In a time of rapid change and social conflict, values that are worth being pursued must be based upon our existential relationship and a new idea of harmony. The idea of harmony is based upon humankind’s existential experience and the ideal state of existence for which longs. One could not live long without harmony, although for earning one’s autonomy and a better life, one might struggle with his or her fellows, nature and God. But the harmony we have in everyday life is merely fragmentary. Once a bit of harmony is happily tasted, we fall again into the bitterness of struggle and conflict.

But, just as we are envious of health when actually ill, human-kind specially longs for harmony when caught up in social disorder or psychological disequilibrium. For example, Confucianism cherishes the harmony between an individual and his fellowmen, but it emerged in the decadence of social norms in the Chou dynasty. Taoism, in emphasizing harmony between humans and nature, came into being during a time of vehement war and social disorder. Christianity, reminding us above all of the harmony between humans and God, concerns itself most with human suffering and evil.

The idea of harmony should be analyzed with regard to the relation between an individual and other fellowmen, the relation between human beings and nature, and the relation between human beings and God, for all three constitute the essential framework of human existence. This means that the idea of harmony could be understood now only in the context of an ontology of relation, which means that all existents, all beings, are in some kind of dynamic relation in which they turn towards one another to constitute the meaningfulness of their existence.

The structural framework of the relations between human beings and reality is constituted by the relations between the individual and his fellowmen, the human and nature, and the human and God. Among all three relations, there is a contrasting tension between harmony and conflict. Hence, we must, on the one hand, retain the harmonious relations one already has with others and, on the other, maximize or optimize harmony in realizing oneself in the totality.

On the human level, all are born into the world in the relational contexts with our parents and the social world. That is the reason why Confucianism concerns mostly the harmonization of a human being’s relations with his fellowmen. One of the main concerns of Confucianism is the meaning of the social order and the meaning of human existence therein.

Confucius himself had endeavored to re-vitalize the ancient social order instituted by Chou-li by rendering it meaningful in a transcendental way. In pre-Confucian China, Chou-li embraced both the ideal and the actual aspects of religious, ethical and political life in ancient China. For its actual meaning, Chou-li saw three essential aspects, the sacrificial ceremonies, the social and political institutions and the code of daily behavior. Ideally speaking, this represented an ideal image of the cultural tradition as Order imbued with a sense of beauty or Harmony. It represented for Confucius a compre-hensive ideal of human life in general, similar to the role of the concept of Paideia for ancient Greece.

But the time of Confucius, the period of Spring and Autumn, was a time of political turmoil leading to social disorder, a time qualified by Confucius as "without order and justice". For example, Confucius said,

In this state of political disorder, Chou-li began to lose this deeper meaning while still keeping its realistic and superficial meaning as a code of behavior with social and political institutions and religious ceremonies. Confucius tried to revitalize Chou-li by translating its ideal meaning into the concept of Jen, which signified and represented for him the sensitive interconnectedness between the human being’ s inner self with other human beings, with nature and even with Heaven. Jen manifests man’s subjectivity and responsibility in and through his sincere moral awareness; meanwhile,it means also the inter-subjectivity which supports all social and ethical life. That is why Confucius said that Jen is not remote or difficult for human beings; one needs only an individual will, for Jen is there in oneself. Thus Confucius laid a transcendental foundation for the interaction of human beings with nature, with society and even with Heaven.

Through this procedure of transcendental deduction, Confucianism reconstitutes and thereby revitalizes the ethical and social order implied in Chou-li and the meaningfulness of human existence therein. The dimension of meaning in human existence is therefore to be understood within the context of a totality constituted of relations between human beings imbued with a sense of orderly beauty or a sense of harmony

In Confucianism, a life of harmony must be concretized as a life of virtue. Virtue is to be seen as both the excellence of natural human abilities and the harmonization of human relationships. Obligation is considered as necessary when it helps to form and achieve virtue. Confucius cherished such virtues as wisdom, humanness and bravery. I would interpret the virtue of wisdom as the excellence of human intellect, the virtue of Jen or humanness as the excellence of human feeling, and the virtue of bravery as the excellence of human will. For Mencius, human nature possesses four beginnings of goodness, which could be seen as four natural capacities of humankind tending towards goodness. Virtues such as humanness, righteousness, propriety and wisdom are the fulfillment of these four beginnings of goodness in human nature. Hence, righteousness as virtue precedes always righteousness as obedience to moral obligations.

In the case of Confucianism, virtue as excellence of human abilities never limits itself within the individual, but instead always refers to relations with others. For example, Confucius, when asked about a life of Jen by Tzu Chang, answered that,

It is clear that all these virtues refer to others and the reactions from others. They are ways of harmonizing human relationships and are therefore relational virtues.

Virtues also are to be formed in the five essential relationships, consisting always in the harmonization of human relationships, whether this concerns the relation between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends and lovers, or individuals and society. These are not to be seen merely as biological or social relationships; on the contrary, they are to be realized as ethically meaningful. The meaning of good relationships, such as piety, fidelity, loyalty, . . . etc., could be interpreted differently according to the custom of the times, but its essence as the harmonization of relationships remains always valid now and forever.

The process of harmonization of relationship is a process of enlargement from reciprocity to universality. Reciprocity is essential for human relationships according to Confucianism. Dzaiwuo proposed two arguments against the maintenance of funeral rites, one based upon the necessity of maintaining social order, the other based upon the cycle of natural processes. Confucius’s answer was based upon human reciprocity, namely, that in our earliest childhood we were taken care of by our parents, and that this is the reason why we observe funeral rites in response to the love of our parents for us. The form of these ritual practices could be changed according to the demand of times, but the essence of reciprocity in human relationship remains.

But good human relationships come to fulfillment when enlarged from reciprocity to universality. That is why Confucius, when asked by Dzu Luh concerning how a paradigmatic individual behaves, answered: "by the cultivation of oneself, first for one’s dignity, then for the happiness of other’s, and finally for the happiness of all people." From reciprocity to universality means that we should transcend the limit of special relationship to universal relationship, even to the point of seeing the people within the four seas as brothers. This means that humankind would treat other fellowmen without regard to their family, profession, company, race and country, but just with Jen, a universal love, but only because they are members of humankind. This is the way by which Confucianism enlarges the harmonization of human relationship, the full unfolding of which is the process of the formation of a virtuous life, not merely a life of observing absolutized obligations.

Confucian ethics is an ethics of virtue, rather than of obligation as some contemporary Neo-Confucians such as Mou Tzong-san would think. But virtue consists in two things, the excellence of human abilities and the harmonization of human relationships. Beginning from the priority of virtue, Confucian ethics could accept also the helpful ideas of an ethics of obligation and even of an utilitarian ethics. The most important principle is that a life of harmony could be achieved only by attaining the full excellence of one’s ability in harmonizing human relationships, or, the other way round, by harmonizing human relationships one accomplishes the excellence of one’s abilities.

Human existence stands on the support of nature. Not only does the relation between an individual and his fellowmen need to be harmonious, but the relation between humans and nature and that between natural beings is also in need of harmony. Especially with the deepening of the industrialization process, the abuse of technology has brought about environmental problems and ecological disequilibrium. This makes the harmony between man and nature more urgent. Here we can learn from Taoism.

Taoism emerged also in a time of social disorder and frequent war. Under Lao Tzu’s penetrating criticism, the society of his time was revealed to be full of social problems provoked by political domination. He wrote

Deeper critical reflection by Lao Tzu suggested that power domination came from desire and the instrumental rationality it manipulated. At that time lust for goods and desire for power were highly elevated. People strove for fame and position. Intellectuals rendered service to political power and became themselves instruments of political domination. People sacrificed their spiritual freedom for lustful desire and instrumental rationality. Lao Tzu even criticized Confucian ideology saying that it emphasized too much deliberate actions taken with anthropocentric self-consciousness, which inclined one to forget the spontaneity of the human being and its rooting in Tao. Thereby, instead of Confucian deduction of Yi from Jen and Li from Yi for the revitalization of Chou Li, quite the contrary, Jen would degenerate into Yi, and Yi would degenerate into Li, which as a form of domination and violence, would become the origin of social conflict.

In order to know the Way of Tao, it is necessary to know how Tao becomes body. According to Lao Tzu, Tao manifests itself first as possibilities, as nothingness; then among all possibilities, some are realized, and to be realized is to take the form of body. This engendered a realm of being. Therefore we can say that the possible is infinitely richer than the real, and nothingness is infinitely more vast than being. On the ontological level, there is a kind of scarcity of being in relation to nothingness. In other words, nothingness or the possible is rich, whereas being, as the real, is scarce.

Creation in the Taoist sense consists in the process through which Tao self-manifests, first as the whole realm of possibilities, and then some possibilities become real. To become real is to let the possible realize itself and consequently to be incarnate in the form of body. Being means the incarnation of the possible. Whereas the possible is liberated from all constraints, the real is always being in a certain concrete form of body. Creation is therefore a dialectical process between being and nothingness, between freedom and constraint.

The openness of mind leading to the ultimate harmony is not limited to this liberation from all attachment to the differentiation between life and death. For Taoism, human beings should follow the rhythm of cosmic creativity instead of imposing oneself upon a specific form of existence. In the process of cosmic creativity one should not impose one’s subjective will in discriminating the human body from other kind of bodies. This is to say that the scarcity of body does not mean the superiority of human body. For Chuang Tzu there is an ontological equality among all living bodies, which is why in Taoist eyes there should not be any preference for the human body. Chuang Tzu would even accept to be transformed into a rat’s liver as well as a bug’s arm. This ontological vision of body transcends our anthropocentric preference. Chuang Tzu relates:

Unafraid of death, even with a joyful acceptance, there is then produced an ultimate freedom, ridding oneself from all horror of illness. This is supported by the Taoist thesis of the scarcity of body, which is complemented by the thesis of equality of all bodies. As locus of the appearing of Tao, all beings are sons of Mother Tao, consequently all beings are equal. In terms of Chuang Tzu, since all beings are specific incarnations of Tao, there is no need to discern the noble from the mean, the true from the false, the rational from the sensible. There is but one ontology, that of the Tao, which penetrates and immerses itself in all beings. This enlargement of existence brings us to a kind of open mind, supportive of a life of sanity.

But, even if Chuang Tzu, due to his ontological visions mentioned above, does not make any distinction between the noble and the mean, the true and the false, the rational and the sensible (he would accept even to become a rat’s liver as well as a bug’s arm), nevertheless, in the profundity of his soul, he has a beautiful dream. It is to become a butterfly, for him the most beautiful and free being wandering and playing in nature. He says:

According to Chuang Tzu, this life praxis begins from the spontaneous control of breathing to the point of minimizing the unconscious desire and its unconscious expression through dreams.

For Freud, dreaming is a disguised way of expressing one’s unconscious desires. But for Chuang Tzu, to be too much immersed in passions and desires would render shallow one’s sensitivity to Heaven’s working. But there is still a way out, that is, by a profound and natural way of breathing, as deep as breathing with one’s heels, by which one could minimize one’s desire to the extent of sleeping without dreaming and waking without daily care.

According to my interpretation, an ox is a living being constituted in a very complicated way, signifying thereby the com-plexity of life, individual as well as social. But, with an art of life praxis which is capable of grasping the complexity of life, one could eventually follow the natural rhythm and learn the way of freedom. As the narrative of the butcher says,

The praxis of life, as illustrated by the narrative of the butcher, makes its progress from the technical level to that of the Tao, and thereby becomes art. It is in fact an art of life praxis which realizes itself in the dynamism and movement of body. The body is the locus for this praxis; it is the incarnation of the art of life praxis. The scarcity of body is only one reason for which a human being should entertain and economize his body so as not to get lost in the vicissitudes of events. In concentrating oneself and in following the natural way of life, a free and fresh way of life could be achieved which would be the fulfillment of a life of harmony.

HARMONY WITH GOD

Besides the relation of an individual with his fellowmen, and that of the human with nature, there is, ultimately speaking, the relation between the human and God. For Christianity, harmony with God is the original foundation of all other harmonious relations. This is based upon the Christian concept of God as creator of all things and it’s concern for human suffering and evil. In the Bible, these were expressed in different forms such as jealousy, murder, war, illness, death, slavery, exile, natural calamities, etc. It is for saving humankind from suffering and evil that Christianity talks about salvation. Christianity, in its essence, explains the origin of suffering and evil in referring to the constitution of human nature, of which the relationship between the human and God is an essential constituent.

When thinking of the Christian vision of human nature and the God/man relation, one might think of the doctrine of original sin. For some theologians original sin represents the original darkness in human nature inherited from Adam and Eve after they acted against a prohibitive rule of God. But, taking into consideration the Biblical context in which the narrative of so-called "original sin" appears, it would be better to interpret it as the defilement of a human nature which is originally created by God as good and in harmonious relationship with God.

Evil came when human beings abused their free will and interrupted their intersubjective relation with God, as represented by a covenant of the rule of action. By this interruption of relation, human beings were enclosed in the arrogance of their own subjectivity, cutting themselves off from their relation with God. Right after this interruption, human beings began to suffer. Evil and suffering were then consequences of the degeneration of human nature as Imago Dei and the ungrateful refusal of one’ s relation with God. After original sin, humankind began to experience suffering and evil. Cain murdered Able, and other evils on and on. Humankind now must work in order to survive; it must make an effort in order to return to a harmonious relationship with nature and with God.

Here Jesus proclaims a general salvation history, which begins from Jesus; and the only worship revealed by God through Jesus is to worship God in spirit and truth. For those who worship God in this way their salvation is not limited to external factors such as any place or racial or cultural group. In this sense, "worship" means a way to bring out what is most sincere in one’s own spirit, and to experience the truth as revealed to the human subjectivity in question. This recognizes the immanence principle by which human beings worship God with their most sincere spiritual dynamism.

For Christians, God is the most perfect Spiritual Being. He is the creator of the whole universe, including human beings, other sentient beings and all other things — a God unexplainable and unfathomable by all human discourses such as science, philosophy and theology. As the first cause and final end of the whole universe God has created all its beings. In it are human beings who, after a certain age, become selfish and egocentric, and tend to indulge themselves in enclosure within an arrogant self, to the exclusion of relationship with God. This is the beginning of a sinful life. Because of this God Himself came to the world and became truly man in order to deliver human beings from their self-exclusion or self-arrogance. His universally altruistic suffering and death on the cross was in order to liberate them from this sinful existence. The last end of human life and the world is to return to God, where there will be a New Heaven and Earth.

We could say also that God is personal, in the sense that He is conscious and spiritual, that He knows and loves. But we can also say that He is not personal, in the sense that He is not "conscious" and "spiritual" in the way that we are. He knows, but not in the way that we know. He loves, but not in the way that we love. According to the via positiva we could say that God is Being and personal; according to the via negativa we should say that he is neither Being nor personal as we conceive. God is personal and God transcends personality. We should say with Teilhard de Chardin that God is hyperpersonal.

But, even if the Taoist experience of nothingness is most profound in its potentialities, still this does not mean that there is no God as fulfillment of being. Even if our freedom is so radical that not a single human discourse, no philosophical, scientific or theological doctrine could serve as foundation to our existence, still this does not mean that we are foundationless. There must be a certain foundation of Being, although the foundation itself is unfathomable and all our founding discourse should be deconstructed in order to keep the human spirit and its foundation free.

In Christianity, God created nature and its laws. Besides, God himself is everywhere in the world. God is impersonal not only in the sense of his unfathomableness, but also in the sense of his immanence in the lawfulness of the natural world and in the irreducible justice of the human world.

Still I think it is more human to think that God is personal who knows and loves and to whom we can pray. Although there is also a profound meaning in God as impersonal, unflexibly maintaining this thesis might also fall into a cult without feeling in which there is no personal interaction and dialogue. This state of mind into which an impersonal interpretation of God and Tao is in danger of falling is something similar to what Jesus described:

For us human beings, to say God is personal is to say that God knows and loves and could be prayed to in our heart. But this does not mean that He knows, loves and listens to our prayers in our human, too human way. It is in this sense we can say that God is not personal but hyperpersonal, which means not that God does not know and love, but that he knows and loves in a hyper-excellent way. Especially in the Christian tradition of mysticism God is the Mystery of all mysteries. In the mystical experience of God there is a void of soul and a certain moment in which we enter the darkness of the soul, as St. John of the Cross would characterize it. There, in contemplative prayer, one enters into a mysterious, passive phase of experience losing oneself in an overwhelming rhythm which is not at all an interpersonal experience. In any case, God transcends the distinction between personality and impersonality. God is personal as well as hyperpersonal. In this contrast there emerges a tension of experience in which our relation with God becomes more and more profound.

Christian mysticism differs from Taoism in the fact that it recognizes not only the impersonal, passive, profound experience of nothingness, but also a personal love and dialogue between man and God, leading towards their mutual communion. Also in Christianity, there are various rich forms of communion, as concretized in the Covenants between humankind and God, communion among people, prayers, meditation, religious rites, the sacrament of communion, mystical grace, etc. This means that man could return to a harmonious relation with God through everyday life, religious rites and mystical experiences. The main purpose of these forms of communion is to return to the original harmony between man and God, which serves as the foundation of harmonious relations between humans and their fellowmen, and between humans and nature. In this way a life of harmony is optimized and human potentialities are fully unfolded.

The human being’s search for harmony must begin from this human world. Among all human relationships, an individual has to conduct himself as a human striving, on the one hand, for the excellence of one’s natural ability and, on the other, for the harmonization of relations. This means that the Confucian ethics of virtue is essential for maintaining a harmonious life.

On this point, Christianity is quite the same as Confucianism. In the Old Testament, the rule set in the Garden by God to Adam and Eve is a rule by covenant, that is, a rule for the maintenance of the relationship between God and Human beings. The moral obligations concretized in the Ten Commandments result from the Mosaic covenant between God and Israel. Respect for the justice of God constitutes the reason for Israel’s obedience to the obligations expressed in the Ten Commandments. These are not to be considered as heteronomy, as some scholars maintained in criticizing Christianity. Any distinction between autonomy and heteronomy still belongs to the ethics of obligation, in which there is priority of norm over virtue. But in Christianity, the truth is quite the contrary. And this is more evident in the New Testament, in which Jesus said, "If you love me then obey my order." Here the relation of love is in priority over the obedience of order. Obey, in order to love. Love is the essence of Jesus’s commandment. Faith, hope, love, justice, wisdom, temperance, etc., are all important virtues in Christian ethics. In short, Christian ethics is an ethics of virtue which emphasizes the perfection of human good and the fulfillment of good relationships.

Nowadays, when utilitarian and deontological ethics cannot provide meaning for human life in the valley of nihilism, it is for the common spiritual resources of Christianity and Confucianism to emphasize the priority of virtue over utility and obligation. Virtue is seen in these grand traditions as both the development and fulfillment of the goodness originally existing in human nature, both as the excellence of human ability and as the realization of good relation-ships. Obligation is considered as necessary only when it helps to form and achieve a virtuous life. Obligations are never taken at their face value, but exist for the formation of virtues. Human excellence and good relationships always are presupposed in the observance of obligations.

But Confucianism is accused quite often of being too occupied with human affairs. To this, Taoism has rightly pointed out the need to decentralize human concern in the form of concern for nature and to re-situate humankind in Nature. It is still more important to trace back our original relation with Tao, the ontological source of all creativity, lest our ethical dynamism degenerate into social conflict and disorder. By returning back to union with Tao, humankind finds an infinite source for its creativity and is thereby rendered more spontaneously human.

But, as Christianity points out, the union with Tao could not be a losing of one’s self in an anonymous logos, or a union with a spontaneous but impersonal nature. The Ultimate Reality should be above impersonal determinism; it must be personal or hyperpersonal with whom one could have intersubjective dialogue and interpersonal communion.

Through a Confucian ethics of virtue, an individual could realize harmony with his fellowmen; through Taoist life praxis, human beings eventually could achieve harmony with nature; through multiple Christian ways in everyday life, religious rites or mystic grace, an individual could return to his original harmony with God. In thus deepening these three levels of existential relations, keeping each free and in peace, together they could form a maximum degree of harmony. Upon the existential relationship and the inner dynamism towards this ultimate harmony can be based a viable value system suitable for this time of rapid change and radical social conflict.

1. A.N. Whitehead, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), pp. 60-63.

2. M. Heidegger, Identitat und Differenz (Pfullingen: Max Niemeyer, 1972), p. 19.

3. Recent new elaboration by A. Badiou in L’Etre et l’evenement (Paris:Edition du Seil, 1988).

4. For me the philosophical concept of the other is best elaborated by Levinas in his Totalité et infini. I see it also as an example of the metaphysics of relationship.

5. The Discourses and Sayings of Confucius, translated by Ku Hung-ming (Taipei: Prophet Press, 1976), p. 145, some corrections by myself.

6. Ibid., pp. 137-138, some corrections by myself.

7. Ibid., p. 154.

8. The Works of Lao Tzu, ch. 75.

9. Ibid., chs. 30, 31.

10. M. Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1972), p. 336; "Uberden Humanismus," in Wegmar-ken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1964), p. 159.

11. M. Heidegger, Unterweg zur Sprache (Tubingen: Neske, 1959), S. 198.

12. Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching, Ch. 1.

13. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, translated by Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press: 1968), p. 80. Italics added by myself. Concerning the last sentence, I use the alternative translation in the footnote of Burton.

14. Ibid., p. 84.

15. Ibid., p. 84.

16. Ibid., p. 49.

17. See my Annäherung an das taoistische Verständnis von Wissenschaft. Die Epistemologie des Lao Tses und Tschuang Tses, in F. Wallner, J. Schimmer and M. Cost, eds., Grenzziehungen zum Konstruktiven Realismus (Wien: WUV Universitatsverlag, 1993).

18. Ibid., pp. 77-78.

19. I have developed Taoist practical methodology for knowing Tao in Confucianism, Taoism and Constructive Realism, pp. 43-58.

20. Ibid., p. 50.

21. Ibid., p. 51.

22. Genesis, 1:27, in The Jerusalem Bible, The Old Testament, p. 16.

23. "Therefore, when Tao is lost, there comes Teh (Creative Power). When Teh is lost, there comes Jen (Love). When Jen is lost, there comes Yih (Righteousness). When Yih is lost, there comes Lih (the Ritual)." Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching, Ch. 38.

24. In Christianity, "hell" indicates this definitive state of self-exclusion from communion with God and with the blessed. Catechisme de l’église catholique (Paris: Mame/Plon, 1 992), p. 271.

25. St. Augustine, Confessions, translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin Classics, 1961), p. 4. Italics in the text.

26. St. Augustine, Confessions, translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin Classics, 1961), p. 1.

27. John, 4, 21-24 in The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1966), p. 153.

28. John, 10, 34-35 in Jerusalem Bible, New Testament, p. 170, In Psalms, 82,6, it reads "I once said, `You too are gods, son of the Most High, all of you.’" Jerusalem Bible, Old Testament, p. 867.

29. In Ps. 118, Serm., 18, 4, quoted from F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. Il (Westminster: The Newman Press, 1960), p. 63.

30. St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I,29, 2; Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 25.

31. M. Heidegger, "Wozu Dichter," in Holzweg (Frankfurt: V. Klostermann, 1938), p. 248

32. M. Heidegger, Identitat une Differenz (Pfallingen: Gunther Neske, 1957), pp. 60-63.

33. In Taoism as religion, there is God in Heaven (Tian Dih) similar to the Christian God; in Buddhism there is also some tendency of divinization of Buddha in Mahasamghikas.

34. Matthew, 11, 16-17, in Jerusalem Bible, New Testament, p. 32.