Confucianism

Historical Context:  Problem of Social Anarchy  (How can we keep from destroying ourselves)
 

Cultural Responses to the Problem of Social Anarchy:

1. Realists
• Reliance on force to instill and ensure social order
• elaborate mechanism of "penalties and rewards"
• Han Fei Tzu:  “If a law is too concise, the common people dispute its intentions.  And enlightened ruler, when he makes his laws, sees to it that every contingency is provided for in detail.  Idealists are always telling us that punishment should be light.  This is the way to bring about confusion and ruin.  The object of rewards is to encourage; that of punishments, to prevent.  If rewards are high, then what the ruler wants will be quickly effected; if punishments are heavy, what he does not want will be swiftly prevented."
• Low estimate of human nature
• 1. Assumes base impulses predominate over noble ones; people are naturally lustful, greedy, jealous
• 2. People are naturally short-sighted
• Believed that government could establish peace and harmony through laws and force
2. Mohism
• Mo Tzu proposed love as the solution to social confusion (in contrast to force)
• Love is inherently practical and useful
• Believed personal commitment was enough to establish social order
3. Confucianism
• Rejected Realists because it was too external - good for setting limits, but unable to inspire change of heart and custom
• Rejected Mohism because it was too utopian, impractical - to emphasize love exclusively is to preach ends without means
• Advocated Tradition as means to shape inclinations and attitudes of culture
• Difference between spontaneous tradition and deliberate tradition
• Deliberate tradition meets two conditions:
1. Continuous with the past
2. Take account of the present needs of society
• The shift to deliberate tradition requires the powers of critical intelligence in order to keep tradition in tact as well as to determine which ends tradition shall serve.  Must make a decision about what values are most important
• Creating a Second Nature
• “The 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 constraints of civilized life have ceased to be alien to him, and imposed from without.  They have become his own inner imperative.”

Jen
Human-heartedness, goodness, benevolence, love, ideal relationship between human beings.
Involves both feeling of humanity towards others and respect for oneself
Dignity of human life
The central Confucian virtue; the inner expression of the Confucian ideal
 

Li

• Course of life as it is intended to go
• Propriety:  the way things should be done, rules of conduct
• Ritual:  individual’s entire life is ritualized, social life is choreographed
• Doctrine of the Mean:  balance between extremes of indulgence and self-denial
• Five Constant Relationships:  1) Parent/Child, 2) Husband/Wife, 3) Elder sibling/Junior sibling, 4) Elder friend/Junior friend, 5) Ruler/Subject
• “the duty of children to their parents is the fountain from which all virtues spring”
• Outward expression of the Confucian ideal in social relationships

• literal meaning:  Power
• power of moral example, the kind of character that compels respect for authority

• “the arts of peace”:  music, art, poetry, culture
• Art’s power to transform human nature

• The Confucian Project as a never-ending project of self-cultivation toward the end of becoming more fully human
• Apart from human relationships, there is no self
• The Self is constructed through its interactions with others, and is defined by the sum of its social roles
• Hsin:  human being is pictured as both mind and heart

Confucian Cosmology/Theology:

• Importance of ancestors in ancient Chinese religion as seen through sacrifice and augury
• Confucius shifted his people’s attention away from heaven and towards earth
• Confucianism as a religion that is profoundly this-worldly:  More like a social code, an ethic, or a political theory than what is traditionally understood as religion
• Belief in God/gods was secondary to establishing an equitable social order
• Shift emphasis from ancestor worship to filial piety
• Project of becoming human involves transcending egoism, nepotism, parochialism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, and even humanism - ever increasing web of social relations and responsibilities