CHAPTER XIV
THE
CONFUCIAN JEN,
A
CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS
MANUEL B. DY JR.
Jen
is a central concept in Confucian philosophy. Its philosophy of the person is
built on the man of jen; "Humanity (jen) is the
distinguishing characteristic of man. . . ."1 It is also the principal virtue of Confucian ethics,2 and the ethos of its social philosophy and metaphysics. No
doubt, Confucianism would not be what it purports to be without jen.
The
aim of this paper is to subject Confucian jen to a critical hermeneutics
as understood by Jürgen Habermas and inspired by his debate with Hans Georg
Gadamer. The basis for such an ap-plication is the similarity of Habermas’s
emphasis on the link of knowledge and human interests with the Confucian unity
of know-ledge and action. A parallelism can also be noted between Ha-bermas’s
three processes of symbolic reproduction of the human species: cultural
transmission, social integration, and socialization, and Confucius’s three
goals of life and thought: to transmit the Chou culture, to reform society, and
to educate the people.
JEN
AND ITS EVOLUTION3
The
richness of the notion of jen is manifest in the diversity of its
translations. It has been translated as benevolence, com-passion, magnanimity,
goodness, love, human-heartedness, hu-maneness, humanity, true manhood, manhood
at its best, kind-ness, charity, perfect virtue, and man-to-manness.4 The character jen
is a composite of two characters: jen meaning "man", and erh
meaning "two". Thus, jen has come to mean the virtue or
principle governing the relationship of man and fellowman.
Confucius: Jen as
Responsibility to Self and Others
Confucius
is reputed to be the first to make jen a general virtue, whereas before
him jen was simply a particular virtue, the kindness of a ruler to his
people. When asked by his disciple Fan Chih for the meaning of jen,
Confucius replied, "It is to love men."5 And this love extends to all, though more intimately with
men of jen.6
As
a general virtue, jen is the principal virtue that unites all others.7
It is "to master oneself and return to propriety";8
so without jen, propriety does not make sense.9
If jen is to love man, wisdom is "to know man".10
"The man of wisdom cultivates jen for its advantage."11 As the central virtue, jen frees man from evil,12 and is above everything else,13 even one’s life.14
Confucius
describes the man of jen in many ways. He can endure prosperity and
adversity for long;15 he is "strong, resolute, simple, and slow to speak;"16 he is earnest, liberal, truthful, diligent and resolute;17 he studies extensively, is steadfast in his purpose,
inquires earnestly, and reflects on what he can put into practice.18 In himself he is respectful in private life; in relation to
things he is serious in handling affairs; and in relating with other human
beings he is loyal.19
These descriptions of the man of jen show the equal emphasis that
Confucius places on personal cultivation and social responsibility.
These
two poles of responsibility (to oneself and to others) form the thread that runs
through all of Confucius’s sayings. "The moral way . . . is none other
than conscientiousness (chung) and altruism (shu)."20 Chung
and shu are the two aspects of jen. Both characters are written
with the character hsin at the bottom. Hsin literally means
"heart" and denotes many things: intentions, feel-ings, cognitive and
evaluative activity.21
Hsin means the very core of man, the heart-mind; in phenomenological
terms it is human subjectivity, in Philippine it is the persons’ kalooban.
Shu,
translated inadequately as "altruism", has the character ju
above, meaning "just as". Shu thus means "do or act just
as the heart dictates," or in other words the Golden Rule, "Do not do
unto others what you do not want others to do unto you."22
Lest Con-fucius’s Golden Rule be compared as negative to Christ’s as
positive, let us cite one positive formulation of the Golden Rule by Confucius:23
A
man of humanity (jen), wishing to establish his own character, also
establishes the character of others, and wishing to be prominent himself also
helps others to be prominent. To be able to judge others by what is near to
otherselves may be called the method of realizing humanity (jen).
On
the other hand, chung, translated also inadequately as
"conscientiousness", has for its character "above" or chung,
meaning "center" or "middle". Together with the character
for "be-low" or hsin, chung literally means "to put
one’s heart in the center of whatever you are doing"; this means wanting
what you really want, being true to yourself.
Chung
and shu are inseparable, and are but two aspects of jen. Chung
is fidelity to oneself, our duty to ourselves; shu is our duty to others.
To separate the two would be to open the Golden Rule of Confucius to Kant’s
objection that it is hypothetical rather than categorical as his Categorical
Imperative.24 In any case, jen is primarily responsibility, rather
than assertion of one’s rights.
As
responsibility, then, jen for Confucius is responsibility for man, both
self and others. Jen is love of the humanity in man; love is man’s
nature itself, for "by nature all men are alike; though in practice they
have grown apart."25 In
jen, all men "within the four seas (the world) are brothers.26 When a certain stable was burned down, Confucius asked, `was
any man hurt?’ He did not ask about the horses."27 And again, Confucius says, "One cannot herd with birds
and beasts. If I do not associate with mankind, with whom shall I
associate?"28
Being
grounded on human nature, it follows that jen is within one’s reach.
Confucius says, "Is jen far away? As soon as I want it, then it is
right by me."29 To
practice jen depends on oneself, not on others.30
Nevertheless,
Confucius placed the practice of jen heavily on the shoulders of those in
positions of leadership: "his burden is heavy and his curse is long. He has
taken humanity to be his own burden. . . . Only with death does his course
stop."31 This is because "the character of a ruler is like wind and that of
the people is like grass. In whatever direction the wind blows, the grass always
bends."32
"The common people may be made to follow it (the Way), but cannot be made
to understand it."33 Confucius promoted a government or leadership by example. He
said, "To govern is to rectify. If you lead the people by being rectified
yourself, who will dare not be rectified?"34 "If a ruler does not set himself right, even his
commands will not be obeyed."35
Leadership by good example secures the confidence of the people, which for
Confucius is the most important element in government.36
Tze-kung
asked about government. Confucius said, "Sufficient food, sufficient
armament, and sufficient confidence of the people." Tze-kung said,
"Forced to give up one of these, which would you abandon first?"
Confucius said, "I would abandon armament." Tze-kung said,
"Forced to give up one of the remaining two, which would you abandon
first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon food. There have been deaths
from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the
people."
Although the practice of jen
rests more heavily on the official, every-one must practice this especially to
one’s teacher.37
Uni-versal as it is, the practice of jen admits of gradation. One should
start with the family, with filial piety and brotherly respect, the roots of jen.38 Love begins at home, with those nearest to one in time and
space. Filial piety entails service and reverence. Confucius said, "In
serving his parents, a son may gently remonstrate with them. When he sees that
they are not inclined to listen to him, he should resume an attitude of
reverence and not abandon his effort to serve them. He many feel worried, but
does not complain."39
And when told by the Duke of She that in his country there is an upright man
named Kung who, when his father stole a sheep, bore witness against him.
Confucius replied, "The upright men in my community are different from
this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son and the son conceals the
misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this."40
Mencius: Jen as
Responsibility
Confucius’s
teaching of jen as graded was further elaborated by his follower, Mencius,
a hundred years later who paired jen with i, "Righteousness
is his straight path."41 and again, "Jen is the peaceful abode of man and
righteousness is his straight path."42 A path implies priorities, and priorities involve gradation and
dis-tinction.43
Righteousness is the virtue that naturally makes dis-tinctions in jen as
responsibility and love. One cannot love every-body equally, although love by
nature is all-embracing. By res-pecting the elders in my family, I can by
extension also treat with respect the elders in other families. "Treat with
tenderness the young in my own family, and then by extension, also the young in
other families."44 It is unnatural for man to love all alike and to the same
degree. The application of jen springs from within man, man’s nature;
it is man’s nature to love. Mencius said, "Jen is the
dis-tinguishing characteristic of the human when embodied in human conduct; it
is the Way."45
Mencius’s
greatest contribution to Confucianism is, of course, his doctrine of the innate
goodness of man, that human nature is originally good. One of his famous
arguments is the in-tuitive appeal to the experience of the "instinct"
in man to save a child about to fall into a well.46
The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of jen, and all have this
basic feeling.47 This feeling of commiseration forms the basis for a
benevolent or compassionate government that cannot bear to see others suffer.48 The benevolent ruler institutes socio-economic measures
(agrarian reforms, the green revolution, the establishment of schools) because,
just as he cannot stand to see an ox being led to be slaughtered, so he cannot
bear to see his people suffer.49 By extending
his innate goodness, his filial piety and brotherly respect from those he loves
to those he does not love (with affection)50 he
becomes a parent to his people.
The
benevolent ruler gains the confidence of his people, the mandate of the people,
which is synonymous with the Mandate of Heaven. "Heaven sees as my people
see; Heaven hears as my people hear."51 For Mencius, following his master Confucius, the confidence
of the people is the most important element of a state.52 And the way to gain the hearts of the people is "to
collect for them what they like and do not do to them what they do not like. . .
. The people turn to the humanity of the ruler as water flows downward and as
beasts run to the wilderness."53
Mencius’s
understanding of "nature" (hsin) paves the way for the
metaphysical basis for the innate goodness of the human heart. Going beyond his
opponent’s, Kao Tzu’s, understanding of nature as simply "what is
inborn,"54
Mencius said that nature is "what Hea-ven has endowed."55 Therefore "he who exerts his mind (heart) to the utmost
knows his nature. He who knows his nature knows Hea-ven. To preserve one’s
mind (heart) and to nourish one’s nature is the way to serve Heaven."56
The person of jen by loving his family and extending that love to others
knows his nature. Knowing one’s nature, thus serves Heaven by cultivating the
nobility of Heaven.
The
harmony in human nature of man, nature, and Heaven finds expression in the
Confucian classic The Doctrine of the Mean. Here jen, humanity, is
jen, man. The government is compared to a fast growing plant, and the
conduct of government depends upon men. "The right men are obtained by the
ruler’s personal character. The cultivation of the person is to be done
through the Way, and the cultivation of the Way is to be done through humanity (jen)."57
Therefore
the ruler must not fail to cultivate his personal life. Wishing to cultivate his
personal life, he must not fail to serve his parents. Wishing to serve his
parents, he must not fail to know man. Wishing to know man, he must not fail to
know Heaven.
The
practical program for the application of jen is explicated succinctly in The
General Learning through the three items of manifesting a clear character,
loving the people and abiding in the highest good, and through the eight steps
of in-vestigation of things: extension of knowledge, sin-cerity of the will,
rectification of the mind (heart), cultivation of personal life, regulation of
family, na-tional order and world peace.58
When things are
investigated, knowledge is extended; when know-ledge is extended, the will
becomes sincere; when the will becomes sincere, the mind is rectified; when the
personal life is cultivated, the family is regulated; when the family is
regulated, the state will be in order; and when the state is in order, there
will be peace throughout the world.
Jen in Taoism and
Buddhism
After
Mencius, the concept of jen evolved to include the in-fluences of Taoism
and Buddhism. Chu Hsi (1130-1200) is the great synthesizer of the neo-Confucian
understanding of jen. His classic saying on jen is his
interpretation of Chang Tsai’s (1020-1077) short essay, the Western
Inscription:59
There
is nothing in the entire realm of creatures that does not regard Heaven as the
father and Earth as the mother. This means that the principle is one. . . . Each
regards his parents as his own parents and his son as his own son. This being
the case, how can principle not be manifested as many? . . . When the intense
affection for parents is extended to broaden the impartiality that knows no ego,
and when sincerity in serving one’s parents leads to the understanding of the
way to serve Heaven, then everywhere it happens that principle is one but its
manifestations are many.
"The
principle (li) is one but its manifestations are many" becomes the
metaphysical basis of jen in Chu Hsi’s philosophy. He identifies jen
with nature, it is one; but as function, it is many.60
Jen’s manifestations are many, but they are all one because they
partake of one principle, that of Heaven and Earth. Now, this principle is
identical with the Mind of Heaven and Earth61
which, in turn, is to produce things.62
Jen being the Mind of Heaven and Earth, it follows that jen is
also the process of production and reproduction; "In man, it is the mind to
love people gently and to benefit things."63
Chu
Hsi’s antagonist, Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529),64 ex-tends this creative character of jen in his
insight of "forming one body with the universe." Because of the
characteristic of jen to grow and produce, the man of jen forms
one body with the universe:
The
great man regards Heaven and Earth and the myriad things as one body. . . . That
the great man can regard Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things as one body is not
because he deliberately wants to do so, but because it is natural to the human
nature of his mind that he does so. . . . Therefore when he sees a child about
to fall into a well, he cannot help a feeling of alarm and commiseration. This
shows that his humanity forms one body with the child. . . . When he sees tiles
and stones shattered and crushed, he cannot help a feeling of regret. This shows
that his humanity forms one body with tiles and stones. This means that even the
mind of the small man necessarily has the humanity that forms one body with all.
Wang Yang-ming sees the
creativity of jen as gradual:65
The
process is like that of a tree which originally appears as a shoot, . . . the
trunk follows, . . . and from the trunk emerge the twigs and branches. Below the
shoot, moreover, must be a root which can grow. In the root is life; without the
root the tree would die. Love between parents and children, and mutual regard
between brothers are the first beginnings of humanity, and are analogous to the
young shoots of the vegetable world. These first awakenings of love will later
extend to embrace the love of all one’s fellow creatures, who are, as it were,
the twigs and branches.
The
neo-Confucian contribution to the understanding of jen is in its
metaphysical dimension: jen taken as the nature of mind (heart) and the
principle of love, as the process of production and reproduction, as
impartiality in one’s extension of love, and as forming one body with the
universe. The Confucian unity with the universe is different from the Taoist
unity with the universe: while the latter is strictly individualistic and
quietistic, the former is essentially social and active.66
THE CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS
OF HABERMAS
Habermas’s
critical hermeneutics can be better understood as based on his notion of three
basic human interests--technical, practical and emancipatory67
-- and seen in the light
of his debate with Gadamer on the issue of critique of ideology.
For
Habermas, there are three specific viewpoints from which we apprehend reality,
three general cognitive strategies, that he calls human interests. Although
these interests are cognitive, they have their basis in the natural
history of man and in the socio-cultural evolution of the human species.
Technical
interest refers to the human drive for instrumental action to master and control
nature. Instrumental action here is purposive-rational, a means-end rationality
whose aim is the ex-ploitation of the world. The empirical-analytical sciences
corres-pond to this interest.
Practical
interest refers to human symbolic interaction in cultural tradition(s), to the
human need for interpersonal com-munication. While technical interest is born
from the need of man to work in order to survive in a material world, practical
or com-municative interest answers an equally important need to relate
intersubjectively in ordinary language communication. Interaction here is
governed by binding consensual norms, based on mutual understanding of
intentions and secured by general recognition of obligation. Understanding takes
place in ordinary language com-munication, in the interpretation of traditional
texts, and in the internalization of norms which institutionalize social roles.
The "his-torical-hermeneutic sciences" correspond to this interest.
In
terms of these two types of interests and action, we can distinguish in a
society the institutional framework or socio-cultural lifeworld that guides
symbolic interaction and subsystems (or social systems of purposive-rational
action, such as the economic system and the state apparatus.68
Emancipatory
interest criticizes the ideological tendencies of the first two interests. The
action here is one of unmasking the forces of domination, dogmatism, and
repression lying behind the reproduction of labor and the institutionally
secured forms of ge-neral and public communication. Emancipatory interest seeks
to break the barriers to open communication between social groups and persons,
raising their self-consciousness "to the point where it has attained the
level of critique and freed itself from all ideological delusions."69 Both the technical and practical technical interest of
self-preservation cannot be segregated from the cultural conditions of human
life; social persons must first interpret what they consider as life. And these
symbolic interpretations must likewise be given for evaluation to the ideas of
the good life or "the criterion of what a society intends for itself as the
good life."70
The critical sciences, philosophy and psychoanalysis, correspond to this
interest.
It
is within the emancipatory interest that Habermas criticizes the hermeneutics of
Gadamer as not going far enough. Gadamer had argued that in the interpretation
of text (and text here refers to anything that is the work of man) one cannot
escape the his-toricality of consciousness. To express, to explain, and to
interpret (the three functions of hermeneutics) all involve language con-ceived
not so much as a system of signs, but as a discourse in which we participate, a
dialectical event. As an event, interpretation takes place in time; to interpret
is always to understand from a certain standpoint or from a certain horizon, for
an historical distance exists between the text and the interpreter. In inter-pretative
understanding this distance is bridged by tradition. Lan-guage is the reservoir
and communication medium of tradition, which hides itself in language. In
hermeneutic understanding, a dialectic exists between one’s own horizon and
that of tradition.71
Habermas criticizes this high regard of Gadamer for tradition and participation.
For Habermas, it is not enough to interpret; what is developed in understanding
is the power of reflection to criticize.
Hermeneutic
understanding must be conjoined with a critique of ideology. Habermas refers to
ideology in the Marxian and Freudian terminology as false consciousness,
including science and technology insofar as they distort reality. Ideology
consists of a type of communication that affects the capacity of a society to
arrive at a consensus concerning common problems. In other words, ideology
distorts communication, hampers the free flow of communication because of
pre-existing dominant patterns of thought and action that are accepted
uncritically as givens. Lan-guage can also be a medium of domination and of
social power and can serve to legitimize relations of organized force.72
Tradition can reveal and express realities, but it can also conceal and distort
the social, political, economic conditions of life, especially those that are
injust. What is needed, therefore, is self-awareness, a critique of one’s own
beliefs, values, and behavior.
A
critique of ideology requires, according to Habermas, a system of reference that
goes beyond tradition and systems that have to do with the mode of production
and power relations.73
Her-meneutic understanding must be conjoined with analysis of social systems,
through which tradition can be criticized and a res-tructuring of world views
can be initiated. This would require in turn a philosophy of history, a certain
vision of the future of society, of what mankind ought to be. Any account of the
past implicitly presupposes a projection of a future which the interpreter can
work to bring about.
A CRITICAL
REINTERPRETATION OF JEN
We
have already mentioned at the start of this paper the si-milarity of the
Confucian unity of knowledge and action with Ha-bermas’s notion of human
interest. For the Confucianist, know-ledge is never for knowledge’s sake, but
rather for praxis, which is ethical action. Similarly, Habermas looks at
cognitive activities as governed by deep-seated human interests that are natural
to the human in his evolution and need to be actualized. Moreover, jen as
the principal virtue of Confucian ethics is also the outstanding characteristic
of good government. Jen is both a personal and social moral standard. In
the Confucian system, ethics is syno-nymous with politics. This is also similar
to one of the attempts of Habermas to go back to the ancient Greek paradigm of
the triad of theoria, praxis and techne where the practical
is synonymous with the political, after criticizing the modern ideological
tendency of science and technology where the practical has been identified with
the technical, the theoretical with the scientific, and the political has been
freed of any normative considerations.
Notwithstanding
the similarity of Confucius and Habermas in the unity of knowledge and action
and in the continuity of ethics and politics, there is a conflation of jen
in the Confucian system with the other spheres of life. This can lead either to
the neglect of the instrumental reason that characterized the technical interest
of man, as was the case in the early period of modernization period of China, or
to the intrusion and predominance of interpersonal har-mony in the economic and
state subsystems. The neo-Confucian notion of jen as forming one body
with the universe, including phy-sical nature, has to be reformulated to mean
forming one body with the human world, because in the modern scientific and
techno-logical age what is of nature or natural is no longer what is inborn or
endowed by Heaven and therefore sacred. Nor is it that which is the object of
human reflection and contemplation, but that which is subjected to technology.
For modern man, nature is the primitive, to be tamed and harnessed for the human
goals of civilization. There is merit, of course, to the Taoist insight of
harmony with nature and respect for its rhythm, if only to correct the abuses
that modern man has inflicted on the ecology. But harmony with one’s fellowman
is different from that with physical nature which is characterized by a
different kind of rationality, namely, one that is purposive.
The
intrusion of jen into the sphere of the technical runs the risk of
subverting the practical and communicative under technical interest for
survival. In such a case, jen becomes a matter of good public relations,
a technical "how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people," a tactical
diplomacy in order to secure one’s own position or gain material or political
advantage. Persons and peoples are then treated simply as means (rather than as
ends) to serve one’s own personal or group interests.
Group
interests refers naturally to the family. Filial piety and brotherly respect as
the root of jen has led to over-emphasis on the family. The result is
clannishness in society, competition among clans, family-run business empires
and monopolies, and nepotism in government. Filial piety has indeed ensured the
personal care of parents in their old age, rather than confining them to
institutions; but in the modern context, this has come to mean treating children
as investments, the more children the greater the chances of the parents being
taken care of. Brotherly respect has not been ex-tended beyond that of the clan.
And when it comes to a conflict between the good of the family and that of the
community or so-ciety, the family interest comes first.
In
this regard, filial piety and brotherly respect need to be reinterpreted as the
mutual love and respect of the person of both parent and child (not only of the
parent), and of one’s fellow humans outside of the clan. The
family-centeredness of jen must be made centrifugal, the closed family
transformed into an open one.
As
graded love jen has made the Confucian society hie-rarchical and its
benevolent government into an autocratic or pa-ternalistic state. Each has a
role in the family and society with its corresponding duties and obligations,
and fidelity and loyalty to the superior is a virtue to cultivate. Organizations
are formed more in a vertical, than in an horizontal order. Greater
responsibility falls on one in authority who has the trust and respect of his
followers by virtue of age, lineage, and sometimes wisdom and experience. Power
is centered on the leader, and any reform must come from the top, which, of
course, is a carry-over from the feudal society of Confucius’s time. Though
Mencius’s notion of the benevolent government with the people as its most
important element may have made him the first democratic thinker in the history
of philo-sophy, nevertheless, this kind of democracy is authoritative.
How
effective and relevant is authoritative democracy today? It has been noticed
that one common trait of the new "small dragons" (Taiwan, South Korea,
Singapore) is that they all have a more central or maximum government, where the
populace instinc-tively appeals to the government for solutions to its problems.74
The agrarian reform programs emanating from Tokyo and Taipei were successful
because they were initiated and implemented under authoritarian rule. Is
Mencius’s benevolent government indeed the East Asian kind of democracy? If we
were simply to apply the technical and practical interests of Habermas, the
answer would be in the affirmative. But under the emancipatory interest, one
must ask whether the wealthy, cultivated, cultured person under a benevolent but
despotic ruler is truly free?
The
person of jen is the one who cultivates him or herself in order to be of
service to others. The Confucian emphasis on ob-ligation and duties has led to a
neglect of rights. The jen-ethic is communitarian, not individualistic.
This is not to say that Confucius disregarded personal cultivation; after all, jen
has two aspects: chung (conscientiousness) and shu (Golden Rule).
But chung is still a duty, and not a right, albeit a duty to oneself. A
duty is only a duty because there is a right. My duty to you is your right, and
your right to me is my duty. For modern institutions and structures jen
has to be reformulated to mean also a right, e.g. my right vis-a-vis society to
be educated, to be cultivated.
Now
jen, when paired with i (righteousness) as a graded and
prioritized responsibility, has given rise to hierarchical distinctions in
responsibilities. As a result, the boundaries of responsibility are clearly
delineated. If we were to reformulate jen as a right and not only as a
duty, then we would have to extend these boundaries of responsibility to include
those rights that are inherent in the person, regardless of whether or not they
are related to me by blood or position. In the modern world where mass media has
made the world truly global, linking man to man from all over, jen must
mean that I am responsible for the right of any other person in the world to
live humanly.
Chung,
the Golden Rule which is the other aspect of jen, also needs to be
reinterpreted in the context of a global humanity. There is a point to Kant’s
objection to the Golden Rule as being hypo-thetical ("if you do not want
this to be done to you, do not do it to others") should be based on one’s
nature. The benevolent govern-ment of Mencius is based too on the innate natural
goodness of hu-man nature, one that is endowed by Heaven. Thus, there is
some-thing sacred in the Golden Rule. In Habermas’s proposal for the
rationalization of the lifeworld to counteract the ideological ten-dency of the
rationality of technical interests, one of the require-ments is the
"linguistification of the sacred." This is the ration-alization of
world views, in some contrast to their religious pre-judgmental character. The
Golden Rule can be reformulated in Ha-bermas’s logic of practical discourse:
the claim to what is right is justified in terms of the principle of
universalizability:75 what is right
is what can be universalized. Here the focal point is not just the individual
"I", but the person that every human being is.
Finally,
jen is to be critiqued as an ideology. There have been moves in some
countries to promote the Confucian ethics of jen, making a fine
distinction between Confucianism as a personal ethic and Confucianism as a
political ideology. Habermas, however, in-sists that culture cannot be
administered. To impose jen on the people is tantamount to making it
ideological and therefore re-pressive. The harmony of jen as falling
under the practical interest has to be re-interpreted as a harmony arrived at
from consensus and not from coercion.76 In the light of the emancipatory interest, the benevolent government of
Mencius that is authoritarian needs to be reinterpreted as a participative kind
of democracy, where each citizen has a right and duty to participate in what
constitutes the good life of man.
CONCLUSION: PERSON AND
SOCIETY
We
have critically interpreted jen in the light of Habermas’s framework of
the three cognitive interests (technical, practical and emancipatory), following
his proposal for a critique of tradition. It seems, however, that our critique
of jen in the context of modernity boils down to the failure of the
Confucian system to distinguish (not necessarily to separate) in the human being
the person and the individual. It would seem that Confucian thought lacks the
notion of person.
To
borrow Max Scheler’s insight,77 the person is more than an individual. For a human being to
be considered a moral person, he or she must possess a sound mind, be in the
process of becoming (maturity), have control over his or her lived body, and not
be objectifiable. The last point is important for the person is not a substance,
a thing. A person is a unity of different acts; he or she exists or is present
in every act but is not exhausted by any one of them. One of the distinguishing
acts of the person is the act of loving; as such the person is also a social
person with social acts. To know another person as person is to know him or her
as a unique being, which entails co-acting with them, for they are present only
in their acts. This is possible because in loving we participate in the Absolute
Person of God in whom the individual and social coincide. The solidarity of
persons is founded ultimately in the personhood of God.
Following
Scheler’s insight, we may say that the human being as an individual is indeed
subordinate to the state or society, and that the state therefore has the right
to oblige one to subordinate one’s individual interests for the good of
society as a whole. But as person, unique, non-objectifiable, irreducible and
unrepeatable, the human being rises above the state which exists so that the
person may grow as a unique being. Nevertheless, the human being can grow to
become a person only by participating and by responding to the value of others
in a community. The paradox of this unity of personal cultivation and community
growth can be reconciled only if we admit of a relationship with an Absolute
Person that grounds the solidarity of moral persons.
NOTES
1.
Mencius VII B:16. The Doctrine of the Mean, ch. 20. Translation by
Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1963).
2.
The other virtues are chih (wisdom), i (righteousness), and li
(propriety).
3.
I am indebted for this part of the paper to Wing-tsit Chan, "The Evolution
of the Confucian Concept Jen," Philosophy East and West, 4,
(1955), 155 295-319.
4. Ibid.,
p. 195.
5. Analects
XII, 22
6. Ibid.,
i, 6.
7.
Wing-tsit Chan, op. cit., p. 296.
8. Analects
XII, 1.
9. Ibid.,
III, 3.
10.
Ibid., XII, 22.
11.
Ibid., IV, 2.
12.
Ibid., IV, 4.
13.
Ibid., IV, 6.
14.
Ibid., XV, 8.
15.
Ibid., IV, 2.
16.
Ibid., XIII, 27.
17.
Ibid., XVII, 6.
18.
Ibid., XIX, 6.
19.
Ibid., XIII, 19.
20.
Ibid., IV, 15.
21.
Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 50-51.
22.
Analects XII, 2.
23.
Ibid., VII, 28.
24.
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. by H.J.
Paton (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964), p. 97 footnote.
25.
Analects XVII, 2.
26.
Ibid., XII, 5.
27.
Ibid., X, 12.
28.
Ibid., XVIII, 6.
29.
Ibid., VII, 29.
30.
Ibid., XII, 1.
31.
Ibid., VIII, 7.
32.
Ibid., XII, 19.
33.
Ibid., VIII, 12.
34.
Ibid., XII, 17.
35.
Ibid., XIII, 6.
36.
Ibid., XII, 7.
37.
Ibid., XV, 35.
38.
Ibid., I, 2.
39.
Ibid., IV, 18.
40.
Ibid., IV, 18.
41.
Mencius VI A:11.
42.
Ibid., IV A:10.
43.
Wing-tsit Chang, "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 302.
44.
Mencius I A:7.
45.
Ibid., VII B:16.
46.
Ibid., II A:6.
47.
Ibid., VI A:6, II A:6.
48.
Ibid., II A: 6.
49.
Ibid., I A:7.
50.
Ibid., VII B:1.
51.
Ibid., V A:5.
52.
Ibid., I B:7.
53.
Ibid., IV A:9.
54.
Ibid., IV A:3.
55.
Ibid., IV A:15.
56.
Ibid., VII A:1.
57.
The Doctrine of the Mean, ch. 20.
58.
The Great Learning, trans. by Wing-tsit Chan.
59.
Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book, pp. 499-500.
60.
Ibid., "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 316.
61.
Source Book, p. 642.
62
Chu Hsi, "Treatise on Jen," in Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book,
p. 593.
63.
Ibid., p. 595.
64.
Wang Yang-ming, "Inquiry on the Great Learning," in Instructions
for Practical Living, trans. by Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia, 1963),
p. 272.
65.
Ibid., sec. 93.
66.
Wing-tsit Chan, "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 309.
67.
Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press,
1971).
68.
Jürgen Habermas, Towards a Rational Society (Boston: Beacon Press,
1970), pp. 92-94.
69.
Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT, 1978), p. 88.
70.
Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, p. 313.
71.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982).
72.
Jürgen Habermas, "A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method," in Fred
R. Dallmayr and Thomas McCarthy (eds.), Understanding and Social Inquiry
(South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1977), p. 365.
73.
Ibid., pp. 358, 361.
74.
Lynn Pann, "Playing the Identity Card," Far Eastern Economic Review
(February 8, 1989), p. 31.
75.
Thomas McCarthy, op. cit., p. 313.
76.
Cf. Tran van Doan, "Confucius and Habermas on Politics," The Asian
Journal of Philosophy, 1 (1987), 101-130.