(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.

Ritual-abiding or goodwill? A Confucian Question.

If we have to use one unit to focus on Confucius’s thought, we should do so about the concept of Ren, translatable as humaneness, humanity, benevolence, kindness, goodwill, etc.

The reason I said so is due to the historical situation that Confucius was facing when he tried to revive the Zhou ritual system to regain the peace of society in his time. Rituals, understood in the broad Ruist sense of “civilizational conventions,” changed since they are after all “conventions”. Even if we assume that none ritual prior to Zhou had never been considered by Confucius (which may be not accurate since he frequently mentioned ancient stories and cultures in the Analects), there had already been 5 hundred years passed after the event of “Duke of Zhou made rituals and composed music.” Yes, in Confucius’s time, rulers of states frequently usurped power to perform rituals that were supposed to be solely performed by the emperor. In this case, it was clear to Confucius what rituals these local lords should not perform and thus, he also condemned these hegemons relentlessly. (Analects 3.1) However, for rituals that are of less outstanding status, people in different times and places are just doing them differently, or in certain cases, people may stop doing them even if scholars can find the historical evidences of these abandoned rituals. Therefore, in order to teach rituals to his students to serve a distinctive social and political purpose, Confucius must have been delved into a quite serious, systematic thought about the origin, function and purpose of ritual in general, so that he could have a standard to advocate certain rituals over others, and in certain circumstances, even to invent rituals fit for his time. A visible instance on the creative ritual practice of Confucius can be found in those analyzed educational principles (please look into unit 6 of the course) that Confucius implemented in the first private school he founded.

So, what is the origin, function and purpose of ritual?

Regarding the origin of ritual, Confucius said, once ritual is lost, we should seek it in the wild field, which means seeking it in the uncultivated, non-urban areas where people still keep their naturally kind and warm-hearted dispositions. (Analects 11.1) He also likened the creation of ritual to drawing pictures on a plainly white canvas (Analects 3.8), and this means that only when we possess a solid foundation of those inborn dispositions of human beings, we can start to design rituals based upon it. In a more concrete term, when he explained why, in his time, people needed to mourn for three years after their parents passed away, Confucius said that people normally “derive no pleasure from the food that they eat, no joy from the music that they hear, and no comforts from their dwelling” after their parents die (Analects 17.21), and therefore, they need a ritual to perform and abide by to help them to go through this difficult time of deep grieving.

So, in the view of Confucius’s, rituals are needed to express and manifest the naturally given inner dispositions of human beings. This view is highly understandable even from today’s perspectives; for instance, we normally get excited, or feel somewhat different about ourselves when our birthday is approaching. It seems that we need something to mark this day, to celebrate what is meaningful to us, and also to project a conceivable future. All of these constitute the rationale of the perhaps most performed rituals of birthday party all over the world.

However, although rituals manifest the inner dispositions of humanity, they can also discipline and refine the latter. The Analects 12:1 noticeably instructs that “Humanity is realized through enabling oneself to return to ritual-propriety,” and also that “Look not at what is contrary to ritual-propriety; listen not to what is contrary to ritual-propriety; speak not what is contrary to ritual-propriety; make no movement which is contrary to ritual-propriety.” Given all our previous discussions of the significance of 禮, it is not difficult for us to understand this aspect of Confucius’s thought. Yes, the inner dispositions of humanity, no matter how naturally good they are, can serious go over their due measure, and become harmful. Think about the aforementioned mourning ritual, if there is no such a ritual to refine people’s natural feeling of grief, this feeling may be indulged for too long a period of time, and for too intensive a degree. If this happened, the community surrounding the grieving person might not have any means to interact the person, and the ordinary activities in that person’s life can also be greatly undermined. The same goes to every “goodwill” that human individuals may have towards certain aspects of life. For instance, I habituate myself to getting up early in the morning, and reading and writing as a scholar; however, in order to regather myself and maintain my creativity, I also drink a cup of coffee, do some meditation, and walk around the neighborhood every one or two hours when I am writing. If I only have a goodwill to balance the stillness and activities of my body without a routinely, materialized way to do it, the goodwill cannot be made true, and whether I have this goodwill at all can also be doubted.

Since ritual both manifests and refines inner dispositions of humanity, when these inward and outward aspects of human living hit a perfect balance and harmony, Confucius has an overall term to describe this ideal state of human character and personality: 仁, the virtue of humanity or humaneness.

Confucius once says that “if a person is not humane, what do they do with ritual-propriety? If a person is not humane, what do they do with music?” (Analects 3.3) So, to acquire the virtue of humaneness is the ultimate purpose of ritual performance. However, ancient Chinese characters normally have a cluster of meanings to apply in varying contexts. Treated as one among many virtues that Confucius advocated in the Analects, the virtue of humaneness refers to the sincere goodwill of human beings whenever we conduct ourselves kindly and benevolently in varying human relationships. However, seen as the cardinal human virtue on top of all virtues, the virtue of humaneness means “to love both oneself and the people” so as to fulfill the distinctive and all-encompassing human love in a cosmic consciousness. In other words, universal human love is how we realize what human beings can best achieve in an endlessly creating and renewing cosmos. Understood in both the minor and major meanings, the virtue of humaneness relates to rituals in a way that I can summarize as follows: Humaneness is the ontological origin, and existential purpose of ritual, while ritual both manifests, refines, and helps to nurture the virtue of humaneness. With this standard of ritual-propriety been set, Confucius can then select, invent and teach rituals in his school as a bunch of examples in this regard are indicated in the Analects.

Last but not least, among all the ways of ritual-propriety that Confucius thinks can help to manifest and realize the virtue of humaneness, there is one that stands prominently. Confucius called it “the method of practicing humaneness” and instructed his students to employ this method uninterruptedly for their whole life. (Analects 15.24) This is normally called the “golden rule” of ethics in the Confucian case. It has three major, inter-related aspects:

• Firstly, the negative golden rule, which is told by 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.

Given our previous analysis of the relationship between ritual-propriety and humaneness, we will understand that none of these three aspects can be implemented separately. For instance, if you merely refuse to impose to others what you do not want to be imposed, but not proactively care and promote the well-being of your human fellows, your “humanity,” viz., the full potential to be a thriving human, will be greatly undermined. Most importantly, in mere reliance upon these three golden rules, we cannot become genuinely humane either. That’s because the implementation of these rules, just as any other practice of ritual-propriety, originates from the inner and deeper source of humanity, and thus, must be based upon the re-discovery and nurturing of certain aspects of our innately given human dispositions. For instance, if you do not like to eat American cheese, according to the negative golden rule, you cannot feed the American cheese to whomsoever. For starving and poor people who need the cheese and nutrition, this cannot be said as a humane deed. Therefore, the implementation of ritual-propriety must be based upon our good judgement of which naturally given pre-dispositions lead to the co-thriving of human fellows. In a Confucian term, this means the practice of ritual-propriety is premised upon and checked by our inner virtue of humaneness. In other words, the so-called golden rule of ethics can be best described as a silver rule according to a Confucian perspective.

The ritual-abiding behaviors alone cannot strengthen our goodwill to be a good human, while as analyzed before, the goodwill alone cannot guarantee us to be so either. An exemplary human should not let either aspect of the goodness of human life triumph over the other, and only when we reach an ideal balance between the raw and vibrant inner-dispositions and outward ritual-abiding behaviors, we can be called an exemplary human being, junzi. (Analects 6.18)

Required Reading:

Selections of Confucius’s sayings on humaneness and ritual-propriety in the Analects.

Recommended further watch:

Quiz:

1, Confucius never changed ancient rituals or invented new ones in his teaching. Is this statement right or wrong?

2, Confucius once said that in order to seek lost rituals, we should ask those seemingly uncultured human beings living in non-urban, wild field. What did he mean by this?

A, we should seek the manifestations of raw, inborn human dispositions.
B, Rural people are naturally more moral than urban ones.

3, Since Confucius advocated to “look, listen, speak and move in ways not contrary to ritual-propriety,” he would follow whatsoever rituals was prevalently practiced in his community and culture. Is this statement true or false?

4, The character 仁 have both minor and major meanings. What is the minor reference of 仁?

A, the sincere goodwill of humans when we perform rituals.
B, the cardinal human virtue of universal love as the ultimate purpose of ritual-abiding.

5, The character 仁 have both minor and major meanings. What is the major reference of 仁?

A, the sincere goodwill of humans when we perform rituals.
B, the cardinal human virtue of universal love as the ultimate purpose of ritual-abiding.

6, 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.

7, “Filiality and fraternal respect – are they not the root of humaneness?” Whose view does this belong to?

A, Confucius’s student, You
B, Confucius
C, Mencius.

8, There are so many cultures, subjects and knowledge to learn in a liberal arts college. Can you describe the standard by which you select some ones rather than others to learn? And what do you think is the ultimate purpose of learning all of these? Do you find any similarity between your thought and Confucius’s on ritual-propriety and humaneness? Please answer these questions using a couple of sentences.

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

We have spent the previous units to talk about the name, the entering text, and several pre-Confucian exemplary figures of the Ru tradition. Now, we finally get to Confucius, which the English name of the Ru tradition, Confucianism, refers to.

It was the Jesuits who gave us this name “Confucius” in around the 16th century. When they did so, they tried to pronounce how Confucius was honored by Chinese people at that time. Kong is the surname, and Fuzi, means “honored master”; so Confucius sounds like Kong Fuzi, and it was not the original name of Confucius. The original name of Confucius is Kong Qiu, and he has a style name called Zhong Ni. Qiu means a hill, referring to what the forehead of Confucius looked like; Zhong means that Kong Qiu is the second son in the family, and Ni refers to the place where Confucius was born, a hill called Ni in the state of Lu, the state that we have discussed as the place where the offspring of the Duke of Zhou were enfeoffed, and thus, it preserved many ancient rituals and cultures of Zhou Dynasty.

I get into these fair details of Confucius’s birthplace and his name because I want to express my general feeling towards Confucius’s life: Confucius is such a real figure that his down-to-earth humanity stands very prominently among the leaders or founders of major world philosophies and religions. Firstly, this very human profile of Confucius is different from founding figures in the Abrahamic religious traditions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam. From varying scriptures, we read a number of miraculous, nearly or fully divine deeds of these religious founding figures such as Jesus, Moses and Muhammad, which we barely find any resemblance in the case of Confucius. Secondly, the number of historical evidences we can gather about Confucius’s life and thought surpasses other legendary thinkers, the reality of whose life we can normally just guess and speculate. For instance, many scholars doubt whether we can know anything sure about the life of the Gautama Buddha, or the life of Laozi, the founder of philosophical Daoism.

However, this down-to-earth human face of Confucius does not mean that his life is merely human, secular, and thus deficient of all transcendent or spiritual commitment. As I will analyze in more details, the concept of “mandate of heaven” (天命) plays a significant role in Confucius’s life, and he indeed tried to live a meaningful and powerful human life with a cosmic consciousness towards what humans can and should do within the entire universe. In this sense, the person of Confucius indicates a lifestyle which we can name as “this worldly spirituality,” and for me, because the lifestyle seems naturally fit into many aspects of human consciousness in modern society, I find it very appealing.

The significance of Confucius to the Ru tradition is that he established the first private school in ancient China, and started to systematically study, teach and propagate ancient wisdom with an ultimate purpose of improving the society where he lived in. In other words, before Confucius, although legendary sages such as Yao, Shun and Duke of Zhou had furnished great wisdom for later generations to follow, all educational resources were monopolized by the government, and therefore, no commoner, which referred to people with no noble pedigree, could become an educated person. However, in the time of Confucius, the central authority of Zhou Dynasty was collapsing, and the official school system was crumbling. This situation furnished a historic opportunity for such a highly intelligent and dedicated human being, Confucius, to democratize the educational enterprise so that he could help his society through making education more accessible. This was unprecedented in ancient China, and in this regard, we can compare Confucius to Plato and Aristotle who opened the earliest schools of liberal arts in ancient Greece. This is also the reason why, comparatively speaking, we can have more historical evidences of Confucius’s sayings and deeds, since he had a large group of students and followers, and his main social activities took place within or in connection to his school. Because of the huge impact of Confucius upon the Ru tradition which he helped to continue and incubate, he was almost universally respected by whomsoever pursued their education in any school system in the context of ancient China. So, without any surprise, Protestant missionaries named the Ru tradition as “Confucianism” in the 19th century partly because of the universal respect to Confucius that these missionaries have witnessed among ancient Chinese people, although as I explained before, the name “Confucianism” is a misnomer.

Since the last topic to avoid in a course about “Confucianism” is Confucius, we will use two units to talk about Confucius. One is about his life and another is on his thought.

There is no better way to decipher Confucius’s life than his own autobiography. My teacher back at Boston, Prof. John H. Berthrong, once told me that this is perhaps the shortest, and also the most famous autobiography ever written by a human being, and it reads like this:

The Master said, “At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning (or, establish my will on learning); at thirty, I took my stand in society; at forty, I became free of doubts; at fifty, I understood the Mandate of Heaven; at sixty, my ears were attuned to it [or, I obeyed it (the Mandate of Heaven) ]; and at seventy, I could follow my heart’s desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety (or, without overstepping the due measures).” (Analects 2.4 – Translation based on Slingerland.)

Here, I will try my best to explain what Confucius looked like at each of these self-described stages of life. But I also highly recommend you to do the required reading, and watch the required video, so that you can get more details about how scholars have tried to confirm the details of Confucius’s life. So, let’s do it one stage after another:

Stage One: “At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning (or, establish my will on learning).”
Many books on self-care or success share a truism about human life: unless you want to be successful, you cannot be a successful person. The same goes to Confucius’s life. He said he established his will on learning, and after 60 years of ceaseless learning (Confucius died at the age of 73, the year of 479 B.C.E), Confucius became the most learned person in his time.

There are several factors to stimulate Confucius’s will of learning.

Firstly, he was born in a declined noble family, and as the youngest son of a concubine to his father, he definitely harbored a will to recover his family’s honor. This will was best represented by one story in his earlier life. It was told by Si Maqian that when Confucius was a teenager, he tried to approach the noble family of Ji Sun, a man that held a great power in the state of Lu, to find needed connections to strengthen Confucius’s own career. However, because Confucius was merely a son of a concubine, and hence, not noble enough, he was rejected. To his great dismay, Confucius realized that he could not rely upon his pedigree to get a stand in the society, and thus, he set his mind upon learning so that he can become a successful man through his own endeavor and hard-working.

Secondly, the city where Confucius was raised in was the capital of the state of Lu, where many ancient rituals and cultures were preserved since the offspring of the Duke of Zhou were all enfeoffed in the state. However, Confucius was not allowed into official schools which at that time admitted students exclusively from noble families. Scholars guessed that Confucius’s single-mother, the great woman of Yan Zhengzai, must have played a great role to nurture Confucius’s interest in ancient culture. However, we do know that Confucius was mostly self-taught, and he just sought and tried to grasp any opportunity that he could learn from somebody or somewhere certain knowledge of the past of his country and culture. During the process, he also earned his livelihood while doing ordinary jobs such as being a bookkeeper of a granary and a shepherd.

Stage Two: “at thirty, I took my stand in society.”
Confucius once described part of the curriculum of his teaching as “Be inspired by poetry, stand on the rituals, and be consummate in music.” (Analects 8.8). Hence, when Confucius said he could stand in society when he was around his thirties, it means he commanded a sufficient amount of knowledge on the ritual system of the time so that he can earn his livelihood, raise his family, and thus, find a position in the society.

In a more concrete term, this means that after at least 15 years of self-learning, Confucius was learned enough to open his school. He taught ancient classics, and six arts (ritual, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy and arithmetic) to people from all backgrounds, and thus, prepared them to get hired by varying governments and noble families. During the process, Confucius could definitely charge his tuition, and became economically independent. To be a teacher, an independent thinker and scholar, and to be economically independent because of teaching and thinking, these were all entirely new phenomena in ancient Chinese history, and the accomplishment of Confucius in this regard cannot be underestimated.

Because Confucius took education as his major job, there were many verses in the Analects to indicate his wisdom on education. For instance, the following three principles of Confucius’s philosophy of education are my favorite. First, “learning without a constant teacher” (學無常師), which means you cannot blindly follow any teacher, but instead, you need to learn from anyone who may benefit your learning. Second, “teaching without discrimination,” (有教無類), which means education should be universally accessible to people of all backgrounds. It is said that a bunch of dry meat can be taken by Confucius as the tuition to accept one student willing to learn; but Confucius also had some extremely rich students such as Zi Gong, a merchant coming from the state of Wei. This speaks to the fact that the admission policy of Confucius’s school was flexible, and as the first school builder in ancient China, Confucius was indeed dedicated to broadening the accessibility of education. Third, “A noble-minded person cannot be like a utensil” (君子不器), which means everyone needs to learn broadly to be a good human being at first, and then, to be good at a specific career to serve a specific aspect of human society. This is very congenial to the western tradition of liberal arts, and probably a major reason why I choose to teach at a very historical liberal arts college in the U.S.

Stage Three: “at forty, I became free of doubts.”
At the age around 40, Confucius gathered much reputation because of his teaching and knowledge. He also started to seek opportunities of serving in government in his home state of Lu and its adjacent state of Qi. One event that marked the maturity of Confucius’s knowledge is that the ruler of Qi once asked him about how to govern, and Confucius answered the question in a very concise way: “let the lord be a true lord, the ministers true ministers, the fathers true fathers, and the sons true sons.” (Analects 12.11) Since we already studied the Duke of Zhou, we find that Confucius’s saying is a concise re-statement of Duke of Zhou’s role ethics which was taken to be the key to all good human life and government: every human needs to shoulder their duty to fulfill their role in varying human relationships.

In a word, in the age around forty, Confucius mastered his comprehensive and principled knowledge on human affairs, and started to apply the knowledge to realms of practical human life. In this sense, he described himself as being “free of doubts.”

Stage Four: “at fifty, I understood the Mandate of Heaven.”
At the age around 50, there is a major upgrade of intensity and change during Confucius’s life.

Firstly, he got to work in the highest level of the state government of Lu, and broadly engaged himself in economical, diplomatic, and military matters. Because he was so successful as a statesman and increased the interstate influence of Lu, the adjacent state Qi tried to find all means to undermine Confucius’s position and the power of Lu. A cohort of courtesans were sent by Qi to the duke of Lu with a result that the duke indulged himself days and nights to totally abandon his state responsibility. This made Confucius realized that he had no more room to employ his political talents. He decided to leave his home state, and plunged into a journey of self-exile and wandering among states for another 14 years, with a hope that he might find an enlightened ruler to realize his political and social ambition.

Secondly, another decisive event for Confucius’s life around the age of 50 was that he started to systematically learn the Zhou Book of Change, 周易. This is originally a book of divination, but because it contains ancient wisdom of human life in a very condensed and comprehensive way, Confucius treated it mainly as a wisdom book to help him understand the position of human beings in changing societies and in the entire universe. If Confucius’s knowledge before he learned the Zhou Book of Change was comprehensive in the practical sense that the knowledge could serve concrete teaching and governmental jobs, his understanding of human conditions after he learned the Book of Change was upgraded into an all-encompassing cosmic consciousness.

Therefore, this is my understanding about why Confucius said that in his fifty, he could understand the “Mandate of Heaven.” Firstly, he knew his “talent,” viz., what he was good at and what he could contribute to society while establishing his own life in the society. Secondly, he knew his “limit”, viz., the practical obstacles that existed in his life to preclude his full flourishing. The dire political situation that his home state was trapped into definitely referred to this limit which urged Confucius’s departure. Finally, he eventually comprehended the “mission” of his life, so that he would fearlessly exile himself in varying foreign states so as to try his best to fulfill the ultimate meaning of his life. In a word, under a cosmic consciousness, Confucius was crystal-clear of his own talent, would like to try his best to both acknowledge and overcome the limit of objective conditions, and finally, to fight his best to continually fulfill the ultimate mission of his life. Compared to the trope of this term “Mandate of Heaven” in early Zhou dynasty which was mainly used to legitimize a political regime, Confucius’s understanding of the term is definitely more individualistic, more spiritual, and because of this, more relatable to contemporary readers.

Stage Five: “at sixty, my ears were attuned to it [or, I obeyed it (the Mandate of Heaven) ].”
The life of self-exile in order to find supportive and enlightened rulers is not easy. Confucius’s life was under serious threat in several occasions. However, at the age around sixty, all these difficulties strengthened Confucius’s cosmic consciousness on his “mandate of heaven” to a further phase, and the strengthened consciousness made him accept whatever may befall him with a total equanimity. For instance, when Huan Tui intended to kill Confucius, Confucius said: “it is Tian (heaven) itself that has endowed me with virtue. What need I fear from the likes of Huan Tui?” (Analects 7.23)

More importantly, regardless of those difficulties that either put Confucius in a life/death situation or drove him to seek tirelessly enlightened rulers, eventually of no avail, Confucius was firm on his mission and would like to do whatsoever ought to be done regardless of consequences. For instance, when a hermit mocked him to say: “The whole world is as if engulfed in a great flood, and who can change it? … Wouldn’t it be better to follow men like us, who avoid the world entirely?” Confucius’s answer was that “A person cannot flock together with the birds and beasts. If I do not associate the followers of men, then with whom I associate? If the Way were realized in the world, then I would not need to change anything.” (18.6). Similarly, he also forcefully encouraged his sometimes quite frustrated students in this way: “it is humans who can enlarge the Way, not the Way that can enlarge humans.” (15.29)

Therefore, with a firm belief in his Mandate of Heaven, Confucius accepted whatever may befall him in the evolving difficult situations of the 14-year self-exile with a total equanimity. In this sense, he can totally attune himself to the Mandate of Heaven without any doubt or complaint.

Final stage: “at seventy, I could follow my heart’s desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety (or, without overstepping the due measures).”
Confucius came back to his home state when he was 68. He was dedicated to studying ancient classics and teaching, and meanwhile, he was consulted on state affairs by the state while not pursuing any formal role in office. After decades of learning and practicing, Confucius was able to feel completely at ease with himself while still diligently pursuing those noble ideals of his life. So, in the age of fifty, he understood his mandate of heaven; at sixty, he obeyed his mandate of heaven; at seventy, he was his mandate of heaven, united himself completely with his mandate of heaven, without any second of his life to depart from the mandate.

However, this completely free and easy-going way of life is not without stress and grief. Several of Confucius’s best students died before him, his son also died earlier than him, and most importantly, until the end of his life, Confucius still didn’t find any enlightened ruler to help him to realize his political ideal. In many of these occasions, Confucius overwhelmed himself with the feeling of sorrow and grief to the effect that even his students were doubting whether his emotions were appropriate. (Analects 11.9). However, Confucius would say: when you need to grieve, grieve in the best and right way! That’s why he could follow his heart without overstepping the appropriate measure!

This is exactly the Confucius whom we were familiar with: a down-to-earth ordinary human with an extraordinary level of cosmic consciousness while never giving up his dream to make the world be better!

Required Reading:

Bin Song, “命 (Ming) – Mandate, Talent, Fate and Mission,” Huffpost.
Peimin Ni, “Life of Confucius,” in Understanding the Analects of Confucius (SUNY press, 2017): pp. 4-8.

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Quiz:

1, The birthplace of Confucius helps his early learning of the Ru tradition because

A, The Duke of Zhou’s offspring were enfeoffed there.
B, Ancient rituals and cultures were preserved there.

2, We get relatively more evidences of Confucius’s life in comparison to other founders of world philosophies and religions around the same time. Is this true or false?

3, Confucius built the first private school in ancient Chinese civilization, and broadened the accessibility of education. This becomes one of the greatest accomplishments of Confucius. Is this statement true or false?

4, what factors stimulated Confucius’s will of learning when he was fifteen?

A, He wanted to recover the honor of his family.
B, He could not rely upon his pedigree for his career.
C, His mother helped to nurture his interest in learning.
D, He lived in a historic and culturally rich city.

5, what principles of philosophy of education did Confucius advocate?

A, Learning without a constant teacher.
B, Teaching without discrimination.
C, A noble-minded person cannot be like a utensil.

6, “Let the lord be a true lord, the ministers true ministers, the fathers true fathers, and the sons true sons.” In what context did Confucius say these words?

A, to answer questions about governance and statecraft.
B, to answer questions about family ethics.
C, to answer questions about his own life.

7, “Mandate of Heaven” for Confucius means:

A, his talent.
B, the fate and limit of his life.
C, the mission of his life.

8, For Confucius, freely following his desires without overstepping appropriate measures means no stress, sorrow, or other seemingly “negative” emotions in human life. Is this statement true or false?

9, Please use a couple of sentences to write what strikes you the most in the details of Confucius’s life, and what you have learned from them.