Confucianism in dialogue

2023-04-14

Introduction

I wasn’t really planning on posting writing I did for classes on this blog, but this assignment was by far the most unique writing prompt I’ve ever endeavored to answer, and thought it deserved a post to itself.

One of the hallmarks (for lack of a better word) of US education is writing the essay: it’s a skill you start developing in elementary school, with simple 3-sentence paragraphs about your backyard, and eventually perfect, in late high school or your undergraduate years, with 10+ page analytical essays. It’s an extremely particular way of presenting knowledge. Essay prose tends to be slightly robotic, an artifact of the rigid “outline” sheets we would be forced to fill out in middle school in a mostly futile attempt to structure ideas in a somewhat cohesive manner.

Over the past couple of years, my essay writing evolved quite a bit. For one, I began outlining out of my own free will (gasp!) – not following any specific format, but systemically organizing ideas to keep me from losing track of them. My essay “voice” also started becoming more casual; I dispensed with the “two sentences of analysis per one piece of evidence” formula I learned in middle school, and instead began doing a little bit more rambling, varying my sentence structure, and other sacreligious essay writing practices.

Enter “Contemporary Civilizations”. CC is a year-long seminar class in Columbia’s Core Curriculum that examines important texts and ideas from the Western canon, ranging in authors from Plato to Arendt and in topics from 18th century German rationalism through modern psychoanalysis. We get assigned essays (like most classes of this sort), but this time, the prompts were quite different in style. There was an option for a standard “compare/contrast” essay, but the prompt that caught my eye was the following:

Write a Declaration of Independence for a new nation. Then, write criticisms and responses to your act of state-making in the style of two authors from our syllabus. You can write this part of the paper as a dialogue between these two thinkers.

I very seriously considered just writing the compare/contrast essay – it would’ve been very similar to countless essays I’ve written in the past, and was something I was pretty confident I could churn out in a couple of days. However, in the back of my head I knew I wanted to write the latter, if not just to see what it would be like to try. It ended up being some of the most fun I’ve ever had writing a paper for a class here. Now I’m not a great writer by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly a breath of fresh air from the monotony of the traditional essay that I had become accustomed to. Please enjoy :)

Piece

DECLARATION.

PREAMBLE.1
During the Spring and Autumn period, China had not found peace in many centuries. For every spring and autumn that passed, another family lost its fathers and sons, another territory was conquered by a dao-brandishing warlord, and another state was annexed by its neighbor.
It was with this bloodied history that Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals. To chronicle this period of time must have been both a monumental challenge and a great honor. Yet as this history unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that a new legal, moral, and political philosophy is necessary to guide our people out of the bloodshed. Three classical philosophies emerged out of this void. The first is Daoism, which asks for small, almost primitive communities that sustain themselves independently and are centered around 无谓: the principle of non-action. For the Daoist, artificial structures like government only further societal confusion and turmoil. The second is Legalism, which in many ways is Daoism’s opposite: it advocates for rigid enforcement of the law as the only sensible method of governance.
However, as a scholar trained in the Confucian school, the direction we shall take for rebuilding present-day China is not to be found in the dao, nor is it to be found in draconian legal codes. As such, we write this DECLARATION to define and maintain our filial values, our virtue and virtue-seeking, and our basic and humanistic good.

PART ONE. On Human Nature.
1A. Humans, and human nature, are good.
1B. When humans act badly, it is not because those humans are fundamentally evil; rather, it is the consequence of unrealized 仁, goodness, that lives in all of us2, like a sleepy bear roused by the sounds of spring.
1C. Humans can (and should) continually self-improve their 善心, moral mind, via self-cultivation3. The only way to realize our innate virtue is to come to accept it through reflection and internalization.
1D. Humans are more similar than they are different. Differences only emerge when habits are repeated until rendering their subjects unrecognizable4.
1E. To become a great person is to follow the great parts of one’s soul. To become a selfish person is to follow the selfish parts of one’s soul. Our desires can be led astray as easily as a leaf caught in a stray breeze. One must take special care to lead an ethical life before those petty distractions snatch it away5. This is why one must follow the heart alone6.

PART TWO. On Societal Relations and Proper Behavior.
2A. The most important 关系, relationship, is to be found in the family. Like a mother stork taking care of its young, the only duty one has is to care for those that gave you life at first7.
2B. So we define 孝顺, filial piety, as the root of all relationships. Son to father, father to grandfather, and for all the ancestors that built this path for us. This sacred lineage extends across all times.
2C. Filial piety is to show love for one’s parents, to display courtesy to those above us, to repay those who have helped us in the past. Filial piety is performed out of unconditional obligation alone.
2D. Filial actions extend from the top down. That is, when our sovereigns love and respect their elders, the people see, and follow suit. When the sovereign treats their equals with honor, the people learn brotherly respect, and follow suit. When the sovereign gives to the poor, the people see, and follow suit8.
2E. Act harmoniously, even when nobody is watching. This is the principle and practice of 礼, rites, that governs all aspects of our lives9: from religious and mourning practice to military and diplomatic engagements.

PART THREE. On Enforcement and Justice.
3A. Punishment fails to advance justice in the minds of people. It only serves as distraction: people will avoid what causes them pain, without understanding the true reason why it such actions are reprimandable10.
3B. Choose to enforce by 德, virtue, instead. This is the only way to instill guilt and shame in the populous – and it will make the others follow11.
3C. Never kill to enforce the law. To do so is to violate the sacred goodness that lives in all of us.
3D. Benevolent leaders recognize when policies are negatively affecting the subjects. Have careful attention to the consequences of such laws, for benevolence is the most important trait a ruler can have1213.

CONCLUSION.
From every human endeavor pours ten thousand ripples that cascade throughout our society. The effects of policy, of familial values, and more impacts the people in ways more fundamental than can be easily grasped. The duty of the leader is, thus, to set a virtuous example for their subjects. Only through the correct education of our youth14 – both in school structures and at home – can a benevolent society progress into the next generations, and it is the role of the leader to ensure this happens properly.

DIALOGUE.15

MILL: Will you join me for lunch? There’s no other empty seat around – you know how crowded John Jay gets at lunchtime…
BURKE: Yes, of course! I had just come from the newsstand. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there was something of an ideological revolution in the East. There was a declaration to accompany it.
MILL: I had not heard! I barely had time to sit down before. Here, let me see this declaration – let’s see if they’ve managed to fix their pernicious stagnation16. It’s a shame, really, they used to be the top of the world – thousands of years of well-educated scholars, and yet now they don’t hold a candle to us Europeans’ technological and societal progress17.

MILL: They really are obsessed with that piety stuff, aren’t they? It’s like everyone is responsible for their parent’s wellbeing as well as their own. That’s double the responsibility per person.
BURKE: You know how I feel about tradition. They’ve perhaps perfected it. Every child grows up at the head of a long tree of ancestral heritage. Each of them is so hyper-aware of where they lie in the history of their family. What better way is there to maintain a sense of continuity over time18?
MILL: Your obsession with tradition is adorable. It’s also misguided. When we spend too much time worrying about the past, it prevents us from progressing past our dogmatic habits19. Sure, our family is important, but their obsession with the “unconditional obligation” of the son to the father cannot be consistent with utility maximization. What if the father is actually a thief, stealing from the wellbeing of other families? Does the child still bear responsibility to him?
BURKE: You can’t have a society that maximizes utility without a functioning society in the first place. All I mean by tradition and continuity is that we can’t just conjure a legal system out of nothing. The only logical way to govern is to look at how governance happened in the past, and extend it into the future20. You seem to think that the Chinese have made no progress in a thousand years. But that’s just what happens when you derive your rights from the rights you had in the past, and what’s wrong with that? At least your family lineage maintains its continuity21.
MILL: The truth of the matter is life is messy, and though it would be great to respect your parents, that’s not always consistent with utilitarianism. Individual liberties matter more than social harmony22. Furthermore, I’m not so sure I agree with point A1: that all humans are good. Seems to me like it’s self-inconsistent – how can humans and human nature be good, but humans still do evil things and harbor evil thoughts? Humans are remarkably prone to selfishness and greed, even if they have a general tendency to seek happiness. They’re only motivated to not harm each other if a government tells them so.
BURKE: You’re misreading that part. The declaration isn’t saying that humans cannot ever do evil. It’s just that they tend towards goodness; indeed, all else equal, humans tend to lean towards social cooperation. But I’m sure you disagree.
MILL: Hmm, I see. I’m a bit more moderate than you and the declaration on this question. Humans are, on average, neither good nor bad. But I don’t disagree that they can and should cultivate the good side of themselves23.
BURKE: There we go, we finally found something we can agree on!
MILL: You’re a fan of cultivating moral virtue too, aren’t you? I can get on board with some of that. After all, the whole reason why I’m spending my lunchtime arguing with you instead of getting more ice cream is because I know the value of debating contradictory opinions24 – even though your opinion is flat-out wrong. It’s keeping me on my toes.
BURKE: You’re right. What more could Deantini want than for us Columbia College students to be debating philosophy over soup? Anyways, this should be the role of institutions. Just like the declaration said: leaders must ensure their citizens are properly educated in the right manner – the alternative is catastrophic, and would ruin any chance the society has of succeeding25.
MILL: I would love it if the whole world obeyed utilitarian calculus. But that’s just a pipe dream. It would only be achieved if, like the declaration asks, there was a cohesive, unified effort to educate the masses towards that ideal. But that shouldn’t happen from the government, like it sounds like the declaration is suggesting26. That would kill any diversity of opinion, which makes it harder for any society to approach that ethical ideal.
BURKE: Damn, we were so close to coming to a consensus on something. Maybe we aren’t meant to agree on this after all. But as you said, maybe this is for the best – we can’t be falling into any dogmatic truisms while only in college, can we?
MILL: Absolutely.

Bibliography

Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. 1790. ed. Jonathan Bennett, 2017. Web.
Burke, Edmund. Speech on the Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament. 1782. Web.
Eno, Robert. The Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean: An Online Teaching Translation. Version 1.0, 2016. Web.
Eno, Robert. The Analects of Confucius: An Online Teaching Translation. Version 2.1, 2015. Web.
Eno, Robert. Mencius: An Online Teaching Translation. Version 1.0, 2016. Web.
Mill, John Stewart. On Liberty. 1859. ed. Batoche Books, Kitchener, 2001. Web.
Van Norden, Bryan. Mencius. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2019, Edward N. Zalta. Web.
Young-jin, Choi and Lee, Haeng-hoon. The Confucian Vision of an Ideal Society Arising out of Moral Emotions, with a Focus on the Sishu Daquan. Philosophy East and West, vol. 66 no. 2, 2016. Project MUSE. Web.

  1. I realized that the timeline of this doesn’t make total sense. To clarify, this declaration was written in the present day for a hypothetical nation and takes inspiration from Confucian principles. Mill and Burke are two precocious Columbia College students discussing this new declaration over lunch. ↩

  2. This is derived from Mencius’ discussions on human nature. He argues that “there is that in our nature which is spontaneously part of us and can become good”; the problem is simply that “we do not focus our minds on them” (Mencius, 6A.6). He gives the example of a farmer: “In years when the harvests have been good, most young men are compliant; in years when the harvests fail most are vicious. This is not a matter of Tian endowing men differently; it is whether or not circumstances have entrapped their hearts” (Mencius, 6A.7). ↩

  3. (Great Learning, I.A.) ↩

  4. (Analects, 17.2). ↩

  5. (Mencius, 6A.15). ↩

  6. (Mencius, 6A.15). The distinction between following the “heart” as opposed to the “ears” or “eyes” can be thought of as the difference between base sensory desires and higher level ethical motivations. ↩

  7. This may be the most well-known concept in Confucianism. Confucianism places massive emphasis on the importance of honoring and serving one’s parents (Analects, 2.7 and 2.8). This philosophy has permeated through Chinese culture in particular – even today. ↩

  8. This is paraphrased from the 大学, or Great Learning, which is a classic book in Confucian literature written by a student of Confucius named Zengzi (Great Learning, Ch. 10). ↩

  9. (Analects, 1.12). ↩

  10. From Analects, it’s clear that Confucius is not a big fan of punishment as a form of regulation. He thinks that if we were to enforce a moral system through punishment, “people will evade [those actions] and have no shame” (Analects, 2.3). Punishment does not help people realize their inner goodness; it just gives them a scapegoat. They wouldn’t actually know why their action is good or bad until they feel “shame” or “guilt” for their action independent of the punishment. ↩

  11. See above, and (Analects, 2.1). ↩

  12. Derived from the story of King Wen, a humane ruler (Mencius, 1B.5). ↩

  13. If this seems inconsistent with the positing of filial piety, it isn’t – Mencius believes that the ultimate benevolence one can have is towards one’s parents. Filial piety extends beyond necessarily just blood family ties; it governs all forms of interpersonal interactions. ↩

  14. (Analects, 13.9). ↩

  15. The style of the dialogue section of this essay takes heavy inspiration from a paper I read in a different class called Holes (David and Stephanie Lewis, 1970). ↩

  16. (On Liberty, Ch. 3). Mill, in some ways, is playing both sides of the coin. On the one hand, he clearly acknowledges Chinese advancements. Historically, he notes, China was the home of what even the most hard-to-please European would admit as “sages and philosophers”. That being said, he also qualifies every statement he makes on China with many an asterisk. He describes it as “a nation of much talent, and, in some respects, even wisdom” – as if China is knocking on the door of wisdom, but hasn’t quite achieved it. Even the “sages and philosophers” line is qualified with “under certain limitations”. As such, though Mill cannot escape the historical place China – especially ancient China – earned for itself through its progress, there is a definite air of European supremacy that permeates his comments. ↩

  17. This is taken quite literally from later in the paragraph, where Mill says “they have become stationary – have remained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by foreigners” (On Liberty, Ch. 3). This statement makes sense in historical context as well, as On Liberty was written in the midst of the Second Opium Wars. As the British military tried to force their way into Chinese markets, there was a parallel ideological defense found in the savioristic language of On Liberty. For Mill, the Chinese needed European help, because otherwise they would make no further progress in the next thousand years than they did in the last. ↩

  18. Continuity is a big deal for Burke even outside of Revolutions. In a speech given in 1782, he explains that “a nation is not an idea only of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation; but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers and in space”, furthering the theme of continuity between the past and future (Speech on Reform). ↩

  19. Mill believes that forced conformity is bad, as it prevents people from learning from each other. Mill would likely take issue with the declaration’s suffocating insistence that respect for parents comes above all else – even if the parent is wrong. There are certainly issues with utility here as well – what if this obligation one has to one’s parents gets in the way of the utilitarian calculus? Imagine a trolley problem where the single person tied to the track is your father. Utilitarianism dictates that you would have to kill your father, which certainly flies in the face of filial piety. ↩

  20. Burke thinks of constitutional rights through the lens of what he calls “entailed inheritance” – that is, natural rights do not exist, and we only create legal rights through a system of inheritance. At some point in history, someone decided on a code of rights; for every generation that passed, they inherited the rights that existed for the previous, to the point that the rights enumerated in the Magna Carta are “transmitted to our posterity; as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any other more general or prior right” (Revolutions, 27). This forms his basis of his defense of the “stagnation” of China in this dialogue. If rights are only inherited from the past, it makes some sense that there are not big jumps in legal rights or even motivations. In that sense, Burke’s conservatism yields more sympathy to the supposed lack of progress that Mill takes issue with, because there is no rational base to justify switching around moral systems on a whim. ↩

  21. See 18 for more commentary. Burke’s relationship with rationalism is, to me, not entirely clear. On the one hand, he’s definitely anti-rationalist insofar as he is fighting back against Kantian enlightenment thinking, which he deems largely responsible for the revolutionary fervor happening in France. On the other hand, he does appear to be making a rationalist argument at times; he calls “on the aid of nature’s unerring and powerful instincts to strengthen the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason”, implying that the shortcomings of the French Revolution are in part due to the “fallible” nature of reason, but not because of the use of reason itself (Reflections, 28). In this dialogue, Burke’s justification for entailed inheritance can be thought of as a rational series of arguments; though he starts from the empirical basis of legal rights being a largely artificial construct, the way that these rights propagate through the generations appears to me like an analytic (and therefore somewhat rationally inspired) conclusion. ↩

  22. Mill cares much more about personal autonomy than is emphasized by both the declaration and by Burke. Mill’s individual liberties range from the right to your own opinions and thoughts, to unite with others, and to behave however one would like as long as they do not harm others (On Liberty, Ch. 4). This is all filtered through a general lens of utilitarianism; for him, individuality is a prerequisite for social harmony, not the other way around. As such, Mill finds the declaration not totally satisfying, as he thinks it gets the order of these backwards. The Confucian society finds social harmony through the family structure as the end goal; Mill thinks of social harmony as a result of pursuing these individual liberties. ↩

  23. (On Liberty, Ch. 5). The ultimate goal for any society should be to foster ethical subjects that maximize utility. ↩

  24. Mill explains four reasons why it is important to debate out opinions that are contrary to one’s own. One of these is to avoid “dead dogma”: holding something to be true without understanding why. This is an area that Mill, Burke, and the declaration agree on – the importance of continually interrogating one’s values, whether that be for the strength of one’s opinions (for Mill) or personal virtue (for a Confucian). ↩

  25. Burke places considerable emphasis on the importance of proper education, lamenting, “Woe also to the country that goes to the opposite extreme and considers a low education … as a preferable title to command” (Reflections, 28). Though that’s not an explicit defense of government intervention, he certainly does believe that government is the most efficient means by which to accomplish these goals. ↩

  26. Mill says this because he is broadly a fan of limiting government intervention. In the arena of education specifically, he thinks that a state mandated curriculum “is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another”, which certainly harms individuality (On Liberty, Ch. 5). Rather, he thinks that the government should fund private education, which would satisfy the society’s need for a diversity of opinion (On Liberty, Ch. 5). ↩