A New Era of Post New Confucianism

My interest in Confucianism was kindled by a movie about Confucius  I saw at the HKSHP  last Sunday afternoon.  It was a USD2.8M PRC production to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, with Chow Yun Fat playing the role of the venerable politician cum social philosopher.  It attempted to turn Confucius from a two character name encountered in the leaves a high-school book into a flesh and blood person touched by sympathies, ripped by anxieties, grief, despair, ambitions, idealism, stubborn hopes and recalcitrant lust doing his best to restrain his natural desires through the exercise of reason, will and firm but not rigid adherence to rites and form instead of a colorless and arid dispenser of unrealistic "mottos" Despite a few misattributions of his "sayings", it succeeded. It certainly made him more human for me.  Apparently the latest thinking in the corridors of power in Beijing is that it is about time to mould Confucius as the promoter of "harmony" both inside China and around the world and a symbol non-aggressive Chinese influence. Yet less than four decades ago, the CCP made him and those who still dared to follow the principles of benevolence (仁), justice (義), loyalty (忠), filial piety (孝) and good faith (信) and above all decorum (禮), the targets of the most vicious ideological attacks and criticisms. History has a way of playing jokes with us. It makes one wonder whether in the end, there is something called "eternal or universal Truth" or if there is, whether its face will change with the unprediictable winds of political ideology. Whatever the truth may be, it is certain that the Chinese Government is now bent on  soft-pedalling Chinese culture worldwide along the model of the Alliance Française and the Goéthe Institute. To date, 282 Confucius Institutes and 272 Confucius Classrooms have already been established in 88 countries, including those in America, Russia, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy many other countries in both Europe, South America and also in Asia including Japan, Korea and other South East Asian countries. Yet the Confucius Insitute only started life in 2004! It was established under the auspices of the Office of Chinese Language Council International ( Hanban 漢辦) which is presumably part of the Foreign Ministry or State Department. It is said that the Ministry of Education of the PRC is planning to set up 500 Confucius Institutes and the Hanban to double that number by 2020.  China is finally learning to spread its culture just like any other modern Western state! What would politicians not do! If Confucius has an immortal soul, something of which he refused to talk about whilst he was alive and which he brushed aside when asked with the remark, "We don't even know about life, why should we be bothered by death?", I am not sure whether he would laugh or cry. Perhaps just a smile and a nod?

So what is contemporary Confucianism all about? I turned to an article in ZheXue De WenHua ZhuanXiang (哲學的文化向) edited by Hung Shiao Nan (洪曉楠)  published by 人民出版社(2009).  In the article called "The Coming of the Era of the Post New Confucianists 后新儒家時代的來臨", Hung quotes 傅偉勛 who thinks that Confucius, Mencius and Xun (孔孟荀) were "classical Confucians", and those in Sung and Ming and their successors were the "new Confucians". But according to Yu YingShi (余英時), in his book " 錢穆與中國文化), the term "new Confucians"in the PRC may be applied to all who do not reject Confucianism in the 20th century but it may be more narrowly defined as those philosophers who have further expounded and developed Confucianism e.g. scholars like Hsiung ShihLi (熊＋力), Zhang JunMai (張君勵), Fung YouLan (馮友蘭), Ho Lun (賀麟) and then a third definition very popular overseas, which is even narrower i.e. only those who follow the thoughts of Hung ShihLi.  But not everybody agrees with Yu. Thus in an article " 對當代新儒家的超越內省", Lu ShuHsin (劉述先) thinks that both he and Yu should be included within the broad defintiion of "new Confucians" and Cheng ChungYing (成中英) in the article "當代新儒學與新儒家的自我超越"(1995) argues that a distinction should be made between "new Confucians" (新儒家) and "new Confucianism" (新儒學), the former being those concerned with reaching a fair assessment of Confucianism and trying to develop and to assist the contemporary men to understand and to use them as standards for their personal or public policy purposes whilst the latter should be confined to particular contemporary academic philosophical schools within Confucianism who develop newer system of thought or themes based on established or firmly held "Confucian values" and argue for the universality of their truths and and their necessity., the former indicating just a rough orientation of their academic concerns and their academic "fashion".

Hung says that according to Lu ShuHsin, the new orientation of contempoary new Confucians is to switch the emphasis of their studies from that concerned with ethics or "respect for virtues" (尊德性) to those concerned with scholarship or  "expounding thought" (道學問). To Yu, the first two generations of new Confucians are concerned to establish  the highest possible ethical principles encompassing all forms of cultural activity and is focused on "teaching" (教) and not just scholarhsip (學).  To Lu, the contemporary or post new Confucians or the third generation of new Confucians are concerned not so much with upholding the traditions of Confucian morality but with developing a new academic schools of thought, branching out to linking with contempary western thoughts and with the problems of contempoary society, more with problems of life in general, and not just the moral life. But to Hung, this is not right. Even as long ago as December 1990,  at the International Symposium on Contempary New Confucianism" ( 當代新儒學國際研討會) in Taipei, Mou TsungSan (牟宗三) already emphasized the necessity for "knowledge" and "scholarship" and pointed out that merely emphasizing on the big learning/mega-knowledge (大學) purifying/correcting/adjusting the heart/mind (正心) and improving on/disciplining personal conduct (修身) are insufficient. In addition, Cheng pointed out another difference between the new Confucianism and the new Confucians is that the former placed the emphasis on using critical or objective reason to establish what they thought of as the philosphic and social "truth" and the "reality" of Confucianism but the latter put the emphasis more on internal subjective personal experience as the basis of establishing the value of "truth" and the "reality" of what Confucians advocate. Whereas the former base their values on objective knowledge, the latter first affirm the relevant values and then some but not all seek to use their "knowledge/scholarship" to assist them to realize such values. In addition, the former may try to go outside of the bounds of the Confucian tradition but the latter merely affirm Confucian values; thus the former may in a sense be considered as "scholarship of Confucianism" in the new age. If so, the popular conception that there is a third generation of Confucian scholars within China would lose its peruasiveness because they may be considered no more than just another form of the post modern variety of "new Confucianism".

To Hung, another major difference betwen the "new Confucians" and the "post new Confucians" is that whereas the former adhere stubbornly to the idea of unity of the Confucian tradition, the latter emphasize more the variety and differences of cultural perspectives. Thus Yu pointed out that since Hsiung, the new Confucians have emphasized that the Chinese tradiion must be upheld and placed at the centre of Chinese culture and should seek virgorously to expand into a "political tradtion" (政统) and an "academic tradition" (學统) . To Hung, Yu emphasized that "the great cultural tradition"(文化大傳统) is a "tradition of Tao" (道统). If so, the "unity of the tradition of the Tao" (一元道統) of moral teaching (教)is transformed into a "multilateral/diverse academic tradition of Tao) (多元 道(學) 統) . In we aceept this, then Tu, Lu, Cheng and Yu, often referred to as the "third generation of new Confucians" in the PRC, should be consdiered no more than contemporary new Confucians.

The coming era of "post new Confucians", will be characterized, according to Hung, by three characterstics. First, the so-called "third generation of new Confucians" will transcend the boundaries traced by the "new Confucians". Thus Yu places the emphasis of Confucianism on how it may affect the life and society of the contemporary Chinese. He is especially concerned with the idea of a "cultural China"(文化中國). To him the most urgent task of contemporary new Confucians is to make use of the resources of "Confucianism" as a focal point to re-unite the Chinese soul in the spheres of academia, knowledge and culture. Lu however thinks that the most important task for the contemporary new Confucians is to initiate and maintain links and symbiotic interactions between Marxist-Leninism, Westernisation and the tradition of humanistic Confucian thought. Yu is particularly critical of the "pride of conscience" (良知的傲慢)of the contemporary new Confucians and recognizes the problems resulting from their "auto-collapse of conscience".(良知的自我坎陷) Cheng, however, thinks that there should be a merging of knowledge, scholarship and values. Both of them were unhappy with the supposed self-sufficiency of Mou's ideas about the "new interior sanctity" (新內聖) driving the "new external king" (新外王)  and wish that Confucianism will be able to re-establish links with the contemporary post modern world  where diversity instead of hegemony holds sway.  

The second characteristic of the coming new era will be the much wider persepctives adopted by the Chinese scholars in the 1990s after they have come into contact with more and more Western ideas of scholarhsip following the 1980s "fad for culture". They are now advocating a move back to tradition, a much wider tradition than mere Confucianism, a more inclusive and poly-centric tradition instead of the exclusively Confucian tradition. Whilst they advocate return to tradition, the reason is that they hope that a return to that poly-valent and polycentric tradition will paradoxically enable them the better to renovate Confucianism.

The third characterisic will be a revival of "orientalism". However this is no longer the old idealistic and simplistic orientalism, and is more akin to a form of westernisation. The dilemmas posed by western post-modernism has exposed the weaknesses of the traditional western emphasis on indvidualism and materialism and hence the felt need for a form of oriental spiritualism or values as an antidote for the ills of contemporary western society. Here, the concern for this new type of "orientalism" is not how Chinese society and civilization may adapt to urbanisation, westernization and modernization through the adoption of science and democracy but how the values of Confucianism may help ameliorate the ills of western industrialization.  According to 季美林 , in the 21st century, the west will again look to the east for guidance because the West has reached the end of its tethers in its metaphysical analysis and may need to seek again the balm of "holism" inherent in Eastern civilizations.  The emphasis on destruction, analysis and individualism will be replaced by a new emphasis on integration, wholeness and unity of Eastern civilzations.

The article, though extremely simplistic, is just right for a neophyte like me. It has certainly introduced a number of imporant names in Confucian scholarship familiar to all those with a smattering of knowledge about the tradiitions of Confucian scholarship. Now I am much better placed to post the the various names in the appropriate slots of historical and scholastic traditions.  One really never knows what life will bring. A chance to see a free film and a spark has been lit! Where it is going to lead to, only time will tell.