Conscious Tradition
Asian Philosophies, 6th Edition, John M.
Koller (hereafter “Koller”) … Read all of
Chapter 16
The World’s 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
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Confucius (551 – 479 BC)… born in Lu (now Shantung
province), China.
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“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.
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Smith remarks that understanding Confucius and his influence, his
fame, requires understanding the world he was born into.
In 551 BC, 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.
4
Recall from the Hinduism PowerPoint:
Once clothed in a human body, the soul attains selfconsciousness, and with it, “freedom, responsibility, and effort.”
(Smith, p64)
Smith’s 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?
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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
“[t]here 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 isn’t sure
if it would have been okay for her to escape. Yoik!
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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.
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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 conduit—one
that could funnel into the present behavior patterns that
had been perfected during a golden age in China’s 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?
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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?
1. Realism (Han Fei Tzu’s [Feizi’s] view): people are
selfish; the answer must appeal to self-interest.
2. Mohism (Mo Tzu’s [Mozi’s] view; called Mo
philosophy): people are loving; the answer must
appeal to human goodness.
3. Confucianism (Kong Fuzi’s view; called Ru
philosophy): people are good and bad; the answer
must inspire people to good behavior.
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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…
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Realism
Defended
by Thomas
Hobbes
(Blue Slides 11-27)
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Leviathan
Hobbes’s 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
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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
minds—emotions 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 one’s 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
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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
Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679
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.
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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 another’s 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?
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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 another’s
domain for gain
 Diffidence encourages invasion for safety
 Glory encourages invasion for reputation
What Iraq War
arguments
correspond to these
causes?
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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”
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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?
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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.)
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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 another’s body.”
“… as long as this natural right of man to everything
endures, there can be no security to any man …”
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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.
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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
He who sacrifices freedom for security
deserves neither. –Ben Franklin
In following these laws, especially the second, we
must form contracts.
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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?
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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?
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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?
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We can’t.
“…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.”
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Though Hobbes rejects the
Divine Right of Kings as the
rational basis for government,
he still prefers the Monarchy to
parliament (democracy)
because of monarchy’s swift
and unambiguous enforcement
of law.
Long live the king!
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Smith, p167:
He [Confucius] rejected the Realist’s answer of force because it
was clumsy and external. Force regulated by law can set limits to
people’s 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 Adam’s quote:
Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
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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 one’s own people, and
regard other states exactly as one regards one’s 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. …
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Mo Tzu’s 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.”
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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 man’s 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.
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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.
1.
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.
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2.
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 selfconsciousness.
Now, society’s members must find
conscious reasons to follow the
old ways.
Watch self-consciousness
emerge for the first time
among “the Borg.”
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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
means—temples, theatres, homes, toys,
proverbs, schools, history, and stories—
until 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 Watch the pupil learn to
admire the master; follow
(if it puts itself to the task) spin an
the “pattern of prestige.”
enveloping tradition, a power of
suggestion, that can prompt its members
to behave socially even when the law is
not looking.
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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 them—partly 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:
… [H]is disciple’s 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 Master’s aphorisms.
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5 Virtues:
1.
2.
3.
Jen (Ren in Koller): Human-Heartedness (humanity / The
Silver Rule)
Chun Tzu: Mature Person (competence)
Li: Social Grace (manners / propriety)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
4.
5.
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.
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Li: Social Grace (manners / propriety)
3.
The Rectification of Names
1.
a)
b)
The Doctrine of the Mean
2.
1.
3.
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
Nothing to excess; avoid deficiency
The Five Constant Relationships
1.
Parents loving; children reverential
2.
3.
4.
5.
Elder siblings gentle; younger siblings respectful
Husbands good; wives ‘listening’
Elder friends considerate; younger friends deferential
Rulers benevolent; subjects loyal
The Family
4.
1.
Chinese legend mentions a hero who invented the family and
elevated the Chinese from mere animals to humans.
Age
5.
1.
Since age accumulates knowledge and wisdom (or can), veneration
of the old will aid society
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The Self:
… a Confucian who is bent on selfcultivation 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. …
[A]part 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 ‘neverending cross currents of
human relationships’ here,
and in the trailer that follows
this introduction to Eat,
Drink, Man, Woman
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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 …
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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.
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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.
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Slide 1: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Konfuzius-1770.jpg
Slide 3: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Confucius_02.png
Slide 16:
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tary_uniform,_1898.jpg
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bes.jpg
Slide 23: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mozi_drawing.jpg
Slide 31:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki
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