Author: Bin Song

The Stirring Ghost of Chen Duxiu (1879-1942 C.E) Needs a Rest

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

(This article was once published in Huffpost, November 2017: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-stirring-ghost-of-chen-duxiu-1879-1942-ce-needs_b_59fa0817e4b09afdf01c3fb0.)

Although Ruism (Confucianism) is experiencing a powerful revival in mainland China and is consequently radiating across Asia and other parts of the world, a suspicion towards it still haunts many people’s mind. This can be seen in frequent reports in English news cycles which either ignore or misrepresent the basics of Ruism. For example, these reports usually present profiles of Ruism containing ideas such as: the Ruist idea of “filial piety” (Xiao) requires blind obedience of children to their parents; Ruism is essentially an ideology of feudal society used by authoritarian governments to manipulate their political power; Ruism oppresses women and other gender minorities; Ruist education stifles creativity, etc.

These attacks, issued by people with limited knowledge of Ruism, are neither true nor new. They share one common point of origin: Chen Duxiu and the so-called May Fourth and New Cultural Movement in the 1910s of China. The movement was launched by radical anti-Ruism Chinese intellectuals who accused it of anything and everything wrong with traditional China. For these intellectuals, Chinese people needed to completely replace their Ruism-hardwired thought with Western thought in order to keep China from being conquered and eliminated by Western colonial powers. Therefore, I must conclude that the greatest obstacle to the contemporary revival of Ruism is that the ghost of Chen Duxiu still stirs in the world.

Chen Duxiu was by far the most impactful anti-Ruist intellectual in the May Fourth and New Cultural Movement. He created the movement’s leading journal of “New Youth 新青年” in the 1910s to champion and propagate the Western ideas of “democracy” and “science”, which he thought of as representing the apex of human civilization. He founded the first communist group in China in the 1920s, and acted as the most powerful political leader of the Chinese Communist Party in its early stage. Most importantly, unlike many contemporary intellectuals who regretted their anti-Ruism thoughts in their elder years, Chen Duxiu’s anti-Ruist stance remained unchanged until his death. As a result, Mao Zedong recognized that Chen Duxiu had played a decisive role in transforming Chinese society from backwards feudalism to modern capitalism and then, ultimately, to a coming “brave new world” of socialism. Mao, in 1919, stated: “May Master Chen Duxiu’s utterly firm and absolutely sublime spirit live for thousands of years!” and in 1942 recognized him as “the Commander-in-Chief of May Fourth Movement.”[1] In hindsight, it is not surprising why Mao had such a high evaluation of Chen Duxiu, which was a rare occurrence for Mao’s contemporary intellectuals at the time. It was Chen Duxiu who helped to introduce Mao to communist thought from the Soviet Union, and it was also Chen Duxiu who finally converted the young Mao (in his late 20s) into a staunch believer in communism.

Therefore, as seeded in Chen Duxiu’s provocative journal essays in the 1910s and approved by Mao, and as a central ideology of the Chinese Community Party until the 1980s, the radical anti-Ruist thought ran consistently throughout most of the history of China in the 20th century.

Nevertheless, for our understanding of Ruism’s contemporary revival, a crucial philosophical question remains to be asked: Is Chen Duxiu’s anti-Ruism correct?

Triggered by the deteriorating conditions of the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911 C.E), and also inspired by social Darwinism, Chen Duxiu held an extremely dualistic view between pre-modernity and modernity, between the East and the West. Chen viewed Ruism as essentially a pre-modern, feudal, system of thought which had nothing in common with “science” and “democracy”, the two central tenets of modern human civilization. Unfortunately, in the remaining part of this essay, we will see that Chen Duxiu’s anti-Ruist arguments were neither accurate nor self-coherent.

When Chen Duxiu talked about democracy, he mainly referred to the European Enlightenment philosophers, such as Rousseau and his theory of social contract, which inspired the French Revolution and led to the establishment of the modern French republic. According to Chen Duxiu, France’s great democratic achievement was based upon those Enlightenment philosophers’ unflinching defense of the autonomous and free use of human reason, and the accordingly inalienable political and social human rights of each individual.

In contrast, Chen Duxiu viewed the traditional Ruist ethical teaching of the “Three Bonds 三綱” (between rulers and ministers, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives) as incompatible with these democratic moral values. In Chen’s mind, the Ruist ethic of the “Three Bonds” requires that persons of a lower rank blindly obey those of a higher rank and, therefore, it is essentially an ethic designed to enslave, allowing the elite to misuse their authority and solidify an unjustifiable feudal hierarchy.

Chen Duxiu’s argument is wrong on at least two fronts. First, it is unwarranted to identify the ethic of the “Three Bonds” as representing the essence of Ruism. The doctrine of the “Three Bonds” was formulated in Dong Zhongshu’s Chunqiu fanlu (Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals) and Ban Gu’s Baihutongyi (A General Discourse on the Meeting at White Dragon) in the Han Dynasty (202 B.C.E – 220 C.E). These Ruist thinkers distilled all relevant elements of pre-Han Chinese thought in an attempt to adjust Ruism to a new political and social situation. In other words, this ethic didn’t even exist in any pre-Qin classical Ruist text (including the well-known Analects of Confucius and Mencius). Since this is the case, it is impossible to use the ethic to epitomize Ruism. Second, even if we can take the “Three Bonds” as a sort of essential Ruist ethical teaching, neither of the texts mentioned above ever taught that ministers, children, or wives should “blindly obey” their counterparts. In actuality, the Ruist ethic of the “Three Bonds” requires that, although someone usually takes a leadership role, all persons have a particular role to play and a special responsibility to fulfill in order to maximize the benefits of everyone involved in a particular relationship. This includes moments when a person in a lower political or social rank sees someone of a higher rank do something wrong, the person is obliged to denounce and rectify it in an appropriate and efficient way. Accordingly, a great portion of the two aforementioned texts are dedicated to exploring effective ways for ministers, children, and wives to “remonstrate” (谏) against their counterparts’ wrong doing. From today’s perspective, it is indeed inappropriate to conceive of the relationship between husband and wife as hierarchical. However, if we focus on the social situation when the ethic was formulated and promoted, we will find that it conveys a perennial wisdom on how to deal with human relationships: no matter who we are, in whatever relationship, we need to follow rules, abide by virtue and, thus, fulfill a responsibility to bring maximum harmony to all parties involved. Quite obviously, the implementation of this ethic requires strong individuality in the sense that each individual needs to learn, manage, and discipline themselves in order to recognize and rectify potentially harmful behaviors in their counterparts, thus creating a sustainable condition of social harmony.

In this sense, Chen Yinque (1890-1969 C.E), a great historian and contemporary of Chen Duxiu, once acclaimed the ethic of the “Three Bonds” as representing the best of ancient Chinese ethical wisdom, as it champions individuals’ “independent spirit and free thought 獨立之精神，自由之思想” within varying human relationships. In other words, the “Three Bonds” ethic was not designed for slaves. Its Ruist kernel expresses a commitment of knowledgeable and conscientious individuals, i.e., the noble-minded Ruist persons (junzi), to moral autonomy and social harmony.

Chen Duxiu’s misunderstanding of the “Three Bonds” and his misjudgment on the incompatibility of Ru ethics with democratic values are also evidenced in his understanding of “science.” Chen’s idea of science as the second pillar of modern civilization was influenced by Auguste Comte’s positivism and Karl Marx’s materialist philosophy of history. He thought there are rules and laws governing natural and social phenomena, and in reliance upon scientific methods(such as the one of induction), Chen Duxiu believed that humans can generalize these rules and laws so as to make the subjective mind correspond to objective reality. This surely requires human individuals to freely use their reason to critically think of any established knowledge so that human science can be continually improved upon to become more and more able to map objective reality.

Ironically, although once lavishly lampooning traditional Ruist scientific naiveté towards the objective natural world in his early essays written in the 1910s, Chen Duxiu concluded his life-long anti-Ruism thinking in his last article on the theme of Confucius in 1937 in this way: because Confucius’ ethical teachings do not include any idea of ghosts, spirits or deities, his thought is in line with the spirit of critical thinking as embodied in the European Enlightenment which challenged the religious authority of the Roman Catholic church. Therefore, Chen acknowledged that Confucius’ thought may be helpful for Chinese people to accept Western science. However, because of the existence of the Ruist ethic of the “Three Bonds,” Chen Duxiu still thought Ruism was incompatible with “democracy” and, thus, Ru thought would be utterly useless in helping the Chinese people to embrace democratic values [2].

Nevertheless, the process of political negotiation in a modern democratic polity actually shares the same commitment to critical thinking and social collaboration as the process of rational criticism in any modern scientific project. In this sense, the values of “democracy” and “science” are generally closely tied together so that neither can function well apart from the other. In this way, Chen Duxiu’s final conclusion of Ruism’s compatibility with modern science and of its incompatibility with modern democratic values is incoherent in and of itself.

In brief, Chen Duxiu’s radical anti-Ruism attitude, which was emblematic of other key participants in the May Fourth and New Cultural Movement, was historically ungrounded and philosophically unwarranted. As a proponent of Ruism’s contemporary revival, I believe that Ruism, as a comprehensive and profound way of living, furnishes great wisdom to enable people around the world to positively engage modern life, and to perfect modern human civilization into a more desired form. In the face of all the “fake news” on Ruism, rooted in the radical anti-Ruist movement in the 1910s in China, we have to say: the ghost of Chen Duxiu needs to take a rest.

[1] 《毛泽东早期文稿》，长沙：湖南人民出版社，2008，279-282. 《毛泽东文集》（第3卷），北京：人民出版社，1996, 289.

[2] 陈独秀，“孔子与中国”，《陈独秀著作选》（第2卷），上海人民出版社，1993, 232.

(Editor: Don Li)

On Ren (仁, Humaneness)

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & Philosophy, Poetry TranslationsLeave a comment

Introduction:

I translate and annotate Zhu Xi’s “On Ren” to show how Zhu Xi understood the cardinal human virtue of Ren (仁, humaneness). In my view, this is one of the most comprehensive explanation of the virtue Ren in Ruism.

仁說

天地以生物為心者也。而人物之生，又各得夫天地之心以為心者也。故語心之德，雖其總攝貫通，無所不備，然一言以蔽之，則曰仁而已矣。請試詳之：

蓋天地之心，其德有四，曰元亨利貞，而元無不統；其運行焉，則為春夏秋冬之序，而春生之氣無所不通。故人之為心，其德亦有四，曰仁義禮智，而仁無所不包；其發用焉，則為愛恭宜別之情，而惻隱之心無所不貫。故論天地之心者，則曰乾元、坤元，則四德之體用不待悉數而足； 論人心之妙者，則曰“仁，人心也”，則四德之體用亦不待遍舉而該。

蓋仁之為道，乃天地生物之心，即物而在。情之未發，而此體已具；情之既發，而其用不窮。誠能體而存之，則眾善之源、百行之本莫不在是。此孔門之教所以必使學者汲汲於求仁也。

其言有曰：“克己復禮為仁”，言能克去己私，復乎天理，則此心之體無不在，而此心之用無不行也。 又曰：“居處恭，執事敬，與人忠”，則亦所以存此心也。 又曰：“事親孝，事兄弟，及物恕”，則亦所以行此心也。

又曰：“求仁得仁”，則以讓國而逃，諫伐而餓，為能不失乎此心也。

又曰：“殺身成仁”，則以欲甚於生，惡甚於死，為能不害乎此心也。此心何心也？在天地則坱然生物之心，在人則溫然愛人利物之心，包四德而貫四端者也。

或曰：“若子之言，則程子所謂愛情仁性，不可以愛為仁者非與？”曰：“不然。程子之所訶，以愛之發而名仁者也。吾之所論，以愛之理而名仁者也。蓋所謂情性者，雖其分域之不同，然其脈絡之通，各有攸屬者，則曷嘗判然離絕而不相管哉？吾方病夫學者誦程子之言而不求其意，遂至於判然離愛而言仁，故特論此以發明其遺意，而子顧以為異乎程子之說，不亦誤哉？”

或曰：“程氏之徒言仁多矣，蓋有謂愛非仁，而以萬物與我為一，為仁之體者矣；亦有謂愛非仁，而以心有知覺，釋仁之名者矣。今子之言若是，然則彼皆非與？”

曰：“彼謂物我為一者，可以見仁之無不愛矣，而非仁之所以為體之真也。彼謂心有知覺者，可以見仁之包乎智矣，而非仁之所以得名之實也。觀孔子答子貢博施濟眾之問，與程子所謂覺不可以訓仁者，則可見矣，子尚安得復以此而論仁哉 ? 抑泛言同體者，使人含胡昏緩而無警切之功，其弊或至於認物為己者有之矣；專言知覺者，使人張皇迫躁而無沈潛之味，其弊或至於認欲為理者有之矣。一忘一助，二者蓋胥失之。而知覺之雲者，於聖門所示樂山能守之氣象尤不相似，子尚安得復以此而論仁哉？”

因並記其語，作《仁說》。(《朱子全書》二十四册)

On Ren (仁)

The being of Heaven and Earth consists in creativity. When things and people come into existence, they are endowed by Heaven and Earth with their natures. Because of this, the human mind-heart—within which human nature is embodied—has virtues which embrace all, penetrate all and thus, lack nothing. Nevertheless, one word can sum them up: Ren (仁, humaneness). Let me try to explain in detail.

There are four virtues for the creativity of Heaven and Earth: initiation, permeation, harmonization, and integration. The virtue of initiation governs them all (i). In their operation, these virtues are manifested in the four seasons—the vital-energy of spring permeates them all (ii).

Correspondingly, there are four virtues for the human mind-heart: Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety, and wisdom—the virtue of Ren embraces them all. When these virtues come forth and function, they are manifested in the human feelings of love, obligation, respect, and judiciousness—the feeling of commiseration pervades them all (iii).

Therefore, when discussing the creativity of Heaven and Earth, if we simply say, “the initiative power of Qian (Heaven), the initiative power of Kun (Earth),” then its four virtues and their functions are encapsulated.

For discussing the magnificence of the human mind-heart, if we simply say, “Ren is what the human mind-heart is,” then its four virtues and their functions are summarized (iv).

So, the virtue of Ren is actually what the human mind-heart—which is produced and sustained by the creativity of Heaven and Earth—consists in. It functions when the human mind-heart engages with things. When feelings are not aroused, the virtue is already there. When feelings are aroused, it functions inexhaustibly.

If we can sincerely embody and preserve the virtue of Ren, then we have in it the fountain of all goodness and the root of all deeds. This is why the teachings of the Confucian school (Ruism) urge scholars to pursue, keenly and unceasingly, the virtue of Ren.

Ruism teaches, “Master oneself and return to ritual-propriety.”(v) This means, if we can eliminate selfishness, and recover the principle of Tian within ourselves, then this mind-heart will reach everywhere and its function will always be operative.

It also teaches, “Be respectful when you are at home, be dedicated when you work, and be trustworthy when dealing with people.”(vi) These are ways to preserve this mind-heart.

It also teaches: “Be filial when serving parents, be discreetly obedient when serving elder brothers, and be empathetic when engaging with all kinds of things.”(vii) These are ways to practice this mind-heart.

It also teaches: “(Bo Yi and Shu Qi) sought Ren and then, they found it.” (viii) This teaching is about Bo Yi, who declined a throne and left the state in favor of his younger brother Shu Qi. The brothers also remonstrated against King Wu’s rebellious expedition, and after failing to persuade him, they chose to starve to death. That they were determined to do this is because they didn’t lose this mind-heart. (ix)

It also teaches, “Sacrifice life in order to accomplish Ren.”(x) This implies that we desire something more than life and hate something more than death in order not to injure this mind-heart. What is this mind-heart all about? It is rooted in the all-encompassing creativity of Heaven and Earth, and in the human world, this mind-heart loves people and nurtures things. It incorporates the four virtues (i.e., Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety, and wisdom) and bonds together the four moral incipient sprouts (i.e., the feeling of commiseration, the feeling of shame and disgust, the feeling of deference, and the feeling of distinguishing right and wrong) (xi) .

Someone asked: “According to your words, is it not wrong for Master Cheng (xii) to say that love is a particular feeling while Ren is the human nature and therefore, love should not be regarded as Ren?”

I answer, “Not so. What Master Cheng criticized was to use the human status when the feeling of love is aroused to portray what is Ren per se. What I argued is to use the principle of love to portray Ren per se. For human nature and human feelings—although they belong to different existential spheres—connect to each other like arteries and veins in the same body (xiii). How can they become sharply separated and have nothing to do with each other? Scholars recite Master Cheng’s words without understanding their meaning to the extent that they even talk about Ren as being something separate from love. I worry about this, and therefore, made the above exposition in order to reveal the lost meaning of Master Cheng’s teaching. You think of my view as divergent from Master Cheng, isn’t this wrong?”

Someone asked, “The followers of Master Cheng have given many explanations of Ren. Some say that love is not Ren, and regard the oneness of all things and one’s self as what is Ren per se. Others maintain that love is not Ren, but explain Ren in terms of awareness possessed by the mind-heart (xvi). If what you say is correct, are they all wrong?”

I answer, “From what they call the oneness of all things and one’s self, it can be known that Ren involves love for all, but this oneness is not what is Ren per se. From the fact that the mind-heart possesses awareness, it can be seen that the virtue of Ren includes wisdom, but this is not how the Ren per se can be named. If you look up Kongzi’ answer to (his pupil) Zi Gong’s question whether conferring extensive benefits on and thus, helping all the people will constitute Ren (xv) and also Master Cheng’s view that Ren ought not to be construed in terms of awareness, you will see the point. How can you still explain Ren in these terms?

“Furthermore, if the oneness of things and one’s self is superficially talked of, that will lead people to be indistinct and inattentive so that no effort is made to keep alert. The harmful effect—and there has been—may be to mistake exterior things for one’s own self. If Ren is construed in the specific term of awareness, that will lead people to be anxious, impatient, and impetuous so that the process of moral self-cultivation lacks depth. The harmful effect—and there has been—may be to mistake one’s desire as moral principle. In the first case, the mind-heart is oblivious, but in the second case, the mind-heart is agitated and disturbed. Both are wrong. Further, as for the construal of Ren in terms of awareness, this view is especially incongruent with Kongzi’ teachings that a person of Ren has the temperament of loving mountain (xvi) and that only the virtue of Ren can preserve what human knowledge has been aware of (xvii). How then can you still explain Ren in this way?”

It is because of all this that I record their questions and compose this essay on Ren.

Notes:

(i) Tian (天, heaven) is an all-encompassing constantly creative cosmic power. Its creativity has four generic features: (1) Tian creates the world from nothing and initiates the world as a process of continual creation, and in this sense, Tian’s creativity is initiative (元, yuan). (2) Tian creates everything, so Tian’s creativity is permeative (亨, heng). (3) Everything created by Tian is and becomes together within Tian, so Tian’s creativity is harmonizing (利, li). (4) Tian creates the world as a whole, and also, every creature is endowed with a nature to integrate itself, so Tian’s creativity is integrative (貞, zhen). These four basic features of Tian’s creativity are called by Zhu Xi its four ‘virtues’ (德, de). Also, Zhu Xi uses “Heaven and Earth” to refer to Tian. This is legitimate, because seeing from the human perspective, Tian is manifested as two parts: heaven and earth. Tian’s creativity is accordingly manifested in the co-creativity of heaven and earth. Furthermore, Zhu Xi thought the virtue of “initiation” governs all other virtues. This is because without the initiative power of Tian, there would be no world, and as a consequence, all other generic features of Tian’s creativity would lose their ground. Zhu Xi’s thought is based upon the statement of the hexagram for Hexagram Qian in the Classics of Change (易經): “元,亨, 利, 貞”.

(ii) Principle (理, li) and Vital-energy (氣, qi) is a basic dyad of categories in Zhu Xi’s thought, which is arguably comparable to the one of Form and Matter in Greek philosophy. The most generic features of the four virtues of Tian’s creativity are referred to by Zhu Xi as the “Principle of Tian” (天理) in the later part of the essay. These principles of Tian are manifested in the action of the cosmic vital-force during the course of four seasons.

(iii) The feeling of commiseration (惻隱之心, the Mencius 2A), according to Mencius, is what one spontaneously feels when one sees a baby about to fall into a well. For Mencius, this is the moral incipient sprout of the cardinal human virtue of Ren, which Mencius thinks is what human nature is all about. For Zhu Xi, he maintains Mencius’s thought and thinks that the feeling of commiseration is also one incipient form of the human feeling of universal love. However, in a more delicate way than Mencius, Zhu Xi furthermore grounds the feeling of love upon the virtue of Ren, and then, in turn, grounds the virtue of Ren upon the all-encompassing creativity of Tian.

(iv) Here we encounter another basic dyad of categories in Ruism: Ti (体, living-substance) and Yong (用, function). The ti of a thing is what the thing per se consists in, while its yong is one thing’s manifested functions when it engages with other things. For example, using Zhu Xi’s example in his other works, the ti of an ear is the ear itself as one organ of human body, while the yong of an ear is its ability to hear. In the context of this essay, the human feelings of love, obligation, deference, and judiciousness are thought of by Zhu Xi as the yong of the four human virtues: Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety, and wisdom. Quite obviously, for Zhu Xi, every virtue has its ti and yong. For example, for Ren, its ti is universal human love which is rooted in the all-encompassing creativity of Heaven and Earth. But its yong is the particular human feeling of love, including, for example, the feeling of commiseration.

(v) The Analects 12:1.

(vi) The Analects 13:19

(vii) This quote is a combination of the Classic of Filial Devotion 孝經, ch. 14 and perhaps Cheng Yi’s teaching on empathy.

(viii) The Analects 7:14

(ix) Bo Yi and Shu Qi are sons of a king in a state during the Shang Dynasty. When their father left the throne to Shu Qi, he declined in deference to his elder brother Bo Yi, but Bo Yi would not violate the order of his father and therefore, chose to flee. Later, when King Wu (r. 1046-1043 B.C.E) overthrew the Shang dynasty in spite of their remonstration, and founded Zhou Dynasty, they would not eat the food of Zhou and starved to death. Their remonstration was arguably unjustified because King Wu’s rebellion was thought of by early Ru as legitimate since it aimed to overthrow a ruthless tyrant, the King Zhou of Shang Dynasty. However, because of the sense of duty that Bo Yi and Shu Qi showed to their father, to each other and to their country, their deeds were almost unanimously praised as being of high moral values by early Ru texts such as the Analects and the Mencius.

(x) The Analects 15:8.

(xi) The Mencius 2A

(xii) Master Cheng refers to Cheng Yi (1033-1107 C.E) or Cheng Hao (1032-1085 C.E), two pioneering Ru philosophers for Song and Ming Ruism who lived in Northern Song Dynasty.

(xiii) Xing (性, nature) and Qing (情, feeling) is another dyad of categories for Ruism. It corresponds to the aforementioned dyads ‘ti-yong’ and ‘li-qi’ in Zhu Xi’s thought. For Zhu Xi, human nature consists in the ti, also the li of the human mind-heart, viz., the four human virtues of Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety and wisdom. In relation, human feelings are the yong, the manifested functions of vital-energy, of human nature. For Zhu Xi, these two aspects of human existence can never be separated.

(xiv) These two views are perhaps influenced by Buddhism.

(xv) The Analects 6:28.

(xvi) The Analects 6:21

(xvii) The Analects 15:32.

(Figure: A Chart of Ren)
Commentary: 

In order to more clearly explain Zhu Xi’s essay, On Ren, I have created The Chart of Ren According to Zhu Xi (please see the below). Through reading the texts and pondering the chart, I believe at least three goals can be achieved for contemporary readers of the Ru tradition: (1) They will understand how the most analytic mind in the Ru tradition thinks of the cardinal human virtue, Ren, 仁. (2) The reading will dissipate their doubt that Ruism may be just a social ethics, without any substantial metaphysical dimension undergirding its ethical teaching. (3) They will understand none of these metaphysical terms or thoughts was borrowed from Daoist or Buddhist traditions, as many stereotypical sayings about Song and Ming Ruism claimed it to be. The truth is that Ruism is a continuous living tradition of “ethical metaphysics” or “metaphysical ethics”, from Kongzi, through Zhu Xi, until now.

With all the rich meanings of terms in mind, I will try my best to explain this chart briefly. In order to understand the chart, Ru learners need to start by following the arrows. Once understood, the chart could be contemplated from anywhere. So, let’s begin:

The nature of Tian is creativity. Creativity means initiation. The initiative power of Tian is manifested in the one of Heaven (Qian) and the one of Earth (Kun). There are four virtues of the creativity of Heaven and Earth: initiation, permeation, harmonization and integration. The virtue of initiation governs them all. These four virtues are manifested in the action of cosmic vital-energy during the course of four seasons. The vital-energy of spring permeates them all.

These four virtues are the principle and living substance of Tian’s creativity, while the four seasons manifest the vital-energy and function of Tian’s creativity. Therefore, for discussing the creativity of Tian, once we say “the initiative power of Qian (heaven), the initiative power of Kun (earth),” then both the four virtues and their functions are encapsulated.

The lower part of the chart is about human beings. It has a parallel structure to the upper section of the chart. Human beings are born from the process of cosmic creativity of Tian. Human nature is embodied in the human mind-heart, and it is the virtue of Ren. There are four virtues for the human mind-heart: Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety, and wisdom. The virtue of Ren embraces them all. When the human mind-heart is aroused and engages with things, the four virtues of human mind-heart are manifested as four human feelings.

There are two alternative ways to name these four feelings. For Zhu Xi, they are the feelings of love, obligation, deference, and judiciousness. For Mencius, they are the feelings of commiseration, shame and disgust, deference, and distinguishing right and wrong. Using Mencius’s words, these four feelings can be called the four incipient sprouts of human virtues. Zhu Xi’s alternative way to name the feelings derive from Mencius, but is more succinct. One apparent exception is the feeling of obligation, which is different from the one of shame and disgust. However, they are actually based upon the same virtue, righteousness—they connote different aspects of this virtue. When we feel we ought to do something, we have the feeling of obligation; but when we do something we ought not to do, we may feel shamed and disgusted by ourselves. Overall, the feeling of love or commiseration pervades all the other feelings.

The four virtues of human mind-heart are the principle, the substance, the nature and the non-aroused status of human mind-heart. The four human feelings for Zhu Xi and the four moral incipient sprouts for Mencius manifest the vital-force, the function, the feeling, and the aroused status of human mind-heart. Therefore, for discussing the magnificence of the human mind-heart, once we say “Ren, is what the human mind-heart is,” then both its four virtues and their functions are summarized.

Zhu Xi’s essay On Ren illustrates the cosmological root of the cardinal human virtue, Ren. In this sense, his thought could be seen as an ethical metaphysics.

( Translated and Annotated by Bin Song. Edited by Ben Butina.)

This essay has been incorporated into “Significant Figures in Confucianism (Ruism),” in Routledge Research Encyclopedia of Chinese Studies: Chinese Religion and Philosophy, ed. by Zhouxiang Lu (Routeldge, December  2023). A chart is also created for illustrating the concepts of Zhu Xi’s metaphysical ethical system in “On Ren.”

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The Height of Ru Spirituality: Gao Panlong (1562-1626)

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & Philosophy, Meditation1 Comment
Video Lecture: Ru Meditation: Gao Panlong by Bin Song.

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College, and I am talking of the Ru style of meditation for varying courses I am offering to the college on the topics of Asian and comparative philosophy, religion, theology and literature.

The ancient Chinese Ru tradition, also named Confucianism in English, experienced its second peak time in the second millennium of imperial China (which is approximately from 9th to 17th century C.E). This period of Ruism is termed as Neo-Confucianism in English. Using its original Chinese self-reference, I’d like to name this period of Ruism as the Daoxue movement (道學). Daoxue means the learning of Dao. Among many new traits of Ruism that the Daoxue movement embodied, the practice of quiet-sitting and other related forms of meditation stand out impressively. As influenced by the Daoist and Buddhist styles of meditation, the Daoxue movement developed its unique Ruist style. This style cares about the holistic well-being of human individuals, advocates social activism, cherishes a this-worldly oriented ethic, and is very friendly to intellectual analysis and integrative learning. In this talk, I’ll use the example of Gao Panlong to illustrate these distinctive traits of Ru Meditation.

In the introductory part of the assigned book “Ru Meditation: Gao Panlong,” I furnished a short biography of Gao Panlong. He was a typical Ru governmental-official who had dedicated his entire career to philosophy, community-building and politics. Among his many venerated philosophical accomplishments, Gao Panlong’s practice and contemplative writing of Ru meditation are particularly influential, and in my view, Gao is among the Ru scholars who has achieved the highest spiritual state of contemplative life in the Ru tradition.

Three traits highlight Gao Panlong (1562-1626)’s contemplative practice and writings:

Firstly, Gao’s understanding of the significance of quiet-sitting evolved throughout his life, and he also furnished rich phenomenological descriptions of his meditative experiences in varying genres of literature such as poetry and prose. For instance, his four five-character poems titled as “Chants for Quiet-Sitting” describes his sitting meditation in the mountains, on the river bank, among the flowers, and beneath the tree. These are really among the best contemplative poems we can find in the Ru tradition.

Secondly, living in the conclusive decades of the Daoxue movement, Gao sought to ritualize Ru meditation in a fixed format of time, place and agenda. For instance, his “A Syllabus for Living in the Mountains” and “Rule for a Seven-Day Renewal” (2018:19-26) describe how he conducts a meditative retreat respectively in a one-day and seven-day format. I once assigned my students at Washington College to come up with their own agendas if they had a chance to organize a spiritual retreat inspired by Gao’s, and the results are just lovely.

Thirdly, in the advanced stage of his contemplative practice, Gao conceived of the goal of Ru meditation as the achievement of “being normal-and-ordinary (pingchang 平常).” Resonating with the Centrality and Commonality (zhongyong 中庸), one of the four Ruist classics canonized by the Daoxue movement, the state of pingchang intends to execute the norm, viz., the varying pattern-principles (理, li) which indicate how diverse factors in a given situation dynamically and harmoniously fit together, in the ordinary moments of everyday life. In other words, a person of pingchang would try to realize the highest spiritual awareness within ordinary moments of their mundane life, such as how to conduct one’s morning routines, how to interact with human fellows in varying relationships, and how to be dedicated to one’s meaningful work for the benefits of oneself and others. In consideration of the prevalence of the emphasis by global traditions over the mysterious and extraordinary nature of meditative experience, the culmination of Gao’s contemplative philosophy in pingchang speaks to the this-worldly oriented spirituality of Ruism exquisitely.

Fourthly, regarding the method of achieving pingchang, Gao (2018:34) says, “in everyday life, whenever we don clothes, put on our hats, or see and meet with one another, we do so with order and decorum. Through this practice, our heartmind (xin 心) gradually trains itself over a long period, and then, just as gradually, it becomes normal-and-ordinary.” In other words, the sustaining practice of “reverence (jing 敬)” towards the appropriately ritualized details of everyday life leads to pingchang. More importantly, Gao thinks that one’s ability of discerning appropriate ritualizations depends upon the final and utmost endeavor of self-cultivation elaborated by the Daxue, viz., “investigation of things (gewu 格物),” since it is only via the investigation of things that the rationales of ritualization, viz., the pattern-principles of things, can be discerned.

The fourth trait highlights the distinction of Gao Panlong’s contemplative lifestyle from previous Ru meditators. In the Daoxue movement, there is a distinction of the lineage of pattern-principle led by Ru exemplars such as Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and Zhu Xi (1130-1200) from the lineage of heartmind led by Ru thinkers such as Wang Yangming (1472-1529). There would not be enough time here to elaborate their differences, about which I do encourage you to take on my more advanced level of courses such as the three hundred “Ru and Confucianism.” However, it suffices to say that Cheng-Zhu’s learning style is more externalist, since they predicate their Ru learning upon the investigation of pattern-principles of things in the world. Nevertheless, Wang Yangming’s learning style is more internalist, because Wang thinks the gist of Ru learning consists in recovering the pure moral intuitions which are already within the human heartmind. In Gao’s time, Wang Yangming’s influence was widely felt and kept rising. Gao Panlong, however, systematically refuted the critiques offered by Wang Yangming and Wang’s follows to Zhu Xi, and sought to strengthen the lineage of the Cheng-Zhu learning of pattern-principle. I will raise one instance as follows to illuminate such a distinctive role of Gao in the Daoxue movement. Once again, the following instance has a very dense philosophical context, and if some of my listening students feels it difficult to grasp the essentials of the addressed philosophy, please seek my other courses on Eastern Religions. So, the instance goes on like this:

As mentioned, Wang Yangming believes in the existence of an innate moral capacity of liangzhi, translatable as good knowing or conscientious knowing. In reliance upon the intuitive capacity of liangzhi to grasp pattern-principles of things in the world, Wang Yangming (Chuanxilu: 2) once employed the dictum “no pattern-principle exists outside the heartmind (xinwaiwuli 心外无理)” to repudiate the externalist and intellectualist tendency of Zhu Xi. For Zhu Xi (14 Zhuziyulei 3:298) once insisted that the knowledge of pattern-principles of realities ought to be obtained prior to one’s moral actions towards them. However, to refute Wang’s critique and clarify Zhu’s instruction, Gao Panlong (1773 8a:24) says, “Pattern-principles belong to the heartmind, and it is also up to the heartmind to scrutinize the pattern-principles. However, if the heartmind is not dedicated to scrutinizing (a pattern-principle), we cannot say that the heartmind has possessed the pattern-principle. If a pattern-principle has not been scrutinized, the pattern-principle cannot be deemed as belonging to the heartmind either. … Everything has its own norm endowed by Tian (heaven or the universe), and we humans just need to abstain ourselves so as to treat things as they are in our everyday life.” In other words, Gao agrees with Wang in principle that “no pattern-principle exists outside the heartmind.” However, Gao does not think that the pattern-principles are therefore able to be totally invented by the heartmind. Instead, only when the heartmind invests itself in scrutinizing the pattern-principles of existing things in the world, the ontological reference of “heartmind” can be deemed as equivalent to the one of “pattern-principle.” To highlight this outwardly oriented method of scrutinizing pattern-principles, Gao (1773 8a:3-8) insists that even the pattern-principles of seemingly trivial things such as a blade of grass or a piece of wood (yicaoyiwu 一草一物) ought to be investigated. This is because one would then be aware of how the life-generating power of the universe is concretely manifested in grasses and woods, and the awareness shall connect one to the power so as to nourish their own heartmind (yangxin 养心). This contemplative and self-nourishing attitude towards the investigation of outside things puts Gao’s thought in a direct opposition to Wang Yangming since Wang once famously told (Chuanxilu:120) that he turned into the inward learning of heartmind because he once failed so miserably to investigate the pattern-principle of bamboo trees using Zhu Xi’s method.

In a word, Gao Panlong exemplifies how a Ru meditator is able to do meticulous intellectual work and access the sublime experience of spiritual transcendence simultaneously. For students, scholars and professionals who are either working in or next to the environment of modern universities and colleges of liberal arts, I think such an approach to meditation of Gao Panlong would appear very appealing.

References:

Gao, Panlong 高攀龙. 1773. The Posthumous Works of Master Gao高子遗书. Qin Ding Si Ku Quan Shu Ben 欽定四庫全書本.
——. 2018. Ru Meditation: Gao Panlong (1562-1626). Translated by Bin Song. Boston: The Ru Media Company.

Wang, Yangming 王阳明. 1992. The Complete Works of Wang Yangming 王阳明全集. Shanghai: Shang Hai Gu Ji Chu Ban She.

A Chart of Ruist Virtues

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

(This article was firstly published at Huffington Post: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-catechism-of-ruism-conf_4_b_11607540.)

In several recent essays on dynamic harmony, the five cardinal human relationships and ten riciprocal duties, and the three guides and five constant virtues, I discussed many Ruist virtues. To help you understand the relationships among these virtues, I’ve created this Chart of Ruist Virtues. I encourage you to read the chart from the top down at first. (After you have a sense of the chart as a whole, however, you can contemplate it from any point.) Because I’ve already explained most of the terms on the chart in previous essays, I’ll focus here on the relationships between and among the terms.

The Chart in Detail

First, let’s discuss the Way of Heaven (Tian) (天道, Tiandao), which appears at the top of the chart. Tian refers to an all-encompassing, constantly creative cosmic power. Tian is the transcendent in Ruism. Literally, Dao means “the way,” but when these two terms are used together, Dao takes on a special meaning: it refers to the principle that runs through the all-encompassing power. By placing Dynamic Harmony (和, he) below The Way of Tian, we’re saying that Dynamic Harmony is the principle that runs through Tian. In other words, we can say that Dynamic Harmony is the Way of Tian. Because virtue (德) in Chinese can be extended to characterize the generic features of Tian, we can also say that Dynamic Harmony is a virtue of Tian.

The reason we can say that Dynamic Harmony is a virtue of Tian is because, as explained earlier, Tian’s creativity is all-encompassing. Everything that has ever existed, exists now, or will ever exist is brought into being by Tian and every being in the universe is part of Tian. In other words, as created by Tian, everything is and becomes together, which is the basic meaning of ‘dynamic harmony’. If we understand this, we can see that Dynamic Harmony is embedded in every aspect of this constantly-unfolding cosmic creation. We can also see that this all-encompassing force is neither anthropomorphic nor anthropocentric. In other words, Tian is not a person, nor is it exclusively focused on humans. As such, humans cannot directly access Tian per se, but must approach it through Ruist mysticism, a topic I’ll discuss in future writings.

The way humans engage with Tian concretely is to realize Dynamic Harmony in human society. We do this through the virtue of Humaneness (仁, ren). For this reason, you’ll see on the chart that the virtue of humaneness is the Way of Human Beings.

In Ruist ethics, Humaneness is the highest human virtue. In the most general sense, the virtue of Humaneness is the manifestation of Tian’s creativity within human nature. When we look in more detail, however, Humaneness includes five different facets, each of which refers to a different dimension of Humaneness:

Humaneness (仁, ren),

Righteousness (義, yi),

Ritual-Propriety (禮, li),

Wisdom (智, zhi),

Trustworthiness (信, xin)

We refer to these as the Five Constant Virtues (五常, wuchang). The Five Constant Virtues are universal principles that govern concrete human relationships. For this reason, the lower region of the chart describes how the Ruist tradition understands and describes particular human relationships.

First, let’s look at the Three Guides (三綱, sangang), a Ruist ethical understanding of three major human relationships. Originally, 君為臣綱 meant “ruler is the guide of subjects.” In a modern context, however, it ought to be understood as something like “in public life, a superior is the guide of subordinates.” This refers to relationships such as those between the state and citizens or between employer and employees. Likewise, although 父為子綱 originally meant “father is the guide of son,” a modern formulation would be something like, “parents are the guides of children.” Finally, 夫為妻綱, which originally meant “husband is the guide of wife,” should now be understood as “husbands and wives are the guides of each other, depending upon their different areas of expertise.”

The ethics of the Three Guides is a distillation of Mencius’ teachings about the Five Cardinal Human Relationships (五倫, wulun), which appear next in the chart. These relationships are parents and children, ruler and subjects, husband and wife, elder and junior, and friendship. Mencius taught that the virtues that guide each of these relationships are affective closeness (親, qin) between parents and children, righteousness (義, yi) between ruler and subjects, distinction (別, bie) between husband and wife, proper order (序, xu) between elders and juniors, and trustworthiness (信, xin) between friends.

The ethics of the Ten Reciprocal Duties (十義, shiyi) are described in an important chapter of The Book of Rites (禮記) called The Unfolding of Ritual Propriety (禮運). The text prescribes a single virtue for each person as they act out their role in these relationships. In the chart, for example, you will find that in the relationship between parents and children, parents should be guided by the virtue of parental kindness (慈, ci) and children should be guided by the virtue of filial devotion (孝, xiao). The practice of these two reciprocal duties by parents and children respectively will nurture the guiding virtue of affective closeness (親, qin) taught by Mencius in the Five Cardinal Human Relationships. This pattern of reciprocal virtues is repeated for the remaining four relationships.

The Big Picture

This chart of Ruist virtues suggests that each of us should cultivate the Five Constant Virtues — which can be seen as different facets of a single cardinal virtue, Humaneness (仁, ren) — so that we can play our roles well in a variety of human relationships. The ultimate goal is to create and sustain Dynamic Harmony in society, which is a concrete manifestation of the Dynamic Harmony of Tian’s all-encompassing creative power.

Notes on Interpretation of This Chart

When using this chart, there are two important caveats to keep in mind. First, you’ve probably noticed that some characters appear in this chart multiple times. This is because they represent different virtues depending on the context. At the top of the chart, for example, Humaneness (仁, ren) appears as the single cardinal virtue, the Way of Human Beings. In the section on the Five Constant Virtues below, however, it appears as one of the five virtues, and is taken in this context to refer to universal human love. Likewise, Righteousness (義, yi) appears in the Five Constant Virtues as the way human beings love appropriately in various situations. When Righteousness (義, yi) appears in the Five Cardinal Human Relationships, however, it is presented as the guiding virtue of the relationship between ruler and subjects and refers to the primary duty of both rulers and subjects to act appropriately toward each other.

The second caveat to keep in mind is that this chart is not intended to prescribe an ethical law that requires each Ruist to understand and practice these virtues one-by-one. This chart doesn’t contain every virtue cherished by Ruists over the past 2,500 years — after all, society is far too complex to be described by a single chart, and the ways in which each of us manifest these virtues in our daily lives will depend a great deal on the context in which we live.

So, although this chart is neither comprehensive nor prescriptive, it can serve as kind of reference chart to help you understand the backbone of Ruist ethical teachings. It is my hope that by studying, contemplating, and meditating on this chart, you will be better equipped to practice Ruist wisdom in your daily life.

The Five Cardinal Human Relationships (五倫, wulun) and The Ten Reciprocal Duties (十義, shiyi)

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment
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Ruism is a tradition of non-theistic humanism. For Ruists, the way to build a harmonious human society is conceived of as the way to concretely engage with what is taken to be the transcendent, that is, to engage with Tian, the all-encompassing, constantly creative, cosmic power. Human society, in virtually all its aspects, is constantly changing. Imagine that Confucius could have taken a time machine from the late Spring and Autumn period of ancient China and landed in Boston in July, 2016. He would hardly be able to recognize our ‘brave new world.’ The question then remains: in order to build a harmonious society, what is the primary building block? In other words, in a harmonious society, what is it that does not change?

The answer given by the tradition is that of establishing good human relationships. An anecdote can help us to understand this answer. Today, many people know that ‘filial devotion’ (孝) and ‘parental kindness’ (慈) are two of the great virtues taught by Ruism, but they rarely understand why. The answer is that whatever happens to a human being, he or she must have had parents. You may have no marriage, no child, no job, no nationality and even no friends, but as long as a human being is alive, he or she owes his or her life to parents. In this way, if you are unable to learn how to nurture a harmonious relationship with your parents, there can be no way to enjoy similar relationships with others. In a word, the reciprocal duty of ‘filial devotion’ for children and ‘parental kindness’ for parents is understood by Ruists to be a way of providing an initial opportunity for humans to learn how to build a harmonious relationship, which can then be extended to other similar human relationships. For this reason, the relationship between parents and children has been taken to be the foundation for a harmonious human society in general.

Of course, the parent-child relationship is just one of the major human relationships. Whether this parental relationship should be considered to be the most important relationship is continually debated within the Ruist tradition. But there is no doubt that how to manage good human relationships is the tradition’s most consistent focus. One of the earliest Ruist classics, the Book of Documents (尚書), recounts that the legendary sage-king, Shun, when he found that it was difficult for people to get along well with their families, appointed his minister, Qi (契), to employ ‘five teachings’ (五教) to educate the people in their ‘five moral characters’ (五品). According to later commentators, the ‘five moral characters’ relate to the five major family roles: father, mother, elder sibling, younger sibling, and child. In another chapter, the goal of Ruist teaching is described as ‘graceful relationships fluidly continuing’ (彝倫攸敘). In the same spirit, when the Duke of Qi consulted Confucius about politics, Confucius’s famous answer was that for good politics, we must have ‘ruler as ruler, subject as subject, father as father, and son as son’ (Analects, 12.11). In other words, everyone needs to fulfill the roles and duties which are defined within these various human relationships.

Distilling previous discussions, and also considering his own contemporary situation, Mencius (372-289 BCE) formulated his teaching of the Five Cardinal Human Relationships (五倫):

“To be human is to follow the right Way: if they are well fed, warmly clothed, and comfortably lodged, without being taught at the same time, they become almost like beasts. The sage Shun was concerned with this, and therefore appointed Qi as the minister of instruction to teach the duties of human relationships: between parents and children, there ought to be affective closeness (親); between ruler and subjects, righteousness (義); between husband and wife, distinction (別); between old and young, a proper order (序); between friends, trustworthiness (信)” (Mencius, “Duke of Teng Wen”).

We can see that Mencius’ statement is a further development based upon the story told in the Book of Documents, but his formulation of these five cardinal human relationships, together with their corresponding duties, is more explicit and better organized. Among these relationships, parents-children and older-younger siblings are familial, and thus private. The ruler-subjects relationship is distinctively political, and thus public. Friendship is more egalitarian, while the relationship of husband-wife could potentially connect to each of the others. Supporting Mencius’s thought, we find in Li Yun (禮運, the “Unfolding of Ritual Propriety”), which was a chapter from the Book of Rites (禮記, compiled around the time of Mencius), a more detailed explanation of the duties each role-player must perform within these five human relationships:

“What are human duties? Kindness (慈) for parents, and filial devotion (孝) for children, amicability (良) for elder siblings, and discreet obedience (悌) for younger siblings; uprightness (義) for husband, and attentiveness (聽) for wife; considerateness (惠) for elders, and deference (順) for the young; benevolence (仁) for ruler, and loyalty (忠) for subjects. These are what are called human duties.”

Although there exist alternative formulations in other contemporaneous Ruist texts, and later Ruists continued to refine their views, the teaching of these two texts’ concerning the Five Cardinal Human Relationships with, thus, Ten Reciprocal Duties (五倫十義, wulun-shiyi) became a paradigm for later Ruists to ponder concerning the correct way to build good human relationships, and thereby to realize dynamic harmony (和, he) in human society. Although each of these relationships and duties is worthy of a separate study, it will be enough for a Ruist beginner to get to know several basic principles about them.

First: duty is absolute, but it is also mutual.

Even today, a denunciative rhetoric against Ruism is still in circulation, a falsehood fabricated by radically westernized Chinese intellectuals in the early 20th century, which claimed that Ruism is an essentially authoritarian tradition urging a one-dimensional, blind obedience by inferiors towards superiors in every social and political hierarchical relationship. With all my knowledge about the entire intellectual history of Ruism, I pledge here and now that this accusation targets anything but Ruism! From the quotations above, we can derive a general principle which is certain: each of the five human relationships is performed by human co-players. Insofar as each co-player stands in a position and plays a role within a particular human relationship, the duties required by the position and by the role are ‘absolute.’ This means that, for example, a wife ought to play her duty of ‘attentiveness’ as long as her wifely relationship with her husband is sustained. However, because it is one’s socio-political position and one’s relational socio-political role which determine one’s duty, rather than the other way around, a co-player’s duty is to perform his or her role only if and when the other co-player is not so far off in his or her own duties as to destroy the sustainability of that particular relationship. For example, if a ruler is so malevolent that it is impossible for his ministers to correct his wrong-doing in a remonstrative way such that the relationship of ruler-subjects can be maintained, his ministers cannot and ought not to continue to be loyal. (The only exception in this regard is for parents-children, and I will discuss this in my future articles.) Understood in this way, the five cardinal human relationships are actually five major opportunities for human beings to cooperatively perform the process of moral self-cultivation so that a particular form of dynamic harmony is created in concrete social situations. Therefore, those impetuous accusers of Ruism who claim that it is essentially authoritarian may only rarely be correct. Urging co-players to fulfill their duties when they do not is actually one great duty that other co-players have in all human relationships. In hierarchical relationships, such as ruler-subjects or parents-children, that is, when the urging is carried out by superiors toward subordinates or dependents, this is called ‘instruction’ (教); when directed by subordinates or dependents toward superiors, it is called ‘remonstration’ (諫). When the urging is done among people of equal position, such as friends, this is called ‘admonition’ (责).

Second: order matters.

The order in which Mencius enumerates the five cardinal human relationships also represents his evaluation of their differing importance. This means that when one’s duties within different relationships contradict one another, one should put the most important first, and accordingly, constrain one’s performance of one’s other duties. In this way, one can create a graded form of harmony in regard to the fulfillment of one’s overall duties. One famous example is from Mencius. His student asked him what Shun, as king, would do if his father, a notoriously bad person, committed homicide. Mencius answered that Shun would order his minister of justice to arrest his father, but before that happened, Shun would give up his kingship, carry his father on his back, and flee into hiding somewhere along the sea-coast (Mencius, 7A). In this thought experiment, Shun shapes his reaction to a touchy situation according to his different, yet conflicting duties, and his way of doing this represents the gradation of values which Mencius thinks these duties bear: the father-son relationship is more important than the ruler-subjects one.

Of course, the order set out by Mencius is just one among many within the tradition. For example, in Zhong Yong (中庸, Equilibrium and Ordinariness), the ruler-subjects relationship is placed before parents-children. Xunzi treats the order as ruler-subjects, parents-children, older-younger siblings, and then husband-wife. This speaks to the fact that Ruists continue to adjust their evaluation of the values of various duties according to the context. But if we had to adopt a single universal rule in regard to these evaluations, I would select what is said in the Appended Texts section of the Book of Changes:

“There are heaven and earth, and then a myriad of things. There are a myriad of things, and then male and female. There are male and female, and then husband and wife. There are husband and wife, and then parents and children. There are parents and children, and then ruler and subjects. There are ruler and subjects, and then superiors and inferiors. There are superiors and inferiors, and then rituals and rules are arranged.”

Based upon the fact that human relationships evolved from the cosmic process within Tian’s creation, the order enunciated by the Book of Changes is as follows: husband-wife, parents-children, and then ruler-subjects. This makes great sense to me because Ruist ethics is generally family-centered, and without a husband and wife, there is no family. Accordingly, I endorse this version as the universal order concerning the priority of human relationships.

Be that as it may, we still need to remember that Ruist ethics is highly contextualized, which means that each co-player needs to adjust his or her evaluation of what to do in relation to the given context. In today’s world, if we take stages of personal growth into serious consideration, I suggest that before leaving home and entering college or a new job, you will have treated the parents-children and older-younger siblings relationships as the most important. And between adolescence and marriage, friendship probably took more weight. Then, after getting married, the husband-wife relationship and then parents-children relationship ought to matter the most. Meanwhile, according to circumstances, the ruler-subject (that is, the state-citizen) relationship or the superior-subordinate relationship during one’s career may take on more or less weight, but generally, these two ought to be less important than the other family-based duties.

Third: though its content may change, principle remains.

The way I have just interpreted the Five Cardinal Human Relationships and The Ten Reciprocal Duties already relates to contemporary contexts. For example, originally, the parents-children relationship was written as ‘father-son.’ Such initial formulations represent a particular social context in which Ruist ethics was embedded: ancient China was a patriarchal society. However, today, we don’t require this context, which means that we can detach Ruist ethics from its historical social context even while still highlighting its principles as being of great value for us today.

This is particularly true for the ruler-subjects relationship. Democracy has been thriving in the world for several centuries, and thus it makes little sense to depict the relationship between, for example, President Obama and the American citizenry, as one of ‘ruler-subjects.’ Therefore, in the political arena, I have replaced it with the relationship of ‘state-citizens.’ This does not mean, however, that everything that Ruism teaches about ruler-subjects is outdated. In my view, human society can never eliminate hierarchical relationships. Even if the president of the United States is equal to other citizens under the law, he or she still has far greater power than any ordinary American citizen in terms of political administration. Also, in the course of one’s career, the employer-employees relationship resonates particularly well with the Ruist teachings which concern ‘ruler-subjects,’ since a similar hierarchical structure undergirds it.

In a word, for contemporary Ruists, though the content of human relationships may have changed somewhat, still, the principle of maintaining them well has not. In order to enjoy a dynamically harmonious relationship in either an hierarchical or an egalitarian situation, human beings must still think of themselves as relational co-players. In this way, we can individually and cooperatively perform the process of moral self-cultivation in gradually expanding circles of the human community: from self to family, to neighborhood, to employment in a group, to state, country, and to the whole earth. For only in this way can a continually growing, harmonious human society be sustained.

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