Mencius or Xunzi?

There’s a lot of emphasis in the Analects on ritual propriety (li 禮). In the Mencius, it’s mentioned as being important but not really emphasized, since any actual rituals are only discussed in passing. In the Xunzi (Hsun Tzu), the rituals hold a very central place in the social program that is to save humans from their own worse selves. Doesn’t Xunzi seem more like the real bearer of Confucius’ mantle than Mencius in this regard? (I know that goes against the traditional hierarchy, but we’re not bound by tradition on this blog.) Any thoughts?

Rectification of Names and Names that Can Name (名可名)

While we’re on the subject of ming, “names” or “terms,” I thought I’d say a something about the second line of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching), ch.1. So, the line is:

“Names can name yet they are not constant names.”

(The traditional Wangbi text reads: ming ke ming fei chang ming, 名可名非常名; but the Manwangdui text has ming ke ming ye fei heng ming ye, 名可名也非恒名也; the Guodian text is missing ch.1)

As a hypothesis, suppose that this is directed in some critical way toward Confucius’s idea that rectifying names is the first task of good governing. That would suggest that the project of rectifying names has something to do with making them constant and unchanging. So, I have some questions for anyone with an opinion here:

  1. Is this a plausible hypothesis, given what you think the Daodejing is setting out in ch.1?
  2. What would it mean to make a name or term constant? Does it refer to the term or the concept it stands for? Can we even assume that distinction for the authors of these texts? Better yet, is there some kind of written or spoken term fetish that we can attribute to them that makes it likely they are really concerned with the term rather than the concepts that terms refer to?

I hope that isn’t too much of a question mash-up. Any takers?

Rectification of Names (zhengming, 正名)

Confucius famously says in Analects 13.3 that the first thing to do in conducting state affairs is to “rectify names” — or “correct terms.” Otherwise, he says, “speech will not follow” (yan bu shun 言不順), with the result that “affairs will not be accomplished” (shi bu cheng 事不成), with the result that “rites and music will not flourish,” with the final result that “punishments and rewards will not be appropriate.”

You could ask a lot of questions here as to what this all means. The one I’ll ask is whether this has anything to do with Analects 12.11–as a lot of people seem to think–where Confucius is asked about governing and he says, very tersely, “jun jun, chen chen, fu fu, zi zi” (君君臣臣父父子子). The way most people seem to render this is some version of “A lord should lord, a minister should minister, a father should father, and a son should son,” where the verbal occurrence is usually embellished (plausibly, I think) with “should act like a proper______.” There are a couple of things that bother me about this, however:

  1. I don’t see how 12.11, so construed, is about “names” or “terms” (ming). It seems ostensibly about lords, ministers, fathers, and sons on the one hand and on the other about roles or actions–not about the terms or titles for such people or such roles (or actions). To be about names or terms, at least one of the instances of each pair, the noun or verb–assuming that is how we should construe the grammar–would have to be a mention as opposed to a use. But, how are we to read 12.11 then?
  2. Suppose a lord does not act like a proper lord, a minister like a proper minister, and so forth. Why would that threaten to undermine correct or effective speech, as 13.3 states? I could almost see how improper use of the terms–for example, calling someone a lord who is not actually a lord–could undermine correct usage, if the practice caught on or was enforced. But the fact that someone who is in fact, legitimately, a lord isn’t living up to the name or title, doesn’t have an effect on the correct usage of the name or title; correct usage is necessary to make that judgment in the first place. And, if he isn’t legitimately a lord, then his not living up to the title is just to be expected and doesn’t pose a problem. So, 12.11 can’t really be about making sure people live up to their (properly) applied titles if it is to be relevant to 13.3.

Any thoughts? I could probably clarify my worries, but I’ll let you tell me that before I do.

Is Nepotism Essential to Confucianism?

(I’ve moved this up to the front, since there is a great discussion going on in the comments.)

Always a question; it usually comes up in the context of reading the Analects, at 13.18:

“The Duke of She said to Master Kong: ‘In my native place, there is a man named Straight Body [or, Upright Gong]. When his father stole a sheep, he bore witness against him.’ Master Kong said: ‘In my native place, straight [or, upright] people are different from this man: Father conceals for son and son conceals for father. Straightness lies therein.” (Chichung Huang translation)

Lighter Fare – Favorite Analects translation

I personally prefer the Chichung Huang (Oxford Univ. Press) translation, but largely for the easy-to-use footnote apparatus that appears under each saying, rather than at the back of the book. That makes it so much easier, especially for students, for understanding a) what some of the traditional commentary is on the saying and b) what some of the opaque references to people, rituals, odes, etc. might be. I wish every translation of the Analects did that. Any opinions?

Courage (yong, 勇)–a Confucian virtue?

I’ve been working on some cross-comparisons of contemporary ideas about courage, the ancient Greek idea (andreia), and the early Confucian idea (yong). I gave the following as part of a presentation about yong in Hong Kong at a moral psychology conference in December. I didn’t end up with enough time in that session to get a lot of feedback, so I’m going to post the relevant portion of it below. The gist of it is that courage/yong isn’t a virtue in early Confucianism; in the following, I try to make that case with regard to the Analects:

There is a significantly ambivalent attitude displayed in some passages of the Analects, which perhaps reflects the unclear or contested status of yong as a virtue at all. As Bryan Van Norden ( “Mencius on Courage,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXI: The Philosophy of Religion, 1997) and other contemporary commentators have pointed out, the Analects doesn’t provide a consistently positive portrayal of yong. The following translations and some commentary are taken from Edward Slingerland’s Confucius Analects. I include relevant commentary from Slingerland that seems to me to show how difficult it is to regard yong, “courage,” as a virtue and comment coherently on the text.

Analects 5.7 – The Master said, “If the Way is not put into practice, I will set off upon the sea in a small raft. And the one who would follow me—would it not be Zilu?” Upon hearing this, Zilu was happy. The Master commented, “Zilu’s fondness for courage exceeds mine. But where can I find some really suitable material (cai)?”

Slingerland’s comment on Zilu: “A former warrior, Zilu was admired by Confucius for his courage, but seems to lack other virtues (such as good judgment) that would balance out his courage. Understood this way, the point of this passage is that a virtue such as courage that is entirely uninformed by other virtues becomes a vice.”

It’s not clear to me why Slingerland takes Confucius to be showing admiration for Zilu’s courage, since Zilu’s fondness for it exceeds Confucius’s, probably to Zilu’s failing. Slingerland’s understanding of the passage has yong as a virtue that can become a vice if uninformed by other virtues. This seems puzzling too; we need to know what conception of the virtues allows one to say that a virtue can become a vice. Slingerland’s reading is based overall on this along with other passages as well, of course. So to understand what conception of the virtues might make sense of yong as a virtue, we need to examine them. These other passages seem to show how possession of yong without possession of crucial other traits results in less than favorable outcomes:

Analects 8.2 – The Master said, “If you are respectful but lack ritual you will become exasperating; if you are careful but lack ritual you will become timid; if you are courageous but lack ritual you will become unruly; and if you are upright but lack ritual you will become inflexible….”

Analects 17.8 – The Master said, “Zilu! Have you heard about the six [virtuous] words and their six corresponding vices*?”…”Loving Goodness without balancing it with a love for learning will result in the vice of foolishness. Loving wisdom without balancing it with a love for learning will result in the vice of deviance. Loving trustworthiness without balancing it with a love for learning will result in the vice of harmful rigidity. Loving uprightness without balancing it with a love for learning will result in the vice of intolerance. Loving courage without balancing it with a love for learning will result in the vice of unruliness. Loving resoluteness without balancing it with a love for learning will result in the vice of willfulness. (*Slingerland translates bi 蔽 as “vices;” it could also be translated as “obfuscations.”)

Analects 17.23 – Zilu asked, “Does the gentleman admire courage?” The Master said, “The gentleman admires rightness above all. A gentleman who possessed courage but lacked a sense of rightness would create political disorder, while a common person who possessed courage but lacked a sense of rightness would become a bandit.”

Analects 17.24 – Zigong asked, “Does the gentleman also have those whom he despises?” The Master replied, “Yes, he does. He despises those who proclaim the faults of others; those who, occupying an inferior position, slander their superiors; those who are courageous but lack ritual; and those who are resolute and daring, but overly stubborn.

According to these passages, yong requires ritual, love of learning, and a sense of rightness in order to keep it from producing unruliness (luan 亂). These passages clearly show yong to be a neutral characteristic that can either be put to use for virtuous ends or not. What conception of virtue would regard yong, so characterized, to be a virtue? A “unity of virtues” conception would not be useful here. On a strong version of that view, a person possesses some virtue if and only if she possesses all other virtues. On a weaker version the virtues are so closely related to each other that as a matter of fact a person could not have one virtue without having all the others (see Terry Penner, “The Unity of Virtue,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 82). Neither version helps us here, since it is made abundantly clear the a person could possess yong while not possessing some other characteristics, supposing they are virtues, that are necessary for it to produce good results. Slingerland’s comment quoted above is inadvertently instructive here. It can’t really be that yong is a virtue that “becomes a vice” without the relevant other things present. Rather, it seems more accurate to say that yong is not a virtue at all but is something can be instrumental to the pursuit of virtuous ends—at least as these passages present it.

Things are somewhat different in the following two passages , however, and that is why there seems to be an overall ambivalence—or perhaps incoherence—in the Analects regarding yong:

Analects 9.29 ﹣ The Master said, “The wise are not confused, the Good* do not worry, and the courageous do not fear.” (*Slingerland translates ren zhe 仁者 here as “the Good;” “the benevolent” or “the humane” would probably be more standard.)

Analects 14.28 ﹣ The Master said, “The Way of the gentleman is threefold, and yet I have not been able to achieve any aspect of it: ‘The Good do not worry, the wise are not confused, and the courageous do not fear.’” Zigong replied, “[By quoting this saying], the Master has in fact described himself.”

In both of these passages, there is clear indication that a short-list description of admirable people includes possession of yong. That does not directly imply that yong is a virtue—all it implies is that admirable people have yong. But that might be enough for some people to regard these passages as showing yong to be a virtue—not yet for me, however.

What is Confucianism? continued

Let me follow up on the criteria for determing who is a Confucian, for which I gave a list of three approaches (see the original post “What is Confucianism?“):

  1. Allegiance to Confucius
  2. Advocating a Set of Uniquely Specifiable Ideals
  3. Rearing in a Particular Type of Society

The reason to specify these approaches is to try to disentangle the sources for some controversies surrounding Confucianism. There are a few issues I have in mind:

Confucians vs. Confucianologists – Despite the awkwardness of the latter term, this is an important distinction to make. There are those who are Confucians in the three ways specified above, and there are those who study Confucianism–the “Confucianologists,” if you will. I’m borrowing here from the “Buddhist-Buddhologist” distinction. The distinction–not, by the way, one that marks mutually exclusive categories–is between someone who is a “believer” in some sense and someone who is a scholar. Since someone could be both, it is important to see how one might be categorized as a “believer.” Hence, it is important to distinguish someone who has some allegiance to Confucius-construed-as-a-sage, someone who advocates the ideals of theories that they attribute to Confucian origins, and someone who is in the grips of norms that are culturally Confucian in some strong way.

Most Confucianologists prior to the modern era were also Confucians in all three ways, I would think. Here, I’m thinking of the traditional commentators (and philosophers in their own right), like Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) and Wang Yangming, and their ilk. It would be interesting to know what we ought to think of some recent and contemporary Confucianologists–scholars like Tu Weiming, Henry Rosemont, Antonio Cua, Philip Ivanhoe, Bryan Van Norden, and others who seem to advocate Confucian ideals to a greater or lesser extent (relative to one another). I think they are clearly Confucians in the second sense, but I’m not too sure about the first or third senses.

Let me be candid about myself: I’m a Confucianologist and just barely a Confucian in the third sense–I have some feelings and responses that are typical of Korean-Confucian culture, but I’ve been very Americanized in my upbringing despite my parents’ efforts. (It was actually kind of liberating for me to discover, late in college, what the source of those “Korean” feelings were.)

One need not be a Confucian in order to be a Confucianologist. The phrase “Confucian scholar” is ambiguous and people should be more careful using it.

Textual integrity and authorship – The difficult issue of dating and establishing authorship in early texts that are traditionally attributed to Confucius and others who are considered Confucians might or might not matter to a particular Confucianologist. Take the issue of authorship and dating in the Analects. Does it matter whether Confucius himself actually said any of the things that are attributed to him in that text? What if most or all of it represents different voices of different Confucius’ disciples or their disciples, or even the disciples of those disciples, etc.? This matters to greater or lesser extent, I think, for a Confucianologist depending on what he or she has at stake. If the ideas matter more than the sage-status of Confucius, then these issue only matter to the extent that they may help resolve interpretive problems about consistency within a single text. For example, if there are historical strata within the Analects or the Mencius, that no doubt helps in understanding why on some topics there is less than a single, coherent viewpoint within the text.

“Confucian” practices and institutions – Whether a practice (such as foot-binding) or an institution (such as a ministry of moral education) is Confucian or not will depend on issues similar to how individuals are identified as Confucian. Does the practice have seamless origins in devotion to Confucius as sage? Does the institution promote a set of ideals that arise from the tradition of Confucian teachings? Does the practice or institution have culturally central roles within historically Confucian societies? These are different ways in which to categorize. I think the most interesting issue relevant to such questions is about clearly sexist practices or institutions. Whether Confucianism harbors them and hence is to be faulted depends on exactly this issue of how Confucian practices and institutions are to be identified.

Questions and comments are welcome!

What is Confucianism?

This is a more difficult issue than one might think. It could actually be wrong-headed to try to identify Confucianism in any definitive essentialist way. Why? Because the tendency, as with any “-ism” would probably be to try to nail down a certain number of doctrines or ideals that should be considered orthodox. That might be a legitimate way to identify some “-isms” or “-ities” (as in “Christianity”), but it should be regarded as a particular approach among others. So, let me suggest that trying to answer the related question: “Who is a Confucian?” is more fruitful. There are a few ways to go about doing this that differ in emphasis, though they might not produce mutually exclusive identifications:

  1. Allegiance to Confucius – One way to identify Confucians is to see who glorifies, canonizes, or categorically defends and promotes teachings attributable to the historical figure known as “Master Kong” (孔子, Kongzi; 551 to 479 BCE). Here, the emphasis is on the unique identity of some historical person to whom “Confucius” refers. This approach should mostly end up including the ritual and spiritual devotees of Confucius–people who in various ways practice the devotional worship and study of Confucius (which still flourish in S. Korea and Taiwan). But it should also include anyone else, including traditional commentators and contemporary scholars, who is invested heavily both in the truth of and authenticity of certain teachings regarded as having issued from Confucius’s own mouth. Here, it actually matters that–or whether–Confucius was a sage, someone who not only taught things but embodied and exemplified something uniquely admirable. By the same reasoning, it matters whether the teachings traditionally attributed to Confucius are really his and not merely some good ideas that anyone could have come up with.
  2. Advocating a Set of Uniquely Specifiable Ideals – This way of identifying Confucians focuses on espousers of the doctrines or concepts that can be specified as belonging to the unique set of views that arise from the moral, political, and (roughly) spiritual tradition that claims Confucius as an early founder. Here, the emphasis is on the strength and viability of a certain set of ideas, regardless of how historically accurate it is to attribute them to Confucius or any other particular individual in the tradition. A Confucian in this sense believes in the non-parochial defensibility of the value of a certain type of society based on the model of family affection and duties, certain types of bearing and decorum in public and private life based on self-reflection, and inculcation of certain feelings and traits through education. It is important to emphasize that a Confucian in this sense regards a core of such ideas as defensible, adaptable, and worth philosophical attention from reasonable points of view that are not already committed to the Confucian tradition.
  3. Rearing in a Particular Type of Society – This way of identifying Confucians emphasizes participation, either witting or unwitting, in a type of society regarded as culturally bound in some non-trivial way to mores and institutions from a Confucian past. “The Confucian past” may be identified as the historical eras in which scholars and ministers with certain sorts of Confucian textual allegiances (see 1 above) influenced policies, laws, and ideologies that played a large role in shaping cultural attitudes. So, someone reared within a very traditionally Chinese or Korean subculture may carry such attitudes with them, whether they realize it or not–having a strong tendency to be scandalized by perceived indecorous behavior or appearance, for example.

Okay, let me leave it there for the time being. I’m sure there’s plenty more I would need to say to clarify things. Feel free to comment or question, name names, point fingers, etc.