CHAPTER I

THE IDEA OF THE GROUP IN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY

ZHU BOKUN

            Here the term "Chinese philosophy refers not to modern or contemporary, but to traditional Chinese philosophy. The chapter concerns the relation between the group and the individual.

            In ancient China, philosophy often considered problems of philosophy as issues of heavenly and human ways. The core problem of the latter is the relation between group and individual. Based on answers to problems of human life, the ideas concerning human life and social ethics took shape and developed in traditional Chinese philosophy: the different answers generated the different schools.

            There were four influential schools of philosophy during the pre-Qin Dynasty: Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism and Legalism. With regard to the relation between the group and the individual, these four schools could be divided into Confucianism, Mohism and Legalism on the one side, and Daoism on the other. The former emphasized the group and underestimated the individual; the latter attached impor-tance to individuals and looked down upon the group. All Confu-cianists, Mohists and Legalists thought that the human being could not separate himself from, but found stability and harmony within, group life; hence they opposed any conflict or split, though of course among them there were differences in ways and means to sustain group life. Daoism considered protection of individual life as a starting point and sought to cultivate the human body and to seek absolute freedom for the individual spirit, looking upon group life as a heavy burden. In time this developed into religious Daoism.

            Regarding the group, among the four great schools the most influential were the Confucians who struggled against the Daoists for a long time and became the main stream in ancient China. Mencius elucidated five constant relations; Xun Zi constructed a theory for har-monizing the group; they all thought that what differentiated the human being from the animal was that the former was capable of con-scious group life. Afterwards no Confucians failed to attach impor-tance to human group life, which was considered the basic human constant. The Confucian idea of the group took the family as the model and then proceeded to extend this to the state and all under heaven. All considered that to sustain group life it is important to harmonize families, administer the state, and make peaceful the land under hea-ven. They thought that one who was ready to serve heart and soul the interests of group life was a sage.

            From the viewpoint of the Confucianists group interests were superior to those of the individual who should try to fulfill his obligation to the group. Based on this principle, there emerged the distinctions between righteousness and benefit, public and private, and principle and desire. In Confucianism, the chief means for upholding group life was to resort neither to a belief in monotheism nor to violent rule, but to ethics in order to cultivate ideas of loyalty, filial piety, humanity, right-eousness, rite and so on. Individual interests must be subordinated to group interests.

            Moral action was to flow from reason and not be controlled by any external power. Therefore, the Confucian idea of group can be called ethical and normative. These notions of group and ethics tended to relate the characters of individuals from different social levels and were of great perduring force. This enabled feudal economies to de-velop and flourish. On the basis of this education in a strong sense of the group, there emerged in Chinese history many people with lofty ideas, patriots and national heroes, who sacrificed their lives for the group interest. This notion of group became a pillar for the harmony of families, the unity of the state and the survival of the nation.

            Nevertheless, as a social ideology, Confucianism was marked by a strong sense of hierarchical and patriarchal relations; the stability and harmony which Confucianism pursued was based on regarding the patriarch as the head of the clan, and the monarch as representing the groups and enjoying all privileges. The rest of the group had no alternative but to submit to, or to attach themselves to the patriarch and monarch. Should an individual’s words and deeds violate the rules his social status imposed it would be considered to be destructive of group interests; as a result, the individual must be severely punished. There-fore, the idea of the group and ethics as a whole did not strive for indivi-dual rights. The obligations one was called to fulfill became tools to preserve the privileges of the upper hierarchy. This suppressed indivi-duality and deprived inferiors of rights, which, in turn, generated social instability so that in modern times it has been criticized by enlightened thinkers.