‘Confucius say’ is the beginning of many jokes. However, little else from Confucianism has made its way into Western culture. Thus, in this series, I will try to make understandable the Confucian project. I am grateful to my contact Bin Song at Boston University for his patience, recommendations, and conversations during this short series.
One debate about Confucianism is whether or not it is a religion. I heard several Confucians and scholars of Confucianism address this issue. The general consensus among this group was that it was not. However, whether or not they are right everyone admits that there are at least religion-like themes at play. Roger T. Ames, author of Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, the book currently under review, talks a great deal about Confucian religiosity.
140 Word Summary:
Confucianism begins with an individual’s approach to life and continues with responsibilities towards family, friends, and community. Accurately translating Confucian concepts into Western contexts is difficult due to differing assumptions about reality. However, if translated carefully, something can be gained by everyone; though a full indigenous understanding is impossible. Instead of individual entities like soul, self, and God, the Confucian worldview is populated with relational roles like father, ruler, and teacher. There is no ‘One’ supporting the many. The ‘cosmos’ is many, varied, and in flux. Exemplarily and creatively fulfilling your roles, duties, and rituals: adds to the ‘cosmos’, is evidence that one is becoming fully human, and enhances individuality. China has a reputation for isolationism and inwardness. However, there are resources available to create a democracy based on Confucian role ethics.
Extended Critique and Analysis:
In this review I will not attempt to assess whether or not Ames is right in his conception of Confucianism. I am not qualified to judge one of the leading scholars of Confucianism on Confucian interpretation. However, I believe the work of this book is too important to be left solely to the scholars of Confucianism. Thus, what I offer here is an understandable summary of Ames’ interpretation of Confucianism. If you are interested then you should read more to see if Confucianism really is as different from Western religions as Ames suggests. There will also be more in this series.
Confucian Role Ethics is an attempt to translate Confucian worldviews and terms into a Western academic context. Done carefully, we can go further and translate Confucian ideas to a much wider audience, increasing cultural (if not religious) literacy among Westerners. I start with Ames’ work.
First, hermeneutics: a rough synonym of hermeneutics is interpretation. However, the fuller meaning refers to how when we understand a text, tradition, or culture, we bring our own tradition and culture to our interpretation. We are embedded, almost from birth, in a sea of language; usually a particular language with particular emphases.
Confucian Role Ethics starts with the following hermeneutical problem: how should one translate Confucianism into a Western context, when any attempt at trying to comprehensively relay Confucianism on its own terms is likely going to fail. Ames’ solution is to turn this problem into a benefit and attempt to start a conversation between a Confucian and Western context with both ‘appreciating’ each other. (Appreciating is used here both in the sense of valuing and making something more valuable).
Given that we start with our own context, Ames reminds us of our implicit and inherited ontological system. Western ontology (theory of being) is primarily concerned with discrete entities, i.e. soul, God, character, self, and etc…. This includes the ontological idea of the ‘One’ behind the many, i.e. there is one Good in which all other goods participate. Ames argues that in the Confucian context there is just the Many; whereas, the Confucian ontological system is relational and multiple.
In the Confucian context we understand ourselves primarily through others and through relations with those others. In addition, the cosmos is enriched when we fulfill our roles well and creatively. Thus, Confucian ontology is populated with relational terms, like father, ruler, student, teacher, and etc…. The ‘self’ is embedded into a social context through birth, as one grows older one has choices and alters this social context, which is always in flux mirroring and participating in the flux of the cosmos.
Now that we have a base level understanding of the different ontological systems, we can start translating specific terms that are used throughout the book so that we can start, as best we can, to understand the Confucian project as a whole.
Perhaps the most central ethical project of Confucianism is often translated: ‘the rectification of names.’ One must fulfill the duties associated with their roles. For instance, to be a good writer I must fulfill my duties as a writer and the main evidence of my writing abilities is to have exceptional and thoughtful readers. But clearly I am not just a writer; I have many roles and many people in my life. My various relations must be balanced, executed well, and rectified (fulfilled and practiced) not just with the title of the role, but also with my other roles. Concepts associated with the rectification of names are li and ren (sometimes spelled jen).
Li is translated variously as ‘ritual,’ ‘rites,’ ‘customs,’ ‘etiquette,’ ‘propriety,’ ‘morals,’ ‘rules of proper behavior,’ ‘achieved propriety in ritualized roles and relations,’ and ‘reverence.’ Li carries all of these meanings, but with differing emphasis with each use. It implies serving the family and communal spirits ‘to bring about a thriving family and community.’ Confucian religiousness is focused on family feeling and concern for community.
Desiring a life of li is essential for ren, often translated as humaneness. Ren is the most central concept/goal for Confucianism. But understanding ren requires an understanding of the ‘self’ in Confucianism.
Remember the self is not discrete, but primarily social. I am my relations with the various people in my life. There cannot be a self without these relations, as I needed to be nourished and cared for as a child to be alive today; to say nothing of the relationships that I have developed.
Thus, when Yan Hui, Confucius’ favorite student, says that ren is self-love, it is met with great approval from the master himself. This may seem selfish and arrogant in a Western context; however, in the Confucian context, self-love implies the love of all the relations that one: has created, has been born into, and has family feeling for.
There are several other words that a ‘vocabulary’ of Confucian terms must address: ‘shu,’ putting oneself in the other’s place, ‘zhong,’ doing one’s utmost, ‘yi,’ optimal appropriateness, ‘xin,’ making good on one’s word, and ‘de,’ excelling morally. These key concepts, central to Confucian ethics, are necessary to be consummately human (ren).
Now that we have a basic understanding of the Confucian project is easier to see how these concepts fit into the Confucian model. In Confucianism, there are no moral holidays, though obviously we are human and occasionally we do fail. The ideal is to be steadfast and to participate in the ethical life out of love of li (propriety).
Bottom line:
If religiosity can be applied to the Confucian tradition it is a religiosity of practical family and community matters. It merges the sacred and the profane. There has been no priestly class in China, nor would Confucians ever renounce the world like Christian and Buddhist monks and Hindu sadhus do. It’s just not possible.
There are rites, sacrifices, and a cosmology all centered on family, communal spirits, and ontology (theory of being). At Confucius’ burial site, there is even a well-attended temple in his honor. In my opinion, Confucianism is a religion and it would count as a religion in many, but perhaps not all, theories of religion.
My favorite theorist, Emile Durkheim, argues that religion is about community that shares beliefs and rituals. Using this conception it is clearly a religion. Max Weber famously wrote on Confucianism and Daoism arguing that these religions made it difficult or impossible for capitalism to develop in China.
Paul Tillich argues that religion is about ultimate concern; the ultimate concern in Confucianism is family and then community. For those like Freud and C.S. Lewis, who believe that religion has to have a central belief component, Confucianism may be a bit ritualistic; however, there is likely enough shared belief for it to count.
William James would likely be a popular dissenting opinion. He argues that religion is about direct individual experiences. For James, the paradigm of a religious individual is the religious mystic. Given that this type of mystic is difficult to reconcile with Confucian community and family feeling, it is possible that Confucianism wouldn’t count as a religion under his theory.
We should also remind ourselves that ‘religion’ is a Western term that would need to be translated into their context and back into ours to see if it fits the category of religion. This is required given the limits on translation.
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