Author Archives: Manyul Im

University of Bridgeport

Reverence, the Spiritual, and the Sacred in Confucianism

These themes seem to have come up in a few different posts, so I thought we might try to tie together some of the strands. I know it’s asking for a lot, but is there any way to get some clarity on how these concepts operate within the history of Confucianism?

I’m assuming there is some close network of meaning within which each of these can be used to understand each of the others–e.g. “the sacred” is something that calls for reverence; reverence is to be distinguished from a purely socially understood concept of respect because reverence is tied to value of a spiritual sort; and so forth.

[Brief digression: I’m sure many of you know more about Durkheim than I, but it seems like “the sacred” is some sort of indefinable, basic concept on his view; I’ve never found that very helpful (someone correct me, please, if I’m totally misreading Durkheim). I only bring Durkheim up because of Fingarette’s clear use of Durkheim’s template in allowing that “the secular” (as opposed to “the profane”) could be part of the sacred–Fingarette’s book on Confucius is called Confucius: the Secular as Sacred, for those who might not know.]

I think if we look at the instances of jing 敬 in the Analects, Mencius, Liji, and other pre-Buddhist texts, it seems to me like it could easily be translated as “respectfulness” rather than “reverence.” I think the main question, whether it is about translating jing or understanding the junzi’s pursuits as in some sense spiritual, is going to be about what the larger template of analysis is that makes the texts “speak to” spiritual or sacred concerns. I think I can see what that template is for understanding the neo-Confucians in that way: reaction to and partial assimilation of Buddhist concerns that are more clearly driven by soteriological goals. I’m not sure what the template should be for the early Confucians–despite having read Fingarette more than a few times. And I don’t know as much as I should about the New Confucians to understand how they would see themselves addressing issues of reverence, the spiritual, or the sacred.

Well, that’s what I’ll start with. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot from responses to this post.

Confucius: Democracy Advocate?

Picking up on something that Boram Lee very eloquently wrote in the Confucianism and Sexism string:

“… my impression is that at its heart Confucianism is neither autocratic nor authoritarian, as some modern Asian regimes like to claim.

It seems to me that one of the main defining features of Confucianism, at least on its political and economic dimensions, is its commitment to decentralization. Its ideal society is one consisting of small communities, each small community composed of persons governing themselves with ritual. The ideal government is not a centralized bureacracy, but self-government by each over themselves, where no coercion is involved, only voluntary control and participation in social activities, and leadership based on rational and emotional persuasion, not the use of laws and punishments. A centralized bureacracy following paternalistic policies towards uneducated peasants is only a second-best option.”

I think I understand most of the arguments for thinking of Confucianism as compatible with democratic ideals. They are some version of Boram’s point: the Confucian ideal of political community is of each person exercising moral self-scrutiny and self-cultivation; education of others and continuing self-education is an important ideal; persuasion and non-violent moral example are preferred to use of force and harsh legalism; hence, democracy is not far away as an ideal–what else would even seem appropriate for a community of junzi-like citizens but a democracy?

I think that would be great if it were true. And maybe there is some pragmatic value in making democracy seem continuous with a powerful self-conception (i.e. of being “Confucian” in some broad sense) that has traditionally been expressed only in non-democratic ways. But why does this kind of argument seem so strange to me? One thing that comes to mind very quickly is that it makes Confucianism’s ideals sound like those of Kant, or any of the other Enlightenment “autonomists.” The community of junzis sounds something like the “kingdom of ends,” a self-governing lot of moral agents who regard each other with respect for their personhoods.

Could I really complain about that? I’m not sure; but I feel like I should complain–Doesn’t it distort Confucianism? Isn’t it mistaken to think that the junzi ideal really lends itself to self-governance? What’s the connection exactly between self-cultivation and self-governance–doesn’t this rest on some conflation? And why has Confucianism only been used in the service of autocracy so far?

I’m not trying to make trouble here, just trying to scratch this itch.

Lighter Fare II

Thanks, to Yuri Pines from the Warring States Group, for the pointer:

From:

Confucius family tree has two million members

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-02-16 22:04

JINAN — He’s been dead for 2,500 years but his family just keeps growing and growing – Confucius, or more properly his descendants, are alive and well and flourishing in China and across the globe, according to the latest version of his family tree which is set to triple the size of his kith and kin.

The job of registering new members to the family tree of revered Chinese thinker and educator Confucius (551-479 BC), was finished by the end of 2007, and the number in the updated tree now stands at more than two million.

The family tree will be published in 2009, according to the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee.

“We have received more than 1.3 million new entries and already stopped soliciting new ones,” said Kong Dewei, a Confucius descendant who is directing the updating work.

The 1.3 million are the living members of the Confucius family who have paid the official registration fee of five yuan (70 U.S. cents), but the deceased members will also be included if their descendants can prove a collateral family tree which conforms to the Confucius Genealogy, without any charges, Kong said.

The registration work started in 1998, when Kong Deyong, 77th-generation descendant established the committee in Hong Kong. More than 450 branches were set up around the world to assist the work.

The pedigree has only been revised four times throughout history. The last revision took place in the 1930s and included 600,000 members. The fifth edition of the Confucius family tree will be published to coincide with the 2560th anniversary of the birth of the thinker next year.

Compared with previous versions, the new genealogy will for the first time include overseas and female descendants of the great philosopher.*

Confucius’ family tree is regarded as the world’s longest, recording more than 80 generations of the sage’s family.

[*emphasis added]

Confucianism and Sexism

Van Norden discusses sexism very briefly (pp. 330-31) in his book. I realize, and he does too, there are whole volumes dedicated to the topic. But I wanted to discuss an interesting issue that Van Norden raises–not to critique his book but because I stumbled across the issue there this morning while coffeeing up. Van Norden writes:

“There is nothing, I think, essentially sexist about Ruism. Ruism emphasizes the importance of acting in accordance with our roles. But it is not a requirement of Ruism in itself that these roles be static or attached to specific genders.”

(For those who are unfamiliar, “Ruism” is another–maybe clearer, maybe somewhat problematic–way to refer to Confucianism.)

I think Van Norden’s view here is probably like that of a lot of contemporary defenders of Confucianism. But it raises a question: Is there something essential to Confucianism that transcends, or would allow it to transcend, its actual socio-historical role in sexist practices and institutions? Or maybe that’s too broad; more pointedly, how could a role-based ethical view remain identifiably Confucian if we divorced it from its actual substantive views about role-appropriateness based on sex? Or am I assuming too much in the latter about Confucianism’s actual substantive views about sex-based role-appropriateness?

Lots of questions; any answers?

Chenyang Li's Review of Van Norden

Thanks to Patrick for the heads up. Here is a review of Bryan van Norden’s book, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy on the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews site: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=12323. Maybe that will prompt some of us to read the book, finally–or do reviews have the opposite effect?

“Read it? I haven’t even taught it yet!”

Comments are welcome here on the book or Li’s review.

A Way without a Mental State

Picking up on Dan Robins’ comment in the previous post:

“On a more substantive point, I tend to accept Chad Hansen’s thesis that early Chinese philosophers (as well presumably as lots of other people) did not work with belief/desire folk psychology because (in effect) they did not think of human thought as propositional. So I wouldn’t agree that belief/desire folk psychology is universal.”

That gives me a chance to post about both Hansen and Fingarette, two of my favorites. On this topic, Hansen gives an interesting and very different defense of Herbert Fingarette’s thesis in “A Way without a Crossroads” (ch. 2 of Confucius: the Secular as Sacred).

Fingarette famously argues there that in the Analects, the language of an “inner life” with respect to choices and responsibilities is conspicuously absent. That isn’t to say that the notions of choice and responsibility are lacking, but that they are, significantly, not spelled out in terms of what we might call inner “mental states” (not Fingarette’s terminology–he refers variously to “inner shape and dynamics” of choice, “looking inward,” “inner life,” and “inner crisis”). Instead of the “choice-responsibility-guilt” complex that implies an inner life, Fingarette argues that for Confucius, the idea of acquiring the Way is of an edification process that provides a correcting and civilizing influence on a person through the rituals, study of poetry, history and so forth. As I understand it, that means that in Fingarette’s view, if there is an idea of moral agency in Confucius, it is not at all concerned with the agent as rational chooser, but the agent as performer, or perhaps “traveler,” of the Way.

In A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought Hansen takes up something very much like Fingarette’s point. Hansen’s argument for it, though, is grander and more far-reaching. Here, I’m going to try to summarize quickly what his argument is in pp. 75 – 78. Because of the pictographic nature of Chinese written language, Confucius and others of the era thought of language as conventional and public. They did not see the need for a private “language of thought”–or “mentalese”–which Western philosophers have thought necessary for making sense of meaning and translation (they need to suppose each of us has a private language of thought into which any conventional language must be translated in order for us to understand it; this would be a pure language of concepts along with logical apparatus of rationality, or something like that). That provides a plausible explanation, Hansen argues, for why Confucius “offers neither psychological nor other explanations” (77) for the meaning and significance of ritual gestures. And the conventionalism, as opposed to language-of-thought-ism, about language and meaning is why Confucius and those like him would not have been engaged in, because they did not require, the folk-psychology of beliefs and desires to explain the meaning or value of people’s behavior, or the guides (daos) for it.

I realize that might gloss over details a bit from either Fingarette’s or Hansen’s views. But, what’s a blog for anyway, if we don’t do that sort of thing?

I have some worries about whether either of their arguments have anything to do with the folk-psychology of belief and desire, however. First a confession: I’m not really very well trained in philosophy of mind/language issues, so I’ll probably need some rectifying at your hands. I thought belief and desire folk-psychology was something fairly basic and theoretically “thin” that we could attribute to anyone who attributes thoughts and desires to others or to themselves. That’s part of its status as folk-psychology–average Dude doesn’t care about mentalese, language-of-thought, propositional content, or translation; Dude just attributes thoughts and desires to people using language like: “She wants…” “She thinks…” “I guess…” “I’m afraid that…” etc. But that just is the use of belief-desire folk-psychology, isn’t it? If so, isn’t it clear that Confucius and everyone else we’re concerned with engages in it? Attributing a desire and a belief doesn’t have to be so elaborate. Maybe the folk-psychology isn’t in the foreground of explaining the meaning or value of people’s behavior, but that might just have to do with pedagogy. How do you teach people to do right or value the right things? You have to change their beliefs and desires, but how do you do that? You might put at the center some kind of nearly rote behavior which is key to coming to a realization of the value of the activity. Then you wouldn’t say much about changing their beliefs and desires because that just goes without saying.

I could say more, I suppose, but let me see what you think.

Qi (氣), Moral Psychology, Humours, and Phlogiston

I’ve been thinking about some qi-related things, but only around the periphery, so maybe you all (as usual) can help me get more into it:

  1. To what extent does “accepting” or defending Mencius’ moral psychology require acceptance of qi-cosmology or qi-physiology?
  2. Same question as 1, but with respect to Neo-Confucian moral psychology in Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi).
  3. Is reverting to qi-based cosmology, physiology, medicine, psychology, etc. as problematic as it would be to revert to “humours” medical theory or phlogiston physical theory? Or is any of that problematic–my instinct is to say yes to all three but that might just be knee-jerk scientism.

My interest in this is, of course, about contemporary relevance of either Warring States or Song-Ming Dynasty Confucianism.

The Value(?) of Philosophical Mindset

Just to pick up on–and to pick on a little bit–some comments in the previous thread:

Don’t there seem to be clear rejections of the value of the philosophical mindset in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, assuming we can identify the mindset more or less clearly? It also seems like Confucius and Mencius rejected the inherent value of philosophical questioning and argument. Confucius’ love of “learning” (xue 學) is really about ritual, literary, musical, and moral-historical learning. Mencius only seems interested in philosophical thought to the extent that he feels the need to quell interest in Mohism and other movements that he finds calamitous. Maybe with the Neo-Confucians the “investigation of things” implies putting on a philosophical point of view–but even there I’m not so sure it isn’t just more of the type of learning that Confucius loved.

In short, aren’t the Daoist and Confucian traditions actually hostile to the kind of philosophical mindset that challenges and questions, analyzes and clarifies, and so forth? I suppose we could still be interested in Daoism and Confucianism from such a point of view–just like the analytic philosophical interest in the later Wittgenstein–but it all seems a bit perverse, no?

(un)clarifying Terms: "Philosophical"

In the Yijing thread of comments, astute participants have pointed out that I am not at all clear about how I construe “philosophy” and “philosophical” value. How can we judge that something has little or no philosophical value if we aren’t precise about what that means? I’m taking that as an excuse to introduce this post about the issue.

First, almost anything whatsoever could be construed philosophically and hence have philosophical value. The mindset or aims of the “construer” determine this. Anything from the Big Bang to defecation can seem interesting from the point of view of thinking philosophically about something.

That should indicate that the crux of the matter lies somewhere in a type of “point of view” or “mindset” that could be reasonably regarded as philosophical. As applied to a text, say the Yijing, I should then clarify that when I’m in my philosophical mindset, I don’t see anything very interesting in the actual semantic content of the text. I do, however, see something philosophically interesting in the way it is used and the influence it has.

So, what makes for a philosophical point of view or mindset? I almost want to say that I know when I’m in it and that’s that, but I don’t know how adequate that will sound. Any suggestions? Disagreements with my way of setting up the question?

A somewhat interesting issue at stake here is whether there is such a thing really as a distinction between Western and Eastern/Asian/non-Western philosophy, or whether instead there is just THE philosophical point of view as applied to different sets of texts and viewpoints.