Confucian Cultures

Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level.

Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the “idea” of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey’s “idea” of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a “Confucian democracy.” Just as Dewey’s “idea” of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi’s Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process “starting here and going there” through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century.

Among twentieth-century Confucians, Xu Fuguan (1904–1982) remains preeminent. This volume, written by Chun-chieh Huang, an authority on Xu’s life and thought, offers English-speaking readers for the first time an exhaustive analysis of the philosopher’s original ideas and research. A distinguished member of the group of Contemporary New Confucians, Xu made a significant contribution to the revival of Chinese culture and society, and the present book outlines the specific features of his legacy in comparison with the views of some of his influential Chinese and Japanese contemporaries.

The topics covered illustrate an overarching idea, namely, the innovative way in which Xu Fuguan answers a major question concerning Chinese culture, one posed by Chinese intellectuals since the May Fourth Movement: how best to approach the modernization of China. Xu’s work is based on the assumption that Confucian thought and ethics—the core of Chinese tradition—can be modernized because “there is nothing in it which is not compatible with the idea of human dignity or rights in modern society.” Xu addresses the question of China’s modernization by offering arguments in favor of building a connection between Confucianism and democracy, mainly its political dimension.

Huang places his subject in the vast context of twentieth-century Chinese Confucian studies and the history of East Asian thought. He compares Xu Fuguan with his most influential opponents Hu Shi (1891–1962) and Fu Sinian (1896–1950) as well as fellow Confucians Tang Junyi (1909–1978) and Mou Zongsan (1909–1995). Huang draws further comparisons between Xu’s thought and that of Japanese Enlightenment philosopher Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) and the father of contemporary Japanese capitalism, Shibusawa Eiichi (1840–1931). These contrasts highlight the “Chineseness” of Xu’s theories and the marks left by traditional Chinese thought and culture on his writing and life in the countryside, where he spent much of his youth.

For more than a century scholars both inside and outside of China have undertaken the project of modernizing Confucianism, but few have been as successful or influential as Li Zehou (b. 1930). Since the 1950s, Li’s extensive efforts in this regard have in turn exerted a profound influence on Chinese modernization and resulted in his becoming one of China’s most prominent social critics. To transform Confucianism into a contemporary resource for positive change in China and elsewhere, Li has reinterpreted major ideas and concepts of classical Confucianism, including a rereading of the entire Analects, replete with his own philosophical speculations derived from other Chinese and Western traditions (most notably, the ideas of Kant and Marx), and developed an aesthetical theory that has proved especially far-reaching.

Although the authors of this volume hail from East Asia, North America, and Europe and a wide variety of academic backgrounds and fields of study, they are unanimous in their appreciation of Li’s contributions to not only an evolving Confucian philosophy, but also world philosophy. They view Li first and foremost as a sui generis thinker with broad global interests and not one who fits neatly into any one philosophical category, Chinese or Western. This is clearly reflected in the chapters included here, which are organized into three parts: Li Zehou and the Modernization of Confucianism, Li Zehou’s Reconception of Confucian Philosophy, and Li Zehou’s Aesthetical Theory and Confucianism. Together they form a coherent narrative that reveals how Li has, for more than half a century, creatively studied, absorbed, and reconceptualized the Confucian ideational tradition to integrate it with Western philosophical elements and develop his own philosophical insights and original theories. At the same time, he has transformed and modernized Confucianism for the purpose of both coalescing with and reconstructing a new world cultural order.

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges.

When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy.

Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order.

“In Confucianism: Its Roots and Global Significance, English language readers get a rare opportunity to read the work in a single volume of one of Taiwan’s most distinguished scholars. Although Lee Ming-huei has published in English before, the corpus of his non-Chinese writings is in German. Readers of this volume will discover the hard-mindedness and precision of thinking associated with German philosophy as they enter into Lee’s discussions of Confucianism. Progressing through the book, they will be constantly reminded that all philosophy should be truly comparative. . . .

“The work is divided into three parts: Classical Confucianism and Its Modern Re-Interpretations, Neo-Confucianism in China and Korea, and Ethics and Politics. These sections reveal the full range of Lee Ming-huei’s thinking, including his view of Confucian philosophy’s reach to encompass the whole of East Asia, Korea in particular. In the Ethics and Politics section, readers get a taste of Lee’s return to his own tradition through the lens of Kantian philosophy with his analysis of Confucius and Virtue Ethics. His thinking through Mou Zongsan’s interpretation of Confucianism, Zhu Xi, and the Huxiang scholars’ debate on ren and the unfolding of discussions over the ‘four buddings’ and ‘seven feelings’ in Korea by Yi Toegye and Gi Gobong set up the subsequent chapters of the book: a reconstruction of Wang Yangming’s philosophy and theories of democracy and a critique of Jiang Qing’s ‘Political Confucianism.’ To be sure, the interrelated ideas and arguments presented here contribute significantly to the Confucian project in English-speaking countries across the world.” —from the Editor’s Foreword