Moving Up and Out

Hi everyone--

Unpolished Jade has now moved to Wordpress (much easier to use than Blogger's setup).  The new page is here.  Check it out!

Does Analects 12.1 Really Say Anything About Human Nature?

Bryan Van Norden seems to suggest (on p. 127 in his "Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy") that Analects 12.1 presents us with a view of human nature relatively close to Xunzi's. Although Van Norden is careful to make clear that he thinks there is no worked out conception of human nature in the Analects, he does seem to think that 12.1 offers some hint that Confucius thought of humans as naturally "resistant to virtue" in something like the way Xunzi did. Although I agree with Van Norden that there is no worked out view of human nature in the Analects, and that what we can glean from the Analects seems to make Confucius closer to Xunzi on what we ought to expect from humans in general (even aside from the issue of xing 性), 12.1 doesn't seem to me to suggest any particular view of human nature. The key to this reading, I think, is the term ji 己. If we read it as simply "oneself", then it does seem to suggest a Xunzian view of human nature. But I think there is reason (which I've been attempting to polish up arguments for in the dissertation) to see ji in 12.1 not as referring to the self, but instead as referring to certain features of oneself. Zhu Xi suggests that the right way to read ji in 12.1 is as something like "selfish desires" (The jizhu commentary on the line of 12.1 in question reads: 己謂身之私欲...). I don't take quite this line, but something relatively close. "socially non-contextualized individual" might be closer to my own reading. I take ji as representing oneself as isolated individual, which is the owner of desires and other features that can belong uniquely to individuals. I take this isolated individual, however, as something less than a full person, because it is not socially contextualized. Then, the issue becomes what human nature attaches to: the isolated individual (ji) or the properly formed person (ren人)? The Analects, although it does I think make this distinction, has no answer about which of these two human nature is involved with. There are some really difficult issues surrounding this, which I've not sufficiently thought through yet. What is clear, however, is that if ji is correctly read in either my way or Zhu Xi's "selfish desire" way, then turning away from one's ji is necessary for moral development, but there is no hint as to whether humans naturally are concerned with this ji instead of with something else. What is clear from 12.1 is that either 1) people focusing on ji to the detriment of ritual was a pressing problem among Confucius' contemporaries--because if it were not, there would be no reason to mention it in giving an answer to how one achieves ren 仁.; 2) paying undue attention to one's ji was a potential or actual problem of Yan Hui's , as the response (克己復禮爲仁 "Turning away from ji and returning/adhering to ritual is ren") was given by Confucius in answer to Yan Hui's question about ren 仁 (Yan Hui was a great student, but he wasn't perfect, after all); or 3) both 1 and 2 are true. Regardless of whether 1,2, or 3 is true, however, 12.1 then does not suggest any particular view of human nature, without further information such as "not only do people these days pay too much attention to ji, but humans in general have a natural tendency to do so." 1,2,or 3 could be true, that is, due to corrupting influences in the society which got in the way (as Mencius suggested) of human nature. Any thoughts?

Dissertation Hell!

I'm in it.  

Wow--two months since I've posted anything here at UPJ!  That's just sad.  I'm going to have to get back to neglecting this dissertation and step things up a bit!  Luckily, since I've got a bit of material from the dissertation that might not make it into the final work, I may air some of that stuff out here in the days to come, to get your thoughts about this stuff.  Confucius and Aristotle stuff mainly, but a few interesting things concerning the Yangist/Proto-Daoist confrontations in Analects 18 (as I've blogged on a little bit before).  Or whatever else I decide to throw out there...

Analects 2.3--Shame, Good Government, and Dao (Part Two)

Well, it's been a while since I posted part one of this two-part post on Analects 2.3, and there have been lots of excellent comments on both my translation and interpretation of 2.3 from part one.  So, in what's becoming an outrageously long multi part post on 2.3, I'm going to expand this post into a few more parts, to discuss both the rest of the issues I promised I'd say something about in part one, and also to spend a little more time making the case for a situationist reading of 2.3.  I'll also say some more things about my translation choices, as there were a couple of excellent comments on this also.  This stuff becomes more complicated as I work through it, which is part of the reason it's taken so long to get new posts up.  I'll try to be better with finishing this series on 2.3 off in a timely fashion, though.

Anyway:  in this second part, I'll be discussing

1) Ambivalence about zheng

Part of what I think is going on in 2.3 is a denial that zheng is really such a great thing after all.  This is markedly different than what we see in Book 12 and 13, which may have been written earlier than Book 2.  This strikes me as a movement away from a positive view of zheng.  In particular, I'm thinking here of 12.7, 12.11, 12.17, 13.1, 13.2 as passages which seem to give a highly positive view of zheng, and link it with the kind of shame and standard that 2.3 claims flows from using de as a way to dao zhi (either thought of as guiding the people or establishing dao in the state--though I'm not so sure the two renderings differ as far as the point made--more on that below).

The above passages from Book 12 and 13 generally take the form of a student asking a question about zheng, and the master answering in a way suggesting that various virtues are part of zheng, and are required for it.  This is the reason I translate it as 'proper governance' rather than just 'system of government', or something like that.  The normative element seems built into the concept, in the way it's used in 12 and 13 (in most places).  One might argue that the use in 2.3 is simply an older type of use, and there is no normative element contained in this, but that the zheng passages from 12 and 13 reflect changed understandings of zheng in which the normative element was increasingly built in, similar to the Confucian transformation of the noble title junzi.  Alternatively, one could argue that zheng is used in a non-normative sense in 2.3 and the passages from Book 12 and 13, and it is just the context in the 12 and 13 passages that adds the normativity to the discussion.  This would be to claim that 問 政 (wen zheng "asking about governance") has implicitly a normative dimension that zheng by itself does not, so that the wen here is doing the work--when one asks about a certain activity, he is asking "how ought one perform this activity."  

There are a couple of reasons I want to avoid this.  First, it doesn't seem to be the case that wen is normatively loaded in this way in many of its uses in the Analects, where it looks to be more of a neutral "inquiring into".  Second, some of the responses Confucius gives seem to suggest that he is thinking about zheng in certain passages as including the normative element.  In 12.17, for example, in response to a question from Ji Kangzi about zheng, 問 政 again, Confucius says:

政者，正也。子帥以正，孰敢不正？ Those who govern promote proper action.  If you engage in promotion of proper action, who will dare to not to act properly?  

[This is a tough passage to translate, and really requires highly interpretative translation.  Some alternative translations might take the first two uses of zheng as the same as the final, so that "acting properly" is what the person who governs does, rather than "promoting proper action".  Some read this as connected to the "rectification of names" bit.  I don't really buy that, because the final zheng here would not make sense.  Also, it would just be too easy to say zheng ming instead of zheng, and I can't see any pedagogical reason Confucius would have avoided using ming here if he really meant to talk about the rectification of names.  Zheng has too commonly used a sense to be linked with zheng ming without strong evidence.  And in the context, taking zheng in its more common sense fits, and seems to make for a reading of the passage keeping with other things the Analects says about government.  Certainly, 13.3 is relevant in connection to this passage, but I think it's a reach to take them as discussing the same thing.]

In 12.7 it looks to me like zheng is meant to include the normative element.  Governing badly would not be an example of zheng.  Although not all the uses seem to contain the normative element, for example 13.6.  Another place we see a use of zheng clearly without the normative element is 2.1, which talks of "using virtue to govern" (為政以德).  See--that pesky Book 2 messing things up again!  See also 12.19, where "wei zheng" is used:  子為政，焉用殺? 

Anyway--back to the main point here--in 2.3 we see that zheng is represented as inferior to de as a way to "establish dao" (or, alternatively, "guide the people/state").  The suggestion is that zheng is inferior because it does not instill the people with the right internal guide or standard of action.  As I read the Analects, this standard of shame works as a way of keeping people in line and focused on the right way without the constant attention of the ruler, "ordering themselves", as some translations of 2.3 have it.  The reason I translate the ge here as 'standard', then, is I take it to refer to a mechanism by which the people become orderly spontaneously and of their own volition, not just the fact of their doing so.  It is connected to the chi, "shame", that is mentioned just before it.  The people will have shame, and it is this shame that serves as the standard by which they see what is right and wrong, and align themselves accordingly.  Without this shame, they cannot be said to have a knowledge of right and wrong.  The ruler has given them no standard for judging it.  (Fingarette's book has an excellent discussion on shame in the Analects, by the way, and Cua also discussed this in his article "The Ethical Significance of Shame").  I know, you may be thinking "that ruler giving a standard stuff sounds more like Xunzi than the Analects".  If so, then you've discovered my Xunzi-bias on Analects interpretation.  I generally see Xunzi as pretty close to the thought of the Analects, certainly closer than Mencius is (though that's an argument for another day).

So, back to the negativity about zheng bit.  Given that, in passages like 12.17, zheng is equated with proper conduct, and in the Book 12 and 13 passages in general, lots of other goodies are offered as included in zheng, including "the trust of the people" 民信 (12.7)--a big one, and relevant to 2.3, which might be read as claiming that the trust of the people comes with de, not with zheng, 2.3 seems a bit down on zheng in comparison.  In the estimation of the Confucius of 2.3, it's not quite hitting the mark.  And this seems like a movement from the views of Confucius on zheng in Books 12 and 13.

Anyway--just some initial thoughts about it, refined a little bit since last time I thought about this, but still really rough, and likely problematic.  

Cheng Shude: An Early Birthday Gift, and Taking A Stand...

So... I realize that part 2 of the post on Analects 2.3 is due--and it's on its way, trust me.  Part of the reason I didn't post the rest of the 2.3 interpretation today was because I just received, via Interlibrary Loan through UConn's library, a copy of Cheng Shude's 論語集釋 (Lunyu jishi), a collection of commentaries on the Analects, which is absolutely massive, and which I want to glance at to get some commentary on 2.3.  Cheng, an early 20th century scholar, collected a whole boatload of traditional commentaries on the Analects, and collected them together in this work--which is, of course, why it's called the jishi ("collected explanations").  I just got the copy today, and it's awesome.  It contains both the He Yan commentaries and the Zhu Xi, and a whole lot more.  

There are only a couple of problems--1) I've only been able to get my hands on the first volume of this edition, which only covers up to Book 12 of the Analects.  To give you some sense of how much commentary is here, this volume runs to 764 pages.  And this isn't a large-print, double spaced, one inch margins type deal.  No!--764 pages of tiny print Chinese characters, where each page is probably equivalent to about four of the same content in English.  Which brings me to problem 2) the characters are so small, I either have to put my face all the way to the book and still squint to see them, or invest in a magnifying glass.  They're so small that the ink used to print the thing in many places runs together because a character has too many strokes, making it look like a jumbled mess or a pure ink blot, so sometimes you can only figure out what the character is from the context.  For example, I had to guess there's a 焉 at the end of one line of commentary, because 馬, 為, and the like wouldn't have really made any sense...  Unfortunately, not all the ink blots are this easy to figure out.  Some of them leave me scratching my head.

Anyway, regardless of the problems, the collection rules, and I'll be sad when I have to send it back to the Brown University library.  I think I'll just buy a copy of this one somewhere--if I can find it.  I look at this as an early birthday gift (albeit a temporary one).

Speaking of birthday--tomorrow (Tuesday) is my 30th birthday.  I thought I'd mention that because (as I mentioned to Chris in a conversation today), if I plan on modeling myself after Confucius, I ought to now be "taking a stand" (立 li).  I guess I'm falling a little short on that one, though--I don't know how much of a stand one can take while hidden away in library offices and coffee shops working on a dissertation on Confucian ethics.  Oh well.  

More to come soon (if I don't lose my mind trying to read microscopic characters)!

Analects 2.3--Shame, Good Government, and Dao (Part One)

Part of the reason I want to start out with this passage is because I find it extremely rich, and possibly as offering a view which looks at 政 zheng ("proper governance") more skeptically than do earlier (date wise) passages in Book 12.  Lots of other interesting stuff here as well.  Anyway, on with the passage!

Analects 2.3  子曰：“道之以政，齊之以刑，民免而無恥；道之以德，齊之以禮，有恥且格

Translation:  The master said, "Using proper governance to establish dao, using a penal code to establish order, the folk will escape (punishment) but will have no guiding sense of shame.  Using virtue (de) to establish dao, using ritual (li) to establish order, there will be a guiding sense of shame and also a standard (ge)."

Okay.  So I won't be using the commentaries on this post, because I'm still waiting for my interlibrary loan copies of the ones I've ordered.  But when my volumes come in, I may look back to this passage to try to pull some more out of it.

For now, then, I'll be content in giving my own interpretation of this passage, and pointing out some keys to what I think is going on here.  First, let me mention that I take this passage to be "situationist-friendly", if not muscular evidence itself that the Analects presents us with a situationist ethics.  I think the latter claim would be extremely implausible and there's no argument that could support it, especially when we consider that situationist ethics such as that advocated by John Doris and Gilbert Harman appear to me very dependent on what they conceive of as Aristotelian virtue ethics--that is, their situationist ethics is mainly negatively formulated, arguing that human behavior is not dependent on global character traits in the way (they claim) virtue ethicists require, and that situation has a larger role to play in causing certain types of behavior than virtue ethicists can allow.  This negative point, however, doesn't really tell us anything about how a situationist ethical theory would be laid out--fleshing out such a theory would require some explanation of what situations are, their link to psychological and physiological mechanisms by which they effect behavior, and how situations can be manipulated so as to result in right action, or goodness of 'local' character, or whatever.  Part of the difficulty I have with the philosophical literature on situationism is that the positive project seems sparse.  So, my reading of Confucius and Xunzi as "situationists" is basically to read them as agreeing with Doris and Harman that there are generally no cross-situationally stable robust character traits (in normal people), and that ethical cultivation depends more on putting oneself in the right environment than attending to reasons for action, etc.

So, with that out of the way, I'll try to explain three things in these two posts, briefly:  1) why I take 2.3 as situationist (even though I take Book 2 in general to be both later--see Brooks and Brooks--and closer to Mencius than the later books of the Analects), 2) how I see an ambivalence about zheng here that doesn't exist in the Book 12 passages, 3) my translation of 格 ge as 'standard' and how this connects to point 1.  Here in Part One of this post on 2.3 I will deal with point 1 above, and will discuss 2 and 3 in Part Two (there's just too damn much to say about this stuff...)

1)  2.3 sets up an opposition between using zheng and xing (proper governance and a penal code) to establish dao and order and using de and li to do this same thing.  What makes the difference between the two ways of establishing dao and order is that one way creates a guiding sense of shame (恥 chi) [I'll leave the ge until later], and one does not, but in both cases there can be adherence to the law, or a certain type of order.  However, if we consider what is operative in the case in which the people gain a guiding internal measure (chi), it seems like of the two ways, following li simply creates in one (members of the 民 min) the kinds of feelings that are appropriate to keep one ordered and following dao (that is, the feeling of shame).  This feeling is generated simply through the following of the li.  Depending on how we construe li here, this is a bold claim.  If li is merely very specific practices divorced from one's psychological state then the claim is strong.  If li, however, includes an affective element, so that one does not count as being engaged in li if one does not have the correct attitude and emotions, then the claim that chi (guiding sense of shame) is generated by following li seems close to trivial, since it seems plausible that if certain attitudes and emotions are required for li then chi is one of these.  So this leads me to think that 2.3 is claiming that by performing certain physical actions we can come to gain a particular psychological state (much like the claim that my mood will become better if I simply force myself to smile--a claim which I take it has some empirical evidence to back it up).

On the other hand, a penal code (刑 xing, also translatable as simply 'punishment') has to do more with negative actions and violations than with positive action.  A penal code gives us a list of things we are not allowed to do and specifies punishments if we do these things.  It does not, however, specify how we ought to perform all the actions for which there can be no punishment, for practical reasons.  We could, one might argue, make a penal code just as detailed as the li, by basically codifying the li and listing various punishments for failure to adhere to li in any given circumstance.  There are (at least) two problems with xing, however.  First--law enforcement has limited scope.  There could be no way one could possibly punish infringements of something as broad as the li, which pertain to every situation in one's life.  Second, and more importantly, offering punishments for failure to adhere to li assumes that such adherence is something that people would just as well not have--the reason behind their adherence on this model is that they will avoid punishment, and this is their only motivation.  For this reason, the people will lack important psychological states (such as chi) which are both guiding, allowing one to use less energy in governing (the people will order themselves, the ruler will be a "pole star", leading in a kind of wu wei fashion), and necessary to ensure that dao is realized in the state.

So how does a ruler use li to order the people?  By adhering to li himself, of course.  Connecting this with the points of the above two paragraphs, we can see that the reason a ruler has to resort to a penal code is that he is not himself adhering to li--because if he were, the people would adhere to li as well, using the ruler as a model for action.  In following the laws established by the ruler and having no shame, the people would also be following the actions of the ruler, in neglecting li.  Confucius seems to hold that both the actions and the psychology of the people are effected by the actions and psychology of the ruler.  There is almost a simple mimicking relationship like that between a child and a parent operative here.  The people look up to the ruler and fashion themselves after the way he is, just like a child looks up to a parent and fashions him or herself after the way the parent is.  Often (most often, perhaps), this happens without our even knowing it.  We simply catch ourselves acting, speaking, and thinking even in ways characteristic of our parents, teachers, or culture.  (By the way Joel Kupperman has a great article on this--"Tradition and Community in the Formation of Character and Self", and I've had some good conversations with Chris about this for the past couple of weeks).

If this is part of what is behind 2.3, it strikes me as very friendly to situationism.  Part of the reason for this is that, in essence, it is saying that the people (min) can be made to have very different behaviors, even very different psychological states (!) simply by variation in the actions of the ruler.  Notice that we are now not talking about children, who are not fully formed either psychologically or physiologically, but the min, the people, which is made up of fully formed adults.  On the globalist notion of character Doris and Harman attack, characteristic responses indicative of character should be expected to obtain across a variety of situations.  The responses of the min are not so, however.  It's not completely clear what to take from this, though.  It could be that Confucius considers the members of the min to lack character in a robust globalist sense, while he thinks that there is such thing as this type of character, obtaining only in sages and the high level junzi (a good question to ask here is whether a junzi who is a low ranking official counts as a member of the min--which is why I'm thrilled Chris is working on a paper on the issue of figuring out what the min is).  It could, on the other hand, mean that Confucius thinks that no one has character of the type in question, and is not disparaging the min.  What seems clear, though, is that for most people, what goes on in the palace has a larger impact on their behavior and psychological states than does any character trait of their own.

Anyway--this was a particularly wandering and disorganized post, mostly because I thought of some new things as I wrote it.  Hope it makes some kind of sense.  But hey, that's why I called this thing "Unpolished Jade" in the first place.  Part two coming up.

Prepare To Be Beaten, Dead Horse!

So I've been somewhat reticent lately, and there have been a couple of good reasons for this--most important, though, is the simple reason that I haven't really had anything very interesting to say recently.  This is mostly because the dissertation is using up most of my creative energy, and given that I've blogged on many of the topics covered in the dissertation, I don't want to keep covering the same thing over and over (especially because, among other things, blogging is a way to avoid said dissertation).

Anyway--looking back over the heap of past blog posts here at "Unpolished Jade", I realized there was a project I was involved in some time ago which I'd completely forgotten about, and which I think it's about time to resurrect.  I had been giving translations and interpretations of passages from the Analects.  Now, in renewing this project, I think I will take a slightly different approach.  Namely, instead of simply going through the Analects passage by passage (this can get kinda tedious, especially when dealing with passages like the Book 10 "if the mats weren't properly positioned, he wouldn't sit" type of thing), I will focus on what I take to be interesting or important passages from the Analects (I know, I know--they're all interesting and important...).  Also, I will try to integrate (in a way I didn't before) some of the traditional commentaries in my discussions on the passages.  Of course, I will do this in a different way than Slingerland does it in his translation of the Analects--I will mention them in order to critically engage with them, rather than as ways to explain the text.  I was converted about a year or so ago to the view that the traditional commentaries are indispensable for understanding the Analects, even if mainly because many of the main interpretive options are descended from views outlined in the commentaries.  So I'll probably be wrestling with the Analects and some commentary, especially He Yan's  論語集解 (Lunyu jijie) and Zhu Xi's 論語集住 (Lunyu jizhu), along with other Zhu works, because I think Zhu Xi's impact on early Confucian interpretation was massive, and, maybe, underestimated by some philosophers, or at least not dealt with as often as I'd like.  I haven't completely lost my marbles and bought into the Neo-Confucian readings of the Analects, however, so expect resistance on this front.

One final matter--if there are any Analects passages any readers of "Unpolished Jade" are interested in, send them along, and I'll give my best shot at some interpretation.  This blog is nothing if not a springboard for further thoughts.  I have my pet passages (which I'll be sure to get in), and I'm sure everyone who reads this blog has their own as well.  So let's get Confucianizing!  I think I'll deal with 2.3 first--expect something on this in the next day or so.  A nice passage to begin with, I think, given my interest in Confucius and behavioral situationism.

Phronimos, We Hardly Knew Ye

On Chris Panza's blog a week or so ago, Aristotle's ethics came up during a discussion on Confucius and possible distinctions within the concept of ren or that of the junzi (check it out).  This got me to thinking about Aristotle and a problem I took him to solve in the Nicomachean Ethics by way of his distinction between natural virtue and full virtue—namely, the problem of how a person with a particular “virtue” (I use the scare quotes here to mark the ambiguity of the term 'virtue' here) could ever perform a non-virtuous action, or one not in keeping with that virtue, in unguarded moments, etc.  Here's what I say about Aristotle in a comment to the post:

He considers cases in which one has a disposition to act a certain way, but external forces keep one from performing the acts one intends to, or other considerations (for example, one act is even more virtuous than another) get in the way.

If I remember correctly, he goes so far as to say that if a person is thwarted in this way from performing virtuous action very often, then the disposition that person has toward this action does not count as a virtue. He is able to maintain this (although it’s not explicit, but has to be interpreted) due to his distinction between “natural virtue” and “full virtue”. 

So, after looking back through the NE after my move back to Connecticut, I noticed that Aristotle never actually explicitly says anything that exciting, but I think we can construct this interpretation of what Aristotle does say in various passages in the NE.  I'd simply been reading Aristotle this way so long that I thought he said it outright.  Anyway, here's some argument:

The key passage for the natural virtue/full virtue distinction is NE 1144b1-1145a6.  Here he explains that the difference between natural virtue and full virtue is phronesis, possession of which unifies the virtues and makes a natural disposition a full virtue.  The phronimos of necessity possesses all the virtues together.  One might possess some natural virtues without others, however.  These natural virtues seem from this passage to simply be the same thing as the full virtues without the unity to other virtues, without rationality leading them, or without requiring successful virtuous acts connected with the naturally virtuous disposition one has “of nature” (something one's born with, perhaps).  

If we then consider what Aristotle says about external goods and their relation to eudaimonia, in Book  I in NE 1098b32-1099a5 and NE 1099a32-b8, we can begin to see how the connection is made.  It's worth the space here to quote one of the above passages fully (Ross/Urmson translation):

(NE 1099a32-b8) “...it [happiness] needs the external goods as well; for it is impossible, or not easy, to do noble acts without the proper equipment.  In many actions we use friends and riches and political power as instruments; and there are some things the lack of which takes the lustre from blessednes, as good birth, satisfactory children, beauty; for the man who is very ugly in appearance or ill-born or solitary and childless is hardly happy, and perhaps a man would be still less so if he had thoroughly bad children or friends or had lost good children or friends by death.  As we said, then, happiness seems to need this sort of prosperity in addition; for which reason some identify happiness with good fortune, though others identify it with excellence.”

Keeping this in mind, let's return to virtue.  For the cultivation of the virtues, it is necessary to practice virtuous acts, as Aristotle explains at NE 1103a26-b2:

“...of all the things that come to us by nature we first aquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity [...] but excellences we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well.  For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”

Thus, one might have “natural virtue” in the sense of having a disposition toward generosity, etc., but if they are unable (for whatever reason) to practice generous acts, they cannot gain the full virtue of generosity.  Aristotle can sensibly maintain this by employing the distinction between natural virtue and full virtue, although he doesn't mention this distinction until much later in the NE.  One may not have a particular virtue (although one does have a disposition toward it) simply because one does not have the opportunity to practice acts connected with the disposition—for example, a completely poor person may have a disposition toward generosity, but without the opportunity to transform this disposition (a mere natural virtue) into a full virtue through practice (which seems that it must be connected to the habituation to reasons), the poor person cannot be generous in the full-blown sense.  The opportunity spoken of here is also related to the need for external goods mentioned above in NE 1098b32-1099a5 and NE 1099a32-b8.  That doesn't mean this poor person has nothing, though—they have a natural virtue (I can see Aristotle saying “and this is better than nothing...I guess...”).  Part of the process by which this natural virtue can become a full virtue, however, will have to do with gaining phronesis, and thus all the other virtues, without which one cannot be fully virtuous.

It seems to me Aristotle must have thought that there are plenty of people around who have various natural virtues, but that no one exists or probably had ever existed who was a phronimos.  In this way, we can liken the phronimos to Confucius' 聖人 sheng ren ("sage").  They are both ideals almost unattainable for real people.  But, although Confucius gives us the more attainable goal of becoming junzi, Aristotle seems only to offer the phronimos, giving us the pinnacle but nothing less.  Perhaps the idea here was that if we aim for the highest ideal, we'll get farther than if we aim for something lower, whereas Confucius took a more practical approach.

Anyway, this is the idea—any thoughts on this interpretation? Is this taking the natural virtue/full virtue distinction to do more work than Aristotle intended it to do? (this is one possible worry)

Does He Really Know Where the Ford Is?

As is my habit, I've been thinking recently about topics that have almost nothing to do with my dissertation (or very little to do with it, anyway).  In particular, I've been reflecting on the exchanges between Confucians and the Yangist-types in Book 18 of the Analects.  Lots of interesting questions arise around these exchanges, and I thought I would just lay a couple of them out here.   I make some attempt to answer them, but I'm still not completely satisfied with these answers.  Anyway, here goes:

1) Who are the non-Confucian characters in 18.5,  18.6, and 18.7 supposed to represent?  The Madman of Chu, of course, appears also in Zhuangzi, giving almost the same speech to Confucius as he does in 18.5, with a Zhuangzi-style twist.  It seems likely that the Zhuangzi passage is later than this one, written as a reaction to Analects 18.5, as it has the same cast of characters and appears stylistically like a parody of the Analects passage, which is following with Zhuangzi's style in general.  So, we should take 18.5, at least, as pre-Zhuangzi.  But how long pre-Zhuangzi?  

A.C. Graham thought that the passages may simply have shown us representatives of a more general tendency, derived from the folkish "shen nong" ideal, rather than a specific strain of philosophical thought such as Yangism, Laoism (for lack of a better term) or Zhuangism (ditto).  Although I don't have a solid argument for this, it seems to me the characters in Book 18 represent a more coherent philosophical tendency than that of shennong idealism.  Actually, I think there are three distinct arguments here by the Confucians in Book 18.  My own view is that Book 18 is roughly contemporary with Zhuangzi, which is why Zhuangzi gets milage out of lampooning it.  In addition, the three key passages from Book 18 are meant to present arguments against three types of "Yangist-like" movements.  18.5 is against the "Laoist", 18.6 is against the "Yangist/Zhuangist", and 18.7 against the general "shennong idealist".

This is more speculation than anything at this point.  I have no strong textual argument for this yet, but it's based mainly on some hunches I get from looking at the responses of the non-Confucian characters in each of these passages.  In 18.5, for example, the Madman of Chu laments the weakening of de 德 and suggests as a remedy that we recognize 來 者 猶 可 追 (things to come can be followed).  Notice the similarity of zhui 追 here to the "Laoist" use of dao.  This seems like a suggestion to follow the yin 陰 (low, weak, etc.) when necessary.

18.6 is more difficult, I think, and the root of my second question, so I'll skip it for now.  18.7 shows a peasant farmer who takes in Zilu for the night and chides him for not knowing how to farm.  This person's folk demeanor and care for the land rather than for lofty philosophizing seems to mark him as one who would be praised by those raising up the folk "shennong" ideal.

So this brings me to question 2, about 18.6 specifically:

2) What is meant by the response of Chang Ju in 18.6:  是 知 津 矣  ("He knows where the ford is")?   I've spent years wondering what the right interpretation of this response to Zilu is.  I still don't have anything I'd be comfortable betting on, but here's my best shot, for now:  this sounds like a very Zhuangist response.  Especially when we consider Zhuangzi's position in the Xiaoyaoyou chapter, in which he talks about perspectivalism, and the fault of privileging certain perspectives over others.  Responding in this way to Zilu's question asking where a ford in the river could be found suggests that Chang Ju's criticism of Confucius' way is that the Confucian takes himself to have knowledge based on the narrow concerns they occupy themselves with, but is actually missing the wealth of other concerns and perspectives in the world.  Thus Confucian knowledge is no knowledge at all.  Confucius doesn't really know where the ford is, because he takes as complete knowledge that which deals with the narrow political concerns of human social groups.  Many things of nature fall outside of the ritual context, and so for Confucius are things that cannot be (and need not be) known.  Analects 11.12 is an example of this view:  "without being able to serve people, how could you serve the spirits?"..."without knowing life, how could you know death?"  Since Confucius restricts knowledge in this way to not only the human but the practical, Chang Ju criticizes him with a quip that seems equivalent to saying "if his knowledge is complete, he should know where the ford is. The fact that he does not know where the ford is shows that his narrow restriction of knowledge is inadequate for true understanding."

Thus, we might take Chang Ju to be saying something like: "Does he really know where the ford is?"  Still, I'm not completely comfortable with this interpretation--as I said above, it's more of a hunch than anything.  Personally, I've always found this reasoning to be the most effective "argument" against Confucianism, although it is merely suggestive.  I tend toward the Confucian mindset more than the Yangist/Daoist, but this passage from the Analects has always captivated me more than either Confucius' response at the end (the "we cannot group with the birds and beasts" bit), or the arguments of the Zhuangzi or Laozi.

So, if this is the right reading of 18.6, does that mean that this passage is a response to Zhuangzi, and is later than 18.5?  Or does it show that some of Zhuangzi's views on perspectivalism were already in the philosophical air at the time?  Or--is my reading just the wrong way to interpret 18.6?

Cross-Cultural Art and Confucianism

This is from an interesting exhibition by a Chinese artist discussed on a post on Frog in A Well.  The artist was trained in Germany, and her pieces are comparative, with the German conception of something in blue on the left hand side, the Chinese conception on the right.  A few of the pieces struck me as illustrating important points to keep in mind about Confucianism--like the above, which represents the two cultures' notions of social connectivity.

Check out the post, over at Frog in A Well.  My favorites are the ones on "sense of the self" and "authority/the boss".  

Yi (義) Can't Make a Junzi--Analects 17.23

Here's an argument from Jiyuan Yu:

"for Confucius, being virtuous must involve an intellectual aspect, which he calls yi (義) a term which is etymologically related to yi (宜, 'what is fitting' or 'what is appropriate') and which I choose to translate as 'appropriateness.'  Appropriateness is even said to be the most important factor for being an excellent person.  In addition to Analects 4.10 [...] Confucius also says: 'for the excellent man it is appropriateness (yi) that is supreme.' (17.23)."

(Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle, p. 140)

I've got to call Yu out on this one.  There is absolutely no way one can justifiably read 17.23 as showing that yi is "the most important factor for being an excellent person" (I assume he means junzi).  Why is this?  Well, let's look at the key bit of 17.23 being considered here:

君 子 義 以 為 上 ， 君 子 有 勇 而 無 義 為 亂 ， 小 人 有 勇 而 無 義 為 盜 。

(trans:  The junzi should take yi as of greatest importance.  The junzi who is brave but lacks yi will be disorderly.  The petty person (xiao ren) who is brave by lacks yi will be a thief.)

I am unsure how anyone can use this to show that yi is a necessary condition for being a junzi.  Not only does Confucius say that there can be a junzi without yi, "the junzi who is brave but lacks yi...", but he compares such a person with a petty person who lacks yi, and finds that each type of person has different qualities--the junzi without yi will be disordered, the xiao ren without yi will be a thief.  So it simply cannot be the case that being in line with yi is necessary or sufficient for being a junzi.  If it's necessary, then one cannot be a junzi without it, which 17.33 denies (as clearly as the bright noon sky).  If it's sufficient, then one with yi should qualify as a junzi, which seems inconsistent with 17.33 (the xiao ren who is brave but lacks yi is a thief, but one who is brave and has yi is not a xiao ren at all??)

Yu seems to be reading Confucius in this way in order to make him closer to Aristotle than he actually is.  The above quote from Yu comes from a chapter in which Yu is arguing that Aristotle's phronesis (practical wisdom) is similar to Confucius' yi, in that they are both intellectual aspects of cultivation of virtue the possession of which are necessary for one to be virtuous.  This is true for Aristotle's phronesis, but it makes a joke out of 17.33--it seems to me that the only reason one would ever consider reading 17.33 the way Yu seems is because they have Aristotle glasses on.  And even then, one has to deny that Confucius meant what he said in order to make it support the Aristotelian reading. 

What Really Matters--Analects 13.18

I've been thinking again about Confucian nepotism, because of the discussion on Manyul's blog some time back, and also because Jiyuan Yu talks a bit about it in his book (see review below).  

The catalyst for all these discussions has been Analects 13.18:  

葉 公 語 孔 子 曰 ： 「 吾 黨 有 直 躬 者 ， 其 父 攘 羊 ， 而 子 證 之 。 」 孔 子 曰 ： 

「 吾 黨 之 直 者 異 於 是 ： 父 為 子 隱 ， 子 為 父 隱 。 直 在 其 中 矣 。 」 

(trans [Ames/Rosemont, modified]: The Governor of She in conversation with Confucius said, "In our village there is someone called '[Upright] Person'.  When his father took a sheep on the sly, he reported him to the authorities."  Confucius replied:  "Those who are [upright] in my village conduct themselves differently.  A father covers for his son, and a son covers for his father.  [Uprightness consists of this].)

I've come to think that Analects 13.18 has a different purpose than some of the interpretations I've heard suggest.  Basically, I read 13.18 as nepotistic, sure, but also as anti-theoretical or anti-idealist (I'll try to explain what I mean by this below).  In a sense, it seems to me that what Confucius offered was simply an example of "common sense" ethics, which of course may have been more common-sensical in the ancient Chinese world than it is for us (although my intuitions strongly agree with Confucius here).  

Consider this, from Jiyuan Yu (The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle, p. 127):  “This passage [13.18] has been a difficulty for commentators, as Confucius appears to endorse here a typical nepotistic behavior.  In Confucius' judgment, however, this governor is not good because he encourages the disruption of filial love, the root of cultivation of all other virtues.  He must be thinking that if the son turns the father in, he undermines the basis by which all virtues are nourished.”  

Because Yu takes virtue (de) as central for Confucius, he holds that family matters are taken to be important as instructive, teaching one how to gain virtue.  But this, of course, makes Confucius into a virtue consequentialist, and takes every normative claim in the Analects to have its basis in virtue.  Of course, this is done in neither Confucius nor Aristotle.  Confucius, in particular, is nowhere so concerned with theoretical constructs, making close relationships consequentially valuable in the way Yu suggests, and Confucius' statement in 13.18 might be seen as just such a denial.  No principle, however noble, trumps the love and responsibilities one has for one's family, and if one takes principles as more important than family duties we can only see them as morally flawed.  

A couple of historical examples come to mind.  Famously, Mao Zedong pronounced his care for the people and his energy for fighting for their causes, yet he treated his own wives in characteristically cold and unfeeling ways (and, even more importantly, was cold toward his children).  Perhaps Mao could justify this treatment by arguing that his energy was spent for the greater benefit of the whole people of China.  A more recent example also comes to mind, that of Pakistani ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto.  She was asked by a journalist about a month before her assassination if her constantly putting herself into danger was bad for her children, who would be emotionally hurt if she were killed.  She answered that she cared about all the children in Pakistan just as much, suggesting that their needs trumped those of her own few children.  Something struck me as deeply morally wrong with this, and I think Confucius would agree.  He wouldn't buy it in either case.  He was not, in this sense, a consequentialist.  Yu's interpretation in essence takes Confucius to be a consequentialist with virtue playing the role of the good to be maximized, and family as good insofar as it can lead to virtue--but 13.18 seems to be a denial of that, rather than a theoretical specification of hierarchy of virtue.  

There is a moral flaw in a person, like Mao or Bhutto (or the “upright” man from 13.18), who chooses the greater benefit of the people over his or her own family.  In addition, we may be inclined to think it is a lie.  What is really psychologically operative, we might think, is some callousness or lack of concern for one's own family, or an all-consuming ambition, rather than a great concern for the people.  We, like Confucius, would find it hard to believe that one who cares so little about family that they could sacrifice them for principle (or cares so much for principle that they could harm their family) could actually care in any real sense for people they don't even know. (We could imagine Confucius making the inverse statement of 1.2—how could anyone ignoring filial care be ren?)   

To take another example—think of people whose sons or daughters are involved in crimes.  Do we ever hear people say: “well, if my son/daughter did that terrible thing, they ought to be punished...”?  Indeed, wouldn't we think it rather callous if a parent did react this way?  More common, I think, is the reaction a couple had when they discovered their son had been involved in a hit and run at the University of Connecticut last year—they tried to cover it up.  He was, after all, their son—and I can't say I would have done differently if my own son were in that situation.  Of course, this does not constitute an argument that such nepotism is morally right, but I think Confucius is simply playing on a common intuition (in his time and place) here.  “Family first” is the intuition, and it's one I share.

This is actually one of the things I've always admired about the Confucius of the Analects—he he has a way of pulling us down to earth when we get carried away constructing fancy ethical theories.  

Are We Arguing Past Each Other?

I really dislike the fact that my posts have become so overwhelmingly negative in the recent past.  There are a couple of reasons (perhaps good ones) for this, however.  First--I'm currently in the middle of writing the "negative portion" of my dissertation, in which I argue against the interpretations of Confucius I oppose, in order to lay the ground for my own interpretation.  This inevitably leads to some negativity, I guess.  Second--I'm in the middle of reading some interpretations of Confucius I believe are very problematic, and thus more objections are rising to the surface of the mind than usually do.

The latest example of this is in my reading of Jiyuan Yu's book The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue.  I am finding that in this book, as in May Sim's book on this topic (see below post), my problem is not so much with the interpretations of Confucius presented (which I also disagree with), but rather with the manner of argumentation used to establish these conclusions about Confucius, which in both Sim's and Yu's case I find far from ideal.  Their manner of argument is so lacking, by my estimation, that I've come to think that maybe something different is going on in these texts than what I expect of philosophical work.  Clearly, both Sim and Yu are very smart people (though both are Aristotle specialists, rather than Chinese philosophy specialists), but some of their interpretive argumentation on Confucius leaves me stunned by its weakness.

Often, I find claims made about what Confucius held, then citations of passages in the Analects where Confucius supposedly says it.  To say the least, this is a problematic way to argue for interpretations of a historical text.  One cannot simply point to a passage in a particular text when there is principled debate over the correct interpretation of that passage.  If we are to offer a particular interpretation and use a passage from a text to reinforce it, we need to argue that the passage we cite actually does the work we claim it does.

Here is an example from Yu's book of an argument thus wanting.  On p. 27, Yu writes:

"The 'Mandate of Heaven' theory presupposes that Heaven has its own will and issues commands.  In the Spring and Autumn period, this is said to be the dao of Heaven.  Heaven was thought to have its own norm, and humankind has its way as well.  When Analects 3:24 claims that Heaven commands Confucius to restore the dao, it shows that Confucius introduces the concepts of Heaven and dao (way) into the center of ethics. [...] The divine mission indicates that the correct way of being a human is that which is in accordance with the way of Heaven."

Note what Yu is doing here.  He is using Analects 3:24 to support his interpretation that tian and dao are at the center of Confucius' ethics.  And they are at the center in a number of ways, according to Yu, including being, like the ancient Greek concept of 'the good', the ground of moral norms.  This view is very similar, of course, to all ancient Greek ones, including Aristotle.  It also has a striking similarity to later medieval Christian views, in which God is the ultimate ground of moral norms, and his command, or what he loves, is what fixes the good.  This is a pretty radical interpretation of Confucius, however, and it makes 3:24 do a lot of work.  If we can get all of this from 3:24, one should at least expect an argument from the text that 3:24 actually does suggest what Yu says it does.  But we are given nothing like this.  No consideration of the language of the text, no comparison to other passages in the Analects in which Confucius uses similar language in order to test the coherence of this interpretation, no consideration of how the terms used in 3:24 are generally used in contemporary and near-contemporary texts... just a pointing to 3:24.

So let's look at 3:24.  The crucial segment of this passage reads:  

天 將 以 夫 子 為 木 鐸  tian jiang yi fuzi wei mu duo (trans:  "Tian is about to use the master as a wooden warning bell.")

Now, it requires some muscular argument to show that this justifies the conclusion that tian and dao are at the center of Confucius' ethics in any sense, especially the strong sense of being the ground of moral norms.  Why, indeed, shouldn't we simply read this as colloquial and pragmatic--something like "The teacher is about to set people straight on what's right."  If I were to utter this sentence right now in a conversation with a friend or student, one could hardly use this as evidence to show that I have any conception of a central ground of moral norms, let alone as evidence to show what that ground is.  

So, what's the problem here?  It seems obvious to me that robust linguistic and textual argument is required to support one's interpretation of any historical philosopher, whether it be Confucius, Aristotle, or Descartes.  So maybe there's something I'm missing.  Perhaps what is going on is that I simply have a different conception of what it is to do historical interpretive philosophy than Sim and Yu (and some others).  Perhaps they are working from a method in which creativity in construing the texts trumps historical accuracy.  But many of the things they claim in their works seem to suggest that this is not what they're doing.  After all, they are claiming to be representing Confucius, rather than a creative ethical theory inspired by Confucius.  And there is some historical argument (although an inadequate amount) in these works.  And both authors claim to want to offer an authentic picture of Confucius.  So why are these arguments so empty?

What's going on here?  Are we just arguing past one another because we don't share methodology?  If so, perhaps the focus of some of these arguments between pro and anti "Confucius as virtue ethicist" philosophers should move from interpretation to interpretive methodology.

Problematic Arguments To Link Confucius and Aristotle

Here is a line of reasoning I don't understand--or if I do understand it correctly, then it's an invalid argument.  I thought I'd throw this out there to see what others think about this.

I've been reading May Sim's book Remastering Morals With Aristotle and Confucius, which presents an interpretation of Confucian ethics (mostly represented by the Analects) as resembling to some (great) degree Aristotle's virtue ethics.  This is the kind of interpretation I'm arguing against in my dissertation (which is consuming the little qi I have left!).  I have numerous problems with virtue ethical interpretations of Confucius, which I won't go into here--but one common type of argument Sim uses in her book to show the "commensurability" of Confucius (of the Analects) and Aristotle stands out as particularly distressing to me.

She argues, in chapter 2 of her book (a type of argument which is repeated in later chapters), that Confucius implicitly accepted Aristotle's ten categories (substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time position, state or condition, action, and affection).  She goes about showing this by mentioning passages of the Analects in which Confucius uses language that she takes to presume that he is operating with some view of various of these categories, accepting these categories (in some sense).  

The discussion about substance is the clearest place the problem arises.  Sim argues against those who hold that Confucius has no view of a substantial self similar to that of Aristotle.  Sim first discusses Confucius' view that one's roles dictate the actions they ought to perform.  Then she says, on p. 57:  

"Even if one's roles do dictate how to act (with shu, zhong, or yi) in various situations, an account of that which is capable of issuing forth such actions is still needed.  Confucius, without theorizing about it, does in discussion invoke a stronger sense of a self than commentators allow.  Thus the Confucian self is minimally 'substantial;' it persists through various changes, is the source of agency, and can adopt various roles and perform them more or less well.”

This argument seems to me straightforwardly invalid.  Before I discuss that, though, let me quote Sim further (from the same page:

"The distinction between one who fills her roles well and one who does not rests in an investment of the person.  A substantial enough self must be presupposed for such an investment.  Without such a minimal self, we can have neither personal investment nor ownership of the action, let along a creative addition to the tradition."  The footnote to this reads: "That a more substantial self is already there in Confucian literature is visible when Confucius mentions that filial piety consists in refraining from reforming a father's way for three years after a father's death (1.11).  Such talk of refrain or restraint presupposes that there is some figment of a self that is to be restrained beyond that of a son whose role is to adhere to the father's wishes--for what of the years following the mourning?"

It seems to me that Sim is basically arguing here that Confucius is using language which commits him to a view of the self as substantial--that is, he is using 'I' and 'self' language.  First of all, it is wrong to assume that language use commits us to any particular metaphysical view.  This is a pretty radical view, so it needs to be argued for.  And there seem to be clear counterexamples to that anyway--what about the (later) Buddhists, or Hume, for example?  The Buddhist view of the self (like Hume's), is explicitly anti-substance, yet they use the same colloquial language as any of us, including “I” to formulate their views (including ethical views).  Their use of common language to formulate their ethical views does not show that they (implicitly or otherwise) held a view of a substantial self--so how does Confucius' use of 'I' and 'self' language show that?  I don't think that when I utter 'I'm going up the street to get a soda then I'm coming back' I commit myself to Aristotelian notions of the substantial self, even if that is the right view of the self.

What Sim might be doing here is claiming that Aristotle's view of the substantial self is the correct metaphysics of the self, and thus when we talk about selves or use personal pronouns, we are implicitly holding such a view.  If this is what she's doing, though, it's false.  Our language use does not commit us to the correct metaphysical view of whatever we are talking about, any more than the identity between water and H20 would have committed Marcus Aurelius to holding the view that the liquid in his chalice was a chemical compound composed of molecules of two hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to one oxygen atom.  Certainly "having a metaphysical view that x" is an opaque context, if anything is.  And if it's not, then it's not only Confucius who implicitly accepts Aristotle's notion of a substantial self, but anyone who has ever used 'I' language, including Hume and the Buddhists.  So we all accept Aristotle's substantial self, whether we know it or not!  But that's just false--it seems incoherent to say, for example, that the early scientists who proposed the phlogiston theory actually implicitly held the correct view about the chemistry of burning, because they used the language of 'fire', 'burning', etc.

It seems that the only thing that could make Sim's argument valid is a premise to the effect that "when one uses language and makes claims about certain concepts, one implicitly accepts (or is committed to) the correct metaphysical theories regarding those concepts."  But then the argument trades in its invalidity for unsoundness, because that premise is clearly false!

Any thoughts?

Listening to the Past

I love things like this--announced by many news sources today, here is the first audio recording in human history, from 1860, of a person singing "Au Clair de la Lune".  With the constant focus on the future in our society, it is refreshing to take a moment to look into (and listen to) our past.  I just wish we did it more often.  Confucius would approve.

--here's the story..

The "Al Qaeda Effect" and Why We Don't Care About the Uighurs

Recently, problems in Tibet have been in the news again, with the riots on the occasion of the 49th anniversary of the "National Uprising" against Chinese rule after which the Dalai Lama fled to India.  Only days before this, there was reportedly an attempt to bomb a China Southern Airlines flight by a Uighur separatist group attempting to get attention for their cause ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games this summer (though this has been questioned by some Uighur groups and human rights groups).  

The difference between the media attention and responses each of these has attracted in the US, is startling.  One of the main things it shows me is that, while Americans seem to have undying sympathy for the Tibetan cause, we either ignore the Uighurs, or malign them as Islamic terrorists, following the Chinese rhetoric designed to undermine their cause, even though the violence against the Uighurs is as at least as bad as that against the Tibetans.  Chinese rhetoric on Tibet largely falls on deaf ears in the US, as does that on their role in the Darfur crisis.  Generally we disbelieve the official proclamations on these issues, and side (morally, at least) with the opposition.  

With the Xinjiang situation, however, things are different.  The newest Chinese claim is that Al Qaeda (along with the Taliban) has infiltrated the region and is behind the separatist movements there (hey, why not throw in Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, and Lex Luthor while you're at it?).  This, of course, is about as plausible as the weak 2003 claims of the Bush administration that Al Qaeda was in bed with Saddam Hussein, and perhaps (unfortunately) it will be as successful.  Al Qaeda, of course, has become the global Bogeyman which is easily trotted out to undermine the legitimacy of certain Islamic regimes and movements who have tenuous, if any, links to the shadowy organization.  It has become all too easy to completely dehumanize and disengage with any state or other entity by pasting them with the "Al Qaeda" title.  

As we saw with Iraq, making claims of Al Qaeda connection with a certain entity is generally given as justification for using force against the entity.  The Chinese have certainly noticed this, and they're jumping on board now, too.  Regardless of what the United States and other influential countries think, of course, the Chinese government will probably continue their violations of human rights in the Xinjiang region as well as in Tibet and elsewhere.  China's essential role in the global economy will ensure that other countries will continue to avoid putting much pressure on China for these violations, but it seems that now China has come up with a way to avoid having any attention payed to their rights violations in the Xinjiang region, by attempting to work the magic of the "Al Qaeda Effect" on the Uighurs.  

A Matter of Efficacy

Well--I'm finally on my way back to the good old USA, and thought: "what could be a better way of spending my last few hours in India than doing some writing on early Confucianism?"

So--I've been thinking recently about a question that seems to continually arise when I present my work on Confucianism to philosophers working outside of Chinese philosophy. The question is: to what extent for Confucians (as represented by the Analects, at least) is the use of force acceptable as a means of ensuring communal agreement and the correct ordering of the social hierarchy? Variations of this question, I have noticed, always come up when I present to non-specialists, and hardly ever come up when I present to specialists. In fact, when I was first confronted with this question, I had to respond that I hadn't given it much thought myself, even though I spend a whole lot of time thinking about early Confucianism.


So, two questions occur to me now: 1) why do non-specialists tend to worry about the issue mentioned above more than specialists? 2) what is Confucius' view on the use of force? I think that both of these questions can be answered by looking not to the Analects, however, but to the Daodejing, which shares certain features with Confucian literature (even the Analects!), and offers better explanations of some processes discussed in the Confucian as well as the Daoist literature.


The passage of the DDJ that seems relevant here (as well as my favorite DDJ passage) is DDJ 17 (Lau trans.):


"The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects. Next comes the ruler they love and praise; next comes the one they fear; next comes the one with whom they take liberties. When there is not enough faith, there is lack of good faith. Hesitant, he does not utter words lightly. When his task is accomplished and his work done, the people all say, 'it happened to us naturally.'"

For the daoist, like the Confucian, the use of force to attain order (or one's goals, whatever they are) is acceptable, but a sign that one is doing something wrong. A ruler who needs to resort to force has failed in a fundamental way. This, of course, is not because it is somehow wrong to use force--arguably the classical Chinese tradition in general did not see violence as intrinsically an evil, as does (for the most part) the post-Christianity western tradition. Rather, the reason using force is not as good as other methods is, as DDJ 17 suggests, a matter of efficacy, with which the Chinese tradition is deeply concerned.

DDJ 17 suggests that the "shadowy presence" is the best kind of ruler because this ruler is the one who will be able to impose his will on the people without their even knowing it. Why, we might ask, is this situation the best one for a ruler to be in? To take a strictly Machiavellian (or Legalist, for that matter) line here, the "shadowy presence" will be, of the four types of ruler, the one whose power is most secure. Think of this in terms of likelihood of rebellion and overthrow. The "shadowy presence" cannot be rebelled against or overthrown, because his will is invisible. The people do his will seemingly of their own will, so the only ones they have to rebel against if they disapprove of what they must do is themselves! The ruler who is loved is not quite as stable in his power. He has some stability, however, because the people are unlikely to rebel against and overthrow this ruler. Their love for him keeps him in power, and the people will not go against their ruler even when the opportunity arises. The ruler who is feared and imposes his will by force (this is where the "justifiability of force" question comes to play) is less secure than either the "shadowy presence" or the ruler who is loved, because even though he can keep order while he has strength, if the opportunity arises or if the ruler's strength diminishes, the people will quickly rebel and overthrow this ruler. Thus, his power is based on volatile external situations--there is much that is simply out of his control, and thus his hold on power is less secure. The ruler with whom the people take liberties, of course, is doomed, because he does not even have the fear of the people to rely on. They do not respect his will, and are likely to subvert it whenever they feel like it. This kind of ruler is a ruler in name only, and has no control over his people.

It is not only in terms of holding power that we can read DDJ 17, however. It will also be true that the better types of rulers will be more effective at making a virtuous society, etc. Just like much of the DDJ, 17 does not offer us normative claims about ends, but about means. The DDJ offers us a method, whereas the Confucian and Mohist texts give us a picture of the ends we ought to be aiming to achieve. The Daoist concern with method rather than ends, however, does not mean that its methods are all that different from those of the Confucian, and on this issue (rulership), they seem to line up nicely. What is the "shadowy presence" of DDJ 17, after all, if not the sagely ruler of Analects 2.1 who, like the pole star, simply "facing south" creates virtue through the de around which the people gravitate?

So, this is the beginning of an answer to question 2 above, I think. What about question 1? That is--why do non-specialists focus on the question of whether force is justified in Confucianism as a way to realize the goals of the community? I suspect that one of the reasons for this is that the notion of the rulership in the western tradition has developed in a somewhat different way than in the Chinese tradition. The "shadowy presence" has not been seen as the ideal of rulership in much of western history (there are, of course, exceptions, including Machiavelli). Rather, the "loved and praised" ruler whose power is on full display has been the ideal for much of western history (Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, etc.). The benevolent and powerful king whose commands are direct and clear for the world to see but who is well loved--this has been the western ideal. The noble Homeric warrior, storming the front lines of the enemy's army, rather than the ninja in the shadows or the sniper blending in with concrete and raining silent death from above, has been the western ideal. Thus, perhaps resorting to force to control a community is seen as a "plan B" in this tradition, whereas it is less justified in the Chinese tradition, being a measly "plan C". This, along with the fact that violence in itself is not seen as intrinsically evil in Chinese thought, as it is in much of western (post-Christian) thought, may help to explain why the "force question" arises more among non-specialists in Chinese philosophy than it does among specialists. Of course, I'm not completely comfortable with this answer, but I'll need to reflect on this some more to come up with something better. Any thoughts?