Month: September 2020

Aristotle: A Short Introduction

On By Bin SongIn Western Philosophies and ReligionsLeave a comment
Audio: A Short Introduction to Aristotle, by Dr. Bin Song
Video: A Short Introduction to Aristotle, by Dr. Bin Song

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song for the course of “introduction to philosophy” at Washington College.

After discussing Socrates and Plato, let’s address the third and final figure in the Trinity of ancient Greek philosophy: Aristotle.

In medieval Europe, when the origin of the modern institution of university started to emerge as stellar academic hubs such as the University of Bologna (1088), University of Paris (1150) and University of Oxford (1167), the name of Aristotle was replaced with the term “the Philosopher” whenever it was mentioned by scholars, teachers and students in these institutions. For these scholars, Aristotle’s architectonic philosophy represented everything that humans could know about the created world through human reason, and what universities remained to do was, on the one hand, to add “Christian faith” on top of it to create “theology” (therefore, the scholastic slogan that “philosophy as a maid to theology”), and on the other hand, to inherit and develop all other branches of the Aristotelian philosophy in light of new observations and human experiences.

You may wonder why it was Aristotle, not Plato, whose philosophy constituted the pedagogical principle of medieval universities. The reason lies largely in the difference of the two philosophers’ styles of thought and genres of writing.

Plato’s thought was very idealistic, who admires an eternal and unchanging, real world of ideas vis-à-vis the material, less real world vulnerable to decay and corruption. Since the material world was not that important to him, quite often, Plato made the points he wanted to make in the sharpest way regardless of what previous philosophers had said on related topics. Moreover, Plato wrote in the genre of Socratic dialogue, and would not hesitate to use Socrates’s mouth to speak for his own thoughts, which increased the power of persuasion while not necessarily conveying more knowledge.

In contrast, Aristotle believes philosophy starts from empirical observations of natural and social phenomena, and from investigating the views of his philosophical predecessors on shared topics. Therefore, when you open one volume in the complete works of Aristotle, the Metaphysics for instance, you will read many of pre-Aristotelian philosophers’ views on the origin of the world, as well as the empirical evidences that these views have referred to, before you can get to Aristotle’s own view. When writing his own views, Aristotle was also fond of using the logic of syllogism to organize varying statements according to the degrees of generality of categories.

For instance, in the books of On the Heavens and the Physics, we read that there are two parts of the entire universe: the sublunary earthly world which comprises four elements: air, fire, water and earth; and the superlunary heavenly world which comprises the divine element called the aether. Overall, all things in the world were moved by the unmoved mover called “Nous,” and the self-perpetuating and self-contemplative nature of the Nous constitutes the ultimate purpose for which all beings in the world move and strive.

Similarly, in the book of the Politics, we are presented with a purportedly exhaustive taxonomy of political regimes that human beings could ever observe. Aristotle employed the standard of whether a state is governed by one, a few, or many people to distinguish three pairs of regimes: monarchy/tyranny, aristocracy/oligarchy, polity/democracy. Within each pair of regimes, the former is thought of as being superior to the latter because it rules for the benefits of all people, rather than just for the ones of the people in the circle of rulership. For instance, polity is the regime where one party is elected among many while being able to represent the interests of all citizens, while democracy is the one where an elected party, due to the non-educated nature of its constituency, can only represent its own self-interest. Overall, Aristotle believes “polity” is the best regime because he thinks (1) humans are not God, and thus, no power can be held by either one singular person or one circle of elite forever no matter how virtuous and intelligent they are, and (2) the regime of polity trains citizens to be virtuous and educated, and therefore, can help to achieve the ultimate goal of human life, eudaimonia (human flourishing or happiness), which is furthermore an imitation of the perpetually self-contemplative divine life of Nous.

Not only did Aristotle have a more organized structure within each branch of philosophy, he also had an architectonic vision of philosophy as a whole. For Aristotle, the meaning of philosophy is virtually synonymous with science, and it includes the entire body of human knowledge. He says, this body of human knowledge comprises three parts: first, theoretical philosophy, which contains knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself without further concern with their practical application. Under this category, we have physics to deal with objects capable of movement, mathematics to target objects without movement, and metaphysics to investigate the most generic features of things in the world. Second, practical philosophy, which is concerned with human praxis and actions, such as ethics, political philosophy, economics, and rhetoric. Finally, what Aristotle called productive or poetic philosophy studies the products, rather than the actions of human beings. In modern philosophical term, this productive philosophy is concerned with both technology, such as house-building, ship-building, and other craftworks, and aesthetics, viz., the theory of beauty as the beauty is represented by artworks. In the pedagogical sense, Aristotle thinks each of these branches of philosophy as a “liberal art” since these subjects help humans to grow to be more virtuous and educated, and hence, to be more fit for the collective deliberation on varying issues in an educated democracy, which Aristotle terms Polity.

Now, I believe you have a better sense of why Aristotle’s works were taken as textbooks, and his philosophy was treated as the pedagogical underpinning of medieval universities. In a word, its organized, systematic, and scholarly quality is just so ready to be put into practice in classrooms. Given the historical root of modern universities in Aristotelianism, it will be highly probable that you will meet the name “Aristotle” sometime or somewhere during the study of your major, whether it is physics, chemistry, biology, political science, art history, etc.

However, since Aristotle’s thought has decisively shaped the intellectual landscape of medieval Europe, the birth of modernity in the same territory was also greatly influenced by his thought. Noticeably, this influence normally took a form of counteraction and resistance, because many aspects of modern thought derive from a critique or revision of Aristotle’s thought.

Regarding the profound changes modern Europe went through in that shaping period of 16-18th centuries, an effective angle to investigate these changes is from the disciplinary divisions that medieval universities once operated upon. In the area of theology, we have the movement of Protestant reformation. In the area of humanities, we have the movement of Renaissance. In natural science, we have modern scientific revolution; while in social science, we have the birth of modern capitalism and varying political movements leading to the establishment of modern democracies. Normally, proponents of these shaping modern movements were graduates of medieval universities who studied the concerned subjects in various departments. As mentioned, since the institutional structure of medieval universities was designed per the Aristotelian thought, we can imagine why the transition between pre-modern and modern human societies was philosophically manifested by critiques and contrasts that modern thinkers made about the ancient Aristotelian thought.

Let me enumerate several examples of the contrast between Aristotelianism and its modern counterparts.

Physics

In the works of the Physics and on the Heavens, Aristotle refuses to use geometry to form hypotheses about the movement of natural objects, because he thought physics deals with objects that can move while mathematics studies ideal objects that cannot move. In other words, physics and mathematics are fundamentally different areas of human knowledge, and thus, different methodologies should be adopted for the studies of them accordingly. However, modern science starts from Copernicus who proposed a geometrical model to conjecture whether the sun can be put into the center and all planets revolve around it. In other words, modern science starts from humans to ask questions to nature, and then, to design experiments forcing nature to answer whether those questioning hypotheses can be verified. During the process, to conduct the exact measurement of natural phenomena and construct deductive theoretical systems, mathematics is irreversibly incorporated into physics. Accordingly, the transition from the old Aristotelian physics solely relying upon observations and categorization to the new Galileo’s one structured by mathematical rationality and technologized experiments marks the birth of modernity in the area of natural philosophy.

Ethics

In line with the modern mentality committed to discovering calculable and universal natural laws in natural science, Kant articulated a new standard of modern ethics called “deontology.” In deontological ethics, the highest principles of human behavior are thought of as being universal and necessary, so that regardless of situations, all humans need to abide by these principles in order to be moral. For Kant, the ubiquitous existence of reason and free will is taken as the foundation of ethics so that he prescribes that “every human must be treated as an end itself, rather than merely as a means” is such a universal deontological rule by which every human being must abide in all their behaviors. Another equally important ethical theory in the modern era is John Mill’s utilitarianism, which says the principle of ethical human behaviors is to calculate whether one decision can lead to the maximal amount of benefits so as to increase the overall happiness or pleasure of human life. Clearly, this utilitarian ethical rule resonates a lot with the basic assumption of modern economics that humans are individual rational beings aiming to maximize their own interests in economic activities.

However, different from either approach of these modern ethics, Aristotle believes the cornerstone of ethics should be to explore how to cultivate a human being to become a fully flourished human person. Aristotle’s opposition lies in his insights that no matter how many rules we rationally understand, we still cannot be a good human person unless we know how to apply these rules in concrete situations. Also, the consequences of good character traits for a virtuous human being, such as courage, temperance and benevolence, are normally non-calculable. Even so, virtues as habits of good human living are still needed for the sake of Eudaimonia, the full-flourishing of human life. Therefore, Aristotle’s ethics is concerned with the formation of human personality, and is taken as a sort of “virtue ethics” alternative to its modern counterparts of deontology and utilitarianism.

Politics

Perhaps no area is more contrasting with our modern consciousness in Aristotle’s philosophy than politics. As depicted by Thomas Hobbes’s thought experiment on the “state of nature” of human conditions, a state is normally thought of by modern thinkers as a lesser evil that we human beings cannot avoid. This is because without a state, everyone will be an enemy to each other, and even the most powerful human being cannot survive the perpetual status of war and strife in the pre-contractual state of nature. So, in our modern consciousness, the rationale of the existence of a state is to protect individual human rights, in whatever sense these rights are conceived by varying philosophies and traditions.

However, for Aristotle, the public human life in a state, or a Polis using a Greek word, is a necessary good, and from the perspective of human sociality, it is even the highest good since without a state, humans cannot practice their unique ability of speech to think, debate, and hence, live a virtuous, just and good human life. While pondering which kind of regime is the best fit for humans, Aristotle also believes a representative regime, whose authority derives from the election by an educated and informed electorate, can create the needed leisure and atmosphere for all citizens to strive for being virtuous and educated. In other words, in modern thinkers’ mind, a state has no function to perfect its citizens, while for Aristotle, humans are in a process of formation, and without a justified public life in a state, the potential of being a good human remains unactualized. Therefore, in an ultimate sense, it is a duty, rather than a right, for every citizen to build and participate the public life in a state. Moreover, Aristotle also has a notoriously non-egalitarian view towards the dignity of human beings, and thinks that slaves and women must succumb to the governance of masters and men because they are thought of as being naturally unfit for rational deliberation over issues of public life.

Nevertheless, since Aristotle’s philosophy runs so contrastingly with modern consciousness, why do we still need to learn it today? It is worth our notice that today’s human society is post-modern, post-industrial, multi-cultural, and undergoing a profound process of increasing globalization. In this brave new world, many assumptions of modern philosophy that were taken by modernists as the foundation of human society were reflected, challenged, and quite often, reformed. If you think Aristotelian physics is too naïve to apply mathematics, his view on the teleological explanation of biological phenomena still holds onto much value in light of the development of contemporary evolutionary and genetic biology. If you think human behaviors and purposes are so complex as to refuse the simplified assumption of modern economics that rationalizes humans as calculative machines, Aristotle’s virtue ethics may still provide insights on how to live a good human life. Finally, the overt endorsement of slavery and misogynism is really worth condemning even if we put it in the full context of the social and economic conditions of ancient Greece. However, every human needs virtues to enact their duties entailed by the roles they play in varying human relationships; this Aristotelian insight on the perfectibility of individuals’ communal roles will still give many contemporary minds a pause whenever they think isolated individuals or atomic individualism is the only legitimate starting point for good human relationships.

In a word, “the philosopher” once shaped the intellectual landscape of medieval Europe; his thought stimulated the creation of modernity in varying aspects of human society, yet with normally a contrastive mode. Eventually, today, we still have many things to learn from Aristotle, such a noble, liberating, and encyclopedic mind who enjoyed his philosophical prime time towards the end of the golden era of ancient Greek philosophy.

Quiz:

(1) Why was Aristotle’s thought taken as the pedagogical principle of medieval universities?

A) His style of thought tends to be empirical, and thus, convey ancient human knowledge on the created world.
B) His genre of writing is organized by the method of categorization and the logic of syllogism, and hence, ready to be put into practice in classrooms.

(2) Which of the following are elements that comprise the universe according to Aristotle?

A) Air
B) Fire
C) Earth
D) Water
E) Aether
F) Wood

(3) What are the two standards by which Aristotle categorizes varying political regimes?

A) Whether a regime is governed by one, a few or many people.
B) Whether the people in power represents the interests of all citizens.
C) Whether the people in power are elected.

(4) What subjects belong to “liberal arts” according to Aristotle?

A) Physics, mathematics, and metaphysics,
B) Ethics, political philosophy, economics and rhetoric
C) Engineering and aesthetics.

(5) What events represent the creation of modernity in Europe during 16-18th centuries?

A) Renaissance
B) Modern Scientific Revolution
C) Protestant reformation
D) The birth of modern capitalism
E) The establishment of modern democracies

(6) Aristotle refuses to use mathematics to form hypothesis to study natural phenomena in physics, because he thought mathematics and physics are two fundamentally different subjects. Is this statement true or false?

(7) Which of the following ethical theories are modern ethics?

A) Immanuel Kant’s deontology
B) John Mill’s utilitarianism
C) Aristotle’s virtue ethics.

The Worst is that You Think the Worst

On By Bin SongIn CounselingLeave a comment
Audio: to stop awfulizing, by Dr. Bin Song.
Video: to stop awfulizing, by Dr. Bin Song.

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song in the course of “Foundations of Morality” at Washington College.

Perfectionism drives people to demand the congruence of their standards of ideal human living with objective realities; once failed to witness it, they may start to damn themselves, condemn other people and curse the world.

However, there is another thinking fallacy which lies at the directly opposite side of perfectionism, but could wrench people’s mind with no less pains and sufferings. In terms of philosophical therapy, we call this fallacy “awfulizing,” viz., just as perfectionists think there could exist perfect things in the world, people that awfulize tend to believe once something bad happens, it could be the worst thing that one can ever experience in the world. In other words,

awfulizing makes us exaggerate the severity of bad events to such an unbearable degree that we become terrified, horrified, and awed with little remaining vigor and stamina to bounce back.

If these perceived awful events happen to the past of people’s life, they may become extremely sad and depressed whenever these occurrences return to their mind. However, if these events are anticipated to take place in people’s future life, it may cause an even more debilitating emotion of anxiety. Regardless, once we entitle the term “the worst thing in the world” with a referent in reality, its petrifying effect would crush us to a bottomless and hopeless abyss, as I said, with no further vigor to bounce back.

Nevertheless, is there really such a thing called “the worst thing in the world”?

  • A man loses his job in his middle career may be very bad. But what if he loses his job and gets divorced? Isn’t it even worse?
  • A man loses his job in his middle career and gets divorced may be very bad, but what if one’s life, family, job and property all get wiped out by a tsunami? Isn’t it even worse?
  • But if you think gratuitous, seemingly meaningless death incurred by a natural disaster is the worst thing that could ever happen to human life, what if a wrongly charged, innocent young man was constrained into his prison cell, and hence, got mistreated, tortured and exploited for all his remaining life? This prisoner does not even have a chance of living his life!

Eventually, if you think any of these examples as the worst thing that could ever happen, please just do some addition: if you add any of them to another, then you will technically get a “worse” thing, and this process can continue forever! Therefore, ontologically speaking, there is no much base to use the term “the worst thing in the world”; employing whatever standards you judge things as good or bad, you will get to continually add items on your list of “the worst thing in the world” without a stop.

Moreover, the phrase “the worst thing in the world” is not only non-realistic in the sense that it lacks a definite reference in reality. It is also unreasonable because it is based upon an assumption that there is such a thing in the world which is purely, absolutely, and without-any-remainderly bad and evil. However, is there really such a purely and hopelessly evil thing in the world? Isn’t the fact that whether we can find something positive within the negativity is entirely up to our own perception, imagination and philosophy? In other words, the worst thing to happen in people’s life is what you think as the worst. If you do not have any reason to perceive anything as purely and absolutely evil, you would not encounter such a thing in your life.

In the following, let me use two examples from the philosophical tradition of Confucianism to explain why such a philosophical approach to confront evil and hence, to live a perfectible good human life is desirable.

To address the issue of the origin of human goodness, Mencius (372-290 B.C.E) took a metaphysical approach. He thinks every ordinary human being is innately good, and hence, is born with some incipient moral sprouts within their heart. The example he furnished is that every ordinary human being, regardless of color, country, culture, wealth, etc., would spontaneously have a feeling of alarm and fright, viz., a feeling of commiseration, when they see a baby about to fall into a well. For Mencius, to live a good human life, humans just need to continually nurture and enlarge this incipient moral spout to affirm and promote the value of “life” or “vitality” within a continually becoming and generating cosmos. For Mencius, this is how humans manifest the constantly life-generating power of the cosmos in the human world, and thus, serve and strengthen the being of the entire universe in a distinctively human way.

However, even if evil is explained by Mencius as the lack of human will to nurture their innate goodness, and thus, as being deficient of a solid ontological status, bad things indeed happened to Mencius. It actually happened a lot to him, since the time when he lived is called the period of “Warring States” in ancient Chinese history, and hence, replete with social turmoil and disruption. Like Confucius, Mencius was also dedicated to wandering among varying states with a hope to find enlightened rulers to implement his ethical and political philosophy, eventually of no avail. However, Mencius had a mindset of resilience to put all these bad things in his life-time into a larger, more enduring and meaningful context, so as to never perceive anything as purely and absolutely evil. The following quote is one example for this mindset:

“When the cosmos (天) is about to bestow a great responsibility on a particular person, it will always first subject one’s heart and resolution to bitterness, belabor one’s muscles and bones, starve one’s body and flesh, deprive one’s person, and thwart and bring chaos to what one does. By means of these things it stimulates one’s heart, toughens one’s nature, and provides those things of which one is otherwise incapable. One must often make mistakes, and only then can one improve. One must be troubled in one’s heart and vexed in one’s deliberations, and only then rise up. Those saddening happenstances must show in one’s face and be expressed in one’s voice, and then, one can eventually understand them.

If, internally, a state has no model families or cautioning scholar-officials, and externally, it has no enemies or foreign problems, the state will normally perish.

Only in these ways do we know that our life springs from sorrow and adversity, but our death from ease and pleasure.” (Mencius 6B, translation adapted from Bryan Van Norden.)

Here, all adversities human life could possibly live through are understood as needed opportunities of empowering people with further abilities, merits and virtues so as to shoulder greater responsibilities. Please don’t get Mencius wrong here. The “responsibility” that Mencius talked about are by no means limited to ambitious and grandiose ones. In difficult life situations, taking good care of oneself, protecting and loving one’s immediate family members, strengthening one’s closer human network can all become a great motivation for us to perceive the positive from the negative, and thus, work ourselves up using the mindset of resilience that Mencius has so brilliantly articulated.

Another Confucian philosopher that indicated a similar mindset of resilience, yet with a different philosophical approach, is Xunzi (Circa., 316-235 B.C.E).

Rather than thinking with Mencius that humans are born with commendable dispositions towards the empathy with distressed human fellows, Xunzi thinks what humans are born with is not those concrete dispositions towards moral excellence. Rather, all humans prefer life to death, food to hunger, security to danger, health to illness, and order to disorder. However, without undergoing education and social ritualization, the inborn dispositions of humans are just not quite different from animals. Our intrinsically self-serving and egoistic nature will lead to endless competitions and conflicts among humans over limited resources, and this would eventually cause death, hunger, danger, illness, and in other words, all evils in the world. So, what is the value of evil after all? According to Xunzi, without witnessing and experiencing these evils, humans would not realize the value of cultivation, education, and ritualization for the sake of individual flourishing and social harmony, and thus, the value of evil is exactly to motivate us towards becoming good. Here is an exemplary quote of Xunzi’s thought:

“In every case where people desire to become good, it is because their nature is bad. The person who has little longs to have much. The person of narrow experience longs to be broadened. The ugly person longs to be beautiful. The poor person longs to be rich. The lowly person longs to be noble. That which one does not have within oneself, one is sure to seek for outside. … Looking at it in this way, people desire to become good because their nature is bad.

Now people’s nature is originally without an awareness towards ritual and rightness. Thus, they must force themselves to engage in learning and seek to possess them. Their nature does not know of ritual and rightness, and so they must think and reflect and seek to know them. So, going only by what they have from birth, people lack ritual and rightness and do not know of ritual and rightness. If people lack ritual and rightness, then they will be chaotic. If they do not know of ritual and rightness, then they will be unruly. So, going only by what they have from birth, unruliness and disorder are within them. Looking at it in this way, it is clear that people’s nature is bad, and their goodness is a matter of deliberate effort.” (Chapter 23, translation adapted from Erik L. Hutton.)

So, clearly, for Xunzi, every bad piece of human life, including both gratuitous natural disasters, chaos and varying adversities engendered by human efforts, is a sign of the corresponding incoming good. Without experiencing bad things in life, people would not be aware of what good things are, and how to achieve them. This by no means encourages people to put themselves in a bad situation voluntarily. Rather, if we enjoy our life as a perpetual process of perfectibility, advancement and creativity, we have to admit: the existence of imperfections in our life is just necessary and indispensable.

Using the examples of seemingly awful events mentioned above, I would say: without a concern of losing our jobs, we would not continually motivate ourselves to refine our employable job skills and entrepreneurship. Without an anxiety of worsening marital relationships, we would not dedicate ourselves to perfecting it. By the same token, without all impending natural disasters, human society would not be likely to pause to reflect upon human behaviors for a better future of the society. In a word, using the mindset of resilience indicated by Xunzi’s thought, there is no purely evil thing in the world of which we cannot make some good.

Therefore, let’s not use the language of “the worst thing in the world”, since there is no such a thing. Let’s put all bad things into a larger context, and thus, courageously confront evils to advance an endlessly perfectible future. Once we succeed to so, we will understand: the worst thing in the world is just that we think in the worst way, and hence, the thinking fallacy of awfulizing does not have much real ground to hold on to, since how we think are under the control of ourselves.

Required Reading:

Elliot Cohen, The New Rational Therapy, pp. 49-63.

Quiz:

1) Although the thinking fallacy of awfulizing is the opposite of the one of demanding perfection, they share the same irrationally absolutist view of the world: one thinks there is the worst thing in the world, and another thinks things in the world can be perfectly good. Is this statement true or false?


2) How does Mencius see adversities of human life?
A) They make individuals stronger and better to fulfill greater responsibilities.
B) They are not bad things seen from a larger, enduring and more meaningful context.

3) How does Xunzi see the value of evil?
A) The experience of evil motivates human beings towards becoming good.
B) Evil does not really exist, and evil things are just a lack of goodness.

4) “Man, as the animal that is most courageous, most accustomed to suffering, does not negate suffering as such: he wants it, even seeks it out, provided one shows him some meaning in it, some wherefore of suffering.” Whose view is this?
A) Nietzsche
B) Buddha
C) Confucius

5) The British philosopher David Hume thinks there is a gab between facts and values; one cannot infer “ought to” from “is” without imposing their own rating. Therefore, it is up to human individuals to decide whether anything awful has happened to their life. Is this statement true or false?

Stop Damning, to Build Respect

On By Bin SongIn CounselingLeave a comment
Audio: On the Fallacy of Damnation, by Dr. Bin Song.
Video: On the Fallacy of Damnation, by Dr. Bin Song

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song in the course of “Foundations of Morality” at Washington College.

Another thinking fallacy, which is closely related to the one of “demanding perfection” and can cause a slew of negative emotions and self-defeating habits of behavior, is damnation. As explained in last unit, people who demand perfection ascribe their standards of ideal human living to objective realities, and once they fail to witness or achieve these standards in reality, they tend to judge human life as not worth living.

One conceivable result from the thought that human life is not worth living is that you start to damn it. This damnation can be taken in multiple forms:

You may start to damn yourself to say words, such as “I will be a complete failure,” “I should not be borne by my parents,” or even harboring the intention of suicide, just because you don’t have those achievements or approval which you think your worth of life as a human individual is necessarily tied to.

You may also start to damn other people, and smear them using vulgar languages just because they fail in certain aspects of their life to realize your standards of good human living. This can be furthermore taken in multiple forms. For instance, you believe people should be honest; but once some people lie and behave in a dishonest way to you, you will think they are essentially and irreversibly a liar, and then, start to condemn them as worth going to hell. Another instance is that when you are greatly irritated by your disagreement with someone during a debate, you start to yell to them, and use damning languages all over the map to turn the debate into a name-calling shouting abuse.

With one step further, you may also start to damn the entire world. Think about the dividing politics, the natural disasters, the humanitarian crises, the ongoing pandemic and the apocalyptic global warming. I believe many people would feel overwhelmed at a certain point of their life, and they may start to condemn the entire world and doubt whether it is worth living here at all.

Quite evidently, once you think of either your self, the persons of others’, or the world as a whole as lacking an intrinsic worth, you will be greatly disturbed by strong self-defeating emotions, and sometimes, these emotions can be very dangerous. Apart for the formidable intention of suicide we mentioned above as an instance, once other people are looked at as damnable pieces of object, we can start to think over how the holocaust, genocides, and racism happen and recur in human history and society. Therefore, in order to live a healthy, good human life, we must eliminate this thinking fallacy of damnation, and start to build genuine respect to every human and non-human being that lives and exists in this world.

Despite standards using which people judge either themselves, others or the world as damnable may be different, there are two essential characteristics shared by all the aforementioned forms of damnation:

  • Firstly, the thinking fallacy of damnation ascribes what happens badly (in whatever sense the badness is understood) in parts to the whole, so as to have a global negative judgment towards a person or the world just because of their partial imperfections.
  • Secondly, which is closely related to the first, the thinking fallacy of damnation fails to appreciate the life of an individual human being or the entire world as constituting an endless process of changing, becoming and daily renewal. Instead, this fallacy reifies its targets of thought, and treats them as stiff, rigid and disposable “objects.” Since being objects rather than respectable beings, what are damned by the thinking fallacy could be either manipulated for selfish purposes or gave up and jettisoned to the extent of (self-) elimination.

In contrast with these two essential features of the thinking fallacy of damnation, if we start to think of people as respectable human beings who keep changing and growing, and if we stop using global, damning languages to address any one who fails to deliver certain of our expectations at a certain moment of their life, we will become more realistic, accepting and kind in our relationships with them. We will therefore become dedicated to patient communication, and rectifying humans’ wrong-doings in a concrete, piecemeal and perfectible way. In a reflective perspective, the attitude towards ourselves will also become much more accepting, motivating, and confident.

As indicated by the assigned reading, the author raised many philosophies and religions to help to nurture this virtue of “respect” to rectify the fallacy of damnation. These wisdoms all pertain to the recognition of the incomparable and constant worth of human life, and its authentic relationship with the world. In the following, I will use my expertise in Confucianism to address the same issue. Surely, for the sake of practicing the virtue of respect, I will also encourage you, my students, to find the philosophy or religion which is the best fit for you.

So, where does the worth of human life consist?

To answer this question, Mencius (372-289 B.C), the second most important philosopher in classical Confucianism, imagined a thought experiment. He said, any ordinary human being who saw a baby about to fall into a well will spontaneously have a feeling of fright and alarm, so as to have the initial thought to save the baby from the impending danger. In this thought experiment, it is completely out of question where the baby is raised, who its parents are, of what color the baby looks, what accomplishment the baby will have in its future life, etc. In other words, In Mencius’s view, all these objective attributes of the baby which we can describe from outside have no relevance to the stimulation of the universal feeling of compassion and love hardwired into the good part of human nature. As long as it is a baby to be approaching some danger, we will recognize immediately the value of its life, and try to save it from distress.

Along the same lineage of thought, Wang Yangming (1472-1529) thought humans’ universal compassion can reach even further to all beings in the universe. So, we have a feeling of alarm and fright not only to a baby about to fall into a well. If an animal gets slaughtered, a plant gets uprooted, or even some tiles and stones are blown away from their original places, we human beings can also be aroused with some inner feeling of concern and alarm, since according to Wang Yangming, the good part of human nature makes us all feel united with everything in the universe.

So, as indicated by these Confucian philosophers’ thought, Confucianism measures the intrinsic worth of human life from the perspective of the philosophy of life. It understands the entire universe as an all-encompassing, constantly creating and renewing cosmic field. Within this field, all human lives matter since they are the manifestations of this continually renewing cosmic force. Therefore, no matter what achievements we can have during our life, and how many people approve of our works, as long as we keep changing, growing, and renewing ourselves just as the normal function of life entails, our life is intrinsically valuable. Quite evidently, this Confucian philosophy of life is also very appropriate for the growing mindset that I explained before to counteract the fallacy of demanding perfection.

If the intrinsic value of human life consists in the sheer fact that each individual’s life is one form of the all-encompassing cosmic life, how should we deal with human relationships, particularly when others are doing something wrong to us?

There is a Confucian version of the so-called golden rule of ethics, and its three aspects address the question fairly well.

  • Firstly, the negative golden rule, which is told by Confucius in the Analects 15.24: do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.
  • Secondly, the positive golden rule, which is told by Analects 6:30: establish others what you want to establish yourself; help others to achieve what you want to achieve yourself.
  • Thirdly, the corrective golden rule, which is told by Analects 14.34: when someone does something wrong to you, you should neither revenge nor tolerate. Instead, you should treat them with justice, viz., to correct their wrong-doing in a loving, but just and righteous way.

Among these three aspects of the Confucian golden rule, the third one is particularly relevant to address the fallacy of damning other people. When someone does something wrong to us, according to this Confucian rule, we should neither tolerate them, viz., that we continue to be kind to them as if nothing happens; nor revenge them, viz., to seek retaliation through damning them as revengeable pieces of object. No, Confucius approved of neither of these two approaches. Instead, Confucius says that we should treat them with justice. That is to try to correct their wrong-doing deeds, rather than damning their whole personhood, so as to create an opportunity for people to morally grow and improve. That can surely be done through legal terms, but can also be implemented in a much softer way in a daily basis, but the key of the methods is still the same: stop damning people, but correct their wrong-doings to indicate our respect to their perfectible humanity.

Last but not least, what’s the Confucian view towards the world as a whole? It is true that the universe is life-generating; otherwise, there would not be so many wonderful things to happen on this earth on a daily basis. But there are also so many natural disasters and humanitarian crises on the earth. If we only look at the bright side of the life-generating process without regarding the tragical sides of it, are we burying our heads into the sand as an ostrich?

To address this concern, the following conversation between Confucius, Confucius’s student Zi Lu, and two hermits (Changju and Jieni) in the Analects 18.6 will be illuminating. The context of this conversation is that Confucius wandered among varying warring states in his time with his students to find opportunities to implement his political and ethical ideas in order to regain peace and harmony in the world. And I will read the conversation as its entirety:

Changju and Jieni were plowing the filed side by side, when Confucius passed by them and sent Zilu to ask the whereabouts of the place to cross the river.
Changju said, “Who is the man holding the reins over there?”
Zilu said, “It is Kong Qiu (Confucius).”
“Is it the Kong Qiu of Lu.”
“Yes.”
“Then he must know where to cross the river already.”
Zilu then asked Jieni, and Jieni said, “Who are you, sir?”
Zilu said, “I am Zhongyou (Zi Lu’s style name).”
“Are you not the disciple of Kong Qiu of Lu?”
“I am.”
Jieni said, “Turbulent floodwater is surging everywhere under heaven. Who is able to change this? Besides, rather than following a man who avoids some people here and there, would it not be better to follow whose who avoid the world altogether?” With this he went on to cover up the seeds without stopping.
Zi Lu went back and reported it. The Master signed, saying, “One cannot be in the same herd with birds and beasts. If I am not with my fellow humans, with whom shall I associate? If the world had the Way, I would not be involved in changing it.”

In other words, in Confucius’s view, the world is neither set up to go against nor for the interests of human beings. The world is just what it is, and nothing about it needs to be particularly praised or condemned. Instead, the world would look exactly as what human beings make out of it. If we want a better world, we need better ourselves at first. If we want a better society, we need better human individuals at first. Therefore, Confucius teaches: do not give up the world, and the whole purpose of human living is to better the world through bettering ourselves.

So, let’s wrap up the Confucian wisdom to counteract the fallacy of damnation: the worth of human life consists in its livingness and perfectibility, which is independent from achievements and approvals from others. If others do something wrong to us, neither tolerate nor damn it; find ways to correct these wrong-doings while showing respect to their perfectible humanity; eventually, have a realistic human attitude towards the world as a whole, and make it as good as yourself can be.

Quiz:

(1) What are the two features of the fallacy of damnation?

A, to have a global negative judgement because of partial imperfections.
B, to fail to appreciate the processual nature of human living.
C, to rightfully condemn evil deeds rather than the whole person.

(2) According to Confucianism, where does the intrinsic value of human life consist in?

A, human individuals as perfectible and living human beings.
B, human individuals as autonomous rational beings.
C, human individuals as sentient beings to seek pleasure and avoid pains.

(3) what is the golden rule of ethics in Confucius thought?
A, do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.
B, help others to achieve what you want to achieve yourself.
C, treat someone who did wrong to you with justice.

(4) “An imperfection in the part may be required for a greater perfection in the whole,” and the whole is the best possible world that God can ever create. Whose view is this?

A, Leibniz.
B, Thomas Aquinas
C, Sartre.

(5) Only when the world become an “it,” it can be damned. However, if we see the world as an “Thou,” viz., some being worth of respect just as equally as us, we would not damn it. Whose view is this?

A, Martin Bubber
B, Confucius
C, William James.

(6) What philosophy would like to use to affirm the unconditional worth of human individual?

Voting with Their Feet: How Early Ruism (Confucianism) Conceived of the Relationship Between the State and its Citizens

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & Philosophy1 Comment

(This article was originally published in Huffpost, Oct 24 2016)

Among the five cardinal human relationships taught by Mencius (372-289 BCE), that of friendship is very special. Unlike the other human relationships, friendship is generally with people who are outside of the family, and it is also egalitarian. Considering that Ruist ethics is usually thought of as centering upon family and socio-political hierarchy, it may be a surprise to learn that Ruism actually places a human relationship which is neither familial nor hierarchical among the five most important ones!

What may seem even more surprising is that for Mencius and his Ru school, friendship is not only one of the five most important human relationships, but it is also the model for the relationship between the state and its citizens: “Friendship is the Way (Dao) between the ruler and his subjects” (“友, 君臣之道.” – the Chu Bamboo Stripes in Guodian). In other words, just as people can freely choose their friends based upon their virtues and merits, the ruler of a state can also be chosen! Though the ruler could not, of course, have been chosen by ballot, something which was not available in the social context of Mencius’ time, even so, Mencius highly recommended that people should vote with their feet! We can see this is the case from the following conversation between Mencius and King Xuan of Qi, which concerns the difference between two kinds of ministers:

The King Xuan of Qi asked about the ministers who are noble and relatives of a ruler. Mencius answered, “If the ruler has great faults, they ought to remonstrate against him, and if he does not listen to them after they have done so again and again, they ought to dethrone him.” The king was stunned and changed his countenance. Mencius said, “Let not your Majesty be offended. You asked me, and I dare not answer but according to truth.”

The king’s countenance became composed, and he then asked about ministers who were of a different surname from the ruler. Mencius said, “When the ruler has faults, they ought to remonstrate against him; and if he does not listen to them after they have done this again and again, they ought to leave the state.” (Mencius 5B)

Relying on this conversation and other related texts, we can summarize Mencius’ view as follows: within an aristocratic monarchy, which was the prevalent form of government in the period of the Warring States (475-221 B.C.E), ministers should assist their ruler in being virtuous just as though they were exhorting a friend. Even so, if a ruler behaves really badly and refuses to be corrected, the senior members of his or her royal family should dethrone him or her, and ordinary ministers should leave the state. Ordinary people should also leave the state in order to look for a virtuous ruler. Such a virtuous ruler can then rally the support of a now larger population and thereby become capable of conquering the surrounding states, not with military arms but by applying moral charisma (德, de). This form of conquest and governance by virtue is extolled by Mencius as the Dao of a Sagely-King (王道, wang-dao), in contrast with the Dao of Hegemony (霸道, ba-dao), a lesser way of governance using deceit and violence, which most rulers of Mencius’ time pursued. Quite obviously, the Dao of a Sagely-King is premised upon the co-government of a virtuous ruler and his meritorious ministers, and ultimately, can only be realized through the people’s voluntary and warm endorsement of the ruler and his or her policies. Therefore, I believe that if Mencius were to be living in the 21st century, he would be delighted to find that since contemporary democracy guarantees the right of universal suffrage, people not only have the freedom to vote with their feet, but they can also vote with their ballots! Ballots are, I think, much closer to Mencius’ ideal of living under the rule of the Dao of a Sagely-King than any of the polities of his own time.

Actually, in order to fully appreciate Mencius’s idea about the interconnection between friendship and good government, we must put this idea in an historical context and understand that this view did not belong to Mencius alone. Instead, it speaks to the nature of the thought of Confucius (551-479 BCE), and to the nature of Ruism as a school of government.

Pre-Confucian China was a feudal empire. Its territory was enfeoffed by the sovereign king, the Son of Heaven, to various aristocratic families mainly in accordance with their pedigree connection to the king. In this feudal system, each rank in the government had its own back-up team for policy consultation and administrative support, which mainly consisted of the concerned dignitary’s intimate family members. For example, the Son of Heaven had his team of dukes (公, gong), a prince had his team of high officers (卿, qing), and high officers had their ‘side house’ (侧室, ce-shi), etc. The lowest rank was called shi (士, scholarly-gentleman), and its back-up team was called you (友, friends). In this way, in the pre-Confucian feudal society, the term, ‘friends,’ mainly referred to members of an extended family or clan, and they were treated as the back-up team for this lowest governmental position of shi.

By Confucius’s time, this arrangement was no longer the case. In the late Zhou period, a series of social crises had caused the sovereign king to gradually lose his authority, and princes became warlords (霸, ba), continually competing with one another for territory and power. The social consequence of this process was the diffusion of the class of shi (scholarly-gentlemen), and the corresponding change of reference for you (friend). Shi were no longer to be appointed from above depending upon their relationship to the emperor, and accordingly, the reference for you was no longer confined to one’s own family clan. Instead, a shi could virtually be anybody as long as he or she was thought of by the state as being useful for its governance, and friends could virtually refer to any ordinary person as long as he or she was considered by anyone to be somewhat like-minded. Since virtually anyone could become the friend of a shi who, as they were in the lowest rank of government, might be promoted to high office, the original highly hierarchical relationship between ruler and subjects gathered momentum to become more equalized. In other words, a flattening trend of social egalitarianism became the historical context in which Ruism arose as a school.

Understood in this way, the earliest Ru community under the inspiration of Confucius was a community of friends. People of various backgrounds and social statuses came together because of a shared vision. They read foundational books, they practiced skills such as music, archery, charioteering and calligraphy, and they also performed various rituals. In other words, they tried to learn all the necessary expertise required for becoming a civilized human being who would be able to embody social norms and behave as a moral model for others. During this process, Confucius’ group of Ru scholars maintained a relationship of friendship through mutual trust (信, xin) and common commitment. The cardinal responsibility for Ru friends was thus to urge one another to become better people（责善, ze-shan), and hence, ‘to help one another to cultivate the virtue of humaneness’ (辅仁, fu-ren, Analects 12:24). Ultimately, they would be trained as shi, serving in governments or local communities in order to help recover the earlier social order and bring about social harmony in a time of intense political turmoil and moral crisis. From the perspective of the five cardinal human relationships taught by Mencius, the role of Ru friends was to be seen as a back-up whose task was to urge one another to behave well in all the other human relationships.

After arriving at this point, we will feel no surprise when we read the teachings of Confucius, which were the basis for the ideas of Mencius. Confucius taught his students, and also his Ru friends, to serve in government, but only if the government was orderly enough to be serviceable, and to remain concealed if it was not (Analects, 8.13). Just as friends were to urge one another to do good, a minister should also remonstrate with his ruler if the ruler’s intentions and actions were not good. However, if frequent remonstration failed to work, the minister ought to resign lest further engagement bring humiliation, just as friends ought to break off the friendship if frequent moral exhortations fail to take effect (Analects, 4.26). By Mencius’ time, because the social collapse had gone deeper and further, these aspects of Confucius’ earlier teachings had to be more explicitly expressed. As a result, the nature of the Ru school as a scholarly community aiming for a non-violent transformation of individuals, families, communities and states, became more explicit.

In a word, Ruism has its own distinctive vision of good governance. The Dao of a Sagely-King (王道, wang-dao) is based upon and leads to the formation of everyone’s moral character. It is the result of trustworthy cooperation among all involved people, who are friends, and who use their virtues and merits to achieve a non-violent transformation of society. Once we have understood this, we can appreciate that Ruism has great value for contemporary democracy. A revisited Ru community will be more than helpful for improving the quality of democracy and bringing about social harmony, something still badly needed by our human societies.

Enjoy Perfecting, Not to Demand Perfection

On By Bin SongIn Counseling2 Comments
Audio: how not to demand perfection, by Dr. Bin Song
Video: how not to demand perfection, by Dr. Bin Song

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College.

In the previous units of “Foundations of Morality,” we introduced the distinction and procedure of philosophy as a therapy. What lies at the center of this philosophical practice is a commitment to good human living, for the sake of which, varying philosophies are mobilized by philosophical practitioners to nurture virtues as antidotes to fallacies of human thought.

As indicated by the clinical experience of philosophical therapy, there are a number of major thinking fallacies which frequently and seriously undermine the mental health of human beings. If remaining to be addressed, these fallacies can generate varying self-defeating emotions and behaviors. So, starting from this unit, we will focus upon several of these major thinking fallacies one after another, to define what they are, how they can be refuted, what virtue is needed to rectify them, and eventually, what philosophy can provide a remedy.

Let’s start from the fallacy of “demanding perfection” vis-à-vis the virtue of “metaphysical security.”

To put it simply, if succumbing to the fallacy of “demanding perfection,” a human would project a standard of ideal human living into objective reality, and insist upon the necessary congruence of the ideal with reality, to the result that if failing to achieve the congruence, human life would be thought of as not worth living. This resulted thought would cause varying negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, anger, and depression.

In previous units of the class, we have analyzed many cases for this fallacy of demanding perfection in our exercises. For instance, a son may demand that all his performances in school must get immediate approval from his parents so that he can validate his belief that he is a good child. A student may demand that none of her courses in a discipline should get a grade lower than B+ in order to re-confirm the validity of her choice of that discipline as a major. A lawyer may demand that none of her cases should ever be lost even if this means she has to manipulate the law and argue in opposition to her conscience. A youtuber may also demand that none of her new videos should get clicks less than her old ones even if this means she has to produce controversial and ethically problematic content. Conceivably, it is impossible to have objective reality conform to these varying standards of ideal human living. As a consequence, we can anticipate that it is almost necessary for all the people in these instances to suffer from a great deal of disappointment, frustration, self-doubt, and other negative emotions because of their irrational demand of perfection.

To remedy this thinking fallacy of demanding perfection, a philosophical therapist would suggest the virtue of “metaphysical security” as an antidote. To put it concisely, a person that enjoys the thinking habit of “metaphysical security” would feel at home, viz., have a constant feeling of security, rootedness and motivation, in a deeply uncertain and imperfect world. To parse it out, this virtue of “metaphysical security” would imply the following two key components:

Firstly, a metaphysically secured human being knows how to set a standard of ideal human living as high as possible so that the ideal can never be fully and completely realized in the real world. Since the ideal can never be fully and completely realized, it would be pointless to demand the congruence of the ideal with objective reality as implied by the fallacy of demanding perfection. And because the ideal would always lie steps further than any result established by human efforts, a metaphysically secured human being would simply enjoy themselves in the endless process of trying, reflecting, relaxing, trying again, and in a word, perfecting. During the process, failures would not be interpreted as a sign of unworthy life; rather, it is simply a needed nutrition for the perfecting human beings to learn from mistakes, to acquire new ability to adapt to evolving situations, and thus, to approach their high ideal in a more dynamic and enriched way.

To continue the instances we raised above, a metaphysically secured son would not demand immediate approval from his parents on all his academic performances, because he understands the process of perfecting is more important than the result of perfection. So, he would be very dedicated to his learning, while being patient to communicate with his parents so as to build a more enduring, understanding and trustful parental relationship. By the same token, a metaphysically secured youtuber would not tie the intrinsic worth of their life to the amount of attention they demand from social media. Rather, they would embed their video products within a larger and broader context of human life, and the value of this life would far surpass any amount of instantaneous attention that they can get from social media. So, in a word, if you tend to demand perfection, please give up the irrational notion that life can ever be perfect. Instead, set a genuinely noble goal, and have it continually motivate yourself in an endless process of perfecting,

Secondly, despite no genuinely noble goal of human life can be fully and completely realized in the objective world, it can still be made true in a partial, piecemeal and deeply satisfying way. In other words, a metaphysically secured human being would be sharply aware of which part of their life is under control, and they would simply enjoy the continually emerging results from efforts they spend upon things that succumb to their free will and autonomy.

For instance, it would be an extremely lofty goal for Buddhist practitioners to vow to save all human beings from sufferings, as the Buddhist teaching of universal compassion requires to; however, whenever motivated by the goal, any of a Buddhist practitioner’s determinations to actually save a concrete form of human suffering will lead to a deep feeling of self-satisfaction and fulfillment. In this case, it is not necessarily the result of the targeted human suffering being eliminated that brings the self-satisfaction, since many factors are out of human control in order to realize this result; instead, it is the self-motivated determination, dedication and process of acting and perfecting that matter the most to the practitioners, since whether to have this attitude of dedication entirely depends upon themselves. In an ultimate term, the awareness towards the sheer fact of being and living here and now already brings a certain degree of self-satisfaction to a Buddhist’s life since all beings, according to the Buddhist teaching, are interconnected; and the realization of all-interconnection is exactly what can eliminate human sufferings which derive from the self-isolation of each human individual.

So, in a word, rather than demanding perfection, we should simply enjoy the process of perfecting. And while in the process of perfecting ourselves, we are simultaneously being motivated by a sublime, never fully realized goal, and being satisfied by our partial, piecemeal and solid accomplishments. If putting ourselves into this balanced growing mindset and behaving ourselves accordingly, we would nurture a virtue of “metaphysical security” to live peacefully and joyfully in a deeply uncertain and imperfect world.

There are many world philosophies and religions that can help to nurture this virtue of “metaphysical security.”

Apart from the mentioned Buddhism, there is a common methodology on how to treat ideals in varying world religions. On the one hand, religions quite often prescribe sublime, transcendent goals which no humans can fully, completely, and everlastingly fulfill. Think about the Christian goal of being God-like; yes, humans can be God-like, but none of us can be a God. However, on the other hand, religions also provide methods of ritual-performance, spiritual practice, and communal living so as to make sure that those sublime goals are not completely out of reach. For instance, I believe many church-goers would not deny the good intention and warm feeling towards other human fellows which they can nurture in varying ceremonies and rituals. These nurtured inner-feelings and their corresponding actions are how the sublime religious goals are realized partially and momentarily.

Not only religions, philosophies can also help. For instance, the principle that we focus upon controllable things while remaining indifferent to things out of control is the golden rule in ancient Stoicism. And Confucius once described his mental state when he turned into 50s in such a way that he knows his mandate of heaven. This means that, firstly, he knows his ultimate goal of human life, viz., an awareness of a mission to continually motivate his life; secondly, he knows the limit of human life. These are factors of human life that are not succumbing to his control. And thirdly, he knows his talent and what he can do to better his life and the society. Overall, Confucius teaches his students to perfect their talents to continually fulfill the mission of their life, while both acknowledging and trying best to overcome obstacles down the road. In this way, to nurture the virtue of metaphysical security, Confucianism would work together with Stoicism to provide inspiring philosophical wisdom.

So, my friends and students, what philosophy and religion fit you to help you nurture the virtue of “metaphysical security” in face of this deeply uncertain and imperfect world? I would like to hear you and look forward to being inspired by your answers.

Required Readings:

Elliot Cohen, The New Rational Therapy, pp. 27-45.
Elliot Cohen, Logic-Based Therapy and Everyday Emotions, pp. 30-34.

Quiz:

(1) According to Confucius, what are the meaning of “mandate of heaven” for human individuals?

A, each individual has their mission of life.
B, each individual has their talent to discover and nurture.
C, each individual needs to acknowledge the limit and obstacles of their life.
D, each individual is determined by an uncontrollable cosmic power to be in a certain situation.

(2) For Thomas Aquinas, human excellence is different from perfection, and he used a metaphor to describe the distinction: “shooting for the stars” is a method of self-improvement, but you cannot demand to land on them. Is this statement true or false?

(3) We may “fail to perceive the beauty of a total pattern in which the particular parts, which seem ugly to us, blend in so harmonious and beautiful a way.” And this view can be used to remedy our demand for physical perfection. Which philosophers hold this view?

A, Augustine,
B, Thomas Aquinas
C, Socrates

(4) To remedy the fallacy of demanding perfection, Spinoza suggests to change people’s absolutistic, unrealistic, musts and shoulds to ()

A, Preferences.
B, Illusions.
C, Visions.

(5) According to Stoic philosopher Epictetus, what are not under human control?

A, our body
B, property
C, reputation
D, office
E, everything that is not our own doing.

(6) Have you ever demanded perfection to your life? If you have, if your friends/family did that, what’s your philosophical advice to yourself or them?