Thinking Through Confucius

"The Da Xue is another of the texts that was part of the Record 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. Basically it provides an account of morality and how to become an exemplary person. It begins with self-cultivation and learning and improvement which is a lifelong pursuit but then it also extends to the family. The family is a site where morality is learned and practised but then it is extended to the country, in a kind of diminishing extent. The love that I’ll feel for a stranger in my country is never the same as the love that I’ll feel for my mother but there is still an element of love. Eventually it is extended to the whole world. That’s why Confucianism, in some senses, is a universalistic philosophy. It does involve some sort of concern, almost love for the whole world, not just for the current generation, but for our ancestors and future generations as well. I think to a certain extent, it is a much more realistic psychology than religions or philosophies which call for complete impartial love. The fact that it is easier to practice makes it more attractive to me and to many people who think of Confucianism as having something to tell us today. Well, throughout most of the twentieth century both the Communists and liberal intellectuals in China were very much against tradition. They viewed traditional values as the sources of China’s backwardness and they thought that they must overcome tradition– basically learn from the West–to become a modern country. Now many intellectuals in China view that as an over reaction, not just intellectuals but also many people in the party itself. They see the over-reaction as partly the result of a misunderstanding of what traditional values really were. That’s why now there’s an effort to revive tradition at different levels of society. Partly it is government-led, and partly it’s from independent and critical intellectuals. Sometimes it’s businessmen who have made their fortunes and say: ‘What am I going to do now?’ And they may decide to fund experiments in education. There’s a general sense of malaise in Chinese society. Capitalism has made people feel that life has become overly materialistic, and there’s this feeling that we need to improve social responsibility. How do we do that? Partly by retrieving our traditional values which 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 modernised over the past 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 a female academic called Yu Dan, on the Analects of Confucius, that has sold over ten million copies. It’s bought not by intellectuals, but by average readers. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter She applies Confucianism more as an individual ethics, as a way of finding meaning in life and in social relations but she really neglects the political aspects of it, which is problematic. Early Confucians, in their own day, were radical social critics. I think Confucianism has this critical edge to it. If you just look at the opening of the book of Mencius, it opens with him directly criticising political rulers in very harsh and moralistic terms. She doesn’t discuss any of that. It’s a very depoliticised form of Confucianism, which probably helps to explain why she’s always on TV, and receives more official support than others who would have more critical views to put forward. An example of the more critical viewpoint might be Jiang Qing, who is a very powerful intellectual. Jiang Qing is putting forward alternatives for thinking about political reform in China today, some even going beyond democracy . I think that’s right. The 1st Emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, who unified China, buried the Confucians alive with their books. His slogan was “A rich country and a strong military”. The 20th century was similar, and Mao himself was inspired more by the first Emperor and the Legalists, than the Confucians. When China is in a period of chaos and when it is weak and bullied and at odds with itself then the Legalist ideas become more important. But when China is more stable and wealthy and doesn’t have to worry so much about being bullied then the soft power of Confucianism becomes more influential. That happened earlier and I think it might help to explain the slow revival of Confucianism now."