Confucianism and Christianity: Conversing with a 67 Year Old Marine
I received this email from a friend of mine the other day. He is an ex-marine, Harvard grad who is currently teaching in China. Met him my first year over - intelligent, acute, loves China and a great person - what I picture P.J. Ivanhoe to be like. He wanted to talk about Confucianism:
His letter (used with permission):
Glad you got a Chinese website, which I checked out, but could not read. Warm, appealing scenes.
When you studied Confucius at Stanford, did any conclusion emerge on what he taught?
Chinese seem to think what he taught was timelessly valuable. From what I see, his teachings or what they claim were his teachings lie at the bottom of many of their problems:
1. Obey the Emperor, or whoever is over you. This assumes the over-person is bright, responsible, indeed even perfect and beyond any question. Kind of puts the critical faculties to sleep.
2. The Emperor is perfect and the Son of Heaven. Nobody ever criticizes the perfect Son of Heaven. No matter how wrong he really was nobody every commented. Just turned a blind eye and pretended all was well. My suspicion is that the Emperor's immediate underlings adopted the same attitude and would consider no criticism from anyone else either. Then it spread to the Emperor's officials and finally to the whole population. Everyone was a little emperor. That would explain the origin of the concept of face.
In contrast, Christianity for all its faults teaches that none but God are perfect. The only way to learn from mistakes is to admit them. That attitude allowed even a king to admit error and added to a mindset that would make science possible. Science is based on observing things clearly, then measuring, recording, explaining [theorizing] how variables interact. And if the theory [or explanation] is good we can use it to predict. Mistakes or wrong conclusions are considered valuable.
3. The subordinate social role of women.
What is your view of the (1) all-perfect view of Confucius, (2) his contribution to Chinese culture and thought, and (3) especially the value of his thought in what is supposedly a modern world that seeks positive change (progress). [Not all change is positive. In fact most of it is not. Most innovations are flops. Most new products are failures. We just forget them quickly. The only ones that ever reach maturity or establish much of a historic record are top-down blunders of corporate CEO's or ill-considered legislation or court decisions. Examples of the latter are Plessy v Ferguson and various New Deal agencies that finally got buried. If a CEO makes enough mistakes the market takes care of them when competing companies devour his.
My Response (sans initial pleasantries):
My general response to everything you wrote about is Confucius was a great guy with wonderful ideas, especially germane to a critique of western culture, but humans have an inexhaustible ability to twist anything to further their own personal, usually selfish, goals, and Confucius is no more immune to that than any other thinker, religious or otherwise. Another thing to take into account is which Confucius are we talking about? Are we talking about only what we see through the fragments of the 4 Books the he supposedly wrote/dictated (well, 3 since the 4th was written was Mencius). Are we talking about the Confucius who is the amalgamation of centuries of Chinese scholarship (or any of the numerous Confuciuses who rise and fall throughout that development)? Or are we talking about the folk-Confucius who is the culmination of stories granny told you as a child and that you told your children, which may have been based on the textual sources but have since gained a life of its own with each retelling? Each of these Confuciuses would say something different to the questions you posed.
I tend to focus mostly on the textual sources from the actual time of Confucius - 500BC more or less. Han scholarship and environs is alright, but once you hit the Neo-Confucians of the Song it all becomes a bunch of reactionary, neo-conservative claptrap (gross over-simplification) and never really recovers. I also avoid the popular notions of Confucius because you never know exactly what you'll be dealing with - everyone holds a slightly different "absolute truth." I once had a student tell me that because his grandmother told him a story about Confucius not helping to pick up a basket of oranges a woman dropped on the road that he (the student) was upholding Confucian ideals by making his girlfriend do his homework for him.
In response to your conclusions:
1. Blind Obedience: It is in there, but just like people who use the Bible for their own ends, they're focusing on single out-of-context passages. Confucius says you should obey people above you because they are worthy to be respected. Sort of like if your professor says your paper isn't clear you should revise it because you know the professor understands the topic. How do you know? Because the professor constantly demonstrates their competency in class. That's the part that governments tend to leave out - if you can kill anyone who disagrees then you don't need to worry about whether or not you have any competency, you can just focus on the "obey your superiors" passages. This is just like slave owners in the 1860's always reading the passage from Ephesians about how slaves should obey their masters and therefore slavery is ordained by God. Does this invalidate Christianity? I don't think so, it just shows that some people will use anything they can to legitimize their own selfish pursuits.
2. The Emperor is perfect leading to the concept of saving face writ large. Yes and no - every dynastic change that wasn't the result of foreign invasion was brought about because the people viewed the Emperor as not being perfect. I don't think the development of face was a top-down phenomenon, but a bottom-up. I always think that it was always part of the culture and Confucian ideas were incorporated and modified to reflect that as opposed to face developing as a result of Confucius's new ideas. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Confucius, being part of a face-saving society, unconsciously incorporated notions that reflect that in his own teachings, though there are several passages where he admits he does not know something and actively seeks to learn from people who are his social inferiors. For social harmony he supports face, for self-cultivation he denies it.
Re: Your comment about Christianity. I think is a good argument for people today, but I don't really think it caused western social development. There were two big events that led to the modernization of Europe and each had to do with the realization that what was coming from the priests may not be accurate. The Renaissance came about when Europeans started interacting with non-Christian cultures who were more advanced than Europe. Admittedly many of these were Islamic cultures which would still meet your idea, but they gained their foundations from Greek science, which most certainly did not hold the Gods as perfect. Perhaps such notions about the perfection of God and the imperfections of humans facilitated such advancements, but there seem to be much more evidence of the Church suppressing scientific advancement than embracing it, as Galileo was wont to discover.
The second major event was the Lisbon quake of 1755. This was such a gratuitous and immediate demonstration of the problem of evil (why would God allow so many clearly good people to be killed?) that it shook off the yoke of Christianity ruling the rational mind and directly caused the Enlightenment. Since God and the Church could no longer be relied up to give convincing arguments to match what was observed, people turned away from religion and embraced reason and the human mind. Thus began the era of modern philosophy, the industrial revolution and the time when Europe's development truly surpassed the rest of the world, all as a result of the rejection of Christianity.
Your argument would be a great one to use today, but it requires a mental sophistication and social acceptance of differences that most people did not have a few centuries ago and many still do not have today.
3. The subordinate social role of women: You're absolutely right here, but because I like Confucius I would say that this was caused by power-hungry conservatives who cared more about what Confucian doctrine could do for them rather than how it could help them cultivate themselves. Just like Christians who quote Corinthians and then smack their wives in the face for daring to question them in public.
Re: Your last 3 questions
1. I don't think Confucius was all perfect, nor did Confucius think he was fully cultivated either. I think that people who think he was perfect are not trying to understand his ideas and are merely trying to legitimize their own selfish actions, or really don't care about it or have never bothered to think about it and are just spouting the party lines. The all perfect view of Confucius is as dangerous as literal readings of the Bible.
2-3. Chinese culture would be unrecognizable today without Confucius. I don't think any social phenomenon could be analyzed without some aspect of it regressing to some sort of Confucian doctrine or interpretation thereof. For its value in the modernization of China I think that it is useful for social harmony, if, unlike human nature always does, it is applied equally to those above and those below. In the family children honestly cannot understand why their parents tell them to do something, but if there is a constant Confucian framework then they will obey when you tell them not to smoke or do drugs or why women are more than sex objects. At the same time the parents would need to be fully engaged in the framework as well and constantly developing their own parenting techniques, how best to communicate to their children, what type of rules would allow them to grow and explore, but be safe at the same time, etc. The main problem is, as I've said many times, is that Confucianism is too often used as a tool of subjugation instead of a method of self-cultivation.
At this stage of the game I think that the western world could use a healthy does of Confucianism and places like China could use a lot of what Christianity teaches. The West could use Confucian notions of filial piety, respect for the elderly, the value of education, constant self-cultivation, and as a curb for our rampant individualism and materialism. China could use Christian notions of forgiveness, viewing all people as equally valuable (even the ones outside of your own family / friendship circles) and the importance of social action / outreach. This doesn't mean that the west has perfected forgiveness or China is without rampant materialism, just that each of our cultures has something to offer the other.
Parting thought: As I was writing this I thought that if these ideas (Christianity, Confucianism) naturally lend themselves to being abused, even if they ideas themselves are admirable, is this a reflection on humanity's ingenuity regarding selfish pursuits or as a fundamental flaw in the ideas themselves which should therefore be censured? I'm not sure…
.
His letter (used with permission):
Glad you got a Chinese website, which I checked out, but could not read. Warm, appealing scenes.
When you studied Confucius at Stanford, did any conclusion emerge on what he taught?
Chinese seem to think what he taught was timelessly valuable. From what I see, his teachings or what they claim were his teachings lie at the bottom of many of their problems:
1. Obey the Emperor, or whoever is over you. This assumes the over-person is bright, responsible, indeed even perfect and beyond any question. Kind of puts the critical faculties to sleep.
2. The Emperor is perfect and the Son of Heaven. Nobody ever criticizes the perfect Son of Heaven. No matter how wrong he really was nobody every commented. Just turned a blind eye and pretended all was well. My suspicion is that the Emperor's immediate underlings adopted the same attitude and would consider no criticism from anyone else either. Then it spread to the Emperor's officials and finally to the whole population. Everyone was a little emperor. That would explain the origin of the concept of face.
In contrast, Christianity for all its faults teaches that none but God are perfect. The only way to learn from mistakes is to admit them. That attitude allowed even a king to admit error and added to a mindset that would make science possible. Science is based on observing things clearly, then measuring, recording, explaining [theorizing] how variables interact. And if the theory [or explanation] is good we can use it to predict. Mistakes or wrong conclusions are considered valuable.
3. The subordinate social role of women.
What is your view of the (1) all-perfect view of Confucius, (2) his contribution to Chinese culture and thought, and (3) especially the value of his thought in what is supposedly a modern world that seeks positive change (progress). [Not all change is positive. In fact most of it is not. Most innovations are flops. Most new products are failures. We just forget them quickly. The only ones that ever reach maturity or establish much of a historic record are top-down blunders of corporate CEO's or ill-considered legislation or court decisions. Examples of the latter are Plessy v Ferguson and various New Deal agencies that finally got buried. If a CEO makes enough mistakes the market takes care of them when competing companies devour his.
My Response (sans initial pleasantries):
My general response to everything you wrote about is Confucius was a great guy with wonderful ideas, especially germane to a critique of western culture, but humans have an inexhaustible ability to twist anything to further their own personal, usually selfish, goals, and Confucius is no more immune to that than any other thinker, religious or otherwise. Another thing to take into account is which Confucius are we talking about? Are we talking about only what we see through the fragments of the 4 Books the he supposedly wrote/dictated (well, 3 since the 4th was written was Mencius). Are we talking about the Confucius who is the amalgamation of centuries of Chinese scholarship (or any of the numerous Confuciuses who rise and fall throughout that development)? Or are we talking about the folk-Confucius who is the culmination of stories granny told you as a child and that you told your children, which may have been based on the textual sources but have since gained a life of its own with each retelling? Each of these Confuciuses would say something different to the questions you posed.
I tend to focus mostly on the textual sources from the actual time of Confucius - 500BC more or less. Han scholarship and environs is alright, but once you hit the Neo-Confucians of the Song it all becomes a bunch of reactionary, neo-conservative claptrap (gross over-simplification) and never really recovers. I also avoid the popular notions of Confucius because you never know exactly what you'll be dealing with - everyone holds a slightly different "absolute truth." I once had a student tell me that because his grandmother told him a story about Confucius not helping to pick up a basket of oranges a woman dropped on the road that he (the student) was upholding Confucian ideals by making his girlfriend do his homework for him.
In response to your conclusions:
1. Blind Obedience: It is in there, but just like people who use the Bible for their own ends, they're focusing on single out-of-context passages. Confucius says you should obey people above you because they are worthy to be respected. Sort of like if your professor says your paper isn't clear you should revise it because you know the professor understands the topic. How do you know? Because the professor constantly demonstrates their competency in class. That's the part that governments tend to leave out - if you can kill anyone who disagrees then you don't need to worry about whether or not you have any competency, you can just focus on the "obey your superiors" passages. This is just like slave owners in the 1860's always reading the passage from Ephesians about how slaves should obey their masters and therefore slavery is ordained by God. Does this invalidate Christianity? I don't think so, it just shows that some people will use anything they can to legitimize their own selfish pursuits.
2. The Emperor is perfect leading to the concept of saving face writ large. Yes and no - every dynastic change that wasn't the result of foreign invasion was brought about because the people viewed the Emperor as not being perfect. I don't think the development of face was a top-down phenomenon, but a bottom-up. I always think that it was always part of the culture and Confucian ideas were incorporated and modified to reflect that as opposed to face developing as a result of Confucius's new ideas. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Confucius, being part of a face-saving society, unconsciously incorporated notions that reflect that in his own teachings, though there are several passages where he admits he does not know something and actively seeks to learn from people who are his social inferiors. For social harmony he supports face, for self-cultivation he denies it.
Re: Your comment about Christianity. I think is a good argument for people today, but I don't really think it caused western social development. There were two big events that led to the modernization of Europe and each had to do with the realization that what was coming from the priests may not be accurate. The Renaissance came about when Europeans started interacting with non-Christian cultures who were more advanced than Europe. Admittedly many of these were Islamic cultures which would still meet your idea, but they gained their foundations from Greek science, which most certainly did not hold the Gods as perfect. Perhaps such notions about the perfection of God and the imperfections of humans facilitated such advancements, but there seem to be much more evidence of the Church suppressing scientific advancement than embracing it, as Galileo was wont to discover.
The second major event was the Lisbon quake of 1755. This was such a gratuitous and immediate demonstration of the problem of evil (why would God allow so many clearly good people to be killed?) that it shook off the yoke of Christianity ruling the rational mind and directly caused the Enlightenment. Since God and the Church could no longer be relied up to give convincing arguments to match what was observed, people turned away from religion and embraced reason and the human mind. Thus began the era of modern philosophy, the industrial revolution and the time when Europe's development truly surpassed the rest of the world, all as a result of the rejection of Christianity.
Your argument would be a great one to use today, but it requires a mental sophistication and social acceptance of differences that most people did not have a few centuries ago and many still do not have today.
3. The subordinate social role of women: You're absolutely right here, but because I like Confucius I would say that this was caused by power-hungry conservatives who cared more about what Confucian doctrine could do for them rather than how it could help them cultivate themselves. Just like Christians who quote Corinthians and then smack their wives in the face for daring to question them in public.
Re: Your last 3 questions
1. I don't think Confucius was all perfect, nor did Confucius think he was fully cultivated either. I think that people who think he was perfect are not trying to understand his ideas and are merely trying to legitimize their own selfish actions, or really don't care about it or have never bothered to think about it and are just spouting the party lines. The all perfect view of Confucius is as dangerous as literal readings of the Bible.
2-3. Chinese culture would be unrecognizable today without Confucius. I don't think any social phenomenon could be analyzed without some aspect of it regressing to some sort of Confucian doctrine or interpretation thereof. For its value in the modernization of China I think that it is useful for social harmony, if, unlike human nature always does, it is applied equally to those above and those below. In the family children honestly cannot understand why their parents tell them to do something, but if there is a constant Confucian framework then they will obey when you tell them not to smoke or do drugs or why women are more than sex objects. At the same time the parents would need to be fully engaged in the framework as well and constantly developing their own parenting techniques, how best to communicate to their children, what type of rules would allow them to grow and explore, but be safe at the same time, etc. The main problem is, as I've said many times, is that Confucianism is too often used as a tool of subjugation instead of a method of self-cultivation.
At this stage of the game I think that the western world could use a healthy does of Confucianism and places like China could use a lot of what Christianity teaches. The West could use Confucian notions of filial piety, respect for the elderly, the value of education, constant self-cultivation, and as a curb for our rampant individualism and materialism. China could use Christian notions of forgiveness, viewing all people as equally valuable (even the ones outside of your own family / friendship circles) and the importance of social action / outreach. This doesn't mean that the west has perfected forgiveness or China is without rampant materialism, just that each of our cultures has something to offer the other.
Parting thought: As I was writing this I thought that if these ideas (Christianity, Confucianism) naturally lend themselves to being abused, even if they ideas themselves are admirable, is this a reflection on humanity's ingenuity regarding selfish pursuits or as a fundamental flaw in the ideas themselves which should therefore be censured? I'm not sure…
.