Author: Bin Song

Xunzi: A Short Introduction

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment
Audio: A short introduction to Xunzi, by Dr. Bin Song.
Video: A short introduction to Xunzi, by Dr. Bin Song.

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song in the course of “Ru and Confucianism” at Washington College.

In this unit, we will discuss Xunzi, the last major Ru philosopher in the pre-Qin period of the tradition.

As indicated by my teaching experience, beginning readers of the Ru tradition in the west normally find Xunzi (circa. 310-235 B.C.E)’s thought quite congenial. This is mainly because in a way blatantly contrary to Mencius, Xunzi thinks human nature is bad, and hence, the process of education and self-cultivation should not be envisioned as a course of re-discovering and nurturing something that is already within us. Rather, for Xunzi, to be a fully human is to find a teacher of authority to inculcate rituals and rules from without, so as to transform one’s uncultivated inborn dispositions to something different. While presenting his moral philosophy, Mencius likes to use metaphors from the industry of farming to describe that moral development is like the process to prepare soil, sow seeds, grow sprouts and therefore, after all human efforts are duly executed, it would be up to the nature to take care of everything else. However, in a very contrastive way, Xunzi thinks the process of being humanized is like one to straighten a piece of shapeless wood using knife and file or to temper a chunk of metal stone using fire and water. In these cases, the craftsmen have to input their blueprints into raw materials so as to transform them into something with form and order. Emphatically, the power of transformation by no means belongs to those raw materials themselves.

Since Mencius thinks education is to rediscover and enlarge something that is innate to each human individual, the role of teachers, books, and all other pedagogical measures is best to be thought of as being facilitative and heuristic, rather than being deterministic. Therefore, regarding the Classic of Documents which was looked at highly by the Ru school, Mencius said that “I would rather have no such a book called ‘documents’ if I have to believe everything in it.” (Mencius 7B) Similarly, the most honored teachers in the Ru traditions are called “sages” or “sage-kings”; however, since the role of teachers for one’s education was thought of by Mencius as being facilitative and heuristic, he did not believe sages were flawless, perfect and semi-divine beings. Instead, he commented that sages actually share the same innately good part of human nature with every other human being, and the excellence of sages consists in their persistent will to perfect themselves once they make mistakes. (Mencius 2B). Most importantly, since he thinks the nature plays a significant role in the process of one’s humanization, Mencius is pious towards the all-encompassing “heaven” (天, cosmos), and describes the process of education as one of “preserving one’s heartmind, nourishing one’s human nature, and ultimately, serving heaven.” (Mencius 7 A)

Because Xunzi holds a fundamentally different view from Mencius on the point of human nature, he disagrees with Mencius on all the points mentioned in last paragraph as well. Firstly, since the process of humanization does not involve the facilitating role of the nature, the Ruist term, Tian (天), lost its religious connotation in Xunzi’s thought. Instead, Tian was understood by Xunzi as a purely natural process of life-generating; it provides the raw materials for human civilization to thrive. However, whether humans can manage and utilize these materials for their own purposes entirely depend upon human efforts. Xunzi claims that “Rather than following heaven and praising it, why not manage the mandate of heaven, and then, utilize it!” (Xunzi, chapter 17) Secondly, in Xunzi’s pedagogical and political visions, it is up to the teacher with an absolute authority who relies upon their extraordinary intelligence to perceive principles which harmonize the relationships among human and comic being. Therefore, it is also these teachers who design civilizing rituals and rules to transform ordinary human beings’ under-human, inborn dispositions. Accordingly, Xunzi thinks sage-kings, as the most honorable teachers in the Ru tradition, are impeccable, semi-divine figures, and people should never challenge their authority. For instance, when explaining why Yao and Shun did not need to abdicate their thrones, Xunzi denies that these sage-kings could be too old to retain their strength fit for a ruler. He says that:


“As for the Son of Heaven (such as Yao or Shun), his power has the utmost weight, and his body has the utmost ease. His heart has the utmost happiness, and nowhere his intentions suffer being turned back. …. Thus, when he inhabits the palace, he is like a supreme spirit, and when on the move, he is like a heavenly deity … And so I say: there is such things as old age for the feudal lords, but there is no such things as old age for the Son of Heaven.” (Xunzi, Chapter 18, translation adapted from Eric L. Hutton.)


In other words, since the entire country provides the best for their supreme leaders to preserve their life and execute their heavenly intelligence, none of them needs to relinquish their political power to others, and the country would be always governed in a superb way under their leadership.

After I sketch the differences between Mencius and Xunzi as such, I believe you would understand better why, at the beginning of my lecture, I reported that starting readers of the Ru tradition in the west normally feel congenial to Xunzi’s thought. This is because Xunzi’s conception of bad human nature and his related thought on human transformation and government are not only similar to the Christian narrative of human fate as deriving from original sins, but also to the fundamental tenet of liberal philosophy that the state of nature of human beings always involves problems, and thus, it needs a contractual process of sociality and governance to rectify them. Nevertheless, seen from the emic perspective of the Ru tradition, Xunzi’s view that rituals derive from the source of a super-human intelligence alien to ordinary human beings’ inborn dispositions is a significant deviation from his Ruist predecessors. Although it is a good philosophical question to ask which of the contrasting views of Mencius’s and Xunzi’s is the right one from a non-temporal perspective, we still need to contextualize Xunzi’s thought in its historical situation, and thus, ask ourselves: how did this deviation of Xunzi’s thought come about at the first hand?

In order to answer this question, it is helpful for us to recall all the major figures that our course has focused upon so far in the timeline since the beginning of the Ru tradition. They are the sage-kings Yao and Shun, the Duke of Zhou, the philosophers Kongzi (Confucius), Mengzi (Mencius), and Xunzi. From an institutional perspective, there were three different kinds of political regimes each of these figures lived in, and thus, the difference surely influenced how these Ru masters envisioned and articulated their Ruist ideals of human society.

In the time of Yao and Shun, the political institution is called the one of abdication, by which a supreme leader, while taking into consideration recommendations made by an assembly of tribal leaders, relinquished their power to a worthy human who normally did not share the same family name with them. The principle of Ru philosophy to embody in this institution is particularly “to treat worthies as worthy” (贤贤), or “to respect worthies” （尊贤）.

However, the institution of abdication cannot be sustained for long since if one tribe becomes much more powerful than others, it may just refuse to abdicate their political powers and instead, take on patrilineal inheritance as the new standard of power transition. This was exactly what happened after the time of Yao and Shun, and Duke of Zhou had furnished the best philosophical articulation of this new feudal system. In the ritual system designed by Duke of Zhou to fit the feudal society, members in the same royal family are enfeoffed; as local leaders, they need to pay regular tributes to the king, and in the time of war and other national businesses, they must follow their king as a supreme leader as well. However, on issues pertaining to the organization of their own states such as economy, taxation, hiring officials, policing, etc., these enfeoffed lords enjoyed a great degree of sovereignty and autonomy. As analyzed in the section on Duke of Zhou, two principles of Ru philosophy were represented in this feudal system: “to treat family as family” (亲亲) and “to treat worthies as worthy.” The implication of the latter principle in the feudal system is easy to understand since local lords and the king need to employ able men to staff their courts; however, the principle of “treating family as family” is particularly important since the power was distributed according to the order of seniority in varying familial lineages, and thus, it would be crucial for maintaining a peaceful political order of a feudal system to abide by a strict family ethic.

The elaborate ritual system designed by Duke of Zhou sustained Zhou Dynasty for quite a while. However, after several hundreds of years, the system was collapsing due to the same reason which once lead to the end of the institution of abdication, viz., in a feudal system, if local lords became too powerful, the king just could not control them. The time of Kongzi and Mengzi was such a period of war when those local lords once enfeoffed by the Zhou kings constantly fought each other. In face of the rampant social and political disintegration, the ideal of Kongzi, as it was followed by Mengzi, was to recover the original ritual system designed by Duke of Zhou. More distinctively, while transmitting ancient cultures, Kongzi and Mengzi distilled a philosophical kernel, viz., the transcendent virtue of Humaneness, from the Zhou ritual system, and hence, created new possibilities for the future development of the Ru thought.

Nevertheless, in the late stage of the so-called Warring State period when Xunzi lived his life, there was a new political institution created by the belligerent states located in the northwestern periphery of the Zhou dynasty. In order to understand the deviation of Xunzi from his Ruist predecessors, the impact of this new institution upon Xunzi’s thought cannot be underestimated. This is the institution of prefecture, by which the administrative power of a state is divided vertically, and the supreme leader retains their ultimate power to appoint officials in varying governmental tiers and to prescribe laws to manage varying offices. The system was designed solely for the purpose of centralizing authority, which turned out to be very effective to militarize a society so as to combat its external enemies.

In a strict sense, this system needs neither to “treat family as family” nor to “respect worthies,” since its political power is distributed among governmental tiers according to neither the pedigree nor the virtue of a governmental official. Rather, as indicated by the most powerful state structured by this institution of prefecture, viz. the state of Qin, which also became the first unified imperial dynasty after the collapse of Zhou, commoners were either rewarded or punished by a set of laws designed for the singular purpose of assisting the central authority to build the domestic order, provide supplies, and win battles against other states in the field. In the intellectual history of ancient China, the philosophy to articulate the rationale of this new system of prefecture is called “legalism,” and it became one most important trend of political thought contemporaneous to Xunzi’s Ruism.

When Xunzi visited the state of Qin, he was impressed by the order of its society and the effectivity of its government. He praised it as “to be at ease, yet bring about order; to act with restraint, yet take care of all details; to be free of worry, yet achieve meritorious accomplishment – such is the ultimate in good government!” (Xunzi, chapter 16). However, being aware of that such an effective governmental system of Qin was based upon an overtly military state ideology, and thus, lacked a moral foundation advocated by the Ru tradition, Xunzi also predicted Qin’s eventual perish.

Therefore, the overall intention of Xunzi’s thought becomes clearer to us after its historical situation gets clarified: in a time of unstoppable political crisis and social disintegration, Xunzi could by no means hold on to the original feudal system which once flourished in the time of Duke of Zhou. In this regard, he welcomed the creation of the system of centralized authority in the institution of prefecture with his full-heart, and saw it as a hopeful means to regain the unity and peace of civilization. However, while judging the prefecture system to have lacked a moral foundation, Xunzi tried to infuse the moral teaching of Ruism with the system so as to create a new type of institution to embody Ruism. While doing so, Xunzi modified the traditional Ruist conception of “rituals” according to the legalist standard of laws, and advocated that it is entirely up to the process of ritualization to transform the innately bad human nature. In other words, what Xunzi intended was to create a state ideology of Ruism to sustain the legalist institution of prefecture.

Since Xunzi’s thought can be understood as such, it will be of no surprise for us to re-read those deified depictions of Ruist sage-kings by Xunzi. Yes, in this Ruist system of prefecture, the central authority can only be envisioned as a supremely intelligent and virtuous human being who design the best rituals and laws to make the entire system revolve around their flawless political gravitas and moral charisma.

However, one final question we ask to Xunzi would be similar to how we would respond to Plato’s idea of philosopher king: is it ever realistic to expect that such a political and moral superhuman can ever be born throughout the entire history of humanity?

Mencius: A Short Introduction

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment
Audio: a short introduction to Mencius, by Dr. Bin Song.
Video: a short introduction to Mencius, by Dr. Bin Song.

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song in the course of “Ru and Confucianism” at Washington College.

When Confucius passed away, his students built schools and academies which furthermore ramified to varying lineages of philosophical and religious thought. Within these lineages, there is one which is particularly favored by later Ruists, and in the second millennium of imperial China, it is also enshrined by scholar-officials as the orthodox version of Ru thought, the so-called lineage of Dao (道统). Allegedly, this lineage started from all those sage-kings discussed by the previous units of our course, such as Yao, Shun, Yu, King Wen, Wing Wu, and Duke of Zhou, continued with Confucius, and then, was finally passed down to Zeng Zi, the immediate student of Confucius as also the alleged author of the text “Great Learning,” to Zi Si, the grandson of Confucius as also the purported author of the text “Centrality and Commonality”, and eventually to Mencius.

As indicated, Confucius, Mencius, Zeng Zi and Zi Si are the authors of four Ru classics: The Analects, Mencius, Great Learning, and Centrality and Commonality. Overall, these four books formed a new canon system, the significance of which in the second millennium even surpassed the Six Classics that Confucius originally taught in his own school.

However, starting from the 221 B.C.E, the beginning point of Qin Dynasty, Mencius’s status was not that prominent for the Ru tradition in the first millennium of imperial China. Yes, he was as important as being seen as a principal Ru thinker; his book was also taken as having furnished an important interpretation of Confucius’s thought. However, during this earlier period, this interpretation did not grant Mencius the title, the so-called “Secondary Sage” (亚聖), through which later Ruists honored him as the sage only secondary to Confucius.

Mencius - Wikipedia

Why so? Why were the emphases of the Ru tradition during the first and second millennia of imperial China different? The answer to this question can be explained as follows.

There were two vast, long-standing, and unifying dynasties during the first millennium, viz., Han and Tang, and somewhat in-between them was another long period of social disintegration and political division. Seen from a historical hindsight, the most significant moment for the Ru tradition in this earlier period was that under the efforts of Ru scholars in Han Dynasty, Confucius’s teaching was adopted as a state ideology, and thus, established its mainstream status in the intellectual and political history of ancient China once for all. However, this also means that Ruism was seen as a major resource for the statecraft and institutional structures of the emerging and developing imperial system of ancient China. More importantly, those impactful non-Confucian thought in the pre-Qin dynasty still existed and developed in their own terms (for instance, Daoism got established as a religion during this time); also, Buddhism migrated from India, and gradually took a strong root in Chinese people’s spiritual life. In face of all these competing schools and traditions, it took time for Ru scholars to learn, interact, and incorporate their thought. In other words, the politically mainstream status of Ruism and the increasingly diversifying intellectual landscape of ancient China made the Ru tradition predominately focus upon elaborating the “ritual” side of Confucius’s thought, rather than its inner-dispositional aspect of ethics and metaphysics. In other words, because Ruism was dedicated to constructing the political and societal ritual-system of imperial China and to confronting the influence of varying schools of thought, it had not yet developed its own all-compassing, holistic discourse which grounds those political and social rituals upon a sophisticated conception of human nature and furthermore, grounds this conception of human nature upon a cosmology which addresses the most generic features of beings in the universe.

However, the situation changes quite drastically in the second millennium, when the so-called “neo-Confucianism”, viz., the form of Ruism in Song through Ming dynasties, arises and gradually regains the mainstream influence in the areas of ethics, metaphysics, and spirituality. Intellectually speaking, the competition and interaction among Ruism, Buddhism, and Daoism prepare the formation of Neo-Confucianism, and what Neo-Confucianism succeeds to provide is exactly the sort of ethical-metaphysics or metaphysical-ethics that completes the two layers of “grounding” mentioned above. In comparison with Han and Tang Ruism, we also find that Neo-Confucianism systemizes the teaching of the “humane” side of Confucius’s thought, and thus, perfects the systemacity of Ruism into an unprecedented level.

Against this background of the rising of neo-Confucianism, it is easier for us to understand why the status of Mencius was also rising in the same period. That’s because Mencius’s thought provided the backbone elements for the all-encompassing ethical-metaphysics needed by the Ru tradition in that particular historical situation.

Now, let me enumerate several major points of Mencius’s thought to help you understand his major contribution to the Ru thought.

Human Nature is Innately Good.

As explained before, there are three aspects of the golden rule of ethics in Confucius’s thought: 1) the negative: do not do to others you do not want to be done, 2) the positive: do to others what you want to do to yourself, and 3) the corrective: treat people’s wrong-doing to yourself with justice. In another statement (Analects 15.3, 15.24), Confucius also insinuated that this rule is one singlular thread to run through all his teaching.

However, without knowing what one genuinely wants and desires, and thus, having a robust moral standard of right or wrong, we still do not know how to implement the rule. Confucius called the rule “the method of practicing humaneness” (仁之方, Analects 6:30), but without knowing the content of “humaneness” per se, the method has no substance to apply. In other words, without a clarification of what the genuine humanity consists in, the one singlular thread is just a formal string to connect no content.

To continue Confucius’s thought on the concept of “humaneness,” it was Mencius who furnished a systematic and substantial elaboration on what the “genuine self” of each human individual entails, and this also constitutes the most significant philosophical proposition in Mencius’s thought: human nature is innately good.

In a thought experiment (Mencius 2A), Mencius envisions every ordinary human being will spontaneously have a feeling of alarm and fright when seeing a baby about to fall into a well. Accordingly, if one does not act upon the feeling, they will spontaneously have another feeling of shame and disgust. If one succeeds to act upon those feelings and saves the baby, others will look at them with the feeling of respect and deference. Overall, these spontaneous reactions speak to the fact that every ordinary human being has an inner moral sense of right and wrong. So, these four interconnected feelings, the one of the commiseration of alarm and fright, the one of shame and disgust, the one of respect and deference, and the one of right and wrong, were thought of by Mencius as the manifestation of four character traits, viz., four virtues, which define the good part of human nature which distinguishes humans from non-human beings on the earth. And these four virtues are humaneness, rightness, ritual-propriety and wisdom.

Once clarified about what is their genuine humanity, what each human individual remains to do is to nurture and develop these moral sprouts in gradually expanding social circles: family, community, state, and all under the heavens, just as what the three-phase and eight-step program of the Great Learning indicates. For me, this is a very wise way to elaborate the concept of “genuine self,” because it is focused upon virtues and moral excellences, rather than any rigid prescriptive rule to dictate what we should or should not do. In other words, under the general framework of those definitive virtues elaborated by Mencius, each individual can develop their own stable character traits in different situations and regarding different conditions of their life, and this approach to envisioning human self therefore maintains a balance between certainty and flexibility.

In a more general term, I think of Mencius’s proposition “human nature is good” as being both descriptive and prescriptive, since it describes a fact that could happen to humans’ emotional reaction to a certain circumstance, viz., the stimulation of the aforementioned moral sentiments. Moreover, it is also prescriptive since it says that these moral feelings distinguish humans from non-human beings, and thus, everyone “should” hold on to them so as to re-discover and enlarge their humanity.

Another very important nature of Mencius’s proposition, which learners of Ruism nowadays often overlook, is that it is a conditional, rather than categorical statement. It implies that only under certain circumstances, human nature is good. Two such conditions were articulated by Mencius: firstly, humans need to intend to re-discover and maintain our good human nature in terms of seeking education and self-cultivation. (Mencius 4A) Secondly, the societal environment needs to be just and peaceful so that the good part of human nature is encouraged and practiced. (Mencius 6A) More interestingly, Mencius had a very unique thought to connect varying contemplative practices such as sleeping and meditation to his moral philosophy, and hence, this leads to the second most important point of Mencius’s thought:

Sleep well, Breathe deeply, and then, Your Human Nature would be Good.

When addressing the question that since human nature is good, why so many bad things are committed by humans, Mencius thinks that this is like asking why a once verdant mountain can one day become barren. Mencius explains that if you continue to use axes and hatchets to destroy every sprout of plants naturally growing in the mountain, no matter how good the quality of soil is, the mountain still would not provide. By the same token, as long as one has a good sleep during a night, in the morning, they will naturally feel a clearer mind and a more sensitive heart to connect to beings in the world. In this case, people will be easier to feel their sympathy and co-existence with the world so that their innately good human nature is well-kept. (Mencius 6A)

Based upon this exhortation to nourish one’s “night vital-energy,” Mencius furthermore puts forward one most charming aspect of this thought: he is after all a mystic, and says that we should continue to nourish the nightly and early-morning sort of vital-energy up to a point when we can feel a union with the entire cosmos through the medium of these all-pervasive vital-energies, to which Mencius gave a remarkable name: the Oceanic Vital-Energies (浩然之氣, Mencius 2A).

In other words, Mencius states that human nature is and should be good, since, as analyzed, the statement is both descriptive and prescriptive. But why can it be good in the final analysis? That’s because humans evolve from the constantly life-generating process of the cosmos (天). Since the cosmos creates constantly and all-inclusively, each human individual, as a result of cosmic creation, can also take care of themselves and other cosmic beings because ultimately, every being in the universe is interconnected through the all-pervasive oceanic vital-energies.

Because humans are envisioned as being endowed by the cosmos with a mission to manifest the all-creating cosmic power in the human world, Mencius articulates his understanding of human fate, which leads to the third most important point of his thought:

Await, Straighten and Establish Your Fate: a Quasi-Stoic Point in Mencius’s Thought

Similar to the ancient Greek Stoic thought, Mencius believes that a joyful, peaceful, and flourished human life consists in distinguishing what can from what cannot be controlled by human beings. So, fame, wealth, property, approval from others, all of these cannot be fully controlled by human efforts. There is a fatalist element of human life to determine whether one can obtain these things or not. However, Confucius once commented, “whenever I desire to be humane, I can be humane.” (Analects 7.30) Similarly, Mencius thought that whether one can practice good sleeping, breathe deeply to keep mindful and nurture one’s inner energy, and hence, be dedicated to cultivating the aforementioned four virtues rooted in one’s inborn moral sentiments is completely under human control. Therefore, Mencius taught that the focus of an exemplary human’s life should be upon these controllable elements of learning and moral self-cultivation. (Mencius 6A, 7A, 7B) In time, the accumulated efforts of self-cultivation will lead to a feeling of self-contentedness and constant joy no matter what situation one happens to enter.

However, in a slightly different mode from the Stoic counterpart, Mencius also believes that if one constantly focuses upon learning and self-cultivation, viz., the aspect of human life that is under our control, we can gradually change the seemingly uncontrollable aspects of human life as well. In Mencius’s term, this is to “wait for one’s fate.” (俟命, Mencius 7B) In this way, since we choose the right aspects of human life to focus on, Mencius also described the resulted situation of human life as “straightening our fate” (正命, Mencius 7A) ; eventually, we humans can also “establish our fate” (立命, Mencius 7A) in the sense that we fulfill the potential of being a human to the greatest extent, and thus, try our best to serve our cosmic consciousness which aims to advance the life-affirming power of the cosmos in the human world.

So, in a word, if I have to use one sentence to summarize Mencius’s thought in light of its significance in Neo-Confucianism, I will do it as follows:

Find your genuine self in terms of four cardinal virtues, cultivate them using all contemplative practices, and eventually, establish the right path of your fate to fulfill the intimate position of your human life within the cosmos.

Required Reading:

Selections from the book of Mengzi (translated by Bryan Van Norden).

Quiz:

1, Which of the following figures were included in the “lineage of Dao” in Neo-Confucianism:

A) Duke of Zhou
B) Confucius
C) Mencius
D) Xunzi

2, What are the foci of Ru scholars in the first millennium of imperical China?

A) To build the political and social ritual-systems.
B) To interact with varying schools and traditions of thought.
C) To be dedicated to systemizing the ethical-metaphysics of Ru thought.
D) To be dedicated to elaborating the “humane” side of Confucius’s thought

3, Which of the following terms can be used to describe Mencius’s statement that “human nature is good”?

A) Descriptive
B) Prescriptive
C) Categorical
D) Conditional

4, Which of the following moral sentiments are thought of by Mencius as being innate for human beings?

A) Commiseration (fright and alarm)
B) Shame and disgust
C) Right and wrong
D) Respect and yield

5, Which of the following belong to Mencius’s attitude towards human fate?

A) To wait for one’s fate.
B) To straighten one’s fate.
C) To establish one’s fate.
D) To blindly obey one’s fate.

6, please pick up one point of Mencius’s views, and argue your own view about it.

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?