Timeless Values of Confucian Ethical Humanism

Timeless Values of Confucian Ethical Humanism

Adriana Simoncelli

Jagiellonian University of Cracow

Today studying Confucius, for a westerner of the twenty-first century, might seem meaningless: what does a Chinese philosopher of 2,500 years ago have to say to us contemporaries? Well, Confucius represented and still represents for China, the foundation of its civilization. In 2500 years of Chinese history, Confucius has always been present as the reference horizon. The proposed issue will be examined by means of text analysis and historical method.

Keywords: Confucius, rén, lǐ, philosophy, ethics, liberalism.

Adriana Simoncelli – doktorantka lV roku, , Zakład Języków i Kultur Indii i Azji Południowej, Wydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, kontakt: adriana.simoncelli©doctoral.uj.edu.pl. Recenzent: dr Grzegorz Dąbrowski, Katedra Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej, Wydział Nauk Historycznych i Pedagogicznych, Uniwersytet Wrocławski.

Introduction

Confucianism, recently referred to as ruism72, is one of the major philosophical-religious, moral and political traditions of China. Developed over two millennia, it also exerted a huge influence in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Confucius elaborated a ritual system and a moral and social doctrine, which aimed to remedy the spiritual decay of China, in an age of profound corruption and serious political upheaval. Contrary to what is believed, this practice existed before Confucius, however according to the Chinese tradition he represents the greatest exponent of ruism and therefore is worthy of veneration. Precisely the importance attributed to it in the classical Chinese texts led the first Europeans to think that Confucius was its founder. By placing strong emphasis on family ties and social harmony between larger groups, hence real-world righteousness, rather than a soteriology that projects man's hopes into a transcendent future, Confucianism is defined as a deeply humanistic and not philosophical doctrine. As to the term, Confucianism, which is used widely in Western literature, has no counterpart in Chinese. It can be seen as a worldview, a social ethic, a political ideology, a scholarly tradition, and a way of life. Sometimes it is classified as a philosophy and sometimes as a religion, Confucianism may be understood as an all-encompassing way of thinking and living that entails ancestor reverence and a profound human-centred religiousness, and this paper is an attempt to examine multiple facets of this system and to understand its everlasting value, still worth to be taken into consideration in the contemporary world. However they need to be explained because from Aristotelian point of view Confucian argumentation may seem to be inexplicit and rather theoretical than practical and for this reason not always convincing73 .

According to much of Western thought, man is an isolated being, who realizes himself individually, abstracting himself from social relations: it is difficult for a Westerner to conceive of „freedom” (maximum horizon of realization) as a „relationship”. If anything, in the West, freedom consists in untying oneself from the bonds that bind the existence of the individual to a context of relationships. Confucius held an opposite perspective: man is a „social animal”, who realizes himself only in a context of relationship with other people. This relationship is characterized by benevolence, which is the characteristic that makes men human. Family and social relationships are thus transformed, through rén, into strictly ethical relationships. On the other hand, lǐ which originally indicated religious sacrifices, in the context of Confucius denotes all the norms and rules, translated into an elaborate ceremonial, which define the appropriate conduct to be taken in the various circumstances and marked by a rigorous respect for hierarchies and social roles. Rén and lǐ are therefore two deeply interconnected concepts: lǐ is the expression

72 P. Rújiào: Teaching of the ru. 73 A. S. Cua, The Conceptual Framework of Confucian Ethical Thought, pp.154-155.

of rén, of the man who realizes his humanity, his benevolence, within a system of relationships decoded by a precise code of conduct, which makes authentic the relationship itself. Thus, Western and liberal society, founded on the primacy of the individual who realizes his „freedom” by untying himself from social bonds and their ritual form, from a Confucian perspective appears to be a non-harmonious, chaotic society, devoted to intoxication and disintegration. In this optic Confucius's study could lead today to reflect on the development of a social philosophy and ethics, as opposed to libertarian individualistic thought.

Principles of Confucianism

Confucianism is a system of thought developed by generations of intellectuals who have referred to a corpus of cultural, moral and spiritual values supported by a long literary tradition and a rich heritage of legends, popular cults and philosophical reflections; placing man and society in close relationship with nature and the divine. It supports an ideal of harmony based on a well-defined hierarchy of family and social values and roles, learned and internalized thanks to a continuous and accurate education centered on principles inherited from the most remote past and updated by each generation thanks to a continuous confrontation with contingent situations.

Confucianism was the political ideology that determined the structure of the Chinese Empire for over two millennia, leaving an indelible imprint on the culture and daily life of thepopulations of numerous East Asian countries, so much so that it became an integral part of their identity. The core of Confucian thought is made up of moral values, such as love of neighbor rén, empathy shù, respect jìng, in particular filial respect xiào and deference towards elders and superiors tì, loyalty zhōng, reliability xìn, the courage of those who know they are right yǒng, the sense of what is correct zhèng and what is ethically appropriate yì which, together with study xué and reflection sī, leads to higher knowledge zhì, the observance of rites and social conventions lǐ. Thanks above all to the positive interaction of rén, yì and lǐ man is able to cultivate his person and express the best of himself, creating the ideal conditions to develop an ethical, dignified and respectful lifestyle that can serve as a model and a virtuous flywheel for the whole of society. Compliance with moral principles and social conventions requires the constant search for the point of greatest balance between contrasting needs zhōng, along the only path that leads to the realization of social harmony hé, which prevails over personal welfare:

„Having rights, of course, makes claiming possible; but it is claiming that gives rights their special moral significance. This feature of rights is connected in a way with the customary rhetoric about what it is to be a human being. Having rights enables us to “stand up like men,” to look others in the eye, and to feel in some fundamental way the equal of anyone. To think of oneself as the holder of rights is not to be unduly but properly proud, to have that minimal–self

respect that is necessary to be worthy of the love and esteem of others. Indeed, respe for persons... may simply be respect for their rights, so that there cannot be the one without the other; and what is called “human dignity” may simply be the recognizable capacity to assert claims. To respect a person then, or to think of him as possessed of human dignity, simply is to think of him as a potential maker of claims... these are the facts about the possession of rights that argue well their supreme moral importance”74 .

Those who carry responsibilities of the government have the duty to act in an ethically appropriate way rényì, sacrificing their personal interest lǐ with a view to sharing, with a sensitive mind, to the suffering of others. The rulers consistent with these sentiments place man and the people at the foundation of political action, creating the conditions for developing and spreading that material well-being which would allow each individual to find the time and resources to devote himself to the care of his own education and person. Just as there are laws and principles that govern the universe and the natural world, human society must also be governed by models and rules. The sages understood this necessity, translating it into an organic system of norms and formal relationships strictly bound to the virtues: “When kings and dukes follow [the rituals], that is how they obtain the world; when they do not follow them, that is how they bring about the perdition of their altars of soil and grain.”75 argued Xunzi76 in III century BC. The relationship with the divinity was ensured by the harmonious relationship between the principles of the natural order and the rites and social conventions, thanks to which „the inferiors become obedient and the superiors acquire sagacity; everything and everyone finds, through countless adaptations, the right place”77 .

From this perspective, the wise is the one who follows the regulatory principles of the universe looking for the point of perfect balance between them and their actions, drawing inspiration from the virtues in the perspective of maximum moral perfection chéng. The foundations for the elaboration of an ethical theory of the universe had been laid in the classical era and it assumes that the principle that governs the universe is by its very nature moral and, as such, is equated with the greatest Confucian virtue, rén „love of neighbor”, which should no longer be understood as referring only to humanity, but extended to whole universe. The universal value of rén and the existence of a single entity yītǐ which would nullify any difference between the nature of the cosmos and the nature of man thus merge into a single principle, which

74 C. A. Ihara, Are Individual Rights Necessary? A Confucian Perspective, p. 21 [in:] K. L. Shun, D. E. Wong, Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community. 75 Xunzi 15.4, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xunzi/ (access 13.09.2021) 76 Xun Kuang, c. 310 – c. 235 BCE, alt. c. 314 – c. 217 BCE also widely known as Xunzi,was a Chinese Confucian philosopher and writer. A book known as the Xunzi is traditionally attributed to him. 77 Xunzi 19.2 in Xunzi: The Complete Text, Princeton University Press 2014, p. 202.

can take on different forms. While there is a plurality of individual principles at the basis of individual objects and phenomena, there is a single universal principle that regulates them as a whole: each individual principle is therefore a manifestation of the celestial principle, which in man is expressed in his innate nature in the form of virtue.

Believing that only education can guarantee the manifestation of virtues and the correctness of social relations, the neo-Confucians, like the great masters who had preceded them, emphasized the value of study, discipline, inner cultivation, civil and political commitment as well as assumption of responsibility in the social sphere. The Confucian conception of society was indeed aristocratic, but education, and not birth, was crucial to achieving levels of excellence. Each man has the task of cultivating his own person and creating the conditions so that others can also receive the benefits of education. The person educated in Confucian values jūnzǐ does not seek the mysteries of an initiatory knowledge, he is not infatuated with his own intellectual baggage, but exercises the constant practice of virtue, the easier the more he is removed from the goad of necessity. In fact, in ascending to ever higher levels of perfection, the wise do not forget those who are oppressed by disadvantaged material conditions, such as to prevent access to effective education.

Confucius and Confucianism

It is curious to note how historically the term „Confucianism”does not have an immediate equivalent in the Chinese language, being of Western derivation, just as the development of the concept of Confucianism as a religion, which took place during the nineteenth century, was Western. In fact, it is customary to translate the binomial rújiā with „Confucianism”78, used in imperial times to indicate the class jiā of the rú, men of culture and profound connoisseurs of the heritage of the past, customs and court ceremonials of music, of the rules of etiquette, of the ideals and ethical principles that had inspired the wise rulers of antiquity. Over time, the term rú was used to indicate Confucians and Confucianism, although for the Zhou era (1045-256 BC)79 it would be more appropriate to translate rú with „classicists” or „literati” . Rúxué or „Confucian studies” refers to the learning xué of the ethical principles and values promoted by the rú and the canonical works that theorized them, while rújiào is the term closest to the concept of Confucian religion. It should be noted that originally jiào did not have the meaning of „religion”, being its semantic field confined to the concepts of „teaching, doctrine”. It was between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century that it began to be used in the meaning of

78 Confucius, Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries, p. 20-25. 79 Ibidem, p. 26.

religion, generating a confusion that still remains today, having rújiào the double meaning of “thought, doctrine, Confucian philosophical system” and of „Confucian religion” .

In the light of these considerations it is evident that Confucius (551-479 BC)80 cannot be considered the progenitor of the rú, who existed well before him, but he was for sure one of the most brilliant exponents. Similarly, he could not be the founder of Confucianism, but he was certainly its spiritual father. The thought of him has been transmitted from a plurality of sources, but no work is attributable to him: the disciples and followers have taken it upon themselves to report the precepts and teachings of him, interpreting, developing and passing on what is attributed to the master. It was with the neo-Confucians of the Song (960-1279) and Ming (13681644) epochs that Confucianism, which became an integral part of society, feeling the influence of Daoism and Buddhism, paid more attention to questions of a cosmological nature and metaphysics and the relationship that binds man to destiny and the divine. For over two millennia the Chinese empire has found its backbone in a widespread bureaucratic system, whose functioning was closely linked to Confucian education, aimed at training educated and irreproachable literati-officials who were preparing for public selections everywhere in the vast country, following study programs based on a corpus of moralizing works, canonized in the first centuries of the empire. The aim of the teaching was not so much to provide technical skills, but to instill ethical values and principles in the student, suggesting a governance practice based on respect for hierarchies, starting with those that linked the members of the same family clan, which in traditional China arrived to include hundreds of members. The ultimate goal was to form men of great virtue and value, sons and subjects capable of social commitment, of a conduct inspired by shared values, obedience and solicitude, authoritative fathers and rulers and at the same time caring towards their children and subjects, in a humanistic vision that pursued common interest and well-being.

Confucianism as a religion

The question relating to the religious nature of Confucianism has been debated for centuries, generating endless disputes between intellectuals of the most diverse backgrounds: theologians, historians of religions, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and sinologists81 . Currently Confucianism is not among the five religions officially recognized by the state (Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism) and very few Chinese would think of defining themselves as Confucian believers, unlike what happens in Hong Kong and

80 Ibidem. 81 A. Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press 2013.

Indonesia, where Confucianism is officially considered a religion, and in the West, where it is often presented and classified as one of the great religions of the world.

Confucianism was defined as a religion by James Legge (1815-1897), a Scottish congregational missionary of the London Missionary Society, the most authoritative translator of Chinese classics of his time. In 1877 he presented to the Plenary Conference of Protestant Missionaries in China held in Shanghai a report in which, for the first time, Confucianism was described as a religious system worthy of comparison with Christianity82. This position quickly became established in the West, leading in 1915 to the publication of the volume by Max Weber (1864 -1920) Konfuzianismus und Taoismus, becoming a reference work for generations of sinologists and historians of religions and influencing Western thought for a long time83 .

On the other hand in China during imperial times, there was no official classification that considered Confucianism a religion or a movement of a religious nature. In the last years of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), driven by the debate initiated for some time by Western missionaries and scholars about the religious nature of practices attributable to Confucius, the idea of making Confucianism a state religion took shape. The great reformist Kang Youwei (1858-1927) coined the term Kǒngjiào84 translated as „Confucian religion” or „Confucianity”. Thus was born the socalled Confucian religious movement Kǒngjiào Yùndòng, which was active in the second decade of the twentieth century. In 1913 a petition was presented to the government asking to include Confucianism as the state religion in the t ext of the new constitution, but the proposal was not accepted; a second attempt failed a few years later. At the end of the 1920s the republican government ordered Confucian-inspired Associations to change their name to Kǒngxuéhuì, translated as „Association for the study of Confucianism”. In 1930 Chen Huanzhang (1881-1933), a disciple of Kang Youwei, moved to Hong Kong, where he founded the Kǒngjiào Xxuéyuàn „Academy of Confucian Religious Studies”, a non-governmental organization still very active today, which objectives are the promotion of Confucianism as a state religion, the teaching of Confucian values and ethical principles in schools of all levels, and the construction, all over the world, of temples dedicated to Confucius.

The association is present, to a limited but growing extent, also in mainland China. With the advent of the People's Republic in 1949, the issue was closed: Confucianism, labeled as

82 J. Legge, The religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism described and compared with Christianity don, Hodder and Stoughton, 1880. 83 M. Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, trad. ingl. Hans H. Gerth & Don Martindale, New York: Free Press, 1951. 84 Kǒng is the surname of Confucius or "Confucianity", paraphrasing the term "Christianity" of which Kǒngjiào is clearly the linguistic cast.

a deviant ideology, was considered a legacy of the past, the expression of a feudal system, harmful to society. A gradual opening towards religious freedom took place only after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and it was then that the question of Confucianism became topical again, to the point that today it is strongly encouraged by the authorities, but not in a religious function, although there is no lack of those who work to promote Confucianism as a religion.

The lack of initiation and conversion rites, of a priestly order, of a church and, above all, of a community of faithful who truly consider themselves such does not allow Confucianism to be counted among the great religions. One becomes Confucian through education, observance of ritual practices and adherence to behavioral models that express a particular ethical concept, not thanks to a pure act of faith. Whoever considers himself a Confucian can at the same time be an atheist or embrace a religion, there is no contradiction. For those traits of religiosity that still characterize Confucianism, partly derived from admixtures with Daoism and Buddhism, and in the absence of criteria that allow to clearly separate religious beliefs from philosophical conceptions, Confucianism could be counted among the so-called „Civil religions” .

Final considerations

In recent years, China has retraced its steps, promoting the recovery of Confucian virtues and opposing them to those „Western values” considered foreign to its culture and sensitivity and harmful to the established order. It is difficult to imagine a path that, especially in the short term, could lead the country towards forms of democratic government, even of „Confucian democracy”, understood both as a vision and as an alternative practice to liberal democracy.

The re-appropriation of the traditional cultural heritage is promoted as a function of the harmonious progress of society and its more effective control. The great ideals of the past seenas a source of legality and legitimacy, induced a process of moralizing political, economic and social life to counter the rampant corruption of recent decades. Confucian values, fully included in the programs of private and public schools of all levels, are the subject of mass awareness campaigns and legislative measures. They represent the true driving force of Chinese civilization and promise a new humanism and a better future, allowing an uncertain and problematic present to rediscover a connection with the country's millennial history.

At the same time, they guarantee the Party a capillary control of society, relying on the traditional sense of respect for the established authority and on systems for verifying individual behavior, such as that represented by social credit. Regardless of the reasons that favored the return to Confucianism and the possibility of its instrumental use, determined by the logic of

power or government, Confucian ideals and values re-learned and internalized by hundreds of millions of Chinese contribute to the creation of a new ideological system that supports the transition from a socialist economy to a more liberal one, combining a vision of the secular society with the spiritual and religious needs of the individual.

Thus, in comparison with the Western liberal society, founded on the primacy of the individual who realizes his „freedom” by untying himself from social bonds and their ritual form, from a Confucian perspective appears to be a non-harmonious, chaotic society, devoted to intoxication and disintegration. In this optic Confucius's study could lead today to reflect on the development of a social philosophy and ethics, as opposed to libertarian individualistic thought.

Book publications

Source literature:

Confucius, Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries, Hackett Publishing Company, 2003. Confucius, Legge J., Confucianism Four Books and Five Classics, Delphi Classics, 2016. Xunzi: The Complete Text, Princeton University Press, 2014.

Monographs and compilations:

Rainey L. D., Confucius and Confucianism. The Essentials, A. John Willey & Sons, 2010. Cua A. S., The Conceptual Framework of Confucian Ethical Thought, [in:] The Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 23 (1996), pp. 153-174. Shun K.L., Wong D. E., Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, Cambridge University Press, 2004. Sun A., Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013. Te W.M., Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation, State University of New York Press, 1985. Weber M., The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, trad. engl. Hans H. Gerth & Don Martindale .New York: Free Press, 1951 Yao X., An Introduction to Confucianism (Introduction to Religion), Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Chapters in collective works:

Xunzi [in]: Stanford Ecncyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xunzi/.

Articles in academic journals:

Hagen K., Xunzi and the Nature of Confucian Ritual, [in:] Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 71, No. 2 (Jun., 2003), pp. 371-403. Scarpari M., Confucianesimo e religione [in:], Inchiesta, 43, No. 181 (2013), s. 76-85. Schofer J. W., Virtues in Xunzi's Thought, [in:] The Journal of Religious Ethics, Spring, 1993, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), pp. 117-136. Zhang M., Confucius' Transformation of Traditional Religious Ideas, [in:] Frontiers of Philosophy in China, March 2011, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 2011), s. 20-40