Tag: spirituality

Dynamic Harmony (和, he) as a Principle of Civil Disobedience

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

(An earlier version of the article was firstly published in Huffington Post: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-catechism-of-ruism-conf_2_b_10449592)

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song teaching and researching at Washington College. As we have learned from previous units of the course, students may already have a sense of the significance of “harmony” or “harmonization” for the Ru tradition. As the character of Ru implies, being a Ru is to utilize one’s cultural knowledge and skills to harmonize all involved beings in a civilization. But what does the Ru tradition mean by “harmony”? Is there any distinction of the Ru conception of “harmony” from other traditions? In this unit, we’ll focus upon these questions. As a conversation starter, I’ll use political philosophy as an example, but please do keep it in mind that the implications of harmony is far-reaching in the Ru lifestyle, and we’ll discuss these implications later.

By all commonsense standards, which may of course be lacking in academic sophistication, the mainland of China is not democratic. The appointment of the General Secretary for the Chinese Communist Party is similar to the selection of the Pope in Roman Catholicism: a small circle of high bishops hold a closed meeting, white smoke rises up, and a new Pope marches out. Accordingly, everyone begins to cheer! In China, the people can’t vote for local magistrates beyond the village level. People can’t openly criticize any governmental malfunction unless ‘the criticisms are of good will.’ I am here quoting the words recently used by China’s foreign minister to berate a Canadian journalist after she had challenged the lack of essential human rights available to people in mainland China ( please click here). There are no television debates, there are no campaigns; often people even know who will be the No.1 political leader, and sometimes also the No.2, almost a decade before he or she actually steps ‘unto the throne.’

Primarily for this reason, I am infinitely sympathetic with the protest carried out by Hong Kong’s young people in 2014, the so-called ‘umbrella revolution,’ when they realized their right of universal suffrage could be ‘cashed out’ by being required to vote only for candidates for chief executive who have been either approved or assigned in advance by China’s central government. This reminds me of my own experience of voting for a ‘deputy of the people’s congress’ (人大代表) when I was in college. China has the strangest ‘congress’ in the world. Although it is called ‘the people’s congress,’ and its main functions are, like other congresses around the world, to pass laws and oversee the functioning of the government, the deputies making up the congress are almost all elitists from various areas of the country: they are city or province magistrates, high governmental officials, directors of giant corporations, presidents of universities, famous entertainers such as singers, film stars or presenters on TV talk-shows, etc. As I said, what is most ludicrous is that citizens can only vote for those representatives who have already been assigned from ‘above.’ I can never forget that in 2000, my sophomore year in college, I was called up to vote for the deputies of congress on behalf of my university. There was only one candidate and I didn’t even know who she was, what her political beliefs were, or how or whether she would fight for the people’s rights and interests. Even so, a label with her name was stuck to a voting box waiting for everyone’s ballots. When I realized how ridiculous this was, I quit, and never voted again.

This gloomy picture of contemporary Chinese politics poses a special challenge for Ruism, the most political of the traditions of ancient China, which always strives to realize ‘humane government’ (仁 政). The question for modern Ruists is: where does the tradition stand today? Actually, a western political observer has noticed a discouraging phenomenon in China’s various democratic movements, such as the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong: a Ruist voice is lacking (click here). When people search for ideological resources to back up any appeal to democracy, they are more than likely to appropriate ideas and slogans from the West, such as Victo Hugo’s, ‘When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty.’ Nevertheless, in my view, Ruism is a tradition deep enough to provide an indigenous ideological resource to back up the contemporary Chinese people’s appeal to democracy, and the only remaining job for contemporary Ruists is to let people know what these ideas are, and then to try to help put these ideas into practice. In the remainder of this essay, I will argue that the spiritual, ethical and political goal of Ruism, ‘dynamic harmony’ (和, he), is the sort of democratic idea that can point to the correct direction for political reformation so badly needed in China and in all other related places in the world.

The basic meaning of ‘harmony’ is ‘being together,’ and the etymology of both its Chinese character, 和, and its English translation, harmony [Gr. άρμονία], relates to music. However, there is a significant difference between the ancient Greek philosophers and the ancient Ruist thinkers in regard to their understanding of musical harmony. For the Pythagoreans, musical performances furnish great occasions to ponder those perfect mathematical laws, such as the calculable proportions among notes and pitches within instrumental performances. In this way, playing music is a way of applying universal laws to particular performances so that an intended harmony is produced. For Ruists, I think they would not disagree with Pythagoreans’ conception of harmony, since being harmonious in general requests a certain set of rules to follow in order to counteract disharmonies. However, the tendency of embodying and practicing abstract ideas makes the Ru tradition distinctively more emphasize the bodily and participatory dimensions of harmonization. For Ruists, playing music (樂, yue) is like joining a magnificent banquet comprised of a variety of factors: performing instruments, singing, dancing, reading, ritual-playing, drinking, eating and so on. In this way, the pattern-principle (理, li) governing the performance of one single element, such as how to correctly play a harp, will be analogically adopted by the other elements even though it may be manifested in completely different ways, such as by the dancers who must translate musical notes into body language in order for the dance performance to unfold together with the playing of the instruments. Here, the key to harmony is not one of pondering universal mathematical laws beyond particular performances, but the creative inter-play among each human participant in accordance with each different situation. Understood in this way, playing music is a dynamic process leading to endless novelty while simultaneously manifesting a recognizable set of pattern-principles. It is not a matter of applying static, universal mathematical laws onto concrete instrumental performances, but rather one of engendering novel expressions of recognizable pattern-principles which have been played out by other co-players or earlier exemplary musicians. Because of this dynamic and diversifying essence of the Ruist idea of ‘harmony,’ I always suggest translating 和 as ‘dynamic harmony’ in order to distance it from its Pythagorean cousin. In Ruism, this distinct understanding of ‘dynamic harmony’ is nicely summarized by Confucius in Analects, 13:23: ‘The exemplary person searches for harmony without uniformity, but the petty-person searches for uniformity without harmony’ (君子和而不同，小人同而不和).

Clearly, this idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ is what sets the foundation for the peoples’ conception of good politics. It requires a humane government that does not do what the current Chinese government has done to the people of Hong Kong and the citizens of mainland China, that is, to ignore appeals from minorities and other under-represented groups of people, and then to impose uniform laws from above. An harmonious process of governance ought to be based upon an all-encompassing process of negotiation and compromise, participated in by all relevant groups of people, which then allows all the people to live and flourish together in the same society. We find references that this is the Ruist understanding of humane governance in some of the earliest Ruist classics.

In the Zuozhuan (Zhaogong 20 昭公二十年), a scholar-minister, Yanzi 晏子 (?-500 B.C.E), whose later thought had a great influence on the Ruist tradition, is recorded to have remonstrated with the Duke of Qi when the duke praised a minister whose ideas always coincided with his own. First, said Yanzi, the process leading to dynamic harmony in governance is like cooking a delicious soup using diverse ingredients, or playing pleasing music using varying instruments. Additionally, Yanzi argued that a harmonious and good government must also be based upon a creative tension within diverse factors:

“When the duke says, ‘Yes,’ Ju (據, the minister whom the duke of Lu had praised) also says ‘Yes’; when the duke says ‘No’, Ju also says ‘No’. This is like mixing water with water. Who can eat such a soup? This is like using the same kind of instruments to produce music. Who can enjoy such music? This is why it is not all right to be uniform (同, tong).”

According to this passage, when the current Chinese government only allows candidates for chief-executive or deputy to the people’s congress who have been assigned from above, they are doing exactly what Yanzi criticized: they are mixing water with water and using the same kind of instruments to produce music—and who enjoys that? From this and other similar Ruist texts, we also find that the Ruist idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ does not mean that there should be no conflict during the process of harmonization. The diversity of interests expressed by different groups of people on which any form of dynamic harmony is based almost inevitably leads to conflict. But it does mean that people do not see such conflict as a source of eliminating antagonism, but rather as a great opportunity leading to change and growth. This requires that people with different interests need to listen to each other, become educated about their topic, and negotiate with one another. Furthermore, doing so constrains personal interest and requires accommodation to the ideas of others, and then, necessitates finding sustainable solutions which allow each inter-connected group to complement the others, and to thrive together in the same society.

Understood in this way, in a case in which unjustified uniform laws have been imposed from above, the Ruist idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ can be seen as a principle of civil disobedience. It urges citizen disobedience because harmony must be based upon an integrated diversity. Ruists believe that a dominant voice cannot be accepted from any authority unless it succeeds in harmonizing appeals voiced by varying groups of people all the way from bottom to top. It is ‘civil’ because the essential Ruist method for dealing with conflict is non-violent and ought ultimately to be oriented toward the establishment of a new harmony. This requires the human co-participators in this conflict-resolution process to creatively invent new forms of ritual-proprieties (禮, li), making the necessary negotiations and compromises practicable and sustainable. In a certain perspective, what Hong Kong’s young people have done in their peaceful demonstrations is a perfect example of how ‘dynamic harmony’ can be practiced in a modern situation: “I protest, I disobey, but I do this as a responsible and educated citizen. Therefore, I will respect the dignity of all involved humans, including my political enemies, using peaceful and civil manners, but I will fight for my basic human right to the death, since without taking account of other people’s diverse democratic views, there can be no humane government, and neither can there be true ‘dynamic harmony’ in human society.”

Confucianism as Not An Atheism

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment
QUFU, SHANDONG PROVINCE, CHINA - 2015/03/19: Dragon carved stone steps leading to Dacheng Hall, also called the Hall of Great

One of the most perplexing aspects of Confucianism is that people easily misunderstand it as a 100% humanism. An example is that, when early Jesuit missionaries went to China and found Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism of “Pattern-Principle” (理）and “Matter-Energy” (氣）was taken to be orthodox by Confucian elite, they categorized Confucianism as a form of “atheism” and thus, thought it deeply corrupted.

In Christianity, even love towards one’s neighbors is ultimately driven by divine grace. That means it is God who commands and makes us love our neighbors. However, because Confucianism lacks this kind of “divine agency” concept, it is very hard for Confucians to say when we love our parents and kids, it is ultimately and exclusively “Heaven” (天） who drives us towards this love.

The divergent situation is that Heaven in Confucianism is an all-encompassing constantly creative cosmic power. It lacks the Christian feature of “agency.” The Heavenly creation is spontaneous, natural, and if we use a term in modern control theory, it can also be self-organized in certain circumstances such as on the earth, but there is no guarantee that every creation of Heaven is ordered according to human expectation. Since Heaven is constantly creating, the essence of human beings, as an organic part of Heaven, is also constantly creating. This constantly creating human nature is named by “Ren” (仁) in Confucianism. An impressive allegory made by Neo-Confucianism is that this human nature “Ren” embodied in humans is like the “kernel” (果仁）contained in the nutshell (果壳), so represents the essential of life. But what is distinct in Confucianism is, Heaven provides the creative energy to human beings, but how humans, as an “agent”, use this energy is solely due to themselves.

As a matter of fact, when Confucians feel united with Heaven through an arduous process of self-cultivation, they would love a myriad of things under Heaven. But in this mystical situation, we can say, the great body of ours which we form with Heaven makes us want to love, but how to love concretely is still exclusively due to ourselves. In this way, the idea of “Heaven” as the divine reality in Confucianism provides ultimate axiological and aesthetic motives for humans’ universal love, but it can’t provide the “agency” which is the last crucial link leading to a concrete action of human love.

In this sense, it is wrong to characterize Confucianism as an “atheism”, since “Heaven” is indeed the divine reality which provides the ultimate axiological and aesthetic values to human deeds. But it is not a “theism” too, since “Heaven” is not a personal God and lacks the Christian-like “agency”. In fact, It is a non-theism. What Confucians worship about “Heaven” is a benevolent but wild cosmic creative power, without any anthropomorphic sort of purpose, will or plan. Correspondingly, the Confucian humanism is a non-theistic humanism, and in this strictly defined sense, it is a spiritual humanism.

Is Confucius a Confucian?

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment
2016-02-06-1454789056-6326582-misnomerofConfucianism.jpg

In the early 15th century, several Confucian missionaries embarked with Zheng He’s fleet, which was being sent out by the Ming emperor, Cheng Zu, both to demonstrate China’s national power and to build up international friendship with foreign countries. Relying on Zheng He’s incredible navigational skills and his massive ships, these missionaries reached every major country in southern and western Asia, eastern Africa, and the Cape of Good Hope, eventually arriving at their final destination, Europe. Their primary goal was to convert each non-Confucian, that is, each barbarian nation to Confucianism in order to spread Chinese civilization and also to bring, according to their view, ultimate goodness to everyone under the Heavens. But in order to do this, the missionaries first needed to understand the kind of education European people traditionally received. They found that in Europe everyone talked about Jesus. Jesus’ not so decent image, a nude, bloody and somewhat mutilated body crucified on a cross, was hanging everywhere and was venerated by almost everyone. As a result, the Confucian missionaries thought that since Jesus seemed to be the European’s sage, this tradition should be named, ‘Jesusism.’ Meanwhile, the missionaries reported this to the emperor of the Central Kingdom, and accordingly, the Chinese came to know the major teaching of Europe as Jesusism. However, these early Confucian missionaries’ efforts in Europe were not very successful. The Jesus believers refused to admit that Jesus was merely a sage, and it appeared that, to them, Jesus was much more than a sage. But because Chinese civilization maintained its technological and economic hegemony in the world from the early 15th century until the present, Chinese became such a powerful language that everyone in the world continually talked about ‘Jesusism,’ no matter whether ‘Jesusians’ approved of this name or not. At the same time, Confucianism spread into every corner of the world, and entertained, sometimes harmonious and sometimes conflicting, relationships with various indigenous traditions.

Yes, you are right! This is a fairy tale, a total fiction! But if you exchange ‘China’ for ‘Europe,’ replace ‘Confucianism’ by ‘Jesusism,’ and switch all the other relevant historical factors in this fiction, then I have been describing exactly what happened in the case of ‘Confucianism’!

Confucianism is a misnomer. It was created by early Christian missionaries for the purpose of comparison and, especially, of conversion. Although Christian missionaries created a number of names for the now so-called world religions, the term ‘Confucianism’ is especially unfortunate since it says nothing at all that is essential about the tradition that the name purports to describe.

We can see that this is so by making a comparison with other major world religions. In Christianity, ‘Christ’ means ‘the anointed,’ or ‘the savior.’ This is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word, ‘Messiah.’ For Christians, Jesus is the Christ, because he is thought to have cleansed the original sin of human beings through his crucifixion, and thus to be able to bring salvation to all the world. Similarly, in Buddhism, ‘Buddha’ means ‘the awakened’ or ‘the enlightened.’ For Buddhists, Siddhartha Gautama is a ‘Buddha’ because he has attained enlightenment. His teaching is thought to be capable of awakening people, allowing them to understand the origin of human suffering and helping them to transcend the otherwise endless cycle of reincarnation, the samsara.

By contrast, if we follow the name ‘Confucianism,’ and claim that Confucius is a Confucian, what could this mean? It is as tautological as to say a dog is doggy and the sun is sunny. I am quite skeptical concerning whether any Confucian practitioner approves of this name.

So what is the Chinese name for ‘Confucianism’? In other words, how would a contemporary Confucian wish to identify himself or herself when following this tradition? It is Ru (儒, pronounced like ‘zoo,’ but in an ascending tone). Given this name, it makes sense for Confucian practitioners to say that Confucius is a Ru because, similar to ‘Christ’ and ‘Buddha,’ Ru is not only a name. It also represents an ideal for human life. In this sense, to know why Confucius is venerated as a Ru is to understand the essential teaching of ‘Ruism,’ which in my view is the correct name to replace ‘Confucianism.’ So, what is this ideal? And what is the meaning of the Chinese character ‘儒’?

Although the division of ancient Chinese thought into named schools, such as Ruism, Daoism, Legalism, etc., was brought about by intellectual historians in the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE), the philosophical debate among major Chinese thinkers who were designated by these names had already begun several hundred years earlier. Mencius (approximately 372-289 BCE) considered that his own thought belonged to the school of Ru (Mencius, 7B). In addition, separate chapters entitled, “The Influence of a Ru“ (儒效) and “The Deeds of a Ru“ (儒行) are contained in Confucian classics such as the Xunzi and the Book of Rites, which were written during approximately the same time period as the Mencius. In other words, among various schools of ancient Chinese thought, the strong self-designation of Confucius’ students as Ru began shortly after Confucius passed away. If we now pay attention to the reason that the tradition selected the character 儒 (ru) to identify itself, we find there are two major meanings of 儒, both of which are warmly endorsed by Confucian practitioners.

First, rou (柔), a closely related character, means ‘being soft’. Why soft? This meaning relates to the sociological status of the term Ru before the time of Confucius. At this time, as a social order, Ru referred to a variety of professions: shamans, diviners, those who prayed for rain, dancers, those who presided over religious ceremonies, etc. In pre-Confucian China, this rank of people possessed one key skill which was thought by early Confucian thinkers to be of the utmost importance to human civilization: knowledge of ritual (li, 禮). From a Ruist perspective, the relationships among human beings and that between human beings and non-human nature are not immediate. Quite often, these relationships are, and ought to be, mediated by a variety of li: language, art, ceremonies, social etiquette, political institutions, technology, etc. In this way, li, although conventionally translated in English as ‘ritual,’ actually refers to all possible means of human civilization, and thus it is fair for us to paraphrase the Ruist concept of li to refer to all ‘civilized symbols.’ For example, faced with a beautiful, charming woman, no suggestion would ever be made that a civilized man should be driven immediately by his sexual impulses to grab her, kiss her, and touch her, without any scruple. On the contrary, civilized human sexual relationship is always mediated by kinds of symbols: a smile, particularized eye contact, intimate language, and probably also messages, emails, heartfelt gifts, etc. Finally, a civilized, more ideal result in this case for humans may be that even if the woman fails to accept the man, both must still show basic respect for each other, and thereby maintain a degree of humaneness throughout such interactive processes. Understood in this way, the uniqueness of civilized symbols consists in this, that as media, they are used by human beings to represent what happens in their subjective inner worlds in order to engage the objective realities which exist outside that inner world.

Therefore, li, according to this broad Ruist understanding, is a non-violent, uniquely human, way to facilitate human to human and human to nature relationships in order to advance human growth and to achieve the condition of dynamic harmony (he, 和) in every domain of human life. In a word, the ‘softness’ connoted by the character 儒 implies the essential and ideally non-violent nature of human civilization.

Secondly, ru means ‘to moisten’ (濡). In order to grasp the significance of this meaning of ru to Ruism, we must first understand a traditional Chinese idiom, 相濡以沫 (xiang-ru-yi-mo), which can be roughly translated as ‘(fishes) moisten each other using their saliva.’ The idiom refers to the following story: when a river dries up, fish become stranded in the river bed. In order to survive in this difficult situation, the fish spit saliva at each other, moistening and thus bringing relief to each other’s bodies. Understood in this way, a Ru, a ‘Confucian,’ was metaphorically thought to be able to ‘moisten’ people’s bodies because the Ru, by relying on their knowledge of all the resources of human civilization as well as on their own ‘practical moral influence’ (de, 德), are able to nourish people’s lives within human society. In comparison to other approaches to ethics in the West, this Ruist understanding of morality points to its distinctively holistic nature: if I am moral, I can nourish my life and the lives of other people, which thereby includes a significant bodily dimension. In other words, if I am moral, I will become healthy. In fact, based upon my previous analysis of the meaning of ‘dynamic harmony‘ (he, 和), this holistic approach to Ruist ethics is quite understandable.

In biological terms, a condition of dynamic harmony can be defined as one of ‘energy equilibrium,’ as when a biological entity employs the least amount of energy to exert optimal biological functioning, at the same time attaining a symbiotic relationship with each of the other entities within its local environment.

In this sense, if a Ru, by employing all kinds of non-violent civilized symbols, is able to bring a condition of dynamic harmony to his or her community, he or she is actually creating a healthy ecosphere within which all kinds of life benefit, nourish, and thus “moisten” each other. In this way, the character of 儒, which is made up of two parts, ren, 人, meaning ‘a human being,’ and xu, 需, meaning ‘need’ or ‘want,’ can be interpreted to refer to someone who is ‘a needed human being.’ But why should a Ru be needed by other people? It is precisely because he or she has command of the essential resources for human civilization, and so is able to ‘moisten’ people’s lives and thereby create those virtuous ecospheres which are needed within all domains of human society.

If we now combined these two meanings of Ru, ‘being soft’ and ‘to moisten,’ we can recognize that the standard meaning of Ru, as it is received in the Ruist tradition, is ‘non-violent transformation.’ To be a Ru is thus to be commissioned as a non-violent warrior and fighter who employs every resource of human civilization toward the realization of dynamic harmony in the world. A Ru is someone who tries to transform the world into an all-encompassing symbiotic ecosphere by employing his or her own personal moral cultivation. As a consequence, please do not forget that Confucius is not a Confucian; he is a Ru. And Confucianism is not Confucianism; it is Ruism. I hope that everyone who reads this article will help to spread this message, and will also commit to realizing the Ruist ideal in every dimension of human living.

“Oneness: East Asian Conceptions of Virtue, Happiness, and How We are All Connected” (Oxford University Press, 2017)

On By Bin SongIn News & InterviewsLeave a comment

Philip J. Ivanhoe, Oneness: East Asian Conceptions of Virtue, Happiness, and How We are All Connected, Oxford University Press, 2017, 188 pp., $39.95, ISBN 9780190840518.

Reviewed by Bin Song, Washington College

First Published at Notre Dame Philosophical Review, 2018.5.5.

At the center of East Asian philosophical traditions lies a conception of oneness signifying that “we — and in particular our personal welfare or happiness — are inextricably intertwined with other people, creatures, and things,” which Ivanhoe calls the “oneness hypothesis.” (1) While drawing upon the writings of East Asian, especially neo-Confucian, thinkers to elucidate the conception of oneness, this book aims to show how these traditional views “can guide us in constructing contemporary versions of the oneness hypothesis.” (3) In an era when human civilization is constantly alarmed by ecological crisis and societal disintegration, this book has great appeal particularly to those who are willing to employ comparative philosophy to tackle these menacing issues.

After introducing the oneness hypothesis and offering examples of East Asian thinkers who have advocated particular versions of such a hypothesis, Ivanhoe discusses the relational conception of the self, and then goes on to illustrate the interrelated, yet different concepts of selfishness and self-centeredness. Ivanhoe views both of these as harmful for humans efforts to envision a more appropriate idea of self implied by the oneness hypothesis. Subsequent chapters explore the nature of virtues and the value of spontaneity and compare Kongzi’s (Confucius’) and Zhuangzi’s conceptions of happiness in order to show how these conceptions contribute to the proper goal of neo-Confucian ethics.

The most brilliant point that Ivanhoe makes is that the ethic required by the conception of oneness ought not to favor an act of care exclusively for the sake of another. Instead, with the awareness of an expanded self, a caring agent would rather pay attention to the particular needs of a cared-for individual so that the altruistic deeds will ultimately bring satisfaction and happiness to the agent. In this sense, we can “avoid infantile conceptions of oneness that shrink back and withdraw from a clear sense of ourselves as individual autonomous agents and seek to merge back into the safety of some surrogate womb.” (152) As Chinese intellectual history shows, many neo-Confucian thinkers championed the traditional Confucian learning as one of “learning for oneself”[1] in contrast with the Buddhist teaching of “no-self.” This sort of learning states that an identification of one’s self with all the world does not make the self get lost in the world. Therefore, Ivanhoe’s incisive analysis of the position of self in a desirable form of the conception of oneness is clearly inspired by neo-Confucianism.

The strength of Ivanhoe’s argument also consists in his meticulous effort to utilize comparative and inter-disciplinary perspectives to enhance the plausibility of the oneness hypothesis in a modern context. On the one hand, Ivanhoe points out that the neo-Confucian reasoning from what the world truly is to how human individuals ought to behave in the world is similar to parts of the Western philosophical tradition such as Plotinus’ metaphysical and ethical vision of the “chain of being.” (16) On the other hand, Ivanhoe quotes extensively from contemporary research in varying disciplines, such as evolutionary biology and moral psychology, to show the compatibility of modern scientific worldviews to the traditional East Asian conception of oneness. Given the distinctive Confucian idea of “harmony” (he), which urges scholars to consider all factors relevant to a topic and then to place each factor in its proper position, we can understand Ivanhoe’s presentation of the East Asian conception of oneness as a Confucian project aiming to make the greatest sense of a historical idea on the basis of a harmonious integration of all relevant human knowledge. The result is truly masterful.

Last but not least, this work avoids the weak point of some current scholarship in comparative philosophy, which tends to lump together “East Asian philosophy” as a coherent whole in order to compare it with its Western counterparts. Consider Ivanhoe’s comparative study of Kongzi’s and Zhuangzi’s ideas of “happiness.” After a detailed explanation of each idea, Ivanhoe concludes: “I do not intend to reduce one to the other, cast them both as expressions of some single higher truth, or obscure their differences in light of what they share. They offer two related but distinct perspectives on oneness and the good life.” (148) In my view, the thoughts of schools and philosophers in ancient East Asia are no less diverse, divergent, or sometimes even antagonistic to each other than those in Western philosophy. Ivanhoe’s careful treatment of both the similarities and differences among East Asian philosophies should be taken as a model for future scholars.

However, there are weak points in Ivanhoe’s argument on the plausibility of the oneness hypothesis, such as his ambivalent attitude towards metaphysics. While defining the neo-Confucian philosophy of oneness as a sort of metaphysical ethics or ethical metaphysics comparable to the neo-Platonic “chain of being,” Ivanhoe argues for its advantage over the empathy-based ethic. This is because its deeper metaphysical commitment to the all-encompassing oneness allows humans’ altruistic care to extend to “nonhuman animals and, even more challenging, plants and inanimate objects.” (11) While citing science to indicate the compatibility of the oneness hypothesis with a modern context, Ivanhoe also hopes that “we might draw upon and employ neo-Confucian conceptions of oneness as a model and guide for fashioning a plausible and attractive modern version of the oneness hypothesis and make use of it as a resource to develop a corresponding ethic.” (33)

All of these are very positive views towards the oneness hypothesis as a whole, including its metaphysical ingredient. However, in many other places, Ivanhoe expresses an unreserved negative evaluation of the contemporary prospect of neo-Confucian metaphysics, which centers on a view of the all-pervading patterns or principles (li) and vital-energies (qi) in the universe. For example, the metaphysical foundation of the neo-Confucian conception of oneness is said to be “clearly inconsistent with the best science of the day” (74), and “so deeply at odds with our contemporary scientific understanding of both self and world.” (151) The idea underlying these jarring statements seems to be that Ivanhoe thinks people today can just pay attention to and practice pragmatically the ethical part of the oneness hypothesis without being involved in any metaphysical controversy (79).

However, first, we do not exactly know how this can be done, and especially, how a truncated conception of the oneness hypothesis, if possible, can be claimed as being inspired by the neo-Confucian conception of oneness. Second, these statements are indeed deeply at odds with others quoted above (3, 11, and 33), which all speak to the central motif of the book: utilizing the traditional neo-Confucian conception of oneness, which is deeply metaphysical, to inspire a modern update. I believe Ivanhoe should distinguish three questions when he articulates his view on metaphysics: first, whether metaphysics is needed at all for constructing a contemporary conception of oneness and its corresponding ethic; second, if it is needed, what is the role of metaphysics for this purpose; third, what traditional metaphysical ideas in this regard are the most inspiring and conducive. Because Ivanhoe has not yet explained his stance on the first two questions, his ambiguous statements regarding the neo-Confucian metaphysics may make it hard for readers to understand his overall argument for the oneness hypothesis.

Another weak point is that Ivanhoe’s presentation of the neo-Confucian hypothesis risks over-simplification in its own right, although he succeeds in delivering a nuanced comparison of the Daoist and the Confucian conceptions of happiness, as mentioned above. In particular, readers might misunderstand the neo-Confucian conception of oneness as a coherent whole after they read this book, but the fact is that thinkers within the Chinese neo-Confucian tradition disagreed on multiple issues in a variety of ways. For example, while presenting the metaphysical core claim of oneness in neo-Confucianism, Ivanhoe says:

Under the influence of Buddhist metaphysical beliefs, neo-Confucians developed a more robust and dramatic sense of oneness as a kind of identity between self and world. Rather than seeing the world as an interconnected system or web of principles or patterns, they believed each and everything in the world contained within itself all the principles or patterns in the universe. (22, emphasis mine)

Here, “contain” is an ineffective word because it fails to show the rich diversity of ideas within neo-Confucianism on this crucial issue: the relationship between the human mind-heart (xin) within and the principles or patterns in the world without. For instance, two contemporary neo-Confucian thinkers of almost equal influence in their time, Wang Yangming and Zhan Ruoshui, both endorsed the idea that “the mind-heart is the pattern or principle” (xin ji li). However, Wang tended to think that the human mind-heart includes innately all principles and patterns in the outside world, while Zhan opposed Wang’s view and insisted that the human mind-heart needs to comply with patterns or principles in order to achieve the ultimate unification between the self and world.[2]

It is worthwhile to mention this debate because, at the end of the book, Ivanhoe specified one problem with the conception of oneness: the conception ought not lead us to “engulf the world by swallowing it into oneself” so as to “efface the variety and texture of our magnificently diverse and dabbled world.” (153) However, as shown in the intellectual history of neo-Confucianism, this problem is exactly what critics once pointed out to some of Wang Yangming’s radical followers. In a word, it is not only unjust to the history of neo-Confucian philosophy to treat the neo-Confucian conception of oneness as a coherent whole; this simplified presentation of neo-Confucianism also defies Ivanhoe’s own argumentative purpose: to construct an available modern conception of oneness under neo-Confucian inspiration.

The last critique I would like to offer is that despite being an accomplished and prolific scholar on ancient Chinese philosophy, Ivanhoe succumbs to certain questionable views that urgently need to be rethought. In conclusion, let me raise three examples.

First, the origin of neo-Confucian metaphysics needs to be reconsidered. Ivanhoe perpetuates a view prevalent among Anglophone students of Chinese philosophy that “Neo-Confucians have embedded earlier Confucian ideas in a much more complex and powerful metaphysical system derived largely from Daoist and Buddhist sources.” (144) However, although terms and characters were shared by neo-Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist metaphysical discourses, the texts upon which neo-Confucian thinkers based their new interpretations and thus built their own metaphysical conceptions all derived from earlier Confucianism. For example, chapters in the Classic of Rites (Liji) and the Classic of Changes (Yijing), two among the so-called Five Classics, were widely thought of by neo-Confucian thinkers as of crucial importance for neo-Confucian metaphysics. Moreover, these metaphysical chapters of classical Confucianism already produced their great influences among Chinese metaphysical thinkers in the Han dynasty, which was significantly earlier than the Song and Ming Dynasties when neo-Confucianism flourished. In other words, the Confucian tradition is undeniably and distinctively metaphysical from its very beginning, although whether Confucian thinkers adopt or emphasize these traditional metaphysical elements depends upon their own discretion.

Ivanhoe’s presentation of both classical Confucianism and neo-Confucianism focuses on writings authored by individual philosophers, but not on the traditional Five Classics and their commentaries. In Chinese intellectual historiographical terms, this means it focuses on the “learning of masters” (zixue), rather than the “learning of classics” (jingxue). Obviously, this perpetuates controversial views on Chinese philosophy as illustrated above.

Third, I have argued, together with other scholars,[3] that “Confucianism” is a misnomer invented by early Christian missionaries for the Ru tradition, and we should change the term “Confucianism” to “Ruism” in order to more accurately present the Ru tradition to Western audiences. Two conspicuous benefits can be derived from this rectification of names in the context of Ivanhoe’s work. First, Ivanhoe seems to have been envisioning a sentence like “Kongzi finds his joy in following the Confucian way” when he discussed Kongzi’s view of joy, perhaps in order to avoid the awkward sentence “Confucius finds his joy in following the Confucian way” through using the Romanized pinyin form Kongzi.[4] However, for readers versed in Chinese language and culture, the former equally smacks of narcissism, and is actually no less awkward than the latter. Replacing “Confucianism” with “Ruism” and “Confucian” with “Ru” or “Ruist,” the sentence can be neatly written as “Confucius finds his joy in following the Ru (or Ruist) way.” Second, if we can avoid “Confucianism” as an awkward Western misnomer, the term “neo-Confucianism” and some of the aforementioned controversial points can also be more easily rethought. There is no Chinese term corresponding to “neo-Confucianism.” In contemporary Chinese intellectual historiography, the Ru tradition in the Song and Ming dynasties is usually called “Song-Ming Ruxue,” i.e., Ruism of the Song and Ming Dynasties. Therefore, instead of “neo-Confucianism,” we can use “Song and Ming Ruism” to show the great continuity of the Ru tradition, and avoid suggesting that the metaphysics of neo-Confucianism derived from somewhere else, and thus, was entirely “neo-” to the “Confucian” tradition.

REFERENCES

  • Angle, Stephen (2016). “Should we use ‘Ruism’ instead of ‘Confucianism’?” Warp, Weft, and Way, posted May 4, 2016, accessed January 1, 2017.
  • Bol, Peter (1994). “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China. Stanford University Press.
  • Huang, Mingtong (2001). Chen Xianzhang Ping Zhuan (An Annotated Biography of Chen Xianzhang). The Press of Nanjing University.
  • Slingerland, Edward (2003). Confucius Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company.
  • Swain, Tony (2017). Confucianism in China: An Introduction. Bloomsbury.

[1] This neo-Confucian thought is based upon the Analects 14:24 “The Master said, in ancient times scholars learned for their own sake; these days they learn for the sake of others.” See Slingerland (2003): 164. One of the best historical discussions of the neo-Confucian idea of “learning for oneself” in relation to the movement of “Learning of the Way (daoxue)” can be found in Bol (1994): 305-337.

[2] About the difference between Wang Yangming and Zhan Ruoshui on this point, see Huang (2001): 306-313.

[3] Most recent scholarly discussions on this issue can be found in Angle 2016 and Swain (2017): 3-22.

[4] The full sentences, upon which the quoted one is based, are from “Kongzi describes various stages of understanding the Dao,” until the end of the paragraph on page 133. See also the phrases “Kongzi, the founding figure of Confucianism” and “early Confucians such as Kongzi.” (129, 131)