of rights as

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interests. He says, “most Western rights advocates draw a distinction between rights and interests, arguing that rights are deontological in character whereas interests are consequentialist or utilitarian . . . Rights trump interest in the sense that rights impose limits on the interests of others, the good of society, and the will of the majority” (CHFT 251). Contrariwise, Peerenboom asserts that a conception of rights as interests would only lead to the triumphing of state interest over individual interest due to the insignificance of an individual’s interest when compared to the interest of the whole society. In spite of Peerenboom’s contrast between rites and rights, he seems to have softened on the legal aspect of rights and his claim that they result in individualism and litigiousness that are destructive of the community in China Modernizes. One of his theses in this book is that the development of a legal system, as well as human rights (including the civil and political rights), are intimately correlated with a nation’s wealth (CM 11, 34, 39, 66). Despite his claim that China’s legal system has progressed significantly since 1978, contributing to her economic growth, where she ranks higher than others in the same income class according to the World Bank’s index concerning the rule of law, Peerenboom notes that China’s higher standard of living is not accompanied by a similar progress in civil and political rights like freedom of speech, press and association (CM 19–20). According to him, a similar poor performance in civil and political rights relative to income level also characterizes other East Asian countries with Confucian influence, such as Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Vietnam (CM 43). He says, “They . . . tend to impose more restrictions than liberals would prefer on freedom of speech and the press, freedom of association, and the exercise of religion” (CM 68). Nevertheless, Peerenboom argues that these nations’ legal systems which protect their people’s economic rights extend to non-economic matters as well. More specifically, he says that the same economic rights protecting the people’s freedom to engage freely in economic transactions also protect their properties from the state and other economic agents (CM 66). As such, Peerenboom maintains that in general, economic growth is bound up with advances in a nation’s legal system. A nation’s legal system, if informed by rule of law according to Peerenboom’s China Modernizes, not only protects a person’s economic activities but also his personal security from arbitrary acts of the government. More specifically, Peerenboom thinks that legal rule enhances justice and allows for a certain degree of civil and political freedom in the East Asian nations as long as one does not challenge the government’s authority or undermine the social order (CM 66). In contrast to Peerenboom’s earlier chapter on “Confucian Harmony and Freedom of Thought” which distinguishes radically rites from rights, his

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China Modernizes account of the advance of the legal systems in the Confucian East Asian nations shows that their hierarchical rites might not be as incompatible with the civil and political rights as he had claimed earlier. This is intensified when we consider his remark about how the rule of law protecting economic transactions can protect civil and political liberties too.5 Such a shift in Peerenboom’s position places him, to a certain extent, in my category (ii) of commentators who find elements in Confucianism that are compatible with the first generation rights. Nevertheless, Peerenboom’s later account is not entirely liberal insofar as it restricts the degree of political freedom these modern Confucian nations would tolerate. Let us examine if the restricted political freedom in Peerenboom’s more recent China Modernizes and his earlier argument that rights in contrast to rites are destructive of community, are necessarily true of the Confucian understanding of rights and community. I return to Confucius’ Analects and the early Confucians for this investigation to get to the source itself. Take the civil and political rights of free speech, association, and voting for instance, and consider how a Confucian might apply these rights. That Confucians today might endorse these rights, even though their predecessors in ancient China never had such conceptions, is plausible if I could show that a Confucian approach to politics is compatible with rights talk, and in fact, can be furthered by an appeal to rights. Confucius’ view of speech is that one must be able to live up to one’s words (xin 信), meaning that our deeds must match our speech so that we do not say things that we cannot or do not intend to fulfill. More importantly, he believes that our ultimate goal in life is to become humane (ren, 仁 the highest human virtue where we extend our love for family members to the rest of society). This is to be cultivated by adhering to ritual propriety in such a way that one is not blindly following the traditional rites. Accordingly, additional conditions need to be fulfilled for one to become humane. One must, for instance, possess knowledge, courage, act with appropriateness (i.e., possess the virtue of yi 義), adhere to reciprocity (shu 恕, or what is known as the silver rule), be reflective, invest in the act, and also have other moral virtues like truthfulness (xin 信, or living up to one’s words) and generosity to have the virtue of humaneness. The exercise of these virtues or their pursuit, like all moral acts, requires that someone has the freedom to make choices rather than merely subordinate himself to the community. If all actions are directed toward the cultivation or realization of humaneness for Confucians, then speech or the virtue of living up to one’s words (xin) too, is no exception. Consequently, far from separating one from others and destroying community relations, speech for Confucius and the Confucians, like other actions, would serve the building of relationships. But

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this does not mean that Confucians would support all speech. In fact, he puts down glib speakers (5.25, 17.18) and those who do not have xin (1.4–1.8). This approach is no different than limitations in the exercise of free speech in the West, like the prohibition of yelling “fire” when there is not one in a crowded room. Limitation of free speech in the West is especially clear in chapter 29 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This chapter not only restricts our exercise of rights to actions that are moral, but also requires that they are consistent with the good of the community and preserve respect for others’ rights and freedoms. Given the Confucian belief that the ruler’s duty is to provide for the welfare of the people, one can also imagine support for free speech that exposes a corrupt government. This would include speaking against the government’s failure to say, fulfill the list of rights in its constitution. Consequently, Peerenboom’s assertion that the first generation civil and political rights, such as free speech, promotes individualism and is destructive of the community is not necessarily true for a Confucian version of free speech. In view of the Confucian goal of humaneness, which begins in social relationships like the family and works toward developing more social relationships with others in the community, we can also conceive of a Confucian defense of the right to free association and assembly.6 Just as the right to free speech is restricted by the pursuit of morality, social welfare and respect for the rights and freedoms of others, the rights to association and assembly are similarly subject to these restrictions. But here is how a Confucian can justify the freedom of assembly. If it is impossible for one to cultivate the virtues, especially humaneness that is constituted by the gradual widening of one’s relations to others in the community, the freedom to gather and the right to association (as long as they do not hinder the rights of others to pursue their virtues) must be compatible with Confucianism. Notice that even though the rights to free association and free speech are for the sake of the virtues for Confucians, without which these pursuits would be impossible, there is no guarantee that everyone in a community would use these rights for the sake of cultivating the virtues. Nor would it be consistent with the requirement of free choice in morality (Confucianism included) to restrict one’s actions to only those that say, do not challenge the government’s authority, as Peerenboom has observed in the case of certain East Asian nations. The risk that rights could be abused is one that any theory of rights faces. Nevertheless, Confucians have a resource for mitigating such a risk; namely, their emphasis on the virtues and how their social relations are arranged to this end from the beginning of life through ritual proprieties. It is more plausible for people who have been habituated into the virtues to use their rights to pursue and realize the virtues, than for those who construe of

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rights as entitlements to whatever interests they have as there is no assurance that their interests are morally good.7 More difficult to defend might be Peerenboom’s charge that Confucian rites are hierarchical, privileging the rulers who are moral, as opposed to rights that protect individual equality. Confucius asserted that the common people do not partake of decisions of the state especially when the way prevails (16.2), and subscribed to the view that rulers, ministers, fathers and sons should carry out their respective roles (12.11). How does a Confucian defend the civil and political rights to vote then? To begin, it is important to note that Confucius conflates the family and the state such that the good of the one is bound up with the other; a state is just a family writ large. For instance, when asked why he was not employed in government, Confucius responded by saying, “It is all in filial conduct (xiao 孝)! Just being filial to your parents and befriending your brothers is carrying out the work of government” (2.21).8 Since Confucius enjoins everyone to cultivate filial piety, which not only requires right actions but right attitudes and self-investment (2.7, 2.8, 3.12), everyone is expected to carry out the work of government regardless of one’s official status. More importantly, filial piety, for Confucius, is the root of humaneness (ren 仁). Accordingly, everyone is to cultivate all the other virtues which constitute humaneness, such as, wisdom, courage, acting appropriately, with reciprocity, according to ritual propriety (li 禮) and doing one’s best (zhong 忠), just to name a few. This is evident too when he answers the question of what should be done with a large population. He says that they should first be made prosperous, and then be taught (13.9). Confucius realizes that not everyone can possess humaneness and be an exemplary ruler. But this does not prevent him from seeing the people’s role in ruling. For instance, in his discussion of effective government, Confucius ranks the provision of sufficient food first, followed by sufficient arms for defending the people, and lastly, the people’s confidence in a ruler’s ability to live up to his word (xin 信). Nevertheless, in terms of their necessity and the order with which they are to be given up, he chooses to surrender arms first, followed by food and confidence in the rulers (xin 信) last. He says, “if the common people do not have confidence in their leaders, community will not endure” (12.7). Even absent an election process for the people to vote for their government, Confucius holds that what the people think about the government’s fulfillment of its promises determines its legitimacy and longevity. The importance of the populace to the effectiveness of a government is further supported by Confucius’ view that the ultimate goal of human beings is to become humane (ren), and to that end, people should be educated. I think that his belief in the significance of the citizens’ education in the virtues,

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along with his conviction that being virtuous is essential to ruling well, are resources that make possible the full participation of the populace in government.9 Even if Confucius had never conceived of an alternative to monarchical rule, he would have been able to conceive of the compatibility between an educated citizenry and various forms of democratic government.10 He could have approved of a voting process to elect a representative form of government for instance, which consists of moral leaders whose roles are to pursue the common good if such an option of political leadership were suggested to him. In other words, Confucius’s conflation of the family and the state along with his emphasis on educating the people, are resources for the people’s participation in politics or the right to vote. Having argued that Confucianism is compatible with freedom of expression, association and freedom to vote, which also imply freedom of thought, Peerenboom might still challenge my interpretation by questioning if it allows for genuine individual freedom or just a “freedom” to conform to the majority view expressed in the community. So, let us look more closely at individual freedom of thought and action in Confucianism. In spite of the import Confucius attributes to filial piety and adherence to ritual propriety, making it seem as if harmony with the community is always prior to the protection of individual thought and liberty, there are passages supporting the contrary in the Analects too. For instance, he speaks about remonstrating with one’s parents when one disagrees with them. The important thing for Confucius is to maintain one’s respect (4.18) under such circumstances rather than simply comply with one’s parents’ mistaken wishes. Confucius adds that one ought not to acquiesce even to one’s teacher in the cultivation of humaneness (ren). These remarks encouraging individual initiatives toward those whom he would normally obey is quite consistent with the virtue of appropriateness in action (yi 義) that is characteristic of the humane person. Confucius says, “Exemplary persons (junzi 君子) in making their way in the world are neither bent on nor against anything; rather, they go with what is appropriate (yi)” (4.10). He recognizes that when things like honor, wealth, and personal safety are at stake, it is especially tempting to think about profiting or benefiting oneself. But these are the conditions under which the humane person preserves his integrity and does what is right or appropriate (yi) rather than what is advantageous to himself (7.16, 14.12). Confucius acknowledges that such actions are not frequently recognized by others; that is why he repeatedly tells us not to worry about being acknowledged by others, but to do what it takes to be honored instead (4.14, 1.1). That honor conferred does not always coincide with genuine virtue is evident in his remark about the “village worthy’s” virtue. Though praised by everyone, the village worthy, in Confucius’ view, is one whose

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external actions conform to morality so that he appears to be moral, but is nonetheless, internally morally bankrupt. On the contrary, the exemplary person who acts appropriately (yi) may not appear to be honorable or moral, and may even fail to conform to the community’s consensus of a moral person. Thus, it is not evident that Confucianism always urges the individual to subordinate himself to the majority or harmonize with the community. In fact, despite Confucius’ claim that “harmony is the most valuable function of observing ritual propriety,” he denigrates the pursuit of harmony “without regulating the situation” when things are not proceeding correctly (1.12). Hence, Peerenboom’s characterization of Confucianism’s emphasis of harmony, along with its inability to protect individual freedom of thought by performing an anti-majoritarian function, does not seem evident when we consider Confucius’ remarks about appropriateness (yi) and harmony. Finally, let us turn to Peerenboom’s criticism that rights in China fail to protect the individual because they are conceived as interests. Western accounts according to Peerenboom, separate rights from interests such that rights are conceived of deontologically whilst interests are consequential. He explains that deontological rights will trump the interests of the society’s good or the majority, whereas rights as interest will always favor the interest of the society over the individual. Again, regardless of the fact that the ancient Chinese did not have a conception of rights,11 I wish to inquire into a conception that is consistent with the Confucian tradition. Is it necessarily the case that Confucians would understand rights as interests and take a consequentialist approach to them as Peerenboom maintains, or would a deontological approach be possible for them? Given Peerenboom’s interpretation of rites as the provider of culturally relative norms for harmonizing social relations, as well as the basis for morality, Confucianism should be compatible with a moral conception of rights which would trump the “apparent good” of the society. Let me elaborate. Consider how the highest virtue of humaneness (ren) is actually served by one’s entitlement to free speech, association, thought and freedom to vote as I have argued above. Economic, social, and cultural rights also make possible the conditions for a minimal standard of living, enabling the pursuit of virtues.12 If one’s ultimate goal is the life of virtue, which cannot be achieved unless one freely chooses one’s actions, thoughts, goals, and relations, then a case can be made from a Confucian perspective, for how a restriction of such freedoms is the equivalent of a restriction of one’s morality. This is true regardless of whether the restriction of freedom results in social harmony or stability in the short run.13 Whether someone has a legal right to exercise the freedom of thought and actions, etc., such freedoms are moral realities that enable moral actions, and thus are required for becoming moral. In the interest of pursuing virtue,

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Confucianism ought then to be able to claim that both the first and second generations of rights are moral rights, which ought to be provided in order that people can become moral. Given the historical concern of Confucianism with right government, coupled with the resources that the pursuit of rights can offer, a case can be made for its endorsement of such resources as the first and second generations rights for the sake of becoming virtuous. Having discussed in detail the shortcomings of a conservative account of Confucian rights represented by Peerenboom, let us turn now to a liberal account that argues for how Confucianism already has the resources for justifying individual rights, or its compatibility with the addition of individual rights. Julia Ching, “Human Rights: A Valid Chinese Concept?”14 offers three aspects for asserting that human rights is a valid Chinese concept. First, she appeals to the writings of early (Mencius, Xunzi, Mozi) and late leading Confucians (Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan), to show that they all supported a certain conception of human rights. Second, she mentions that most East Asian nations not only readily endorse human rights, but even claim ownership of them. Finally, she alludes to the Confucian influenced East Asian nations which are able to adapt their Confucianism to democratic practices (79). Ching maintains that political corruption in China is the reason why China has not yet developed a political system that respects human equality and dignity despite her early recognition of such ideas. More specifically, she appeals to the Chinese understanding of the Mandate of Heaven (tianming 天命), which we have already encountered in Peerenboom regarding how a ruler can lose his power or mandate of heaven to rule if he fails to govern well. Ching thinks that this idea also implies that government for the Chinese was based on popular consent. However, as Peerenboom observes, an acceptance of heaven’s mandate does not necessarily mean an endorsement of civil and political rights as people may express their approval or disapproval without necessarily having the political rights to change the government.15 More persuasive might have been Ching’s appeal to Mencius’ account of an equal opportunity to become a sage and with that, an equal opportunity to rule as a sage-king. She offers this account of equality as a response to the stereotypical view that Confucian social relations are pervaded by hierarchy and social-orientation: “the Chinese view of the human being tends to see the person in the context of a social network rather than as an individual” (72). In contrast, Ching thinks that the Mencian “moral equal opportunity” for sagehood implies human equality and individuality for Confucianism. Nevertheless, this account would still be susceptible to Peerenboom’s question if it is a genuine individuality and freedom, or simply the freedom to conform to the community’s consensus. That Ching ultimately means the

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latter is confirmed by her own admission that for the Chinese, “The concept of freedom as a right, such as the right to freedom of thought and religion, to freedom of speech and assembly, was never clearly articulated until modern times, and then under Western influence” (73). The individuality or freedom she found in Mencius is, by her own characterization, “an interior, spiritual freedom to improve one’s own moral character” (73). Unlike my approach, Ching does not appeal to Confucius’ concept of appropriateness (yi) or humaneness (ren) to defend a more liberal interpretation of Confucianism, despite her liberal stance that human rights is a valid Chinese concept supported by the early and later Confucians’ ideas of human equality, dignity and government by popular consent. To reiterate, my approach is that if the Confucian telos is humaneness, which requires the other moral virtues like yi, xin and shu (just to name a few), then Confucians should welcome both the first and second generations of rights insofar as they make possible the conditions for the cultivation and exercise of these virtues. With respect to Ching’s appeal to the East Asian nations’ endorsement of human rights and their having demonstrated that democracy and human rights practices are compatible with Confucianism, some skepticism is in order. This is apt considering Peerenboom’s account of how the Confucian influenced East Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, along with China, share the characteristic poor performance in civil and political rights despite their higher or growing income levels and rapid economic growth (CM 43). That economic growth need not translate to democracy or improved civil and political rights is a point cautioned by authors like Jack Donnelly and Li Xiaorong too. Far from the conviction that a nation’s economic growth will lead to democracy and human rights practices, Li questions this Asian values approach by saying, “The sad truth is that an authoritarian regime can practice political repression and starve the poor at the same time.”16 In the same vein, Donnelly expresses skepticism regarding the need for political repression of the first generation rights in order to pursue economic growth to provide for the people’s basic needs. He asserts, “Regimes that sacrifice either civil and political rights or economic, social and cultural rights to development do not represent a desirable form of government.” Donnelly continues to say that these nations’ pursuit of economic growth “does not justify wholesale denial of freedom of speech, assembly, and association, let alone practices such as arbitrary arrest and detention or outlawing opposition political movements and parties.”17 In light of these corrupt practices surrounding the endorsement of human rights by the East Asian countries, we might question the strength of Ching’s appeal to them to support the compatibility between human rights and Confucianism.

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Overall, I agree with Ching that there are liberal aspects to Confucianism that are compatible with human rights, especially the civil and political rights which the more conservative commentators of Confucian rights deny. But I question the completeness of her defense of the liberal approach because she does not offer an account of the concept of freedom as a right. Nor does she address the poor performance in civil and political rights of many East Asian nations despite their higher income levels and economic growth, not to mention their professed democracy. Finally, let us examine what I call the “intermediate” approach to human rights, i.e., the approach that argues for Confucianism’s compatibility with both the first and second generations of human rights. Li Xiaorong is a proponent of this sort of approach as she argues against some standard Asian values approaches and proposes a method of intercultural dialogue for arriving at universal human rights.18 More specifically, Li considers the common argument that Asian nations value communal harmony over individuality. On this view, civil, and political rights like those to free association and expression are not only denied on the premise that they are ill-suited to Asian nations, but also on the assumption that community and state interests do not conflict with individual interests. Li challenges the conflation of the community with the state that forms the presumption of this Asian view. She asserts that such a conflation makes any criticism of the state simultaneously a criticism of the community and the people, such that any endorsement of individual rights, say of free speech, would be “anti-communal, [and] destructive of social harmony” (402). Contrary to Confucianism’s support for the suppression of individual rights, Li thinks that such “draconian practices . . . has little in common with her ideal of social harmony” (403). Li thinks that free speech, assembly, association, and tolerance are essential to the well-being of communities. Thus, she holds that separating the state from communities “provides a public space for the flourishing of communities” by enabling “open public deliberations, [so that] marginalized and vulnerable social groups can voice their concerns and expose the discrimination and unfair treatment they encounter” (403). Apart from Li’s argument that the civil and political rights allow for the flourishing of communities and are compatible with Confucianism’s doctrine of harmony, she asserts that the Asian values view that we must choose between economic development and civil and political rights is a false dilemma which supposes that “the starving and illiterate masses have to choose between starvation and oppression” (403). Arguing for the distinction between economic growth and economic rights, where the former refers to the state’s growth whilst the latter to securing basic subsistence for the poor and vulnerable, Li questions the claim that economic growth leads to

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economic rights for the poor and exploited. As she puts it, “Unfortunately, Asia’s development programs have not particularly enabled the poor and vulnerable to control their basic livelihood, especially where development is narrowly understood as the creation of markets and measured by national aggregate growth rates” (404–5). Instead of the Asian values argument that civil and political liberties need to be sacrificed for economic growth which then provides economic rights (say, to the basic necessities), Li thinks that a more persuasive argument for prioritizing social and economic rights over civil and political rights is that the “poor and illiterate people cannot really exercise their civil-political rights” (405). Ultimately, Li asserts that the two generations of rights are really inseparable for apart from physical subsistence, the poor and illiterate stand to benefit from civil and political rights to express their discontent without fear of reprisal. Arguing that the civil-political and social-economic-cultural rights are indivisible, and each is needed for the effective assertion of the other, Li says: “If citizens’ civil-political rights are unprotected, their opportunities to ‘get rich’ can be taken away just as arbitrarily as they are bestowed; if citizens have no real opportunity to exercise their social-economic rights, their rights to political participation and free expression will be severely undermined” (405). That the civil-political and social-economic-cultural rights are not as indivisible in practice is plausible when we consider Peerenboom’s account in China Modernizes. There, he has shown that East Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and China have advanced legal systems that protect their people’s economic rights and properties, and even some of their civil and political rights, as long as they are not used to challenge the state politically (CM 66, 20, 43). Governments of these countries, according to Peerenboom, realize that some rule of law promoting justice and fairness, along with protecting their citizens from arbitrary actions from the state and other citizens are actually indispensible for attracting foreign economic investors and fostering economic growth. Nevertheless, as Peerenboom has made clear, these East Asian economies can also continue to flourish economically in spite of their poor records on the civil-political rights that relate directly to their government’s rule and power. Thus, there are degrees of relation between the civil-political and economic-social-cultural rights, allowing for the radical separation between some civil-political (namely, those challenging the state) and economic-social-cultural rights, as exemplified by so many of these East Asian nations. Contrary to Li’s worries, these countries can allow a certain degree of civil-political rights to assure people that they can really “get rich,” and a certain degree of economic-socialcultural rights for people to engage in the kind of political participation and free speech that are permitted. Just because people in these countries

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are educated to exercise their liberty and economic rights to monetary prosperity, as well as civil and political rights to defend their lives and properties, does not mean that they are similarly educated to exercise their political rights, or allowed the political rights to criticize their government and incite change.19 Having examined some shortcomings surrounding defenders of what I have called the “conservative,” “liberal,” and “intermediate” approaches to the compatibility of Confucianism and human rights, let me review and say a little more about my own account, which addresses the weaknesses in these approaches. I have shown that Peerenboom’s earlier conservative approach which contrasts rites and rights is questionable; a culture steeped in rites is not incompatible with its reliance, to a certain extent, on the rule of law for achieving order. This is borne out by Peerenboom’s own more recent, albeit still conservative, account which examines the role that law has played in the Confucian influenced East Asian countries’ economic growth, illuminating their own version of law, democracy and human rights practices. In fact, the rule of law, which Peerenboom takes to be necessary for the exercise of the liberal civil and political rights, is quite consistent with the East Asian Confucian countries’ style of government. Nevertheless, Peerenboom’s more recent account has also shown that the advancement of a country’s legal system, as ranked by the World Bank’s rule of law index, does not necessarily guarantee all civil and political rights. Nor would economic growth and the rising level of income assure the civil and political rights that can be used to challenge the current regimes in power. Thus, Peerenboom’s conservative approach of respecting the Asian values way of increasing human rights by prioritizing the economic-social-cultural rights over the civil-political rights is debatable. By the same token, I have shown that Ching’s liberal approach does not get to the real liberties that enable the exercise of genuine civil and political rights Confucianism can offer. Her account falls short by her own admission that the civil and political rights are more recent developments due to Western influence. I suggest that the early Confucians actually have the resources for making sense of such rights if we were to consider the Confucian account of appropriateness (yi) and humaneness (ren). Finally, Li’s intermediate approach which urges the indivisibility of the first and second generations rights fails too because the East Asian practices, as Peerenboom’s analysis in China Modernizes has demonstrated, actually show that they can be quite separate. However, I agree with Li that the intermediate approach that argues for both the liberal and conservative aspects in Confucianism that support the first and second generations of rights, is correct. But I think that her defense could have been stronger.

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Contrary to Li’s and Peerenboom’s skepticism toward the potency of the second generation rights, Rosemont maintains that to prioritize the first generation civil-political rights, which encourages individual autonomy, can never lead to the second generation type rights of protecting others’ rights to work, health care and education. He asserts that there is an unbridgeable gap between the first and second generations rights.20 Given the “unbridgeable gap” problem between the first and second generations rights Rosemont asserts, and the difficulties encountered by the authors I have discussed while trying to bridge this gap, I wish to suggest the following solution. Rather than prioritize one generation of rights over the other, I believe that Confucianism’s resource lies in its ethics of virtues. Specifically, it is precisely Confucianism’s telos of humaneness that can justify both the first and second generations rights. To reiterate, if one were inclined to subscribe to the Confucian thesis that the highest virtue is humaneness (ren), which cannot be achieved unless one could freely choose one’s action, speech, association, government and thought, since restrictions on any of these activities (apart from those governed by morality and infringements on others’ similar rights) are restrictions on one’s path toward ren, Confucians should accept the rights to these activities. Even if there is not a legal system that protects these rights in a Confucian nation, the fact that they are the necessary conditions to one’s pursuit, attainment and exercise of humaneness, makes them moral rights. Consequently, any arbitrary restriction of these rights would constitute a moral violation, regardless of whether the violation is legally acknowledged. Due to the moral reality of such rights, they also cannot be sacrificed in the name of the state or communal interest. By the same token, Confucian ren is not achievable without the appropriate family and social relations within which the cultural ritual proprieties, in which the cultivation of ren is rooted, are exercised. Healthy familial and social relations are in turn impossible without a certain level of living standard where people’s physical subsistence, health, education and income level are assured.21 Once again, Confucians cannot enjoin others to pursue the virtue of ren without also ensuring that the economic, social and cultural conditions are satisfied, especially if they have the resources for satisfying these conditions to ren. Assuring the cultural practices of ritual propriety, the social institutions to educate and provide health care, as well as the economic conditions of reasonable working conditions and fair wages, etc., are part and parcel of a Confucian nation directed at the cultivation of ren. In conclusion, even though both the first and second generations rights are required in a Confucian society, my argument is not that one is required to fuel the other so that one needs to be prioritized over the other. This seems to be the debate between the liberals and the conservatives, whilst the intermediate

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approach attempts to strike a harmony between these rights. Rather, my proposal is that each of the two generations of rights is to be justified on the basis of the Confucian telos of ren. Put otherwise, each set of rights provides the necessary conditions to the achievement of ren. Since ren is the Confucian goal, a Confucian nation should also be amenable (provided that it has the resources), to provide these rights which secure the necessary conditions to the highest Confucian virtue. This justification of rights for the Confucians by appealing to their conception of humaneness, is preferable to the other three for it is: (i) consistent with the liberal and conservative aspects of Confucianism, each of which is endorsed by certain Confucian interpreters; (ii) not contingent on the actual practices of the East Asian nations since on this account, rights are moral realities regardless of their legal status, and (iii) it is not contingent on prioritizing or harmonizing the two generations of rights—which debate frequently leads to the underestimation of one of these rights. As such, my defense of this Confucian account of rights can also act as a standard for adjudicating other Confucian accounts and practices of human rights.

NOTES 1. Randall Peerenboom, “Confucian Harmony and Freedom of Thought” (hereafter, CHFT ) in Confucianism and Human Rights, eds. Wm. Theodore De Bary and Tu Weiming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 234–60. 2. Peerenboom, China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? (hereafter CM ), New York, Oxford University Press, USA (2008). 3. See note 15 for Jack Donnelly’s agreement with this point. 4. Seung-hwan Lee, Liberal Rights or/and Confucian Virtues?, Philosophy East and West, 46(3) (1996): 367–79, would agree with Peerenboom’s view that rights are legal. Lee says, “The moral dimension of the language of rights (that is, the morally obligatory, the morally indifferent, and the morally prohibited) is minimalist because it cannot take into account other normative categories that are also significant parts of human experience, such as supererogatory and meritorious acts. For example, rights cannot require benevolence (jen); they do not provide a moral reason to act benevolently in the way that they can compel one to perform those duties specified by corresponding rights.” 5. See Hahm Chaihark, “Constitutionalism, Confucian Civic Virtue, and Ritual Propriety ” in Confucianism for the Modern World, eds. Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), for an account of the relatedness of law and culture. He says, “The normative power of law, especially a constitution, therefore derives from its being embedded in a nomos, the normative cultural vocabulary of a people through which they understand and evaluate political action. In any society, law is a part of its normative culture and as such operates by interacting with other parts of that culture” (39). A more historic account of this view can be found in Aristotle, who maintains that the unwritten laws are prior and more powerful than the

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written ones. I offer a detailed analysis of this issue in my Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Given Confucianism’s reliance on ritual propriety for social order, it is plausible that its legal system protecting the civil and political rights would be akin to that which protects its economic, social and cultural rights which share similar goals as rituals. I will argue that the common goal of rituals, laws and both types of rights for Confucianism is the pursuit of humaneness (ren). 6. Not all commentators agree that the Confucian familial relations can be expanded beyond the family. See Jiwei Ci’s “The Confucian Relation Concept of the Person and its Modern Predicament,” reprinted in Personhood and Health Care 7 (2001):149–64, especially 154–5. For a response to this objection, see my Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 169–71, and “Confucian Values and Resources for Justice,” in Justice ed. M. Lebar (OUP 2018). 7. As Seung-hwan Lee, op cit, puts it, “rights are not sufficient to produce the good life or the ideal personhood. ‘Understanding that one has rights . . . is not sufficient for one to have an admirable character, for one might yet be a mean-spirited pharisee, unwilling ever to be generous, forgiving, or sacrificing’ (Quoting Joel Feinberg’s “A Postscript to the Nature and Value of Rights,” 33.) What is to be added to the minimal requirements of morality is the importance of the excellence of character, virtues, and significance—an axiological ordering of goods.” (My parenthesis and italics.) 8. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are (with slight modifications) from The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, trans. R. Ames and H. Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Ballantine, 1998). 9. The democracy of Confucius’ view about education is evident in Analects 15.39 when he asserts: “In instruction, there is no such thing as social classes.” For the possibility of such education for a liberal state, see Hahm Chaihark, “Constitutionalism, Confucian Civic Virtue, and Ritual Propriety ” in Confucianism for the Modern World, eds. Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Chaihark starts out by explaining the traditional liberal principle that the state is to be neutral regarding different conceptions of the good life. This leads its proponents to maintain that the state’s functioning is independent of the citizens’ virtues. Nevertheless, Chaihark notes a recent change amongst Western thinkers. He says, “Many liberals nowadays acknowledge the need to promote civic virtue and to educate people with the habits, beliefs, and attitudes necessary for citizenship. These writers argue that even a liberal government is dependent on the habits and dispositions of its citizens and that the liberal state need not— indeed, should not—be neutral as to the process of character formation” (35). 10. I defend such a position in my “Confucian Values and Human Rights,” The Review of Metaphysics 67 (2013): 3–27. 11. See my “Confucian Values and Human Rights,” The Review of Metaphysics 67 (2013): 3–27, especially p. 6 for the explanation for why there’s no consciousness of human rights in early Confucianism. 12. See my “A Confucian Approach to Human Rights,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 21 (2004): 337–56; Remastering Morals with Aristotle and

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Confucius (Cambridge: Cambridge Universtity Press, 2007); “Rethinking Virtue Ethics and Social Justice with Aristotle and Confucius,” Asian Philosophy 20 (2010): 195–213. 13. See my discussion of Analects 1.12 about the pursuit of harmony for harmony’s own sake in the previous paragraph. 14. In Confucianism and Human Rights, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Tu Weiming, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 15. Randall Peerenboom says, “The presence of second generation type welfare concerns arguably implicit in such notions as the people as the basis (minben) and Heaven’s Mandate (tianming)—whereby the ruler who failed to serve the interests of the people lost the Mandate of Heaven and the right to rule—need not and in fact did not entail first generation civil and political liberties, such as freedom of thought” (CHFT 248). Jack Donnelly makes a similar point in his Universal Human Rights in Theory & Practice, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), chapter 5. 16. Xiaorong Li, “‘Asian Values’ and the Universality of Human Rights,” in The Philosophy of Human Rights, ed. Patrick Hayden (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2001). 17. Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights: In Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 110. 18. For another discussion that is critical of the Asian values approach to the first generation rights, see Neil A. Englehart, “Rights and Culture in the Asian Values Argument: The Rise and Fall of Confucian Ethics in Singapore,” Human Rights Quarterly 22 (2000) 548–68. See Fred Dallmayr, “ ‘Asian Values’ and Global Human Rights,” Philosophy East and West, vol. 52, no. 2 (April 2002):173–89, for a perspective which urges both intra- and cross-cultural dialogues aimed at global justice to approach the universal legitimacy of human rights. 19. See Beng Huat Chua, “Constrained NGO s and Arrested Democritization in Singapore,” in Civil Life, Globalization and Political Change in Asia, ed. Robert P. Weller (New York: Routledge, 2005), 171–89. Chua says, “To sum up the current context for civil society, in basic rights such as the rights of speech, association, and assembly, Singapore law “is marked by a fairly large number of permissions and permits that need to be obtained before exercising the rights . . .” so much so that the government admits that the general impression of Singapore and Singaporeans has been “Anything not explicitly permitted is proscribed.” One of the consequences of this, which is itself a cost of maintaining absolute control of political power, is a generalized disenchantment and disinterest in public affairs among the population. This is reflected in the common observation that Singaporeans are apathetic when it comes to politics and public affairs (175). 20. Henry Rosemont, “Whose Democracy? Which Rights?” in A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, eds. Kwong-Loi Shun and David B. Wong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). See also his “Human Rights: A Bill of Worries,” in Confucianism and Human Rights, op cit.

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21. For an explanation of this point, see my “Economic Goods, Common Goods and the Good Life,” in Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence, Roger T. Ames and Peter D. Hershock, eds. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015) 441–59.

WORKS CITED Ames, R. and Rosemont, Jr. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine, 1998. Chaihark, H. “Constitutionalism, Confucian Civic Virtue, and Ritual Propriety,” in Confucianism for the Modern World. Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong, eds. 31–53. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Chua, B.H. “Constrained NGO s and Arrested Democritization in Singapore,” in Robert P. Weller, ed. 171–89. Civil Life, Globalization and Political Change in Asia. New York: Routledge, 2005. Ci, J. “The Confucian Relation Concept of the Person and its Modern Predicament,” reprinted in Personhood and Health Care 7 (2001): 149–64. Dallmayr, F. “ ‘Asian Values’ and Global Human Rights.” Philosophy East and West 52 (2002):173–89. De Bary, W.T. and Tu, W. Confucianism and Human Rights. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Donnelly, J. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Englehart, N. “Rights and Culture in the Asian Values Argument: The Rise and Fall of Confucian Ethics in Singapore.” Human Rights Quarterly 22 (2000): 548–68. Feinberg, J. “A Postscript to the Nature and Value of Rights.” Bandman and Bandman, Bioethics and Human Rights 32. 1980. Lee, S-H. “Liberal Rights or/and Confucian Virtues?” Philosophy East and West, 1996. 46: 367–79. Li, X. “ ‘Asian Values’ and the Universality of Human Rights,” in The Philosophy of Human Rights, ed. Patrick Hayden. St. Paul: Paragon House, 2001. Peerenboom, R. “Confucian Harmony and Freedom of Thought,” in Wm. Theodore De Bary and Tu Weiming, eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 234–60. Peerenboom, R. China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Rosemont, H. “Human Rights: A Bill of Worries,” in W.T. De Bary and Tu Weiming, eds. Confucianism and Human Rights. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Rosemont, H. “Whose Democracy? Which Rights?” In Kwong-Loi Shun and David B. Wong, eds. A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Sim, M. “A Confucian Approach to Human Rights.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 21 (2004): 337–56. Sim, M. Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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Sim, M. “Rethinking Virtue Ethics and Social Justice with Aristotle and Confucius.” Asian Philosophy 20 (2010): 195–213. Sim, M. “Confucian Values and Human Rights, The Review of Metaphysics 67 (2013): 3–27. Sim, M. “Economic Goods, Common Goods and the Good Life,” in Roger T. Ames and Peter D. Hershock, eds. Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence, 441–59. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. Sim, M. “Confucian Values and Resources for Justice,” in Mark Lebar, ed. Justice, 237–60. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS ON EARLY CHINESE ETHICS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ALEXUS McLEOD

There have been more works written in the areas of ethics and political philosophy than any other in Chinese thought, by far. This is only proper, given the centrality of these topics in the tradition. To thus have an exhaustive bibliography of this vast literature (especially an annotated bibliography) would require multiple volumes of its own. Thus, here I select what I take to be a number of essential works on the key topics in ethics and political philosophy in early China. I present this with the knowledge that many important works will be left out. This list at least presents the reader with a good starting point from which to enter the far more vast literature on these topics. For the most part, I have leaned toward inclusion of more widely known works that have endured in the field, and which almost everyone working in these areas will have read. Added to this are more recent sources, as well as works I think are important for the ideas they present, and the works of the authors included in this collection (these categories are of course not mutually exclusive). I have included here only works in English. There is of course a rich literature in Chinese and other languages as well, but I focus on Englishlanguage scholarship here as this is the audience of this volume. I also focus here on what I consider some of the essential scholarship in this area. Even in English-language scholarship, there is an overwhelming amount of work in the area, and I include here what will bring anyone up to speed on major issues in the area. I have of necessity left out some very important work, and 287

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this list is not meant to be a “best of ”, or to imply that work left out is essential. Also, since this volume focuses on early (Han and earlier) Chinese ethics and politics, I leave out important works on schools such as Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, and later developments. I have also tried to stick close to the issues brought up in chapters in this volume. I have also focused here mainly on relatively recent work in these areas, though there are older classics interested readers might seek as well, in the sources below. One reason for this is that fewer of these resources have been created, and another is that this gives the reader a sense of the current direction of scholarship in this area. There is of course much more excellent work on these topics. A few good sources for this work are: Paul Goldin’s “Ancient Chinese Civilization: Bibliography of Materials in Western Languages” (online). Bryan Van Norden’s “Readings on the Less Commonly Taught Philosophies”, which includes a section on Chinese Philosophy (http://www.bryanvannorden.com/ suggestions-for-further-reading). Philpapers Chinese Philosophy: Ethics (https://philpapers.org/browse/chinesephilosophy-ethics). Numerous chapters in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, including: David Wong, “Chinese Ethics” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-chinese/). Stephen Angle, “Social and Political Thought in Chinese Philosophy ” (https://plato. stanford.edu/entries/chinese-social-political/).

1. General Works on Early Chinese Ethics and Politics Bai, Tongdong. China: The Political Philosophy of the Middle Kingdom. London: Zed Books, 2012. Brindley, Erica. Individuality in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010. Brindley offers a unique interpretation of the concept of individualism in a number of different traditions in early Chinese thought, including systems in which conformity was prized. Brindley, Erica. Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012. Carreiro, Daniel. “The Dao Against the Tyrant: The Limitation of Power in the Political Thought of Ancient China.” Libertarian Papers 5 (1), 2013. Chong, Kim-chong. Zhuangzi’s Critique of the Confucians: Blinded by the Human. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2016. Czikszentmihalyi, Mark. Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Fraser, Chris, Dan Robins and Timothy O’Leary, eds. Ethics in Early China: An Anthology. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Pines, Yuri. Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Raphals, Lisa. Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998.

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Slingerland, Edward. Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor in Early China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Slingerland offers a unique interpretation of the concept of wu wei as action without exertion, in the early Chinese tradition as a whole, in both political and personal dimensions. Van Norden, Bryan. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

2. Confucianism Ames, Roger. Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011. A central statement and overview of the role ethics framework for understanding early Chinese thought, particularly Confucianism, that Roger Ames has developed for the past few decades. An, Yanming. “Family Love in Confucius and Mencius.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 7(1), 2008. Bai, Tongdong. “The Price of Serving Meat: Confucius’s and Mencius’s Views of Human and Animal Rights.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 19 (1), 2009. Behuniak, James. Mencius on Becoming Human. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004. Behuniak, James. “Hitting the Mark: Archery and Ethics in Early Confucianism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37 (4), 2010. Cai, Dahua. “A Weakness in Confucianism: Private and Public Moralities.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 2 (4), 2007. Chen, Lisheng. “Courage in the Analects: A Genealogical Survey of the Confucian Virtue of Courage.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 5 (1), 2010. Chen, Xunwu. “The Value of Authenticity: Another Dimension of Confucian Ethics.” Asian Philosophy 25 (2), 2015. Cline, Erin. “The Way, the Right, and the Good.” Journal of Religious Ethics 37(1), 2009. El Amine, Loubna. Confucian Political Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. A reconsideration of Confucian political philosophy arguing against the view that it is ultimately grounded in Confucian ethical positions and aimed at furthering Confucian ethical goals. Elstein, David. “Beyond the Five Relationships: Teachers and Worthies in Early Chinese Thought.” Philosophy East and West 62, (3), 2012. Elstein, David. “Why Early Confucianism Cannot Generate Democracy.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10 (3), 2011. Gao, Ruiqian, “The Source of the Idea of Equality in Confucian Thought.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 5 (4), 2010. Hagen, Kurtis. “The Propriety of Confucius: A Sense-of-Ritual.” Asian Philosophy 20 (2), 2010. Harold, James. “Is Xunzi’s Virtue Ethics Susceptible to the Problem of Alienation?” Dao: A Journal of Chinese Philosophy 10 (1), 2011. Hutton, Eric. “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought.” Philosophical Studies 127 (1), 2006.

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Connection of the lessons of psychological situationism to interpretation of early Confucian thought, on the issue of the possibility and difficulty of the cultivation of character. Im, Manyul. “Emotional Control and Virtue in the Mencius.” Philosophy East and West 49 (1), 1999. Im, Manyul. “Action, Emotion, and Inference in Mencius.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32 (1), 2002. Ing, Michael. The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 A study of ritual failure, looking specifically at the Liji. Ing, Michael. “Born of Resentment: Yuan in Early Confucian Thought.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 15 (1), 2016. Ing, Michael. The Vulnerability of Integrity in Early Confucian Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Ivanhoe, Philip. “A Confucian Perspective on Abortion.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 9 (1), 2010. Ivanhoe, Philip. Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation. Indianapolis, IL : Hackett, 2000. A discussion of key figures and features of Confucian ethics in both early Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism, particularly Mengzi and Wang Yangming. Kupperman, Joel. “Confucian Civility.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 9 (1), 2010. Lee, Jung. “An Ethics of Propriety: Ritual, Roles, and Dependence in Early Confucianism.” Asian Philosophy 23 (2), 2013. Li, Chenyang, and Peimin Ni, eds. Moral Cultivation and Confucian Character: Engaging Joel J. Kupperman. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2014. Li, Chenyang. “Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation Between Li and Ren in Confucius’ Analects.” Philosophy East and West 57 (3), 2007. Li, Chenyang. The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Li, Chenyang. The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender. La Salle, IL : Open Court, 2000. Liu, Jeeloo. “Confucian Moral Realism.” Asian Philosophy 17 (2), 2007. Liu, Xiusheng, and Philip Ivanhoe. Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi. Indianapolis IN : Hackett, 2002. Mattice, Sarah. “On ‘Rectifying’ Rectification: Reconsidering Zhengming in Light of Confucian Role Ethics.” Asian Philosophy 20 (3), 2010. McLeod, Alexus. “Ren as a Communal Property in the Analects”, Philosophy East and West 62 (4), 2012. McRae, Emily. “The Cultivation of Moral Feelings and Mengzi’s Method of Extension.” Philosophy East and West 61 (4), 2011. Olberding, Amy. Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That. New York: Routledge, 2011. Olberding uses Linda Zagzebski’s moral exemplarist framework to understand the moral theory of the Analects. Olberding, Amy, ed. Dao Companion to the Analects. New York: Springer, 2013. Collection of a number of relevant chapters on Confucius and the Analects, including Hagop Sarkissian’s “Ritual and Rightness in the Analects,” David Wong’s “Cultivating the Self in Concert with Others,” Amy Olberding’s “Perspectives on

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Moral Failure in the Analects,” Stephen Angle’s “The Analects and Moral Theory,” and Tongdong Bai’s “The Analects and Forms of Governance.” Olberding, Amy. “A Sensible Confucian Perspective on Abortion.” Dao: A Journal of Chinese Philosophy 14 (2), 2015. Pang-White, Ann. “Caring in Confucian Philosophy.” Philosophy Compass 6 (6), 2011. Seok, Bongrae. Moral Psychology of Confucian Ethics of Shame: Shame of Shamlessness. Lanham MA : Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. Shun, Kwong-loi and David Wong, eds. Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy and Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Tan, Sor-hoon. “Imagining Confucius: Paradigmatic Characters and Confucian Virtue Ethics.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32, 2005. Tiwald, Justin. “Sympathy and Perspective-Taking in Confucian Ethics.” Philosophy Compass 6 (10), 2011. Wang, Yunping, “Are Early Confucians Consequentialists?” Asian Philosophy 15 (1), 2005. Wen, Haiming. “Confucian Role Ethics in Chinese and English Language Contexts.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 7 (4), 2012.

3. Daoism (including Yangism and Zhuangism) Allinson, Robert. “Moral Values and the Daoist Sage in the Daodejing,” in Brian Carr, ed. Morals and Society in Asian Philsophy. London: Curzon, 1996. Allinson, Robert. “On Fish, Butterflies, and Birds: Relativism and Nonrelative Valuation in the Zhuangzi.” Asian Philosophy 25 (3), 2015. Elder, Alexis. “Zhuangzi on Friendship and Death.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 52 (4), 2014. Feldt, Alex. “Governing Through the Dao: A Non-Anarchistic Interpretation of the Laozi.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 9 (3), 2010. Fraser, Chris. “Psychological Emptiness in the Zhuangzi.” Asian Philosophy 18 (2), 2008. Fraser, Chris. “Emotion and Agency in Zhuangzi.” Asian Philosophy 21 (1), 2011. Lai, Karyn. “Conceptual Foundations for Environmental Ethics: A Daoist Perspective.” Environmental Ethics 25 (3), 2003. Lai, Karyn. “Ziran and Wuwei in the Daodejing: An Ethical Assessment.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6 (4), 2007. Lee, Jung. “Preserving One’s Nature: Primitivist Daoism and Human Rights.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34 (4), 2007. Møllgaard, Eske. “Zhuangzi’s Notion of Transcendental Life.” Asian Philosophy 15 (1), 2005. Nelson, Eric. “Questioning Dao: Skepticism, Mysticism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi.” International Journal of the Asian Philosophical Association 1, 2008. Nelson, Eric. “Responding With Dao: Early Daoist Ethics and the Environment.” Philosophy East and West 59 (3), 2009. Olberding, Amy. “Sorrow and the Sage: Grief in the Zhuangzi.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6 (4), 2007.

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Perkins, Franklin. “Wandering Beyond Tragedy with Zhuangzi.” Comparative and Continental Philosophy 3 (1), 2011. Roth, Harold. Original Tao. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Sarkissian, Hagop. “The Darker Side of Daoist Primitivism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37 (2), 2010. Tiwald, Justin. “A Right of Rebellion in the Mengzi?” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 7(3), 2008. Tiwald, Justin. “Well-Being and Daoism,” in Guy Fletcher, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being. New York: Routledge, 2015. Wong, David. “Zhuangzi and the Obsession with Being Right.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 22, 2005. Xu, Keqian. “A Different Kind of Individualism in Zhuangzi.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10 (4), 2011.

4. Mohism Brindley, Erica. “Human Agency and the Ideal of Shang Tong (Upward Conformity) in Early Mohist Writings.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34 (3), 2007. Chiu, Wai Wai. “Jian Ai and the Mohist Attack of Early Confucianism.” Philosophy Compass 8 (5), 2013. Chong, Chaehyun. “Mohism: Despotic or Democratic?” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35 (3), 2008. Duda, Kristopher. “Reconsidering Mo Tzu on the Foundations of Morality.” Asian Philosophy 11 (1), 2001. Flanagan, Owen. “Moral Contagion and Logical Persuasion in the Mozi.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35 (3), 2008. Fraser, Chris. Philosophy of the Mozi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Fraser offers a philosophical overview of the Mozi, arguing that the system of the Mohists is more plausible than often given credit for, and less extreme than its opponents such as the Confucians claimed. Hao, Changchi, “Is Mozi a Utilitarian Philosopher?” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 1 (3), 2006. Johnson, Daniel. “Mozi’s Moral Theory: Breaking the Hermeneutical Stalemate.” Philosophy East and West 61 (2), 2011. Loy, Hui-chieh. “Justification and Debate: Thoughts on Moist Moral Epistemology.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35 (3), 2008. Loy, Hui-chieh. “On the Argument for Jian’ai.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 12 (4), 2013. Lu, Xiufen. “Understanding Mozi’s Foundations of Morality: A Comparative Perspective.” Asian Philosophy 16 (2), 2006. Robins, Dan. “Mohist Care.” Philosophy East and West 62 (1), 2012. Zhang, Qianfang. “Human Dignity in Classical Chinese Philosophy: Reinterpreting Mohism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34 (2), 2007.

5. Legalism Bárcenas, Alejandro. “Xunzi and Han Fei on Human Nature.” International Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2), 2012.

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Bárcenas, Alejandro. “Han Fei’s Enlightened Ruler.” Asian Philosophy 23 (3), 2013. DeLapp, Kevin. “Being Worthy of Persuasion: Political Communication in the Han Feizi.” China Media Research 10 (4), 2014. Elstein, David. “Han Feizi’s Thought and Republicanism. Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10 (2), 2011. Goldin, Paul. “Han Fei’s Doctrine of Self-Interest.” Asian Philosophy 11(3), 2001. Goldin, Paul. “Persistent Misconceptions about Chinese ‘Legalism’.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38 (1), 2011. Goldin, Paul. Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Han Feizi, Springer, 2013. This collection contains a number of chapters on Han Feizi’s ethics and political philosophy. Particularly relevant are Albert Galvany’s “Beyond the Rule of Rules: The Foundations of Sovereign Power in the Han Feizi,” Eirik Harris’ “Han Fei on the Problem of Morality,” and Yuri Pines’ “Submerged by Absolute Power: The Ruler’s Predicament in the Han Feizi.” Harris, Eirik. “Constraining the Ruler: On Escaping Han Fei’s Criticism of Confucian Virtue Politics.” Asian Philosophy 23 (1), 2013. Harris, Eirik. “Legalism: Introducing a Concept and Analyzing Aspects of Han Fei’s Political Philosophy.” Philosophy Compass 9 (3), 2014. Harris, Eirik. “Aspects of Shen Dao’s Political Philosophy.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 32 (2), 2016. Harris, Eirik. The Shenzi Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis and Translation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. A translation and study of the extant work attributed to Shen Dao, a political philosopher of the Warring States Period often associated with Legalism, but, as Harris argues, who had a much broader influence. Hutton, Eric. “Han Feizi’s Criticism of Confucianism and its Implications for Virtue Ethics.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 5 (3), 2008. Ivanhoe, Philip. “Han Feizi and Moral Self-Cultivation.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38 (1), 2011. Kim, Sungmoon. “Virtue Politics and Political Leadership: A Confucian Rejoinder to Hanfeizi.” Asian Philosophy 22 (2), 2012. Martinich, A.P. “Political Theory and Linguistic Criteria in Han Feizi’s Philosophy.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 13 (3), 2014. Moody, Peter. “Rational Choice Analysis in Classical Chinese Political Thought: The Han Feizi.” Polity 40 (1), 2008. Sanft, Charles. “Shang Yang Was a Cooperator: Applying Axelrod’s Analysis of Cooperation in Early China.” Philosophy East and West 64 (1), 2014. Schneider, Henrique. “Han Fei, De, Welfare.” Asian Philosophy 23 (3), 2013. Schneider, Henrique. “Legalism: Chinese-Style Consitutionalism?” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38 (1), 2011. Yang, Soon-Ja. The Secular Foundation of Rulership: The Political Thought of Han Feizi (ca. 280–233 BE ) and His Predecessors. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2010.

6. Comparative works An, Ok-Sun. Compassion and Benevolence: A Comparative Study of Early Buddhist and Classical Confucian Ethics. Bern: Peter Lang Publishing, 1998.

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Bai, Tongdong. “What to Do in an Unjust State: On Confucius and Socrates’ Views on Political Duty.” Dao: A Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38 (1), 2011. Blahuta, Jason. Fortune and the Dao: A Comparative Study of Machiavelli, the Daodejing, and the Han Feizi. Lanham, MD : Lexington Books, 2015. Boesche, Roger. “Han Feizi’s Legalism Versus Kautilya’s Arthashastra.” Asian Philosophy 15 (2), 2005. Chai, David. “On Pillowing One’s Skull: Zhuangzi and Heidegger on Death.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 11 (3), 2016. Cline, Erin. “Two Senses of Justice: Confucianism, Rawls, and Comparative Political Philosophy.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6 (4), 2007. Cline, Erin. Confucius, Rawls, and the Sense of Justice. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. Connolly, Tim. “Friendship and Filial Piety: Relational Ethics in Aristotle and Early Confucianism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39 (1), 2012. Foust, Mathew. Confucianism and American Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2017. Ho, Katia. “Beauty in Things: A Comparison Between the Theories of Thomas Aquinas and Zhuangzi.” Philosophy and Culture 38 (4), 2011. Huang, Yong. “A Copper Rule Versus the Golden Rule: A Daoist-Confucian Proposal for Global Ethics.” Philosophy East and West 55 (3), 2005. Johnson, Daniel. “Social Morality and Social Misfits: Confucius, Hegel, and the Attack of Zhuangzi and Kierkegaard.” Asian Philosophy 22 (4), 2012. Kalmanson, Leah, Frank Garrett, and Sarah Mattice, eds. Levinas and Asian Thought. Pittsburgh, PA : Duquesne University Press, 2013. Li, Chenyang. “Confucian Harmony, Greek Harmony, and Liberal Harmony.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 15 (3), 2016. Liu, Qingping. “On the Possibility of Universal Love for All Humans: A Comparative Study of Confucian and Christian Ethics.” Asian Philosophy 25 (3), 2015. Loy, Hui-chieh. “Classical Confucianism as Virtue Ethics” in Stan van Hooft and Nafsika Athanassoulis, eds. The Handbook of Virtue Ethics. New York: Acumen Publishing, 2014. Martinich, A.P. “The Sovereign in the Political Thought of Hanfeizi and Thomas Hobbes.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38 (1), 2011. Metz, Thaddeus. “Confucianism and African Philosophy ”, in Toyin Falola and Adeshina Afolayan, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Metz, Thaddeus. “Values in China as Compared to Africa: Two Conceptions of Harmony.” Philosophy East and West 67 (2), 2017. Radpour, Esmaeil. “Ecstatic Language of Early Daoism: A Sufi Point of View.” Transcendent Philosophy Journal 16, 2015. Sim, May. “Dewey and Confucius: On Moral Education.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36 (1), 2009. Sim, May. “Rethinking Virtue Ethics and Social Justice with Aristotle and Confucius.” Asian Philosophy 20 (2), 2010. Sim, May. Remastering Morals with Confucius and Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Slingerland, Edward. “The Situationist Critique and Early Confucian Virtue Ethics.” Ethics 121 (2), 2011. Stalnaker, Aaron. Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine. Washington DC : Georgetown University Press, 2006.

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Yu, Jiyuan. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge, 2007. Zhao, Qi. “Relation-Centred Ethics in Confucius and Aquinas.” Asian Philosophy 23 (3), 2013.

7. Translations of Key Texts Ames, Roger and David Hall. Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003. Czikszentmihalyi, Mark. Readings in Han Chinese Thought. Indianapolis, IN : Hackett, 2006. Durrant, Stephen, Wai-Yee Li, and David Schaberg. Zuo Tradition/Zuozhuan: Commentary on the “Spring and Autumn Annals”. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016. Fischer, Paul. Shizi: China’s First Syncretist. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Harris, Eirik. The Shenzi Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis and Translation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Huang, Chichung. The Analects of Confucius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Hutton, Eric. Xunzi: The Complete Text. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2014. Johnston, Ian. The Mozi: A Complete Translation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Knoblock, John and Jeffrey Riegel. The Annals of Lü Buwei [Lushi Chunqiu]. Redwood, CA : Stanford University Press, 2001. Major, John, Sarah Queen, Andrew Meyer, and Harold Roth. The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Miller, Harrison. The Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals: A Full Translation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Nylan, Michael. Exemplary Figures/Fayan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013. Nienhauser, William. The Grand Scribe’s Records [Shiji]. 9 volumes. Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 1995–2010. Queen, Sarah and John Major. Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn [Chunqiu Fanlu]. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Rickett, W. Allyn. Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early China. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1998. Rosemont, Henry and Roger Ames. The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Van Norden, Bryan. Mengzi: With Selections from the Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis, IN : Hackett, 2008. Watson, Burton. Records of the Court Historian [Shiji], 3 volumes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Watson, Burton. Han Feizi: Basic Writings. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Ziporyn, Zhuangzi: The Inner Chapters.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Alejandro Bárcenas is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Texas State University Joshua R. Brown is Assistant Professor of Theology at Mount St. Mary’s University David Chai is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Kurtis Hagen is an Independent Scholar, formerly Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh Michael D.K. Ing is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington Sarah Mattice is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of North Florida Alexus McLeod is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Asian/AsianAmerican Studies at the University of Connecticut Amy Olberding is Presidential Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma May Sim is Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross Misha Tadd is Visting Scholar at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Matthew D. Walker is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS College 297

298

INDEX

Abe Yoshio 52 acquired character (wei) 54–5 agency 6 Allison, Robert 135 Ames, R. 26, 29, 30, 36, 38, 39 Analects 2, 3 death 211, 213, 215, 216 filiality (xiao) 7–8, 79 non-impositional (wu-wei) rule 187, 188–90, 191–3, 199 proper naming 27, 28 ritual (li) 156 rulership 13 ancient Greece 4. See also Aristotle; Greek philosophy anxiety Indian and Greek philosophy 226, 227–33 Zhuangzi alternative reading 226–7, 234, 235, 236–43 Buddhist readings 233–6 apatheia 228–9 aristocratic privileges 159–60 Aristotle 4, 170 imperative rule 198–9, 200 non-imperative rule 187, 193–8 assembly, freedom of 272 ataraxia (peace of mind) 227–8 Back, Youngsun 74–5 beauty 191

benevolence 122 bereavement 206, 207–8, 212–16, 220, 221 Berkson, Mark 135 Berling, Judith 134–5 body (shen) 134 Book of Odes 190, 192. See also Shijing (Odes) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 232 Buddhism 226, 229–33, 235 care 259 impartial 70–4, 75 universal 68–9, 82–3 category (lei) 47, 50 Chandogya Upanishad 232 Character Ethics (Kupperman) 37 China Modernizes (Peerenboom) 270–4, 279 Ching, Julia 276–7, 280 chu (anxiety) 241 Cicero 170 “Ciguo” chapter, Mozi 96 clarity of the laws 160–1 community 278. See also social harmony; social roles Confucian constructivism 46, 49–53 “Confucian Harmony and Freedom of Thought” (Peerenboom) 268–70 Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (Ames) 26, 29, 36 299

300

Confucian Role Ethics (CRE) 25–7 critical engagements with 38–41 interpretation 33–8 naming 27–9 translation 30–3 Confucian Tradition and Global Education (de Bary) 35 Confucian Virtue Ethics 38 Confucianism 4–5. See also Mengzi benevolence 126 central concepts 5–10 criticism 10 human rights conservative approach 267–76 intermediate approach 267, 278–80 liberal approach 267, 276–8 weaknesses in approaches 280–2 identity 12 rulership 13 theological elements 248–50 Confucius 2. See also Liji (Record of Rituals) death 207, 211, 212, 213–14, 215–16, 218–19, 220 filiality (xiao) 7, 79 legal punishment 199 Legalist critics 198–9 morality 115 non-impositional (wu-wei) rule 187, 188–93, 199 proper naming 27, 28 ritual (li) 156 social harmony 3 tian (heaven) 9 correlative cosmology 34 cosmology Aristotle 195–8 Confucian Role Ethics (CRE) 34–5 Confucius 191–3 Coutinho, Steve 233 cultural patterns 35 dao (way) 1–2, 9–10 Daoism 10–11 Han Fei 161–9 Xunzi 58 Zhuangzi 234, 235, 236

INDEX

Daodejing Heshanggong’s Commentary on 113 ideals and manifestations 120–5 morality 114–20 significance of 125–8 rulership 13 virtue 81–2 yin and yang 12 Daoism. See also Zhuangists; Zhuangzi dao (way) 10–11 effective action 11 personhood 12 politics 13 selfhood 133–4 as nothingness 135–44, 150–2 scholars’ views 134–5 selflessness 144–9 datong (Grand Unity), era of 88–9 versus xiaokang (Modest Prosperity), era of 90–3, 96–8, 99–100, 100–1 de (virtue) 5–6, 38 Confucius 189–91, 271–4, 275, 281–2 Daodejing 81–2 Han Fei 158 Xunzi 45–6, 55–6 de Bary, William 35, 234 death 205–8. See also mortality Chinese philosophy 211–17, 218–20, 221–2 Western philosophy 208–11, 217, 221 Death of Ivan Ilyich, The (Tolstoy) 209–11 Defoort, Carine 75 deism 8 democracy 268 Didion, Joan 221 differentiation 91, 92, 97 Diogenes Laertius 230, 236 Donnelly, Jack 277 early China 1 early Chinese ethics and politics 2 early Chinese philosophy 2, 15–16 early Confucianism 4–5 central concepts 5–10 Ebrey, Patricia Buckley 48 economic growth 268, 270, 277, 278–9, 280

INDEX

economic rights 278–9 education 273–4 effective action 11–12 emotions 228–31, 253. See also anxiety emptiness 126 Eno, Robert 46–7, 48 equality 158, 160, 276. See also inequality equanimity (upeksha) 229 ethics 2, 4. See also Confucian Role Ethics (CRE); morality Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle) 193–5 fa (laws), Han Feizi 14–15, 157–61. See also human rights in Confucianism; imperative rule; rulership government 161–9 limitations 170–3 family 29. See also filiality fear. See anxiety Feng Youlan 59 filiality (xiao) 7–8 humaneness (ren) 273 jian ai 76–82 Mengzi 250–5, 258, 259 “Five Classics” 3, 4 flexibility 118 foreignizing method, translation 31–3 forgetting the self 147–9 foundational natural laws 127 Fraser, Chris 70, 71–2 freedom of assembly 272 freedom of speech 271–2 freedom of thought 268, 274 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 33 generalizations 35 God 8, 187, 194–7 Goldin, Paul 48 gong (public interest) 166–7 Gongfu Ethics (Peinim Ni) 37–8 goodness 114–15, 115–16, 118, 119 government 161–9. See also rulership Graham, A.C. 47, 59, 213–14 Grand Unity (datong), era of 88–9 versus Modest Prosperity (xiaokang), era of 90–3, 96–8, 99–100, 100–1

301

Great Learning, The 190 Great Peace 117–18 Great Way Grand Unity (datong), era of 88–90 Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing 117–18, 121, 122–3, 124 Greek philosophy 226, 227–9, 230, 232–3, 236, 239. See also Aristotle; Plato; Socrates grief. See bereavement Hall, David 134 Han Dynasty 2, 13 Han Feizi 14–15, 157–61 criticism of Confucius 198–9 government 161–9 limitations 170–3 Hansen, Chad 47 harmony (he) 5 health 193, 194 heaven (tian) 8–9, 50, 51, 164, 192–3. See also son of heaven Mandate of Heaven (Tianming) 276 Hellenistic philosophy. See Greek philosophy hereditary privileges 159–60 Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing 113 ideals and manifestations 120–5 morality 114–20 significance of 125–8 Holding the One 115–16 Holowchak, Andrew 228–9 Huang-Lao school 10, 120, 125–6, 126–7 Hui of Liang 259 “Human Rights: A Valid Chinese Concept?” (Ching) 276–7 human rights in Confucianism conservative approach 267–76 intermediate approach 267, 278–80 liberal approach 267, 276–8 weaknesses in approaches 280–2 human roles (lun) 29. See also social roles human soul 193, 194, 195 human-effort (wei) 54, 55 humaneness (ren) 271–4, 275, 281–2 humanity (ren) 5–6

302

identity 12, 34 “illusion of transparency” 30–1 impartial care 70–4, 75 imperative rule 194, 198–201 Indian philosophy 226, 227, 229–33 individual freedoms 274–5 inequality 159–60. See also equality interpretation 33–8 Ivanhoe, P.J. 48 ji (“self ” and “standard”) 99. See also self/selfhood jian ai 67–8 filiality (xiao) 76–82 as “impartial care” (modest view) 70–4 mixed interpretations 74–5 as “universal care” (radical view) 68–9, 82–3 Jiang Shangxian 51 Jochim, Chris 134 justice 170 Keightley, David 102, 103 King Hui of Liang 259 King Xuan of Qi 259–60 Knoblock, John 47, 49, 59–60 Kongzi Jiayu 96 Kupperman, J. 37 language 46–7 Laozi 124 laws (fa), Han Feizi 14–15, 157–61. See also human rights in Confucianism; imperative rule; rulership government 161–9 limitations 170–3 Legalism 13–15, 198–9 lei (category) 47, 50 Lewis, C.S. 221 Lewis, Mark Edward 125–6 li (pattern) 47, 48, 49–50 li (ritual). See ritual (li) Li, Chenyang 35 Li, Puqun 57–8 Li, Xiaorong 277, 278–80 liberal democracy 268

INDEX

Liji (Record of Rituals) 7, 87–104, 251 Grand Unity versus Modest Prosperity 90–3 narrative(s) of ritual 96–9 origin of ritual 93–6 proper naming 99–100 vulnerability of prosperity 100–2 world view 102–3 ”Yueji” chapter 91–2 Liu Qingping 249–50 love 191 Loy, Hui-chieh 74 lun (human roles) 29. See also social roles Lynch, Thomas 221 Mahabharata 237 Maspero, Henri 47–8 Mawangdui texts 126–7 medicine 193–4 Mengzi (Mencius) defense of Shun 252–5, 260–1 equality 276–7 filiality and possessions 250–2 King Hui of Lian 259 King Xuan of Qi 259–60 Mozi 69 political philosophy 247–8 ren 5 Shun’s ascension 257–8 tian 8 Yao’s presentation of Shun 256–7 meontological self 135–44, 150–2 Merwin, W.S. 221 Metaphysics (Aristotle) 195–6 military 124, 125–6 Modest Prosperity (xiaokang), era of 89–90, 102–3 versus Grand Unity (datong), era of 90–3, 99–100 ritual 95–6, 96–7 self 98–9 vulnerability 100–2 Mohism. See also jian ai social harmony 3 monarchy 172 Moody, Peter 164, 168–9 morality. See also ethics Han Fei 158

INDEX

Heshanggong 114–20 ideals and manifestations 120–5 significance of vision 125–8 mortality 231, 232. See also death mourning. See bereavement Mozi 69, 70–1, 72–3, 80, 81, 96 Murase Hiroya 52 music 91–2 mystical knowledge 47–8 naming 27–9, 39–40, 49 natural dispositions (xing) 53–4, 55 natural order 127 nature 9 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle) 200 non-action (wu wei) 11, 12, 137, 144. See also non-impositional rule non-impositional rule Aristotle 187, 193–8, 200–1 Confucius 187, 188–93, 198, 199 non-systemic rule 194, 195 no-self (wuji) 134, 135 nothingness, self as 135–44, 150–2 particularist attachments 76, 77 pattern (li) 47, 48, 49–50 pattern (wen) 114, 115 peace of mind 227–8, 234, 242 Peerenboom, R. 126–7, 268–74, 279, 280 Peimin Ni 37 personhood 12, 34, 78 personhood (shen) 134 Pfister, Lauren F. 250 philosophy 2, 15–16. See also Greek philosophy; Indian philosophy; Western philosophy Plato 157, 196, 197 Pole Star 191–2, 198 political interpretation 37 politics 13 possessions 250–2 potency (de) 5–6. See also virtue (de) prosperity. See Modest Prosperity (xiaokang), era of public interest (gong) 166–7 punishment 199, 200 pursuit of selfish interest (si) 166–8

303

qi cosmology 34 Qin Dynasty 2 reason 47 ren (humaneness) 271–4, 275, 281–2 ren (humanity) 5–6 reproduction 197 resistancy method, translation. See foreignizing method, translation righteousness 122–3 rights. See human rights in Confucianism rites versus rights 269–70, 273 ritual (li) 6–7. See also Liji (Record of Rituals) Confucius 156 Heshanggong’s Commentary on the Daodejing 123 Xunzi 45–6, 48, 51–2, 53, 58 Robins, Dan 72, 73, 76–8 role ethics. See Confucian Role Ethics (CRE) Rosemont, H. 32, 281 rulership 13, 121–2, 123. See also government; non-impositional rule filial 259–60. See also Shun problem of the single ruler 170–3 Samaññaphala Sutta 229–30 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 31 self / selfhood 98–100, 133–4 as nothingness 135–44, 150–2 scholars’ views 134–5 selfish interest, pursuit of (si) 166–8 selflessness 122, 138, 139–42, 144–9 self-so (ziran) 116–17 Seneca 209 Sextus Empiricus 227 shen (“body” or “personhood”) 134 shi (intellectual class) 159 shi-fei (this/not-this) 11, 238, 242 Shiji 255–6, 257 Shijing (Odes) 92–3. See also Book of Odes Shun Mengzi’s defense of 252–5, 260–1 Yao’s presentation of 255–7 Shun, Kwong-loi 69 si (pursuit of selfish interest) 166–8

304

Skepticism 227–8, 232–3 social harmony 3 social harmony thinkers 4–10 social roles 6 Socrates 209 son of heaven Shun as 252–5, 260–1 Shun’s ascension 257–8 Yao’s presentation of Shun 255–7 sophistication 91 soul 193, 194, 195 speech, freedom of 271–2 standards (fa). See laws (fa) Stoicism 228–9, 230, 232–3, 236, 239 subjective self 134 Symposium (Plato) 196, 197 systemic rule 194 tian (heaven) 8–9, 50, 51, 164, 192–3. See also son of heaven Tianming (Mandate of Heaven) 276 Tillich, Paul 231 Tiwald, Juston 234 tong (unity) 91–2, 97 translation 30–3 Translator’s Invisibility, The (Venuti) 30–3 True Way 115. See also Great Way truth 140

INDEX

warfare. See military water 136 Watson, Burton 59, 60 way (dao) 1–2, 9–10 Daoism 10–11 Han Fei 161–9 Xunzi 58 Zhuangzi 234, 235, 236 wei (acquired character) 54–5 wen (pattern) 114, 115 Western thought bereavement 221 death 205–6, 207, 208–11 deism 8 ethics 7, 38–9 free speech 272 freedom of thought 268 Heshanggong 127–8 rights 270, 275 Western Zhou, house of 155 Wu, Guangming 134 wu wei (non-action) 11, 12, 137, 144 wu wei rule, Confucius 187, 188–93, 199 wuji (no-self) 134, 135

Van Norden, Bryan 59, 68–9 Venuti, Lawrence 30–3 virtue (de) 5–6, 38 Confucius 189–91, 271–4, 275, 281–2 Daodejing 81–2 Han Fei 158 Xunzi 45–6, 55–6

xiao (filiality) 7–8 humaneness (ren) 273 jian ai 76–82 Mengzi 250–5, 258, 259 xiaokang (Modest Prosperity), era of 89–90, 102–3 versus datong (Grand Unity), era of 90–3, 99–100 ritual 95–6, 96–7 self 98–9 vulnerability 100–2 xing (natural dispositions) 53–4, 55 Xuan of Qi 259–60 Xunzi 45–6 constructivist view 49–53 natural dispositions and acquired character 53–6 political implications 55–6 realist interpretation 46–9 evidence 57–60

Wang, Hsiao-po 159, 162, 166 Wang, Youru 135

Yangzi Fayan 252 Yao 255–8

undifferentiation 97 unity (tong) 91–2, 97 universal care 68–9, 82–3 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 272 universality of death 218–19 Unmoved Mover 196–8 Upanishads 229, 232–3 upeksha (equanimity) 229

INDEX

yin and yang 12 “Yueji” chapter, Liji (Record of Rituals) 91–2 Zhang Dongsun 34 Zhao, Guoping 135 zhengming (proper naming) 27–9, 39 Zhou classics 3, 4 Zhuangists effective action 11–12 ethics 4 personhood 12, 78

305

Zhuangzi anxiety alternative reading 226–7, 234, 235, 236–43 Buddhist readings 233–6 dao 11 death 207, 211–13, 214, 215, 216, 218–19 selfhood 133–4 as nothingness 135–44, 150–2 scholars’ views 134–5 selflessness 144–9 ziran (self-so) 116–17

306