I’ve been recently thinking about an issue that comes up in both the Daodejing and the Analects. DDJ 63, specifically, is commented on in Analects 14.34. In the two texts, we see different positions concerning how one should respond to enmity 怨 yuan. DDJ 63 reads:
為無為，事無事，味無味。大小多少，報怨以德。圖難於其易，為大於其細；天下難事，必作於易，天下大事，必作於細。是以聖人終不為大，故能成其大… Continue reading →
Actually, both parts of that conjunction are false: I am far from virtuous, and I probably don’t hate you. (Really I don’t.) But say I were virtuous: what would be the problem with me hating some people? Would feeling hatred toward some individuals detract from my overall moral standing? And forget about poor old un-virtuous me. What about someone who, by all accounts, really was virtuous–Confucius. Would it detract from his moral standing if he hated some people?
Our thanks to fellow blogger, Chris Panza, for the heads up.
Rodney Taylor enlightens the Huff Post readership on what Confucianism really is HERE.
Just to get you interested, here’s something Taylor says in the piece:
By emphasizing the learning of the sages of antiquity, Confucius believed rulers ruled by the Mandate of Heaven. Confucius thus supported the theocratic nature of the Chinese state. More importantly, however, he supported the religious authority associated with T’ien as a principle of “purpose.” Because of T’ien, the universe had a purpose and that purpose was exercised on behalf of the state. For the Confucians, this “purpose” of Heaven was seen as a greater authority than the power of rulership itself. The ruler only ruled because of Heaven’s Mandate, and the Mandate could be taken away. To hold the Mandate, the criterion was the moral conduct of the ruler. In Confucian thought, much is made of the distinction between a ruler, wang, a true ruler of moral worth, and a tyrant, pa, one who exercises power only for his own personal aggrandizement.
Section 2A/6 of the Mencius tells us that the heart of deference (辭讓) is the starting point of ritual. I’ll try to convince you that this is a puzzling claim, and then suggest a solution to the puzzle.
The puzzle is that ritual obviously mobilises motives other than deference, and calls for behaviour that is not simply deferential. Think of the way that grief takes on ritualised shape in funerals: this is not just an extension of deference. So, why did it make sense to the author or authors of Mencius 2A/6 to say that deference is the starting-point of ritual?
(AP photo)
UPDATED and moved to top: As Steve Angle reported in comments a couple of days ago, apparently the statue has been moved inside the museum! Confucianism revivalists are up in arms. Information about why this was done — whether long-planned, or not -– is contradictory. The English-language press is now reporting this, though they don’t have much information, either!
Here’s a New York Times piece about it from yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/asia/23confucius.html?_r=1
If you hover over the Times picture, it shows you a dramatic(?) before and after shot. Note this interesting quote from the piece:
Guo Qijia, a professor at Beijing Normal University who helps run the China Confucius Institute, said that only Confucian teachings could rescue China from what he described as a moral crisis.
“Students come home from school and tell their parents, ‘One of my classmates got run over by a car today — now I have one less person to compete against,’ ” he said. “We have lost our humanity, our kindness and our spirit. Confucianism is our only hope for becoming a great nation.”
While there is a lull here, check out Sam Crane’s post on The Useless Tree about a plan in Taiwan to use the Four Books to help address problems in its high schools.
The excellent ethics blog PEA Soup hosts a public discussion of one article per issue of Ethics, and starting March 30 the discussion will feature Ted Slingerland’s “The Situationist Critique and Early Confucian Virtue Ethics,” which is now freely available (as part of an arrangement between the blog and Ethics). Double-congratulations to Ted (for the essay in Ethics, and for it being chosen for this discussion)!
UPDATE: the actual url for the discussion is here.
My main project while on sabbatical this year has been a book on contemporary Confucian political philosophy (built on the Tang Junyi Lectures I gave a year ago). I am working on one of the final chapters right now, in which I argue that Confucianism must recognize and critique structural forms of injustice. This has led me to revisit some of the literature on Confucianism and feminism, including Lisa Li-Hsiang Rosenlee’s Confucianism and Women (SUNY, 2006). I want to ask, somewhat in the spirit of a devil’s advocate, is it really as easy to articulate a Confucian feminism (or a feminist Confucianism) as Rosenlee says? Continue reading →
An announcement from the Center for East West Relations at Beijing Foreign Studies University:
You are invited to the 2011 Confucian Studies Summer Camp for Teachers of Chinese Culture at the Nishan Birthplace of the Sage Academy in Shandong Province, China. Continue reading →
My review of Kam-por Yu, Julia Tao, and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Taking Confucian Ethics Seriously: Contemporary Theories and Applications (SUNY Press, 2010) has recently been published at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
