Conscious Tradition

1
Confucianism

• Conscious Tradition

2
Sources

• Asian Philosophies, 6th Edition, John M. Koller
  (hereafter Koller) Read all of Chapter 16
• The Worlds Religions, 50th Anniversary Edition,
  Huston Smith (hereafter Smith) Read the full
  chapter on Confucius
• Remember, you must be in slide show mode for
  links to work

3
Life

• Confucius (551 479 BCE) born in Lu (now
  Shantung province), China.
• When I was young, I was without rank, and in
  humble circumstances. Smith, p154
• We know nothing of his ancestors. His father died
  when Confucius was 2 his mother was poor.
• His youth was not bookish hunting, fishing,
  archery. He bent his mind to learning at 15.
• In his 20s he married (not quite happily) and
  became a tutor after a series of government jobs.
• As a teacher, he quickly won the devotion of his
  pupils.
• He set himself for a life in government due to
  his belief that his social reform ideas would not
  catch on unless he himself instituted them
  showed they could work. His career in government
  was a failure.
• His teachings, however, shaped China for 2,500
  years.

4
Confucius World

• Smith remarks that understanding Confucius and
  his influence, his fame, requires understanding
  the world he was born into.
• In 551 BCE, China was at the tail end of the Zhou
  Dynasty (8th to 3rd centuries). Smith provides an
  awesome paragraph of the degeneration from a
  chivalric period to the Period of the Warring
  States
• Contests between charioteers gave way to cavalry,
  with its surprise attacks and sudden raids.
  Instead of nobly holding prisoners for ransom,
  conquerors put them to death in mass executions.
  Whole populations unlucky enough to be captured
  were beheaded, including women, children, and the
  aged. slaughters of 60,000, 80,000, and even
  400,000. There are accounts of the conquered
  being thrown into boiling cauldrons and their
  relatives forced to drink the human soup.
• This period was the century after Confucius
  death.

5
Pre-Human Society - Coming Unglued

• Recall from the Hinduism PowerPoint
• Once clothed in a human body, the soul attains
  self-consciousness, and with it, freedom,
  responsibility, and effort. (Smith, p64)
• Smiths claim is that prior to this attainment,
  or the emergence of self-consciousness, humans as
  animals operated on instinct. It is instinct that
  holds together the pack, the herd, the hive.
• While there is plenty of violence in the world of
  packs, herds, and hives, the violence is for the
  most part between species, not within them.
• What happens when the glue of instinct goes
  missing and violence breaks out within the herd?

6
Tradition

• As instinct is replaced by reason, the first
  replacement epoxy is tradition.
• Smith It is hard to overstate how powerful
  tradition has been
• Tribes of Eskimos and Australian aborigines who
  have no word for disobedience.
• Tradition takes root without education programs
  or conscious effort
• Greenlanders have no education system but
  anthropologists report their children are
  impressively obedient, good-natured, and ready
  to help.
• Some American Indians are still alive who
  remember a time when there were no laws
  Everybody did what was right.
• Early China was so steeped in tradition there is
  the story (by a historian of Confucius time) of
  a noble woman who burned to death because she
  would not leave her palace without a chaperone.
  The historian isnt sure if it would have been
  okay for her to escape. Yoik!

7
Individualism

• Looking back at Confucius World (slide 4), large
  groups of people had abandoned social convention.
  
• Self-consciousness replaced group-consciousness.
• Reason was replacing tradition. It was no longer
  possible for the earlier generation to expect
  blind obedience of the next to their way of life.
  Once it becomes popular to ask the question Why
  do I have to do it your way?, tradition is
  fighting a losing battle.

8
Deliberate or Conscious Tradition

• Confucius was all but obsessed with tradition,
  for he saw it as the chief shaper of inclinations
  and attitudes. He loved tradition because he saw
  it as a potential conduitone that could funnel
  into the present behavior patterns that had been
  perfected during a golden age in Chinas past,
  The Age of Grand Harmony. Smith, p168
• The problem, however, is, How do you move from
  spontaneous tradition to deliberate or conscious
  tradition, as there is no going back to
  spontaneous tradition?

9
Competing Answers

• Under Rival Answers, Smith presents 3 ways
  China tried to answer the question, How do we
  establish conscious tradition? Why do I have to
  do it your way?
• Realism (Han Fei Tzus Feizis view) people
  are selfish the answer must appeal to
  self-interest.
• Mohism (Mo Tzus Mozis view called Mo
  philosophy) people are loving the answer must
  appeal to human goodness.
• Confucianism (Kong Fuzis view called Ru
  philosophy) people are good and bad the answer
  must inspire people to good behavior.

10
Realism (Legalism)

• A leading proponent of Realism is Han Fei Tzu
  (Han Feizi). His Western analog is Thomas Hobbes.
• Hobbes is world famous for his defense of Realism
  (as that term is defined by Smith) in this work
  from 1651, The Leviathan.
• The effects of his ideas are seen in literature
  and cinema

11
Realism Defended by Thomas Hobbes
(Blue Slides 11-27)
11
12
Leviathan

• Hobbess major work is titled
• Leviathan
• Or
• The Matter, Forme, and Power of A Commonwealth
  Ecclesiasticall and Civil
• Right is the frontispiece of the book, as it was
  published in 1651

13
Human Nature

• Hobbes views human beings as complex machines,
  material objects, and, in the beginning of
  Leviathan, gives mechanistic descriptions of the
  operations of our mindsemotions and reasoning.
• Met Galileo in 1636 was impressed by physics and
  the new role science was playing in intellectual
  life.
• Liberty is defined as freedom to do as one
  wishes, but ones wishes are determined by
  mechanistic laws governing matter in motion. How
  Hobbes retains his belief in God became a problem
  for him politically he was exiled from England
  for his views occasionally and feared for his
  life regularly for heresy.

Galileo Galilei 1564-1642
14
Hobbes Tries to Modernize Ethics

• Hobbes wants us to consider the relations that
  emerge among human beings in light of our common
  human nature, prior to there being any society or
  government imposing rules upon us. In doing this,
  he hopes to show
• why we need government
• the character that government must have
• what our duties are to our government
• In doing this, Hobbes is rejecting the Great
  Chain of Being, and with it, the Divine Right of
  Kings, as the rational basis for governmental
  authority.

Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679
15
Equality

• Apart from any government, nature has made us
  equal, according to Hobbes, in the sense that
  even the weakest among us can, by forming
  associations or devious planning, kill the
  strongest.
• Anyone, or any group, can move into anothers
  place and take their property, products, life, or
  liberty. And those who might do this can expect
  the same might be done to them.

What book is this from?
16
Equality

• Hobbes notes that this equality fosters quarrels
  due to
• Competition for goods (each having hope of
  overpowering the other), making people enemies.
• Diffidence or lack-of-confidence leading to
  defensiveness, and
• Glory as everyone likes to think highly of
  themselves, and being equal, each thinks their
  own honor worth fighting for
• Competition makes an individual or group invade
  anothers domain for gain
• Diffidence encourages invasion for safety
• Glory encourages invasion for reputation

What Iraq War arguments correspond to these
causes?
17
The Condition of War (State of Nature)

• The equality among us, combined with scarce
  goods, yields conflict. Hobbes calls that
  condition war, and tells us
• war consists not in battle only or the act of
  fighting, but in a tract of time wherein the will
  to battle is sufficiently known

• As by analogy,
• foul weather lies not in a shower or two of rain
  but in an inclination thereto of many days
  together

18
The Condition of War (State of Nature)

• Hobbes
• so the nature of war consists not in actual
  fighting but in the known disposition thereto
  during all the time there is no assurance to the
  contrary. All other time is peace.
• Also,
• such a war is of every man against every man.

Why every man against every man, rather than,
say, group vs. group?
19
The Condition of War (State of Nature)

• Hobbes most famous paragraph regarding the State
  of Nature
• In such condition the Condition of War, or State
  of Nature there is no place for industry,
  because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and
  consequently no culture of the earth, no
  navigation nor use of commodities that may be
  imported by sea, no knowledge of the face of
  the earth no account of time, no arts, no
  letters, no society, and which is worst of all,
  continual fear and danger of violent death, and
  the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
  and short.
• (We can think of the State of Nature as a time
  when both instinct and tradition have lost their
  influence on human social behavior.)

20
Right of Nature, Laws of Nature

• In the State of Nature, life is governed by what
  Hobbes calls The Right of Nature.
• The Right of Nature the freedom of everyone to
  do anything and everything that will, in their
  own judgment, preserve their own life.
• In the State of Nature, the Right of Nature
  provides everyone the right to everything
• even to one anothers body.
• as long as this natural right of man to
  everything endures, there can be no security to
  any man

21
Right of Nature, Laws of Nature

• Hobbes says what he means by Laws of Nature in
  the context of human nature
• a precept or general rule by which man is
  forbidden to do that which is destructive of his
  life or takes away the means of preserving same,
  and to omit that by which he thinks it may best
  be preserved.
• NOTE This, combined with the Right of Nature
  from the previous slide, suggests we not only are
  free to do anything necessary to preserve our own
  life, but that we have a duty to do so.

22
Laws of Nature

• 1st Law of Nature
• Branch one Seek peace
• Branch two defend yourself, by all means
• 2nd Law of Nature
• Be willing to trade freedom for security
• In following these laws, especially the second,
  we must form contracts.

23
Contracts

• Contracts are formed by renouncing or
  transferring a right (in this case, freedom to do
  whatever you want) in trade for some good (in
  this case, security, or escape from the State of
  Nature).
• In Chapter XIV, paragraph 8, Hobbes tells us
  forming contracts like this is a voluntary act,
• and of the voluntary acts of every man the
  object is some good to himself.
• What descriptive theory of Human Nature does this
  sound like?

24
Contracts

• One right that cannot be laid down in forming a
  contract is the Right of Nature. Hobbes tells us
  that no matter what you say, you cannot give up
  your right of self-defense
• a man cannot lay down the right of resisting
  them that assault him by force to take away his
  life, because he cannot be understood to aim
  thereby at any good to himself.

What part of being a good citizen might this
interfere with?
25
Laws of Nature

• 3rd Law of Nature
• Keep promises
• From this final law, which says to stick to your
  agreements when you follow laws 1 and 2, arise
  justice and injustice. It is only once a covenant
  or promise is in place that we can act justly or
  unjustly.
• But how do we trust each other to follow the 3rd
  Natural Law?

26
The Sovereign

• We cant.
• covenants of mutual trust, where there is fear
  of not performance on either part, are
  invalid.
• before the names just and unjust can have
  place, there must be some coercive power to
  compel men equally to the performance of their
  covenants, by the terror of some punishments
  greater than the benefit they expect by the
  breach of their covenant such power there is
  none before the erection of a commonwealth.

27
Come back, King!

• Though Hobbes rejects the Divine Right of Kings
  as the rational basis for government, he still
  prefers the Monarchy to parliament (democracy)
  because of monarchys swift and unambiguous
  enforcement of law.
• Long live the king!

28
Confucius Rejects Realism

• Smith, p167
• He Confucius rejected the Realists answer of
  force because it was clumsy and external. Force
  regulated by law can set limits to peoples
  dealings, but it is too crude to inspire their
  day-to-day, face-to-face exchanges. With regard
  to the family, for example, it can stipulate
  conditions of marriage and divorce, but it cannot
  generate love and companionship. This holds
  generally. Governments need what they themselves
  cannot provide meaning and motivation.
• Think of John Adams quote
• Our constitution was made only for a moral and
  religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the
  government of any other.

29
Mohism

• Mo Tzu argues, Smith, p166, that not force but
  love, universal love, is the solution to society
  gone bananas.
• His central claim
• One should feel toward all people under heaven
  exactly as one feels toward ones own people, and
  regard other states exactly as one regards ones
  own state.
• His explanation of why society has lost its way
• Mutual attacks among states, mutual usurpation
  among houses, mutual injuries among individuals,
  these are among the major calamities in the
  world.
• But whence do these calamities arise?
• They arise out of a want of mutual love.

30
Mohism (cont.)

• Mo Tzus argument that his solution can work
• If it the proposal to support teaching universal
  love to society as a cure for what ails it were
  not useful, even I would disapprove of it. But
  how can there be anything that is good but not
  useful?
• Smith suggests this argument is supported
  psychologically for Mo Tzu by his belief in
• Shang Ti, the Sovereign on High, who loves
  people dearly ordered the sun, the moon, and the
  stars sent down snow appointed dukes and lords
  to reward the good and punish the wicked. Heaven
  loves the whole world universally. Everything is
  prepared for the good of human beings.

31
Mohism (cont.)

• Smith, p167, supplements or summarizes the
  argument like this
• As love is obviously good, and the God who orders
  the world is good as well, it is inconceivable
  that we have a world where love does not pay.
• Confucius response
• Agrees with Realists that Mohism is utopian
  meaning, a great idea but impossible to do.
• Smith quotes A.C. Graham, p167
• Mohism has the appearance of being foreign, not
  merely to Confucian thinking, but to the whole of
  Chinese civilization. No one else finds it
  tolerable to insist that you should be as
  concerned for the other mans family as for your
  own.
• (In Philosophy, this topic is called Special
  Concern, that is, what is the basis, and is it a
  good basis, of our special concern for those
  close to us?)
• Smith
• To harp exclusively on love is to preach ends
  without means.

32
Confucius Answer Conscious Tradition

• Smith suggests that while Confucius may have
  idealized the Chou (Zhou) Dynasty at its high
  point (1000 BCE), he was not antiquarian. He
  saw a way to reestablish the role of tradition,
  in two steps.
• There must be a bridge from the old, eroded
  tradition starting brand new will not allow
  citizens anything to base their citizenship in.
  We must learn from what we already know, as it
  were.

33
Confucius Answer Conscious Tradition

• At the same time the answer must take clear-eyed
  account of the developments that render the old
  answer unworkable. Smith, p169
• Those developments amount to the evolution of
  self-consciousness.
• Now, societys members must find conscious
  reasons to follow the old ways.

Watch self-consciousness emerge for the first
time among the Borg.
34
Confucius Answer Conscious Tradition

• Smith, p170
• As one Chinese has described the process of
  moving from spontaneous to deliberate tradition
  Moral ideas were driven into the people by every
  possible meanstemples, theatres, homes, toys,
  proverbs, schools, history, and storiesuntil
  they became habits of daily life Even festivals
  and parades were in a sense religious in
  character. Buy such means even a society of
  individuals can (if it puts itself to the task)
  spin an enveloping tradition, a power of
  suggestion, that can prompt its members to behave
  socially even when the law is not looking.

Watch the pupil learn to admire the master
follow the pattern of prestige.
35
Confucius Answer Conscious Tradition

• Patterns of Prestige
• Whatever its content a pattern-of-prestige
  embodies the values the leaders of the group
  admire. Followers, taking their cues from the
  leaders whom they admire, come to respect their
  values and are disposed to enact thempartly
  because they, too, have come to admire them, and
  partly to win peer approval.
• How does Confucius provide content to an
  influential pattern of prestige? To read Smith,
  he was himself an embodiment of such a pattern
• His disciples conviction was Since the
  beginning of the human race there has never been
  a man like our Master.
• Also, in his writings, especially his Analects,
  he uses anecdotes and maxims to define the
  pattern
• The Master said The true gentleman is friendly
  but not familiar the inferior man is familiar
  but not friendly.
• Tsu King asked What would you say of the person
  who is liked by all his fellow townsmen? That
  is not sufficient, was the reply. What is
  better is that the good among his fellow townsmen
  like him, and the bad hate him.
• Click here for hundreds of The Masters aphorisms.

36
Confucius Answer Conscious Tradition

• 5 Virtues
• Jen (Ren in Koller) Human-Heartedness (humanity
  / The Silver Rule in Smith really, Golden Rule
  is better)
• Chun Tzu Mature Person (competence)
• Li Social Grace (manners / propriety)
• The Rectification of Names
• The Doctrine of the Mean
• The Five Constant Relationships
• The Family
• Age
• Te Ruling power (moral authority / Philosopher
  Kings)
• Wen The Arts of Peace (the Coke song!, Anthems,
  etc.)
• Koller emphasizes that Confucius views all the
  other virtues as a means to develop Ren, the most
  important virtue.

37
Confucius Answer Conscious Tradition

• Li Social Grace (manners / propriety)
• The Rectification of Names
• A father should be a father, a ruler a ruler
• Names must have clear and correct meaning, and
  people must adapt themselves to the names
• The Doctrine of the Mean
• Nothing to excess avoid deficiency
• The Five Constant Relationships
• Parents loving children reverential
• Elder siblings gentle younger siblings
  respectful
• Husbands good wives listening
• Elder friends considerate younger friends
  deferential
• Rulers benevolent subjects loyal
• The Family
• Chinese legend mentions a hero who invented the
  family and elevated the Chinese from mere animals
  to humans.
• Age
• Since age accumulates knowledge and wisdom (or
  can), veneration of the old will aid society

38
Confucius Answer Conscious Tradition

• The Self
• a Confucian who is bent on self-cultivation
  positions himself squarely in the center of ever
  shifting, never-ending cross currents of human
  relationships and would not wish things
  otherwise saintliness in isolation had no
  meaning for Confucius. Apart from human
  relationships there is no self. The self is a
  center of relationships. The human self is a
  node, not an entity. It is a meeting place where
  lives converge. Smith, p180

See an example of never-ending cross currents of
human relationships here, and in the trailer
that follows this introduction to Eat, Drink,
Man, Woman
39
Successful at Civilizing?

• Koller, p214
• During the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE),
  Confucianism was ridiculed and scorned (recall
  Han Fei Tzu), most Confucian books were burned,
  and many Confucian scholars killed. Yet during
  the next dynasty, the Han (206 BCE -220 CE),
  Confucianism came to be adopted as the state
  orthodoxy and the Confucian classics enshrined as
  the basis of the imperial university where they
  were to remain as the basis of all education for
  more than two thousand years.
• Smith, p158
• Until this century, every Chinese school child
  for the last two thousand years raised his
  clasped hands every morning toward a table in the
  schoolroom that bore a plaque bearing Confucius
  name. Virtually every Chinese student as pored
  over his sayings for hours

40
Successful at Civilizing?

• Smith, p191
• Regarding Education and Art
• There have been golden ages in China when the
  arts have flourished as nowhere else in their
  time, and deep learning was achieved
  calligraphy, Sung landscape painting, and the
  life-giving dance of Tai Chi Chuan come quickly
  to mind. Paper was invented. Four centuries
  before Gutenberg, movable type was discovered. A
  fifteenth century encyclopedia 11,095 volumes,
  poetry, scroll painting, ceramics which
  because of the fineness of their materials and
  decoration elegance of their shapes, may be
  considered the best pottery of all countries and
  of all times.

41
Successful at Civilizing?

• Smith, p191-192
• Regarding Assimilation
• China was subject to wave after wave of invasions
  by cavalried barbarians Each wave of invaders
  tended to lose its identity through voluntary
  assimilation they admired what they saw. Time
  after time an illiterate invader, entering solely
  for plunder, succumbs. Within a few years his
  foremost hope is to write a copy of Chinese verse
  that his teacher, who is likewise his conquered
  slave, might acknowledge as not altogether
  unworthy of a gentleman, and his highest hope is
  to be mistaken for Chinese. Kublai Khan is the
  most striking example. He conquered China but was
  himself conquered by Chinese civilization, for
  his victory enabled him to realize his lasting
  ambition, which was to become an authentic Son of
  Heaven.

42
Image Sources

• Slide 1 http//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/FileKo
  nfuzius-1770.jpg
• Slide 3 http//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/FileCo
  nfucius_02.png
• Slide 16 http//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/FileT
  heodore_Roosevelt_in_military_uniform,_1898.jpg
• http//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/FileBenjamin_F
  ranklin.PNG
• Slide 20 http//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/FileL
  eviathan_by_Thomas_Hobbes.jpg
• Slide 23 http//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/FileM
  ozi_drawing.jpg
• Slide 31http//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki
  FilePeace_love_and_happyness.svg