Reference: Confucianism
[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]
All Chinese philosophy is preeminently social philosophy. Chinese philosophers have been interested primarily in ethical, social, and political problems. Confucius’ social emphasis produced, in the Chinese, a conspicuous social effectiveness—a capacity to get things done on a large scale when need arose.
In his book The Next Million Years, Charles Galton Darwin notes that anyone who wishes to make a sizable impact on human history has the choice of three levels at which to work. The agent may choose direct political action, or create a creed, or attempt to change the genetic composition of the human species. The first method is the weakest because the effects of political action seldom outlast their agent. The third is not feasible, for even if we had the knowledge and technique, a genetic policy would be difficult to enforce for even a short period and would almost certainly be dropped before any perceptible effects were achieved. “That is why,” Darwin concludes, “a creed gives the best practical hope that man can have for really controlling his future fate.”
Darwin concludes, “a creed gives the best practical hope that man can have for really controlling his future fate.”
History affords no clearer support for this contention than the work of Confucius. For over two thousand years his teachings have profoundly affected a quarter of the population of this globe. Their advance reads like a success story, for the unbelievable upshot of Confucius’ outwardly undistinguished career was the founding of a class of scholars who were to become China’s ruling elite and the emergence of Confucius himself as the most important figure in China’s history. In 130 B.C. the Confucian texts were made the basic discipline for the training of government officials, a pattern that continued (with interruption during the political fragmentation of A.D. 200–600) until the Empire collapsed in 1905. In that same Han Dynasty Confucianism became, in effect, China’s state religion; in A.D. 59 sacrifices were ordered for Confucius in all urban schools, and in the seventh and eighth centuries temples were erected in every prefecture of the empire as shrines to him and his principal disciples. China’s famous civil service examinations, which democratized public office centuries before the rest of the world dreamed of doing so, had the Confucian corpus at their heart. The Sung Dynasty (late tenth through late thirteenth centuries) perfected that system, which remained in place into the opening years of our own century.
History affords no clearer support for this contention than the work of Confucius. For over two thousand years his teachings have profoundly affected a quarter of the population of this globe.
Darwin follows his general point about the power of “creed” by saying that “the Chinese civilization [which Confucius’ creed did so much to shape] is to be accepted as the model type to a greater degree than any of the other civilizations of the world.” We shall not go this far. As there is no measure by which to rank-order civilizations qualitatively, we shall content ourselves with quantity, where numbers do tell an objective story. Unlike Europe or even India, China held together, forging a political structure which at its height embraced a third of the human race. The Chinese Empire lasted under a succession of dynasties for over two thousand years, a stretch of time that makes the empires of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon look ephemeral. If we multiply the number of years that empire lasted by the number of people it embraced in an average year, it emerges quantitatively as the most impressive social institution human beings have devised.
The Chinese Empire lasted under a succession of dynasties for over two thousand years, a stretch of time that makes the empires of Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon look ephemeral.
It is not easy to say what Confucius contributed to this institution, because in time Confucian values merged with the generic values of the Chinese people to the point where it is difficult to separate the two. What we shall do here, therefore, is take note of some features of the Chinese character that Confucius and his disciples reinforced where they did not originate them. The features we shall mention pretty much blanket East Asia as a whole, for Japan, Korea, and much of Southeast Asia deliberately imported the Confucian ethic.
We shall take note of some features of the Chinese character that Confucius and his disciples reinforced where they did not originate them.
We can begin with East Asia’s emphatic social emphasis, which Confucius helped to fix in place. Virtually every sinologist has remarked on this emphasis, but two verdicts will suffice here. “All Chinese philosophy is preeminently social philosophy,” Etienne Balazs observed, and Wing-tsit Chan concurs: “Chinese philosophers have been interested primarily in ethical, social, and political problems.” To catch an immediate glimpse of how this social emphasis translates into practice, we can note that though China is as large as the continental United States, it has a single time zone. Apparently, the Chinese feel that it is more important that they be synchronized among themselves in their time sense than that their clocks conform to impersonal nature.
All Chinese philosophy is preeminently social philosophy. Chinese philosophers have been interested primarily in ethical, social, and political problems.
This is a small point, to be sure, but small signs can reflect deep-lying attitudes, and in any case larger evidence is at hand. Confucius’ social emphasis produced, in the Chinese, a conspicuous social effectiveness—a capacity to get things done on a large scale when need arose. Historians have speculated that the social emphasis we are looking at may have gotten its start in China’s early need for massive irrigation projects on the one hand, and titanic dikes to contain her unruly rivers on the other; and we should not overlook the fact that social effectiveness (as we are calling it here) can be wrongly applied; there has been a lot of despotism in China. But, for good or for ill, effectiveness seems to be a fact. Facing up to its population problem in the third quarter of this century, China halved her birthrate in a single decade. And in the thirty years from 1949 to 1979, she put famine, flood, and epidemic disease behind a quarter of the world’s population, seemingly forever. As the Scientific American pointed out in its September 1980 issue, “this is a great event in history.”
Confucius’ social emphasis produced, in the Chinese, a conspicuous social effectiveness—a capacity to get things done on a large scale when need arose.
Directly related to the subject of this book is the way, unique among the world’s civilizations, that China syncretized her religions. In India and the West religions are exclusive, if not competitive—it makes no sense to think of someone as being simultaneously a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew, or even a Buddhist and a Hindu simultaneously. China arranged things differently. Traditionally, every Chinese was Confucian in ethics and public life, Taoist in private life and hygiene, and Buddhist at the time of death, with a healthy dash of shamanistic folk religion thrown in along the way. As someone has put the point: Every Chinese wears a Confucian hat, Taoist robes, and Buddhist sandals. In Japan Shinto was added to the mix.
In China, the religions are syncretized. Traditionally, every Chinese was Confucian in ethics and public life, Taoist in private life and hygiene, and Buddhist at the time of death, with a healthy dash of shamanistic folk religion thrown in along the way.
The importance of the family in China—three of Confucius’ Five Constant Relationships pertain to it—scarcely requires comment. Some sinologists argue that when ancestor worship and filial piety are included, the family emerges as the real religion of the Chinese people. The family surname comes first in China; only thereafter are given names added. The Chinese extended family survived well into the twentieth century, as the following report attests: “A single family may embrace eight generations, including brothers, uncles, great-uncles, sons, nephews and nephews’ sons. As many as thirty male parents with their offspring, each with their ancestors and offspring even unto grandparents and grandchildren, may live in a single joint family home comprising but one single family.” The Chinese vocabulary for family relationships is equally complex. A single word for brother is too clumsy; there must be two words to designate whether he is older or younger than the sibling who speaks. Likewise with sister, and with aunt, uncle, and grandparent, where different words are required to indicate whether these relations are on the father’s or the mother’s side. In all, there are titles for one hundred fifteen different relationships in the Chinese extended family. Strong family bonds can smother, but they also bring benefits, and these work for East Asians right down to the present. One thinks of low crime at home—the burglary rate in Japan is 1 percent of that in the United States—and the impressive record of East Asian immigrants to other lands; their delinquency rate is low, and achievement and upward mobility are high. Relatives regularly pitch in to further the education of even distant kin.
Some sinologists argue that when ancestor worship and filial piety are included, the family emerges as the real religion of the Chinese people. A single family may embrace eight generations, including brothers, uncles, great-uncles, sons, nephews and nephews’ sons.
The upward tilt toward the elder partner in three of Confucius’ Five Constant Relationships helped to elevate East Asia’s respect for age to an attitude that borders on veneration. In the West when someone confesses to being fifty, the response is likely to be, “You don’t look a year over forty.” In traditional China courtesy would have reached for a response more like, “You look every bit of sixty.” In the mid-1980s an elderly visitor to Japan was asked by a Japanese friend how wise he was. The confusion the question generated caused the Japanese to realize that he had made a mistake. Apologizing for his faulty English, the Japanese explained that he had intended to ask how old his friend was. When we compare this with the Western attitude toward age—“You’re over the hill at forty, and over the hill you pick up speed”—the contrast is glaring. Facing up to the inevitability of the body’s decline, China created social structures that buoyed the spirit. With each passing year one could count on more solicitude from one’s family and associates, and (as we have noted) more attentive, listening respect.
With each passing year one could count on more solicitude from one’s family and associates, and (as we have noted) more attentive, listening respect.
Confucius’ Doctrine of the Mean continues to this day in the Chinese preference for negotiation, mediation, and the “middle man” as against resorting to rigid, impersonal statutes. Until recently, legal action has been regarded as something of a disgrace, a confession of human failure in the inability to work things out by compromises that typically involve family and associates. Figures are not available for China, but in the mid-1980s Japan in ratio to its population had one lawyer for every twenty-four in the United States. The issue of negotiation ties in with the peculiar oriental phenomenon of “face,” for in the win/lose context of a legal verdict the party the judgment goes against loses face. This is serious, because if you are going to have to live on intimate terms with your associates, no long-term good can come from mashing them psychologically.
Confucius’ Doctrine of the Mean continues to this day in the Chinese preference for negotiation, mediation, and the “middle man” as against resorting to rigid, impersonal statutes.
And there is wen: Confucius’ conviction that learning and the arts are not mere veneer but are powers that transform societies and the human heart. China honored his conviction here: She placed the scholar-bureaucrat at the top of her social scale and soldiers at the bottom. One wonders whether anywhere other than Tibet, and during the brief early years of Islam there has been such an attempt to effect Plato’s ideal of the philosopher king. It was only an attempt, yet here and there, now and again, it bore fruit. There have been golden ages in China when the arts have flourished as nowhere else in their time and deep learning was achieved: calligraphy, Sung landscape painting, and the life-giving dance of tai chi chuan come quickly to mind. Paper was invented. Four centuries before Gutenberg, movable type was discovered. A fifteenth-century encyclopedia, climax of the research of two thousand scholars, reached a total of 11,095 volumes. There has been great poetry, magnificent scroll painting, and ceramics, which “because of the fineness of their material and decoration, and because of the elegance of their shapes, may be considered the best pottery of all countries and of all times.”
China honored Confucius’ conviction that learning and the arts are not mere veneer but are powers that transform societies and the human heart.
Blending with the Confucian art of life itself, these objects of wen produced a culture with a flavor all its own. A compound of subtlety, brilliance, and restrained good taste, it endowed the Chinese with a power of assimilation that at its peak was unrivaled. Having the most open frontier of all the great civilizations, China was subject to wave after wave of invasions by cavalried barbarians who were always ready to fall on the Earthbound agriculturalists. To their gates came the Tartars, whose one long-range raid inflicted a mortal wound on the Roman Empire. But what the Chinese could not fend off, they absorbed. Each wave of invaders tended to lose its identity through voluntary assimilation; they admired what they saw. Time after time an illiterate invader, entering solely for plunder, succumbs. Within a few years his foremost hope is to write a copy of Chinese verse that his teacher, who is likewise his conquered slave, might acknowledge as not altogether unworthy of a gentleman, and his highest hope is to be mistaken for Chinese. Kublai Khan is the most striking example. He conquered China but was himself conquered by Chinese civilization, for his victory enabled him to realize his lasting ambition, which was to become an authentic Son of Heaven.
But what the Chinese could not fend off, they absorbed. Each wave of invaders tended to lose its identity through voluntary assimilation; they admired what they saw.
The magic did not last. In the fifteenth century Chinese civilization was still unrivaled throughout the world, but stagnation then set in and the last two centuries must be discounted because the West, armed with superior military technology, snatched China’s fate from her own hands. There is little point in discussing Confucianism in the context of a Western-instigated war that forced opium on the Chinese and the subsequent division of China into European spheres of influence. Even the twentieth-century importation of Marxism must be seen as an act of desperation to regain a lost autonomy.
In the last two centuries, stagnation has set in because the West, armed with superior military technology, snatched China’s fate from her own hands.
For the enduring constructive Confucian influence we must look not to China’s twentieth-century politics but to the East Asian economic miracle of the last forty years. Taken together, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, all shaped by the Confucian ethic, constitute the dynamic center of economic growth in the latter twentieth century—impressive witness to what can happen when scientific technology links up with what might here be referred to as the social technology of East Asians. A single statistic, followed by a reporter’s account of a routine episode, provide clues to what makes that social technology work. In 1982 Japanese workers took an average of only 5.1 of the 12 vacation days they were entitled to, for (by their own accounts) “longer vacations would have imposed burdens on their colleagues.” As for the report, it reads as follows:
Six o’clock on a spring morning. In front of the Kyoto Central Station six men are standing in a circle singing. They are all dressed in white shirts, black ties, black pants, and shiny black shoes. One of them reads a pledge in which they affirm their intention to serve their customers, their company, the city of Kyoto, Japan, and the world. They are taxi drivers beginning their work day as usual.
For the enduring constructive Confucian influence we must look not to China’s twentieth-century politics but to the East Asian economic miracle of the last forty years.
It does not relate to the issue of productivity, but another report from Kyoto points up the courtesy for which orientals have been famous: “In the cyclonic mess of Kyoto traffic, two cars scrape bumpers. Both drivers leap out. Each bows, apologizing profusely for his carelessness.”
These are lingering echoes of the Confucian spirit, but one must wonder if they are not fading ones. In a Westernizing world, what is the future of this religion?
No one knows the answer. It may be that we are looking at a religion that is dying. If so, it would be appropriate to close this chapter with the words Confucius applied to himself when on his deathbed his eyes rested for the last time on the majestic dome of T’ai Shan, China’s sacred mountain:
The Sacred Mountain is falling,
The beam is breaking.
The wise man is withering away
On the other hand, prophets have a way of outlasting politicians. Gandhi has outlasted Nehru, and it appears that Confucius will outlast Mao Tse-tung.
In a Westernizing world, what is the future of this religion? We may be looking at a religion that is dying. On the other hand, prophets have a way of outlasting politicians.
.
