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

On December 31, 2022December 31, 2025 By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

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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Wang Yangming’s Dissent from Zhu Xi

On December 4, 2022December 30, 2025 By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College to teach Ruism, global philosophies and religions.

We have used one session to introduce the thought of Zhu Xi as the reservoir of the Daoxue movement. As explained in that session, the term “reservoir” means that not only the thought of Daoxue prior to Zhu Xi confluenced into him, but that later thinkers may disagree with him after learning him. Therefore, in this session, we’ll introduce the thought of Wang Yangming (1472-1529 C.E), a major dissent from Zhu Xi in the later Daoxue movement.

A major historical context to understand the rising of Wang Yangming’s thought is that since being endorsed officially by Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), Zhu Xi’s philosophy, which emphasizes the intellectual investigation and analytic analysis of the principles (理) of things and affairs, had been misused by many Ru literati as an excuse of pedantry and formalism just for tactically making it through the civil examination. This engendered strong critiques from devoted Ru practitioners such as Wang Yangming. Moreover, after the defeat of Song Dynasty by the nomadic Mongols, the imperial regime became increasingly authoritarian, and the royal families headed by mercurial emperors were also more and more reluctant to accept the co-governing role of Ru governmental-officials. Since the top down approach of relying upon emperors’ support to realize Ruism being shut down, Ru activists had to pave an alternative path from the bottom up capable of propagating Ruism extensively among commoners. Wang Yangming advocates the attainment of the “conscientious knowing (良知, liangzhi),” an innate intuitive awareness of morality, as the sole and final pursuit of individuals’ self-cultivation, and hence, furnishes a new foundation for the changing ethos in the conclusive stage of the Daoxue movement.

No dissent of Wang Yangming from Zhu Xi is more visible than their varying interpretations of the spiritual steps of self-cultivation in the Great Learning. For Zhu Xi, whether one is able to authenticate their intentions so as to rectify their heartmind depends upon a cumulative process of investigating things to attain the knowledge of principles. The dimension of the heartmind which complies with principles comprises the innately good human nature endowed by Tian, whereas the one of the heartmind which does not entirely abide by principles is considered as human feelings, which include sensations, emotions, desires and other embodied human dispositions. Therefore, a dictum of Zhu Xi’s philosophy is “the heartmind encompasses (human) nature and feelings (心统性情).” (Chen 2000: 251-256) Self-cultivation is accordingly characterized as a process of perfecting human feelings via cumulatively investigating things so as to preserve the good human nature rooted in the cosmic principle of Tian. Nevertheless, for Wang, the authentication of intentions does not rest upon this outwardly oriented process of investigating principles of things. Traditional Ru virtues (such as humaneness, righteousness, ritual-propriety and wisdom) are thought of by Wang as being inherent to the heartmind. Consequently, the principles of these virtues, which speak to the ways how individuals co-flourish in nurturing human relationships integral to a sustainable civilization, are also inherent to the heartmind. Instead of considering the heartmind as encompassing the “nature” and “feelings” of which only the nature abides by principles, Wang insists that “the heartmind is the principle (心即理)” and “no principle outside the heartmind (心外无理).” (Wang 1992, 传习录 Instruction for Practical Living: 2)

Zhu’s insistence upon the necessity of investigating principles of things leads to his tendency of emphasizing the temporary priority of knowledge over action. However, since he advocates no principle outside the heartmind, Wang exhorts “the union of knowledge and action (知行合一),” which implies that the sheer awareness towards a concrete case of being moral leads immediately to one’s attitude of affirming as well as the action of executing it. (Wang 1992: 3-5) For instance, if one merely knows the virtue of filiety (孝) towards their parents without actually doing anything about it, this is for Wang not a genuine kind of moral knowledge. In the more mature stage of his thought, Wang furthermore developed the idea of genuine moral knowledge into one of “conscientious knowing (良知, liangzhi),” and pivoted his entire moral philosophy upon the action of “attaining conscientious knowing (致良知).” In other words, Wang believes that there is an innate dimension of the human heartmind which provides individuals with spontaneous and infallible moral intuitions to varying situations. Rather than construing zhizhi (致知) in the Great Learning as “attaining the knowledge” of principles which comes after investigating things (格物, gewu), Wang interpretes zhizhi as “attaining conscientious knowing” and gewu as “rectifying things.” Wang claims that the primary step of self-cultivation should be to recover one’s innate conscientious knowing which does not derive from empirical knowledge of the outside world, and then, to rectify outward things from evil to good using the standard of moral intuitions furnished by the conscientious knowing. (Wang 1992, 大学问 An Inquiry into the Great Learning: 967-973)

In the second before the last year of his life, Wang developed a “four-sentence teaching (四句教),” which crystallizes all the aforementioned major propositions of Wang’s moral philosophy and has engendered riveting debates and controversies among later Ru thinkers. Wang says “The fundamental state of heartmind is neither good nor evil. There are good and evil when intentions are aroused. The conscientious knowing knows good and evil. Doing good and eliminating evil is to rectify things.” (Wang 1992: 117) An exegesis is furnished as follows:

The term xinti (心體) in the first sentence reminds of Mengzi’s contemplative practice of oceanic vital-energy conducive to the unitary feeling of one body with the universe, and signifies the ontological bond of humanity with Tian. The fundamental state of human existence is neither good nor evil because Tian has its mysterious power to have everything exist and change together in the broadest cosmic scale. From the perspective of Tian, any created thing is ipso facto good since it manifests Tian’s sublime creativity by default. This sort of “goodness,” characterized by Wang also as “utterly good (至善),” has no dialectical relationship with “evil,” and is thus nondualist par excellence. (Wang 1992: 29, 119) More importantly, if the fundamental state of heartmind endowed by Tian is well maintained, the way one does good and eliminates evil in the human world would be just as spontaneous and non-contrived as how Tian’s creativity proceeds in the cosmic realm. Such a naturally flowing state of being moral appears to be “as if there is neither good nor evil.” (Wang 1992: 29) Wang highlights this ideal state of morality in order to prevent humans from being mired into dualistic or oppositional moralistic wars, in which they may fight each other using one limited perception of goodness against another.

Wang construes the yi (意) in the second sentence as “the arousal of heartmind,” viz., the affective reaction of heartmind to external things, such as the feelings of love towards benefits and of hate towards harms. (Wang 1992: 6)Therefore, it means intentions. One’s intentions towards concrete things could be good and evil because it is not the case that every intention complies with the utter goodness of Tian’s all-encompassing and spontaneous creativity, and is able to respond to things appropriately so as to create evolving harmonies in the human world. Instead, one’s “habitual dispositions (習氣)” and “selfish desires (私慾)” (Wang 1992: 2, 984) obscure the original good state of heartmind, and force them to intend benefits and avoid harms not according to the cosmic principle of Tian, but per their possessive, divisive and combative needs. One’s perceptions and pursuits of good and evil would consequently lose the nondualist nature of the fundamental state of heartmind, and inevitably lead to disharmonies in society.

However, despite the potential of intentions to go astray from the fundamental state of heartmind, there always remains a consciousness integral to the state, which can pull back the strayed intentions and reorient them towards the right path. Wang terms the consciousness as conscientious knowing (liangzhi), and believes it has an innate epistemic ability of knowing morals as stated in the third sentence. Since liangzhi belongs to the fundamental state of heartmind continuous with Tian’s creativity, moral judgements made by liangzhi are also spontaneous and natural, as Wang says, “The heartmind can naturally know, … as one naturally knows to be commiserate with a baby about to fall into a well. This is what I mean by ‘conscientious knowing.’” (Wang 1992: 2) Finally, since the liangzhi spontaneously and perfectly knows good and evil, one just needs to invest efforts maintaining it while rectifying things into good per the injunction of liangzhi.

Among the four sentences, the first one has been the most controversial because devoted Ru after Wang opposed the seemingly Buddhist language using which Wang described the cosmic root of human nature as with no good nor evil. Ru scholars more prone to Zhu Xi’s thought also reemphasized the role of empirical knowledge in one’s moral pursuit, and hence, disapproved of the apparently anti-intellectual moral intuitionism hinted by Wang’s teaching of liangzhi. The origin of evil as rooted in one’s selfish desires is also frequently challenged, since these desires, as being integral to human heartmind, are also supposed to be manifestations of the utterly good cosmic creative power of Tian. In a historical hindsight, Wang Yangming’s four- sentence teaching is a potent catalyst for the conclusive stage of the Daoxue movement, which has continually stimulated the innovation of Ru thought in its modern and contemporary forms.

Zhu Xi as the Reservoir of the Daoxue (道學) Movement

On October 30, 2022December 30, 2025 By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College to teach Ruism, global philosophies and religions.

The Ru tradition experienced a major reboot in its second millennium after being adopted as the state ideology in Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE). And there are two major historical backgrounds of this reboot. Firstly, the immigration of Buddhism and the establishment of Daoist religions stimulated Ru thinkers to create a new version of Ruism able to orient individuals’ life more comprehensively. Since seeking the genuine Dao, the Way, so as to provide guidance to all major aspects of human life is always a goal of Ru self-cultivation, these Ru thinkers referred to this historical reboot of Ruism as a Daoxue movement, and Daoxue (道學) means the learning of Dao. In English scholarship, we also call it Neo-Confucianism. Secondly, since the 8th century, the Chinese imperial system had endured a series of severe domestic and foreign threats. Ru literati therefore sought to overcome the threats and recover the ancient ideal of humane governance while creatively reinterpreting Ru classics. To such a reacting and synthesizing Daoxue movement, Zhu Xi (1130-1200)’s philosophy played the role of an intellectual reservoir into which his predecessors’ thoughts confluence and out of which later Ru thinkers derive and diverge. To evidence such a role, Zhu Xi condensed the originally expansive Ru classics into a new canon comprising four books, viz., the Great Learning, the Analects, the Mengzi and the Centrality and Commonality, and his 四书章句集注 (Commentaries of the Four Books) was thereafter officialized as a textbook for the systems of civil examination in East Asia.

Zhu Xi’s synthetic Ru philosophy, despite its extraordinary scope and complexity, pivots itself upon one singular concept, Li (理, translated alternatively as principle, pattern-principle, Pattern, or coherence, see Angle & Tiwald 2017:28-34), and aims to parse out the three phases and eight steps of self-cultivation articulated by the Great Learning which furnishes a comprehensive guide to the Ru way of life. According to the Great Learning, the realization of the ideal of peace and harmony among all under heaven rests upon the regulation of one’s state and the alignment of one’s family, which furthermore rest upon the cultivation of one’s genuine self comprising four major steps, viz., rectifying the heartmind, authenticating intentions, attaining the knowledge, and investigating things (格物, gewu). Zhu Xi maintains that the object of the ultimate step of gewu is Li, defined as “the reason why things come to be so and the rule how things ought to be so.” (Zhu 2002 Vol. 6 大学或问 An Inquiry into the Great Learning:512)For instance, the Li of a table is the sum of all the conditions which explain why the table is produced in a certain material with a certain shape so as to fit itself with all surrounding items in a given environment. Because the factual ways to fit oneself with all the others in a given context lead to the ideal state of harmonization in which all beings evolve and thrive together without undermining the essential identity of each, Li is both descriptive and prescriptive. In the natural world, Li refers to the patterns of changing realities which co-exist in the broadest ontological scale of the whole universe, viz., Tian. In the human world, Li designates the moral principles and social conventions which perfect human relationships so as to sustain the development of civilization, and hence, to manifest the cosmic harmony of Tian in the human realm.

With Li construed as such, appropriate intentions of the heartmind towards external things are those in line with Li so that one does not merely intend objectives sincerely, but also authentically. For Zhu Xi, the process of authenticating intentions to rectify the heartmind leads to the recovery of one’s genuine human nature endowed by Tian, a trope continuous with the teaching of the Mengzi and the Centrality and Commonality. And the process is characterized by accumulation, ecstasy and extrapolation. Accumulatively, one needs to broadly engage the world via activities such as reading classics, canvassing histories, studying the nature, having discussions with friends, and dealing with human affairs so as to learn each and every Li. (Zhu 2002 Vol. 6 大学或问:527-528) While one’s practical knowledge of Li continually increases, an ecstatic moment would transpire when one can comprehend the coherence of all Li in the universe, and hence, grasp the interconnection of all dimensions of moral living. (Zhu 2002 Vol. 6 大学章句 An Exegesis of the Great Learning: 20) After the ecstasy, one needs to extrapolate their general knowledge of the Li of the world into minute and novel details, and hence, keep being centered in the everyday moments of mundane life. (Chen 2000: 309-314)

Among the three aspects of “thoroughly studying Li (穷理),” the ecstatic moment begs more attention since it reveals the overarching structure of Zhu Xi’s thought. The following chart illuminates the structure via illustrating Zhu Xi’s treatise of “On Ren (humaneness) (仁说).” I link my full translation of this treatise here, and I’ll read the most relevant few paragraphs in this treatise, and explain them later.

A Chart of Ren (Humaneness) according to Zhu Xi

“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 heartmind—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. In their operation, these virtues are manifested in the four seasons—the vital-energy of spring permeates them all .

Correspondingly, there are four virtues for the human heartmind: 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.

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 heartmind, if we simply say, “Ren is what the human heartmind is,” then its four virtues and their functions are summarized.

So, the virtue of Ren is actually what the human heartmind—which is produced and sustained by the creativity of Heaven and Earth—consists in. It functions when the human heartmind 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.“

As demonstrated by the chart, several categorical dyads have structured Zhu Xi’s philosophy. Firstly, with Li construed as principle, Qi (气) is the material vital-energy pervading the entire universe, the dynamics of which manifests the normativity of principles. The dyad of principle and vital-energy is thus, albeit with an emphasis on process and change, comparable to the one of form and matter in ancient Greek philosophy. Secondly, the relationship between Li and Qi is further interpreted as the one of Ti (体, substance) and Yong (用, function). The Ti of a thing is what the thing per se consists in in its enduring form, while its Yong is the manifested functions of the thing when it engages with other things. Thirdly, Xing (性, nature) and Qing (情, feeling) characterize the dimensions of human heartmind which correspond to the dyads “Li-Qi” and “Ti-Yong.” For Zhu Xi, human nature is equivalent to the Li or Ti aspect of the heartmind, while the nature is signified by four cardinal virtues of Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety and wisdom. Human feelings are the Yong, viz., the manifested functions of Qi, aspect of the heartmind. Using a contemplative language, Zhu Xi also describes the aspect of principle, substance or nature of the heartmind as underlying one’s experience of inner peace and centrality prior to any concrete feeling aroused by external things. Therefore, another dyad of “non-aroused (未发)” and “being-aroused (已发)” indicates one’s respective experiences of spiritual formation in the different states of heartmind characterized by the aforementioned dyads.

Understood as such, the system of Zhu Xi’s thought per the chart can be explained as follows:

According to the Classic of Change, The nature of Tian is creativity. Creativity primarily means initiation. The initiative power of Tian is manifested jointly by the proactive Heaven (Qian, the most Yang hexagram) and the receptive Earth (Kun, the most Yin hexagram). There are four virtues, viz., four generic traits, of the creativity of Heaven and Earth: initiation (which means Tian creates everything from nothing), permeation (which means Tian’s creativity pervades everything), harmonization (which means everything dynamically co-exists within Tian), and integration (which means each created thing is endowed with a nature and all things comprise an interconnected whole within Tian). The virtue of initiation governs them all. These four virtues are manifested in the proceeding of cosmic vital-energy during the course of four seasons. The vital-energy of spring permeates them all.

Those four virtues are the principle and living substance of Tian’s creativity, while the four seasons manifest its vital-energy and function. Therefore, for discussing the creativity of Tian, when the initiative power of Qian (heaven) and the initiative power of Kun (earth) are mentioned, 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 one. Human beings are born from the process of cosmic creativity of Tian, and the endowed human nature is the virtue of Ren embedded in the human heartmind. There are four cardinal virtues for the heartmind, viz., Ren, righteousness, ritual-propriety, and wisdom, and the virtue of Ren embraces them all. When the heartmind is aroused and engages with things, the four virtues are manifested as four incipient moral 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 Mengzi, they are the feelings of commiseration, shame and disgust, deference, and distinguishing right and wrong. Zhu Xi’s alternative way to name the feelings derive from Mengzi, but is more succinct. Overall, the feeling of love or commiseration pervades all the other feelings.

The four virtues are the principle, substance, nature or non-aroused status of the human heartmind. The four human feelings for Zhu Xi, which are the four moral incipient sprouts for Mengzi, manifest the vital-energy, function, feeling, or aroused status of the heartmind. Therefore, for discussing the magnificence of the human heartmind, once it is pointed out that Ren is what the heartmind consists in, then both its four virtues and their functions are summarized.

In a word, Zhu Xi’s treatise of “On Ren” demonstrates the cosmological root of the distinctively good human nature, which is summarized by the cardinal human virtue, humaneness. While urging individuals to rediscover and nurture such a cosmically endowed human nature via cumulatively studying and practicing Li, Zhu Xi’s philosophy can be understood overall as an all-encompassing ethical metaphysics which aims to manifest the supreme harmonization of Tian’s creativity in the human world.

Where, How, and What is Ru Metaphysics? – Ruism (Confucianism) is a Mono-pan-en-non-theism

On July 7, 2022December 30, 2025 By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

Metaphysics, as a discipline beyond physics, concerns itself with something more abstract than the concrete stuff of the world. It includes two major sections: cosmology and ontology. Cosmology, as the logos (science) of cosmos, investigates how the cosmos originates and evolves. Ontology, as the logos (science) of ‘being’, probes the most generic features of entities in so far as they ‘are.’ In western philosophy, these two parts of metaphysics can be discussed together, such as in Plato’s Timaeus. Or, they may be elaborated separately. For instance, Aristotle’s De Caelo prioritizes cosmology, while his Metaphysics prioritizes ontology.

Today, a rumor has been circulating among scholars that Ruism pays too much attention to ethics and statecraft to show much, or even any, interest in metaphysics. These scholars include New Age orientalists: they are dismayed by classical western thought for a variety of reasons, and are trying to find a total alternative in ancient Chinese thought. Similar ideas are entertained by some begrudging Daoists: they strive to usurp every sentence mentioning ‘Dao’ in ancient Chinese texts and to assert, therefore, that Ruism has nothing distinctive to contribute to ancient Chinese metaphysics. There are also some East Asian scholars, who are so obsessed with the agenda of post-modernism that they tend to be opposed to investigating the deepest, grandest and most imperishable concerns of ancient Chinese thought. Regardless, all these scholars commit a common error: they see in Ruism what they want to see even before they turned their eyes to it. Using the words of Xunzi (313-238 BCE), a great Ru philosopher in classical Ruism, these scholars’ minds are all ‘narrowed by one particular angle and thus become ignorant of the complete truth’ (蔽於一曲而暗於大理）.

Ruism, as a comprehensive way of life which has had so deep an influence upon virtually every facet of ancient East and South Asian civilization, cannot have failed to have a deep interest in metaphysics. Its well-known strong emphasis upon ethics was actually always grounded in its systematic thinking about the origin of cosmos and the regulative principles of cosmic realities. For me, this is the major reason why I once portrayed Ruism as a religious humanism, rather than simply humanism per se.

Interestingly enough, for a Ru learner, Ru metaphysics is even easier to find than its western partner since cosmology and ontology were almost always discussed together in the same texts. In the remaining part of this essay, I will try to illustrate, in the most succinct way, where, how and what is Ru metaphysics.

Firstly, where did Ruist metaphysics come from?

Two seminal texts, together with their commentaries, define Ru metaphysics. One is the Appended Texts (繫辭), also called the Great Commentary (大傳), part of the Classic of Change (易經). This text was perhaps compiled between Mencius (372-289 BCE) and Xunzi; even so, the Ru tradition ascribed its authorship to Confucius himself. Although this ascription is continually debated, I tend to believe, relying on all evidence that we can gather today, that even if it was not actually written by Confucius, it is certain that this text was heavily influenced by Confucius’s thought. Among commentaries on the Great Commentary, the most influential for the Ru metaphysical tradition were composed by Ru scholars between the Han and Tang Dynasties: Zheng Xuan (鄭玄, 127-200 CE), Wang Bi (王弼, 226-249 CE), Han Kang-bo (韓康伯, 332-380 CE), and Kong Ying-da (孔穎達, 574-648 CE), for instance. For English readers, Richard J. Lynn’s translation of the Classic of Changes is a good start for learning both the seminal text and its commentaries.

The other fundamental text is the Diagram of Ultimate Polarity (太極圖) and its Illustration of the Diagram of Ultimate Polarity (太極圖說), which was composed by Zhou Dun-yi (周敦颐, 1017-1073 CE). Based upon Confucius’s insights in the Great Commentary, Zhou Dun-yi presented the densest and most vivid illustration of Ru metaphysics for Song and Ming Neo-Ruism. After Zhou Dun-yi, it was Zhu Xi’s commentaries and essays on Zhou Dun-Yi’s seminal text that systematized and deepened the Neo-Ruist metaphysics. Although there were exemplary thinkers later, such as Cao Duan (曹端, 1376-1434 CE) and Luo Qin-shun (羅欽順, 1465-1547 CE), who revised Zhu Xi’s metaphysics quite a bit, the basic metaphysical structure of Neo-Ruism remained definitive in Zhou Dun-yi’s and Zhu Xi’s thought. For English readers, the best starting-point for appreciating this tradition is Joseph A. Adler’s translation and study of the concerned texts.

Secondly, how metaphysical is Ruism?

The short answer is, very. To prove this, I only need to point out that Ru spirituality in some of its historical periods was even thought to be too metaphysical by later Ru scholars so that they needed to launch a movement to counteract it. One example is Han Yu (768-824 CE)’s ‘Movement of Ancient Prose.’ In the face of the Tang Dynasty’s decline, triggered by the An-Shi Rebellion (安史之亂, 755-763 CE) , Han Yu thought that the major reason leading to this crisis had been that the Ru literati in his time had learned too much metaphysics from pre-Tang dynasties’ metaphysicians and that these literati’s genre of writing was accordingly too decorative and flowery. Instead, in order to stop the dynastic decline, Han Yu urged a plainer genre of literary writing and required Ru literati to focus more on ethics and statecraft, rather than metaphysics. On similar grounds, the challenge brought by Lu Jiu-yuan (1139-1193 CE) and Wang Yang-ming’s School of Mind-Heart in opposition to Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi’s School of Principle within Neo-Ruism is another great example. What happened was that, since he was one of the most metaphysical minds in the Ru tradition, Zhu Xi’s teaching encouraged a tendency among Ru literati which emphasized the meticulous study of Ru literature along with metaphysical speculations concerning the outside world. Instead, Lu Xiang-shan and Wang Yang-ming urged the literati to concentrate more upon one’s own inner personality so that one’s Ru knowledge could be of more practical use in the actual human world. Unsurprisingly, since these reform movements within Ruism were not very friendly to metaphysical thinking, their contribution to Ru spirituality was mainly about ethics, spiritual formation and statecraft. In other words, if nowadays people want to learn the basics of Ru metaphysics, they still need to look for it in the Ru schools that these movements were opposing: Wang Bi’s and Han Kang-bo’s commentaries of the Great Commentary, and Zhou Dun-yi’s and Zhu Xi’s thoughts on Ultimate Polarity.

Finally, what exactly is Ru metaphysics?

It is impossible to present a full profile of Ru metaphysics in one Huff-Post essay. However, in order to glimpse at the depth of Ru metaphysics, it would be helpful to address one of its key issues: the relationship between the ultimate reality, Tian (天, Heaven), and derived realities, the myriad things under Tian (天下萬物, tian-xia-wan-wu). Apparently, this issue is similar to the one of the relationship between God and the world in the Greek-Christian tradition.

In the Greek-Christian tradition, according to how God or God’s existence is conceived, theological discourses are divided into theism, polytheism, henotheism, and atheism, etc. According to how the relationship between God and the created world is conceived, theological discourse could be further categorized as pantheism (God is equal to everything in the world), panentheism (God permeates while simultaneously transcending everything in the world), deism, or acosmism (the world is not real but an illusion), etc. Keeping all these terms in mind, and relying upon my knowledge of the Ru metaphysics implied by the aforementioned seminal texts and commentaries, I will try my best to characterize Ruism as a Mono-Pan-En-Non-Theism. Yes, you read it right! I indeed wrote, ‘monopanennontheism’, which term’s complexity may sound awkward enough to require the following explanations.

Firstly, why ‘mono-‘? As I have explained several times before, ultimate reality in Ruism is Tian, an all-encompassing, constantly creative cosmic power which permeates everything. However, within this all-inclusive cap phenomenon, Ru metaphysics investigates further various ontological principles that can explain both the origin and the order of cosmic changes. For example, these principles include ‘the five phases’ (water, wood, metal, fire, earth), the interaction of which explains how things emerge and become. These five phases are thought of as functioning in the temporal framework of ‘the four seasons’ (spring, summer, autumn and winter), whose generative power is periodic but not cyclic. In other words, the creative force symbolized by the periodic movement of ‘the four seasons’ realizes the entire cosmos as an endless process advancing into novelty. Further, all the creative powers of ‘the five phases’ and ‘the four seasons’ are a manifestation of the one of ‘Yin and Yang vital-energies’ (氣, qi) , which are the most generic and determinate pair of categories that the traditional Chinese mindset ever invented for explaining the world. Yet, the story doesn’t stop there. Even beyond ‘Yin and Yang vital-energies’, Ru metaphysics believes that there is one singular, ontologically unconditional creative act, Ultimate Polarity (太極), which creates the entire world, including the Yin and Yang vital-energies, the four seasons, and the five phases, etc. In so far as Ru metaphysics avers that there is one singular principle that accounts for both the origin and the order of the entire created world, it is a ‘mono-‘ tradition.

Secondly, why ‘pan-‘ ? This is because of the Ru metaphysical view that the changing-and-becoming process experienced by each determinate thing within Tian is a manifestation of Tian’s creative power. Not only does Tian create, but everything within Tian also strives for being, becoming and growing. Because Tian’s creativity is ultimately grounded in the one of Ultimate Polarity, this ‘pan-‘ mode of Ru metaphysics is nicely captured by the Neo-Ruist motto that ‘Each thing has its own Ultimate Polarity’ (物物一太極) .

Thirdly, why ‘en-‘? All the creative powers that are embodied and brought about in the becomings of all concrete things cannot exhaust Ultimate Polarity’s creativity. In other words, Tian is not equal to the myriad things under Tian, and as a result, Tian’s creativity always has the potential to break through and challenge any status quo of cosmic realities which may have already been safely grasped by an established set of human knowledge. In the words of the Great Commentary, this inexhaustible and unfathomable creative power of Tian is termed as the one of ‘birth birth’ (生生, sheng-sheng), or ‘continual creation’.

Fourthly, why ‘non-theism’? First, Ruism is not atheism. Atheism, as it is particularly meant by Marxism in today’s China, is anti-religious and thus, denies any kind of ‘divine reality.’ However, for Ruism, Tian is ultimate. Its creative power ‘grounds’ all derived realities, and hence, its sublime creativity is taken to be an ideal that Ru learners (士, shi) try to emulate and realize in the human world. In this sense, Tian is holy and sacred. Ruism’s commitment to Tian’s creativity has a distinctively religious character.

On the other hand, Ruism is not theism, either. As described above, the deepest dimension of Tian’s creativity, Ultimate Polarity, is an unconditional ontological creative act without an actor or creator standing behind the scene. Because of Ultimate Polarity’s non-theistic and unconditional features, the process by means of which Tian creates the myriad of things under itself is incongruent with what the mainstream Greek-Christian idea of divine creation tries to convey. In particular, it is not that Tian puts intelligible forms into an amorphous matter so that concrete things are created. Instead, in the Ruist case, ultimate reality and derived realities maintain a tricky relationship of ‘two-fold asymmetry’. On the one hand, Ultimate Polarity is ontologically prior to all concrete cosmic realities, and therefore, Ruism believes that, as the singular ontological principle, Ultimate Polarity creates the entire world. On the other hand, since Ultimate Polarity is ontologically prior to anything in the world, including human intelligence and knowledge, anything we can know about how Ultimate Polarity creates must be drawn out 100% from our investigation about the de facto statuses of derived realities. In other words, derived realities are epistemologically prior to ultimate reality, and therefore, there is just no way for Ruism to assert that there might be any purpose, plan, or anthropomorphic telos which is inserted into the created world by Ultimate Polarity prior to its creative act actually taking place. As a consequence, Ruism’s standard conception of the cosmos is that this is a natural process of spontaneous emergence, which has no theistic telos to guide it.

In a word, Tian’s creativity is sublime. It is constant and all-encompassing. Nevertheless, ultimately, Tian’s creativity is not human. In Ruism’s view, only humans have visions and responsibilities to manifest Tian’s creativity in the human world and in a particularly human, that is, humane (仁, ren), way. At the conclusion of this essay, we can see that the religious commitment of Ruism towards the ‘non-theism’ of Tian’s creativity lays down a firm ground for its equally unflinching emphasis upon humanistic thinking and practices.

Foot-binding and Ruism

On July 7, 2022December 30, 2025 By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

(This article is originally published in Huffpost.)

If there is anything of which the Chinese Ru (Confucian) Tradition should feel guilty about, it is the past practice of female foot-binding in late imperial China. This does not mean that it was Ruism alone that caused the perpetuation of this awful custom that had wrought so much pain and suffering to women. Neither does it mean that Ruism does not have its own resources to correct itself in order to avoid anything similar in the future. In this essay, I will write down basic facts that contemporary Ruists should know in order to reflect, at first, and then, keep vigilant.

Q: When did the practice of foot-binding start?

A: The origin of female foot-binding had nothing to do with Ruism. According to a well-accepted view among historians, foot-binding began in the period of Wu Dai (907-979 C.E), which was more than one thousand years later after the life of Confucius (551-479 B.C.E). A frequently told story is about Li Yu (937-978C.E), the corrupted emperor of Nan Tang (937-975 C.E) who was more able to compose poetry than govern his state. He bound the feet of a court dancer called Yao Niang using silks so as to create a particular type of postures and movements for Yao Niang’s body to appear supple and sexually attractive. Since this kind of foot-binding was initially created for dancing, it had not yet evolved into the painful mutilation of women’s feet as seen later in the Ming (1368-1644 C.E) and Qing (1644-1911 C.E) Dynasties.

Q: How did the practice of foot-finding get developed?

A: There are three stages for the development of the foot-binding custom. From Wu Dai to Northern Song (960-1127 C.E) was the first stage, when foot-binding was visible mainly in the royal families, in the class called “Shi Da Fu” (senior scholar-officials) and other associated social elite’s circles. The practice was mostly seen in the cities. From Southern Song (1127-1279 C.E) to Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 C.E) was the second stage, when the practice of foot-binding spread to ordinary households, and even young girls of 4 or 5 years old were sometimes required to bind their feet in order to have a fortunate marriage prospect. Ming and Qing Dynasties were the last stage when foot-binding became a ubiquitous social norm, and the way to bind feet was also becoming the most abusive: women did not only need to bind their feet, they, from a very young age, also needed to mutilate, or even cut away part of their feet in order that their grown feet could look like a “three-inch golden lotus.”

As how most social norms spread to the general populace, a pattern can be discerned concerning the development of the foot-binding custom: the poor people imitated what the rich people did, the rural imitated the urban, the rich and urban imitated the politically powerful and the politically powerful imitated the royal families.

Q: What is the relationship between the practice of foot-binding and Ruism?

A: Even though it is difficult to find statements in Ruist classics that explicitly promoted the practice of foot-binding in those specific historical periods, the sociological and philosophical foundation of Ruism did provide rich soil that allowed foot-binding to flourish.

The membership of the aforementioned social class “senior scholar-officials” depended upon whether one can pass the civil examination and then, be officially appointed in a governmental position by the emperor. The major content of the civil examination is Ruist canons. In this way, since those “senior scholar-officials” were one of the most powerful social engines that spread the aesthetics associated with foot-binding, these officials, as well as the Ru Tradition they sustained, cannot be exonerated from the blame of condoning or even actually perpetuating this brutal practice of foot-binding.

One of the aims of the political philosophy of Ruism is to create harmony and stability within a justifiable hierarchy of social classes. The mainstream Ruist teaching in those time periods understood the marital relationship between husband and wife as hierarchical: the husband needs to be a model taking a leading role in his family, and the wife is expected to be an able assistant to her spouse. Although Ruism does not support wives to be mindlessly subservient to their husbands, the basic formation of Ruist family ethics risked a facile alliance with the patriarchal abuse of power with a result that some inhumane social rites, such as foot-binding, cannot be easily hurdled. As a consequence, as early as Yuan Dynasty, the increasingly popular practice of foot-binding was seen as aiming to cultivate women’s Ruist virtues, such as chastity and feminine propriety.

Q: Were there Ruists opposing the practice of foot-binding?

A: Yes! The practice of foot-binding ran counter to the central principle of Ru spirituality: the cardinal virtue of Ren (humaneness), which longs for the full-flourishing of all humans’ life in their dynamic and harmonious relationships, as well as the virtue of Xiao (filiality), which takes “not injuring one’s body” as one’s first duty. Throughout all the three stages of the foot-binding custom, there were Ruists standing up and voicing their dissent against the custom using Ruist principles. In its latest stage, Ruists even became a major reformative social group campaigning for the custom’s repeal. Some examples can be seen as following:

In the first stage, when the practice of foot-binding had not yet been spread to rural areas and ordinary households, Xu Ji (1023-1103 C.E), one of the pioneering Ruists in the so-called “Dao Xue” (“learning of Dao,” usually translated as “neo-Confucianism”) movement, denounced it in a poignant manner: when Xu Ji wrote a poem praising one virtuous woman who, through years, made great efforts to organize a decent funeral ritual for each of her 18 passed family members, he said: “She planted the pine-trees by her own hands, and then, all her body was stained with mud. Did she have any vain time to bind her two feet? She only knew how to work diligently using her four limbs.” [1] Here, unbinding one’s feet was seen by Xu Ji as a condition to fulfill a woman’s family obligation, while the upper-class fashion of women’s foot-binding, due to its associated aesthetics of vanity and indolence, is lampooned.

In the second stage, when the foot-binding custom gradually infiltrated ordinary households and even toddlers began to be required to do so, Che Ruoshui (1210-1275 C.E), who was well-known as a Ruist “being deeply convinced by Zhu Xi’s Collective Commentary of Four Books”, boycotted the custom using a compassionate heart: “To bind women’s feet, I do not know when this practice started. My little daughter is only four or five years old. Since she is so innocent, should we torture her with so much pain? If we bound her feet to such a small size, of what use was it?” Because these words were said in the context of Che Ruoshui’s discussion of Mencius’ thought on “accumulating one’s rightful deeds” (集義), Che was implicitly employing Mencius’ famous teaching about the incipient sprout of the innately good human nature to arouse people’s compassion to stop the inhuman practice of foot-binding: if people cannot help having a feeling of alarm and commiseration when they see a baby falling into a well, can we not help having exactly the same feeling when we see our young daughters have to bind their feet?

Again, during the Yuan Dynasty in the second stage when the foot-binding practice continued to gather its popularity, Bai Ting (1248-1328 C.E), an officially appointed Ruist teacher traveling and lecturing in various local schools, forcefully opposed it. The way Bai voiced his dissent was to cite the story of Cheng Yi’s family. Cheng Yi (1033-1107 C.E) was one definitive figure of the Dao Xue movement in Northern Song. His grandson was called Cheng Huai. According to Bai Ting’s record, “the extensive family of Cheng Huai lived in Chi Yang. No women bound their feet. Neither did any of them pierce her ears. Cheng’s family followed this rule until now.” [3]. This record does not only speak to the protesting stance of Bai Ting against foot-binding, it also tells us that Cheng Yi, the founding Ruist for the Dao Xue movement actually did not approve of foot-binding, and Cheng Yi took it as a family rule that no women within his extensive family, including his offsprings, can bind their feet.

In the third stage, when the practice of foot-binding turned into a social routine, Ruists became a powerful social group campaigning for its repeal. In this regard, two examples can let us get a glimpse into this historical trend.

Qian Yong (1759-1844 C.E), among many other contemporaneous Ruists sharing a reformative ethos in early and middle Qing dynasty, argued: “if women’s feet are bound, the being of two modes will not be perfected. If the being of two modes is not perfected, their male and female offsprings will be weak and feeble. If all men and women are weak and feeble, everything in human society will fall apart!” [4] Here, the phrase of “two modes” (两儀) was borrowed from one of the Ruist canon, the Classic of Change, and referred to man and woman.

Also, among all reformative Ruists in the third stage, Kang You-wei (1858-1927 C.E) was one of the most active. He did not only argue for the cruelty of the foot-binding custom, he also launched social movements and established organizations to implement his critical ideas. He once adamantly urged to repeal the custom in such a way: “In the view of a state’s government, it (the practice of foot-binding) abuses power to punish innocent women; In the view of the virtue of parental kindness, it hurts parents’ feelings of humaneness and love; in the view of hygiene, it breaks women’s bones and causes their diseases; in the view of military competition, generations of weak people will be born; in the view of aesthetics and culture, it will make a barbarian country mocked by its neighbors. If we can bear this, what else can we not bear?” [5] Here, as for other similar examples, we find underlying Ruist principles for Kang’s argument, and therefore, although it was only after the end of the imperial China (1911 C.E) that the practice of foot-binding was finally eliminated in China, we need to know that Ruists were once major contributors helping this day to come earlier.

Q: What can we learn from the shown complex relationship between the foot-binding practice and Ruism?

A: At least two important lessons contemporary Ruists must learn from the concerned relationship:

First, even though hierarchical systems are still a worthy ideal for the development of human civilization due to efficiency and meritocratic justice, there is no need to sustain such a standard in some interpersonal relationships such as marriage. Married couples can cooperate in various ways depending upon their different personalities, abilities, and expertise. In some circumstances, men may play a leading role. In others, it may be women who go to take the lead. Regardless, contemporary Ruism must make a maximal use of its own resources to support the full-flourishing of women’s life in both domestic and non-domestic contexts. The role of women in family should neither be confined in assisting a leading patriarch nor giving birth to and taking care of offsprings. Women should have the opportunity to flourish, giving them a chance to build a legacy which could be equally as memorable as any man.

Second, one idiosyncratic feature of Ru spirituality is its persistent emphasis upon the role of li (禮, cultural symbols and facilities, usually translated as “rituals” or “rites” ) in the process of creating and sustaining high human civilization. However, good li leads to high civilization, but bad li can destroy it. Informed by the intricate relationship between the tragic custom of foot-binding and historical Ruism, contemporary Ruists should be on a constant alert to any degenerating tendency of established cultural systems and social norms, and thus, be prepared to use our full strengths to fix any new problems on the horizon. In this regard, we should keep Lao Zi’s Daoist criticism (the Dao De Jing, Chapter 38) of the Ru project of social construction and Confucius’ Ruist self-criticism (the Analects, 3.3) of the same project constantly in mind: being a Ru is to believe that li demarcates the humanistic feature of humanity; however, if misused, li can become inhumane.

Notes:

[1] 徐积, 節孝集, 卷十四. Translations are my own, including the following.

[2] 车若水, 脚氣集, 卷一.

[3] 白珽, 湛淵静語, 卷一.

[4] 錢泳, 履園叢話, 卷二三.

[5] 康有為政論集，北京：中華書局, 1981: 335-336.