As China modernizes, it increasingly reverts to its traditional culture. certainly the revival of Confucian thought is part of this reappraisal. but what is Confucianism?
Confucianism is like liberalism or Christianity. it is a very rich and diverse tradition and is at least 2500 years old. It is based on the idea that the good life is rooted in social relationships, beginning with family, spreading to friends, other communities across the country, and eventually to the entire world. the key question Confucians ask is: what are the roles we occupy? What are the types of obligations we have in those roles?
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Of course, Confucius himself is the most famous representative of the tradition, which is why I selected the Analects as my first book, even though he saw himself as the transmitter of an earlier tradition.
what are analects?
is a compilation. It is not written by Confucius himself. it is more a collection of anecdotes of how he involved his students, almost in the form of a dialogue. and in them, he is shown as a very charming, humorous, non-dogmatic and very modern figure. I think that’s part of why it’s been so influential.
There is an opinion that Confucius was a conformist, but that is partly due to the way Confucianism has been abused throughout Chinese history. also because he has a somewhat different approach to critical thinking than we have today. for him learning is a matter of learning by stages, and the first stages are about improving understanding. only once one has a good understanding of what our ancestors said is one in a position to evaluate it and think critically about it. Therefore, the idea that children should engage in critical thinking would seem very strange to Confucius. More generally in Chinese education, and certainly still today, rote learning is considered important in the early stages, to understand what great thinkers have said in the past. then at a certain point we have to think critically about what we learn.
From its origins as a philosophy, how did Confucianism come to be so closely associated with the state?
Well, Confucius himself was practically a political failure. it took some five hundred years for his ideas to become politically influential. he advocated his ideas in the spring and autumn period when china was not yet unified and basically wandered from state to state trying to persuade the rulers of his political ideals and was unsuccessful. the most influential interpreter of it was Mencius, a hundred years later. and he was also practically a failure in terms of political influence. It is only in the Han dynasty, some five hundred years after the time of Confucius, that Confucianism became the official state ideology. so that was about 2000 years ago.
And even then, the Confucianism that became the official state ideology could be said to be different from the original views of Confucianism. it was conflated to some extent with legalism, which is the other key political tradition in china. legalism advocates the use of severe punishment to control people and almost justifies a totalitarian form of social control. Confucianism is in favor of light government, of informal means of social control, of harmony based on emotions. and, in principle, that became the official ideology. but in practice it was combined with legalistic ideas.
So, in fact, what many people think of as Confucianism is actually closer to “legalism”?
They are both. it is a combination that varied throughout Chinese imperial history. certainly not exactly the kind of ideas that Confucianism had in mind, although there was some continuity.
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Confucianism is often equated with conformity. Is this a fundamental part of the philosophy of Confucius?
In reality, it is the legalists who are in favor of intellectual conformity as a way of ensuring social order. Confucians are not at all in favor of conformity. in fact, one of the most famous sayings of the analects is: “exemplary people should seek harmony but not conformity.” harmony is really this idea that you have differences, explained with metaphors like: very tasty dishes made up of many different ingredients that are bland on their own but combine together to make this delicious dish; or music, where you have an instrument that sounds good on its own but when combined with other instruments it produces a beautiful harmony. Confucius himself, if you look at the model of him as an educator, very much encouraged constant questioning and constant self-improvement and definitely not a conformist attitude towards learning. rather he would say the opposite.
Tell me about Mencius, your second choice of books on Confucius.
Mencius lived about a century after Confucius, but it was not until the Song dynasty, some 1,000 years later, that Mencius’ interpretation of Confucius became the most influential. Mencius believed that we are born good. he had a rather optimistic view of human nature, as well as the view that the government should rely on informal means of social control rather than harsh punishment as a way of ensuring social order and harmony.
He is also known for his views on what constitutes a just war. could you expand on that?
mencius is often seen as the softest of the Confucians, as an idealist who was not sensitive to realpolitik. but he was writing in the age of warring states, which was an age of constant conflict, and he had some principles for war, when war is moral or just, that I think are pretty well grounded in reality. In my opinion, they are quite realistic and feasible, and have much in common with modern ideas of just war. he provides a description of when defensive warfare is justified, that is, when one is attacked unprovoked by a neighboring country. In this situation, military force is legitimate if the ruler has the support of the people. he also has this idea, equivalent to the modern idea of humanitarian intervention, that when there is a ruler who systematically oppresses the people, there might be a case for using military force to liberate the people. but he is quite clear that certain conditions must be met for this to be legitimate. one is that the people have to welcome the invading army, and that the welcome has to be lasting, not just short-term. furthermore, there has to be the equivalent of international support for the invasion. he also investigates what we understand by oppression. and for him, oppression means that the ruler is violating the most basic needs; most notably survival. Mencius would not argue that one could legitimately invade another country to promote democracy. if a ruler is systematically killing people, or systematically starving them, only then could there be a case for humanitarian intervention.
So, Mencius would not agree with the central tenet of the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy: that outside interference in a country’s internal affairs should never be allowed?
The idea of sovereignty was emphasized for most of the 20th century in China, which made sense when China was being bullied by foreign powers and needed to become stronger. China is now a relatively powerful and stable country with international influence. i think you’ll have to think outside the box a bit, and that’s why some people are bringing back some of the old confucian sources, including mencius, which have valuable things to say about modern humanitarian intervention.
let’s talk about xunzi, your third book on confucius.
mencius was followed about a hundred years later, in the 3rd century BC. by xunzi, who had an opposite view of human nature, that basically we are born evil. his view of Confucianism was quite marginal in theory, but in practice he was quite influential throughout Chinese imperial history.
So, is he the Machiavelli of the Confucians?
xunzi is certainly seen as a type of realpolitik. But there’s more than that. if you look at the texts, it favors the use of ritual as a way of providing social order. he uses the example of marriage rituals, or burial rituals, even drinking rituals, which would lead to the coming together of people of different classes. so if you have a rich person and a poor person engaged in a common drinking ritual, part of the effect is that eventually the rich person develops some sort of bond with the poor person and is more willing to do things on behalf of the poor person . .
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So, in a way, you are saying that ritual, rather than law and harsh punishment, is key to ensuring solidarity in society, especially a sense of community between rich and poor. it is a way of making people care about the interests of the disadvantaged instead of using the law which is ultimately not effective in transforming the motivation, especially of the rich and powerful. it has always been easy in a big county like china to evade the laws if you have to or if you want to. the question is: how do we change the motivation of the rich and powerful? xunzi’s idea of ritual has a lot to say about it.
Your next book is the yueji or music records, part of the rite record, various texts that were collected at the time Confucianism became the official state ideology during the Han dynasty. What relevance does music have in Confucian society?
The music records aren’t as historically influential as some of the other texts, but I think it’s very interesting. illustrates how music is key to producing a sense of harmony. If the ruler pays attention to the uses of music to ensure social order, cooperation and harmony, it is ultimately much more effective than using law, than using punishment to control people. Rulers throughout Chinese history paid attention to the role of music in ensuring harmony. sometimes they even sent emissaries to find out what music people were listening to. it is the equivalent of modern surveys. if people are listening to harmonious music, you can say that things are more or less okay. but if music, to use a modern example, like punk music, is widespread in society, then you know something is wrong. People wonder today, why do East Asians, whether they are Korean, Japanese or Chinese, societies with a Confucian heritage, why do they love karaoke so much and why do they like to sing whenever there is some kind of opportunity? I think some of the earlier roots of those ideas can be traced back to those texts and how they had some sort of political use throughout Chinese history.
Could you talk a bit about da xue (the great learning)?
the da xue is another of the texts that was part of the register of the rites. Zhu Xi, who was the most famous interpreter of Confucianism in the Song dynasty, regarded it as one of the four great books of Confucianism. It basically gives an account of morality and how to become an exemplary person. It starts with self-cultivation and learning and improvement, which is a lifelong pursuit, but then it extends to the family as well. the family is a place where morality is learned and practiced but then it spreads out into the countryside, in a kind of diminishing extent. the love I will feel for a stranger in my country is never the same as the love I will feel for my mother, but there is still an element of love. eventually it spreads to the whole world. that is why Confucianism, in some senses, is a universalist philosophy. it implies some kind of concern, almost love for the whole world, not only for the current generation, but also for our ancestors and future generations. I think that, to some extent, it is a much more realistic psychology than religions or philosophies that demand completely impartial love. the fact that it is easier to practice makes it more attractive to me and to many people who think that Confucianism has something to say to us today.
so all these texts you have chosen, with their emphasis on ancestors and tradition, were all but rejected by the communists when they came to power?
well, for most of the 20th century, both communists and liberal intellectuals in china were very much against tradition. They saw traditional values as the sources of China’s backwardness and thought that they should overcome tradition, basically learn from the West, to become a modern country. now many intellectuals in china see that as an overreaction, not only the intellectuals but also many people in the party itself. they see the overreaction as resulting in part from a misunderstanding of what traditional values really were. that is why there is now an effort to revive the tradition at different levels of society. It is partly run by the government, and partly by independent intellectuals and critics. sometimes they are entrepreneurs who have made a fortune and say: ‘what am I going to do now?’ and they may decide to fund experiments in education. there is a general sense of malaise in Chinese society. capitalism has made people feel that life has become too materialistic, and there is a feeling that we need to improve social responsibility. how do we do that? in part by recovering our traditional values that aim to promote a sense of social responsibility. there are surveys that measure social and political attitudes. It is really quite unexpected that as China has modernized in the last 15 years, there has been a very substantial increase in attachment to traditional political and social attitudes at different levels of society, even at a very popular level. For example, there is a book by an academic named Yu Dan, on the Analects of Confucius, which has sold more than ten million copies. It is not bought by intellectuals, but by average readers.
And she’s writing about Confucianism?
She applies Confucianism more as an individual ethic, as a way of finding meaning in life and in social relations, but she really neglects the political aspects of it, which is problematic. the early Confucians, in their time, were radical social critics. I think Confucianism has that critical side. If you just look at the opening of Mencius’ book, it starts with him directly criticizing the political rulers in very harsh and self-righteous terms. she doesn’t argue with any of it. it’s a very depoliticized form of Confucianism, which probably helps explain why she is always on TV and receives more official support than others who would have more critical views to present. An example of the more critical point of view might be Jiang Qing, who is a very powerful intellectual. Jiang Qing is proposing alternative ways to think about political reform in China today, some of which even go beyond democracy.
Do you think these ideas are really undercurrents in Chinese history that keep resurfacing, reflecting periods of unity and chaos in the Chinese state?
I think that’s correct. The first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, who unified China, buried the Confucians alive with his books. his motto was “a rich country and a strong army”. The 20th century was similar, and Mao himself drew more from the First Emperor and the Legalists than from the Confucians. When China is in a period of chaos and when it is weak, intimidated, and at odds with itself, legalistic ideas become more important. But when China is more stable and wealthy and doesn’t have to worry as much about being bullied, then the soft power of Confucianism becomes more influential. that happened before and I think it might help explain the slow revival of Confucianism now.
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