Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Confucianism
Reference: The World’s Religions by Huston Smith

[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]

Tradition appeared to Confucius to be the device for appropriating from this glorious past prescriptions that could serve his own troubled times. 

Neither of these rival answers to the problem of social cohesion impressed Confucius. He rejected the Realists’ answer of force because it was clumsy and external. Force regulated by law can set limits to peoples’ dealings, but it is too crude to inspire their day-today, face-to-face exchanges. With regard to the family, for example, it can stipulate conditions of marriage and divorce, but it cannot generate love and companionship. This holds generally. Governments need what they cannot themselves provide: meaning and motivation. 

Confucius rejected the Realists’ answer of force because it was clumsy and external. 

As for the Mohists’ reliance on love, Confucius agreed with the Realists in dismissing it as utopian. A. C. Graham testifies to the decisiveness of Confucius’ victory on this point when he observes that in retrospect “Mohism has the appearance of being foreign, not merely to Confucian thinking, but to the whole of Chinese civilization. No one else finds it tolerable to insist that you should be as concerned for the other man’s family as for your own.” That love has an important place in life, we shall be hearing Confucius insist; but it must be supported by social structures and a collective ethos. To harp exclusively on love is to preach ends without means. Putting it this way helps us to appreciate Confucius’ conviction that the Realists and Mohists were equally mistaken, but in opposite ways. The Realists thought that governments could establish peace and harmony through the laws and force that are their domain. Mohists went to the opposite extreme; they assumed that personal commitment could do the job. This overlooks the fact that different circumstances and relationships prompt different sentiments and legitimize different responses. When asked, “Should one love one’s enemy, those who do us harm?” Confucius replied, “By no means. Answer hatred with justice, and love with benevolence. Otherwise you would waste your benevolence.” Confucius’ foremost disciple, Mencius, used this same logic to reject Mo Tzu’s call “to love all equally.” In ignoring the special affection members of one’s own family inspire, Mo Tzu showed himself to be unrealistic. 

Confucius rejected Mohists’ reliance on love because it was simply utopian. His answer was, “By no means. Answer hatred with justice, and love with benevolence. Otherwise you would waste your benevolence.”  

The West’s current approach to the social problem—through the cultivation of reason—probably did not occur to Confucius. If it had he would have dismissed it as not thought through. Those who hold an evolutionary view of intelligence, seeing it as increasing over the centuries, may argue that this was because he was dealing with society in its immaturity—when, like an adolescent, it was too old to spank but too young to reason with. It is more probable that insofar as this issue entered his consciousness at all, Confucius assumed that the mind operates in a context of attitudes and emotions that are conditioned by the individual’s group relationships. Unless experiences in this latter area dispose one to cooperate, upgraded reason is likely to do nothing but aid self-interest. Confucius was no child of the Enlightenment. He was closer to philosophers and psychologists who recognize that altruism is not much engendered by exhortation. 

The American society is like an adolescent, it is too old to spank but too young to reason with. It lacks the experience of a tradition that is inclusive of all people—like that of India.

Taking this for granted, Confucius was all but obsessed with tradition, for he saw it as the chief shaper of inclinations and attitudes. He loved tradition because he saw it as a potential conduit—one that could funnel into the present behavior patterns that had been perfected during a golden age in China’s past, the Age of the Grand Harmony. Because mores were then compelling, people conformed to them; because they were finely wrought, the conformation brought peace and happiness. Confucius may have idealized, even romanticized, this period when China was passing from the second millennium into the first and the Chou Dynasty was at its zenith. Unquestionably, he envied it and wished to replicate it as faithfully as he could. Tradition appeared to him to be the device for appropriating from this glorious past prescriptions that could serve his own troubled times. 

Tradition appeared to Confucius to be the device for appropriating from this glorious past prescriptions that could serve his own troubled times. 

Current social theorists would commend his line of thought. Socialization, they tell us,

has to be transmitted from the old to the young, and the habits and the ideas must be maintained as a seamless web of memory among the bearers of the tradition, generation after generation…. When the continuity of the traditions of civility is ruptured, the community is threatened. Unless the rupture is repaired, the community will break down into factional…wars. For when the continuity is interrupted, the cultural heritage is not being transmitted. The new generation is faced with the task of rediscovering and reinventing and relearning by trial and error most of what [it] needs to know…. No one generation can do this. 

Confucius spoke a different language, but he was working on this exact theme. 

Today, in America, the needed traditional values seems to have been encapsulated  in this little booklet: The Way to Happiness.

His regard, even reverence, for the past did not make him an antiquarian. He knew that changes had occurred that precluded the possibility of returning literally to the past. The year 500 B.C. was separated from the year 1000 (to use round numbers) by the Chinese having become individuals. They were now self-conscious and reflective. This being the case, spontaneous tradition—tradition that had emerged without conscious intent and had ruled villages without dissent—could no longer be counted on. Its alternative was deliberate tradition. When tradition is no longer spontaneous and unquestioned, it must be shored up and reinforced through conscious attention. 

When tradition is no longer spontaneous and unquestioned, it must be shored up and reinforced through conscious attention. 

The solution, simple to the ear but in substance profound, embodied the appositeness of social genius. In times of transition an effective proposal must meet two conditions. It must be continuous with the past, for only by tying in with what people have known and are accustomed to can it be generally accepted—“think not that I came to destroy; I came not to destroy but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). At the same time the answer must take clear-eyed account of developments that render the old answer unworkable. Confucius’ proposal met both requirements brilliantly. Continuity was preserved by keeping tradition stage center. Don’t rush, he seemed to be saying; let’s see how it was done in the past—we have heard his claim to being “simply a lover of the ancients.” With the perspicacity of a politician taking his stand on the Constitution, he appealed to the Classics as establishing the guidelines for his platform. Yet all the while he was interpreting, modifying, reformulating. Unknown to his people, we can feel confident, he was effecting a momentous reorientation by shifting tradition from an unconscious to a conscious foundation. 

Unknown to his people, Confucius was effecting a momentous reorientation by shifting tradition from an unconscious to a conscious foundation. 

Unknown to his people, and for the most part unknown to himself, we should add, for it would be a mistake to suppose that Confucius was fully aware of what he was doing. But genius does not depend upon full, self-conscious understanding of its creations. A poet may have less than a critic’s knowledge of why certain words were chosen; the lack in no way precludes the words from being right. Probably all exceptional creativity proceeds more by intuitive feel than by explicit discernment. Clearly, this was so with Confucius. He would not, he could not, have justified or even described his answer in the terms we have used. He merely conceived the answer in the first place, leaving to posterity the secondary task of trying to understand what he had done and why it proved to be effective. 

Confucius merely conceived the answer. He could not have justified or even described his answer in the terms we have used. 

The shift from spontaneous to deliberate tradition requires that the powers of critical intelligence be turned both to keeping the force of tradition intact, and to determining which ends tradition shall henceforth serve. A people must first decide what values are important to their collective well-being; this is why “among the Confucians the study of the correct attitudes was a matter of prime importance.” Then every device of education—formal and informal, womb to tomb—should be turned to seeing that these values are universally internalized. As one Chinese has described the process: “Moral ideas were driven into the people by every possible means—temples, theaters, homes, toys, proverbs, schools, history, and stories—until they became habits in daily life…. Even festivals and parades were [in this sense] religious in character.” By such means even a society constituted of individuals can (if it puts itself to the task) spin an enveloping tradition, a power of suggestion, that can prompt its members to behave socially even when the law is not looking. 

The traditional moral ideas should be driven into the people by every possible means—temples, festivals, theaters, parades, homes, toys, proverbs, schools, history, and stories—until they became habits in daily life.

The technique pivots around what sociologists call “patterns of prestige.” Every group has such patterns. In teenage gangs they may include toughness and outrageous floutings of convention; in monasteries, holiness and humility are valued. Whatever its content a pattern-of-prestige embodies the values the leaders of the group admire. Followers, taking their cues from leaders whom they admire, come to respect their values and are disposed to enact them—partly because they, too, have come to admire them, and partly to win peer approval.

The technique pivots around what sociologists call “patterns of prestige.” In teenage gangs they may include toughness and outrageous floutings of convention.

It is a powerful routine, perhaps the only one by which distinctively human values ever permeate large groups. For nearly two thousand years the first sentence a Chinese child, living in the direct light of Confucius, was taught to read was not, “Look, look; look and see,” but rather “Human beings are by nature good.” We may smile at the undisguised moralizing, but every nation needs it. The United States has its story of George Washington and the cherry tree and the moralisms of the McGuffey Reader. The Romans’ renown for discipline and obedience fed on their legend of the father who condemned his son to death for winning a victory against orders. Did Nelson actually say, “England expects every man to do his duty”? Did Francis I really exclaim, “All is lost save honor”? It doesn’t much matter. The stories express national ideals, and shape peoples to their image. Similarly, the interminable anecdotes and maxims of Confucius’ Analects were designed to create the prototype of what the Chinese hoped the Chinese character would become.

The interminable anecdotes and maxims of Confucius’ Analects were designed to create the prototype of what the Chinese hoped the Chinese character would become.

The Master said: “The true gentleman is friendly but not familiar; the inferior man is familiar but not friendly.” 

Tsu King asked: “What would you say of the person who is liked by all his fellow townsmen?” “That is not sufficient,” was the reply. “What is better is that the good among his fellow townsmen like him, and the bad hate him.” 

The Master said: “The well-bred are dignified but not pompous. The ill-bred are pompous, but not dignified.” 

Once when Fan Ch’ih was rambling along with the Master under the trees at the Rain Altars, he remarked: “May I venture to ask how one may improve one’s character, correct one’s personal faults, and discriminate in what is irrational?” 

“An excellent question,” rejoined the Master. “If one puts duty first and success after, will not that improve one’s character? If one attacks one’s own failings instead of those of others, will that not remedy personal faults? For a morning’s anger to forget one’s own safety and that of one’s relatives, is not this irrational?”

Confucius was creating for his countrymen their second nature which, to complete the statement of the social analyst that was begun several paragraphs back, is what people receive when they become civilized.

This second nature is made in the image of what [people are] living for and should become…. Full allegiance to the community can be given only by a man’s second nature, ruling over his first and primitive nature, and treating it as not finally himself. Then the disciplines and the necessities and the constraints of a civilized life have ceased to be alien to him, and imposed from without. They have become his own inner imperatives.

Confucius was creating for his countrymen their second nature which is what people receive when they become civilized.

.