Confucianism and Daoism
Learning from the young rice plants
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Contradiction in Confucius?
• (1) Overflow with love for all humanity
• (2) Should you treat injury with kindness?
• “What do you say concerning the principle that
injury should be recompensed with kindness?” The
Master said, “With what then will you recompense
kindness? Recompense injury with justice, and
recompense kindness with kindness.”
• Compare Jesus: “Turn the other cheek.”
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Solution to contradiction
• Inner respect: jen:
– Therefore love everyone.
• External behavior: li
– But do not behave the same way to everyone.
• Apply to misbehaving child
– Love the child
– But “punish” the behavior
• Lesson: all actions have consequences
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Mencius (372 – 289 BCE) on how to
unite the Empire
• Mencius saw King Hsiang of Liang. Coming
away, he said to someone, ‘When I saw him at
a distance he did not look like a ruler of men
and when I went close to him I did not see
anything that commanded respect. Abruptly
he asked me, ‘Through what can the Empire
be settled?’
• --Compare to the behavior of the Sage King
Shun
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• ‘ “Through unity,” I said.
• ‘ “Who can unite it?”
• ‘ “One who is not fond of killing can unite it,” I
said.
• ‘ “Who can give it [the Empire] to him?”
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Look at the rice plants
• ‘ “No one in the Empire will refuse to give it to
him. Does your Majesty not know about
young rice plants? Should there be a drought
in the seventh or eighth month, these plants
will wilt. If clouds begin to gather in the sky
and rain comes pouring down, then the plants
will spring up again. This being the case, who
can stop it?
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• “Now in the Empire amongst the shepherds of
men there is not one who is not fond of killing.
If there is one who is not, then the people of
the Empire will crane their necks to watch for
his coming. This being truly the case, the
people will turn to him like water flowing
downwards with a tremendous force. Who
can stop it?” (Mencius, Book I; Part A, 6.)
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To understand China: Look to the Rice
Plants
• Main rule for ruling well: do not kill
– Recall Confucius on how Shun rules w/o acting
• This attracts people to you
• Reliance on force = legalism: repels others and
creates opposition
– What you resist, persists
– If you push on something, it pushes back at you.
(Isaac Newton’s third law of physics.)
• =>Rule by magnetic attraction, not by force
overcoming resistance.
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Yin-Yang
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How the many things are created
•
•
•
•
•
Tao begets One
One begets Two
Two begets Three
Three begets all things
All things carry the female and embrace the
male
• And by breathing together, they live in
harmony
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What is the Way?
• It can’t be named –
– because names refer to “things.”
– And one thing is named in relation to other things.
“Up” is named in relation to “down”
• It is in the one before the two
– Unity of yin and yang, female and male, non-being
and being, easy and hard, low and high, borrower
and lender . . .
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No-thingness
• It is not a thing
– The spokes of the wheel require empty space
between them to work
– The hollowness of the vase makes it a vase
– Empty space allows things to exist
– Silence allows sound to be
• The no-thingness of the Dao is the inner
Source of all things
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The Sage
Aware of the no-thingness of the Dao:
• While the common people are so bright,
• I alone am so dull!
• While the common people know how to
differentiate,
• I alone cannot see the difference.
• All the people have their purpose,
• But I alone am stubborn and despicable. . .
• And value getting nourishment from the Mother.
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Value the feminine side of things
• Recall Antigone: Mother Earth, the eldest of the gods
versis “man” with his plow and horse
• The Daoist Sage returns to the Mother Source of all
things.
• Rejects primacy of masculine learning/ labeling,
calculation, arrogance, aggression, competition.
• =>Return to early kinship egalitarianism
– Before Class hierarchy, the State and male
domination
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How the good ruler rules –
like a woman
• I do not act and the people reform themselves
• I love serenity and the people rectify
themselves . . .
• A large state is like the low land;
• It is the focus point of the world
• And the female of the world.
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• The female always conquers the male by
serenity.
• In serenity, she puts herself low.
• Therefore, the large state puts itself beneath
the small state,
• And thereby absorbs the small state.
• (Contrast method of Qin emperor.)
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Philosophy of No-Mind
• Knowledge involves intellectual distinctions,
labels, separations.
• But truth, the Way, cannot be grasped by such
knowledge.
• The Tao of no-thingness cannot be grasped by
“the mind.”
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Awareness, not knowledge
• Be aware of the space between things, which
allows the things to be
• Be aware of the silence between the sounds,
that allows the sounds to be
• Still your mind by being in the present moment
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Philosophy of Love
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•
•
•
•
The Sage does not store things for himself
The more one does for others
The more he has for himself
The more one gives to others,
The more he keeps for himself.
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Confucian Mencius has Daoist Ideas
• Confucius:
– Learning, propriety (li) is needed,
– but it should be linked to jen – to inner feeling of love, first
learned in family relationships
• Mencius:
– For good rule, imitate the rice plants
– For good rule: don’t kill the peasants
– Government is needed, but it should not rule by force, but by
peaceful example and by serving
• Putting itself low, like a woman
– Morality is a natural response of the human heart.
• Who would let a crawling infant fall into a well?
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Land problem of China
• Only 12% of land in China is arable
• Problem: how best use the land
– Need to respect nature
• Solution: rice has higher yield in calories per
acre than wheat and other grains
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Labor problem
• Rice is more labor intensive.
– Surplus per laborer is much less than in wheat
production.
• =>more laborers per acre in China
• =>high population density of China
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Management problem:
Small margin of survival
• Labor intensive farming: large family on small
plot
• Small surplus per individual
• But large numbers of individuals
• > Rich state, but
• > Small margin of survival for individuals
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Competition for surplus
• Division of pie
– State, Emperor’s family
– Large feudal landlords
– Bureaucracy
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Need an ethical bureaucracy
• Bureaucracy cannot be greedy for itself
• Bureaucracy must defend peasant against
greedy state, landlord
• Confucius: primacy of family unit for health of
state
• Need balanced government: the Mean
– 1) Government depends on peasant surpluses
– 2) too much pressure on the peasants destroys
the balance
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Solution to management problem
• Mencius on taxation: no more than 1/9
• If State/bureaucracy and aristocratic
landowners are too greedy
• > famine and revolution
• Hence, need for ethically trained bureaucracy:
– Confucian ethical bureaucracy,
– Not faceless bureaucracy of centralized states of
the Middle East and West (e.g., Rome)
• Reason for failure of Qin Emperor?
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East v. West
Rice v. Wheat
• 1) Irrigation v. rain-watered
– Centralized state serves v. dominates
• 2) Labor intensive v. technology intensive
– Transfer young plants by hand v plow and animal
power
• 3) Low surplus per laborer v high surplus
• 4) High yield per acre in calories v low yield
• 5) Respect for nature v. pride in human
technology
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Dark side of iron
• Why did China outlast Rome?
• Iron > Slavery as well as freedom
– History of Rome: from free citizen to slave state
– Slavery destroys Roman peasantry
• Slavery presupposes high labor productivity
– Slaves are not naturally careful
– Slaves require external supervision
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Implications of rice re Slavery
• Labor intensive rice cultivation: Low
productivity per worker
• Special care needed to manage irrigation
• > No slave agriculture for rice production
• > Selfless Confucian bureaucracy (ideally)
– Danger of corruption
• > Long duration of Chinese society
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Daoism and Rice Production
• Peasant is close to land, to nature
• Works with hands, feet in mud
• Daoism:
– let nature take its course without human
interference (i.e., without interfering high
technology)
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Rivals or Complementary?
• Revolutionary rivalry
– Important differences in doctrine
– Confucian focus on society v. Daoist focus on
nature
– Daoist revolutionaries fight corrupted Confucians
• But Confucianism is a philosophy of neokinship, and so also emphasizes the natural in
society
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Dual sources of two philosophies
• 1) China must respect limitations of nature
(12% arable land)
• 2) But China is also dependent on a complex,
state-organized artificial irrigation system
• > two indigenous Chinese philosophies
– Daoism reflects closeness to nature
– Confucianism reflects state-based social
organization
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Unity of two philosophies
• But both reflect closer-to-nature, neo-kinship
society
• Chinese Syncretism:
– A “gentleman” can be a Confucian in his public
life,
– and a Daoist in private life.
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