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  Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of Hawai'i Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy East and West. http://www.jstor.org BOOK REVIEWS Boston Confucianism:Portable Traditionin the Late-ModernWorld. By Robert Cummings Neville. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Pp. xxxv + 258. Reviewedby BryanW. Van Norden VassarCollege At an internationalconference in 1991, people began to referto RobertNeville and his colleagues as "BostonConfucians."At firstthe phrasewas used as affectionate teasing and tongue-in-cheekself-description.However, Neville reportsthat, by the end of the conference, the phrase "BostonConfucianism"had come to be used as a semi-serious label for a particularview: the position that "Confucianismis not limitedto EastAsian ethnic application"and that it "has somethinggenuinely interesting and helpful to bring to contemporary philosophical discussions" (p. 1). Neville's book, Boston Confucianism:PortableTraditionin the Late-ModernWorld, is a defense of these claims. In the process of defending his theses, Neville makes a numberof points that I thinkare utterlyincontrovertible.I shall note five of his insights.The firstthree I shall just mention, but then I shall proceed to two that are particularlyworthy of more extensive discussion. First,one need not be ethnically EastAsian to be a Confucian. To deny this claim is as absurdas suggestingthat one must be Greek in orderto be a Platonistor an Aristotelian(p. xxii). Second, in orderto be a viable, contemporary "world philosophy," Confucianismmust have (and has yet to develop) ways to accommodate culturaldiversityand pluralismin practice.Third,Confucianismmust show that it is not inconsistentwith the insightsof modernscience. (This is particularly an issue if, like Neville, one is attractedto the more metaphysicallybaroque formsof Confucianismthat developed in the Song and laterdynasties.) Neville's fourth insight is that the Confucian notion of "ritual"is a category that could significantlydeepen and broaden Western philosophical discussions. Neville suggeststhat the semiotic work of the AmericanpragmatistCharlesSanders Peirce provides a useful frameworkfor understandingand enrichingthe Confucian emphasis on ritual.Neville's comments on Peirce are suggestive,but I wonder what Neville would say about the "functionalist"approachto ritualpioneered by Emile Durkheim.Durkheimargued, in works such as The ElementaryFormsof Religious Life,that participationin ritualactivitiesfunctionsto express and (more importantly) maintainthe individual'scommitmentto society.1 Severalcommentators,including A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (who independentlydeveloped an approachto ritualsimilarto that of Durkheim)and more recentlyRobertF. Campany,have noted thatthis sortof functionalistinterpretationof ritualis quite similarto that advanced by Xunzi more than 2,500 years ago.2 Functionalismhelps us to understand(in naturalisticterms) why ritualis so important,why it is perfectlyacceptable for it to take differentforms in differentsocieties, and why the decay of ritualleads to excessive individualism and, in Durkheim'sphrase, "anomie."As far as I can see, all of this is at least con- PhilosophyEast& West Volume53, Number3 July2003 413-417 ? 2003 by Universityof Hawai'iPress 413 sistent with what Neville says about ritual, but I would be interestedto know whether he thinksfunctionalismadds anythingto a Peirceanconstrualof Confucian ritual. Finally, Neville presents an insightfulcritique of the positions developed by David Hall and RogerAmes in theirtrilogyof books.3Itis worthspendingsome time on Neville's critique,since RogerAmes and the late David Hall are so well known and have been such influential figures in contemporarycomparative thought. Neville objects that "theirmethod of contrastingculturesby generalizingto basic principlesand trivializingexceptions follows the Western... strategyof developing a grid of categories ... and locating thinkersand cultureswithin them.... This is surely an impositionof categories from without to the neglect of the concrete, a matterthey ironicallywould consign to the West" (p. 49). Anotherway of putting this point is that Hall and Ames stronglyoppose what they see as the dualistictendencies in the Western tradition,and applaud the nondualistictendencies in the Chinese tradition.However, they do so using a sort of "methodologicaldualism," which sharplydistinguishes"China"and "the West," as if each were itself largely monolithic. Hall and Ames certainlydo acknowledge that there are exceptions to their generalizations.But, as Neville suggests, there is much more complexityand subtletyin both "China"and "theWest" than methodologicaldualismallows. Neville makesa relatedobjectionto Hall and Ames' applicationof the notionof "transcendence"to distinguishChinese and Westernthought (pp. 148-150). Hall and Ames write: "a principle,A, is transcendentwith respect to that, B, which it serves as principle if the meaning or importof B cannot be fully analyzed and explained without recourseto A, but the reverseis not true."4However, as Neville notes, "heaven, earth, and dao are all transcendent in the strict sense" (p. 149), even following Hall and Ames' definition of that term. Consider, as an illustration, the discussion of the dao in Daodejing chapter 25: Thereis a thing confusedyet perfect,which arose before Heaven and earth. Stilland indistinct,it standsalone and unchanging. Itgoes everywhereyet is neverat a loss. One can regardit as the motherof Heaven and earth. People model themselveson the earth. The earthmodels itselfon Heaven. Heaven models itselfon the Way. The Way models itselfon what is natural.5 The dao certainly seems to be described as transcendent in this passage. Neville also observes that Hall and Ames' own definition of transcendence actually does not apply to many of the Western concepts that they use to illustrate it. I agree with this point, but I am unsure about Neville's way of arguing for it. He says of Hall and Ames that "in all their examples-God, a Platonic form, the unmoved mover, a classical atom, a decisive will-the transcendent principle cannot be explained in itself, only in its explanatory function" (p. 150). Neville's argument seems to be that A cannot transcend B if A cannot be explained to us humans with- 414 PhilosophyEast& West out referenceto B. I am not surethatthis follows fromHall and Ames' definition.But part of the problem here is that it is not clear what Hall and Ames mean by "the meaning or import"of something. Do atoms (as conceived by, say, Lucretius)transcend ordinaryphysical objects?Hall and Ames state explicitlythat they do,6 but it is hardto know how to apply their characterizationof transcendenceto this case, because "meaning"and "import"are not centralconcepts in classical atomistphilosophical views or methodology.Leavingtrickycases like this aside, though, I agree with Neville that there are many major Western philosophical movements that it would be misleading to describe as "transcendent."Aristotle,for example, suggests in MetaphysicsZ thatthe "primarysubstances"are ordinary,everydayphysical objects, whose matter,form, function, and "efficientcause" all interrelateto make them what they are. So I find myself pleasantly in agreementwith Neville on a numberof important points. In fact, I have only two disagreementsworth mentioning.One is that, precisely because I agreed with so many of this book's majortheses, I wondered whether it actually advances the argumentin the field in an importantway. Are we being told anythingwe didn't already know? (When I was in graduateschool, we used the phrase"New Wave Confucianism"to describethe same basic positionthat Neville identifieswith "BostonConfucianism."So Neville's label is original,but the concept is not.) However, perhapsthe points this book makes are controversialto more of the majorfiguresin the field than I realize. This relatesto my second differenceof opinion with Neville, which has to do with how the two of us conceptualize the field of Chinese and comparativephilosophy as a whole. I was surprised,for example, by how much space and energy this book devotes to the views of Tu Wei-ming. My own view is that Tu occupies a position in contemporaryConfucianismroughlyequivalentto that of a serious, sincere Christianevangelist, one who is charmingin personalpresence and delightful and effective as a public speaker,but not a Biblicalexegete, theologian, or historian of religion,and not regardedas such by those who are. Neville is aware of the concern that certain versions of Confucianismmay seem "bland"(p. 84). He strives valiantly to make something sophisticatedand "piquant"out of Tu's comparison of Confucianismand Kierkegaardian existentialism(pp. 86ff.). However, I ended up that the similarities are not thinking illuminatingof either Kierkegaardor Confucianism. Tu's main point seems to be that, accordingto both Kierkegaardand Confucianism, living well requiresan intense personal commitmentto the source of value (God or the dao, respectively).Butthis is a very thin similarity.Forexample, Aristotleis neither an existentialistnor a Confucian, but he, too, stresses that one must "choose" virtuefor its own sake. Perhapsmy objection will be more clear if I say a little about what I consider to be a more helpful comparisonof Confucianismand existentialism.In his "Moral Decision in Wang Yang-ming:The Problemof Chinese 'Existentialism,'"David S. Nivison points out that there are superficialsimilaritiesbetween the two positions: "there is much curiously existentialist-liketalk about 'freedom' and 'nothingness' between Wang Yang-mingand his students."7However, "'Nothing' for Wang's Book Reviews 415 disciples seems to mean an absence of preconception or selfish interest that could attach or bind us to things. For Western existentialists, consciousness is 'nothing' because it must be other than its object, which 'is': while the object so to speak just sits there, a thing 'in itself,' we are things 'for ourselves,' as it were, tipped into the world, concerned with open possibilities of dealing with it. One could argue that this is the direct opposite of 'nothing' as 'nonattachment.'"8 Furthermore,for Wang and his disciples, "freedom is spontaneity and is something they take for granted that we want to have; indeed the task of self-cultivation is to adjust our understanding of ourselves so that 'obstructions' to spontaneity, all anxiety or hesitation, fall away. For both Kierkegaard and Sartre our freedom is a terrifying burden, its exercise painful, something we can never really escape, though we will hide it from ourselves if we can."9 Perhaps the most important difference is that "Wang seems to be in the last analysis an 'intellectualist,' not a 'voluntarist' in ethics." In other words, Wang thought that there was some objective truth to discover within ourselves, and that this can and should be our ethical guide.10 For existentialists of either the theistic or atheistic variety, the claim to follow such an inner guide would be a paradigmatic instance of "bad faith." Nivison has certainly not given us the last word on this topic.11 But what I find preferable in a discussion like Nivison's is that it clearly sets out various positions, shows intimate familiarity with both the relevant Western and Chinese philosophical texts, takes into account historical context and the development of intellectual traditions over time, and then tries to identify specific similarities and differences. The failure to do this kind of careful work is, I believe, one of the reasons that Tu Weiming's work has had little influence in the broader philosophical community. Perhaps, though, like Zhuangzi's well-frog, I have insufficient appreciation of what lies outside my own narrow perspective. Allow me to end on an irenic note. Let us heartily agree with Neville that Confucianism is in no way parochial to East Asia. And let us also agree that the various alternative formulations of Confucianism are in a league with the various formulations of Platonism, Aristotelianism, Kantianism, Vedanta, Buddhism, and others as participants in a world-philosophical dialogue. Notes 1 - EmileDurkheim,The ElementaryFormsof ReligiousLife,trans. KarenE. Fields (New York:FreePress,1995). See especiallythe sections "Definitionof ReligiousPhenomena and of Religion"and "Conclusion." 2 - See A. R. Radcliffe-Brown,"Religionand Society," in Brown,Structureand Function in PrimitiveSociety: Essaysand Addresses(New York:Free Pressof Glencoe, 1952), pp. 153-177; RobertF. Campany,"Xunziand Durkheimas Theoristsof RitualPractice," in FrankReynoldsand David Tracy,Discourseand Practice(Albany:State Universityof New YorkPress, 1992), pp. 197-231; and Xunzi, "Discourseon Heaven," "Discourseon Ritual,"and "Discourseon Music,"trans.EricHutton,in PhilipJ. Ivan- 416 PhilosophyEast& West hoe and BryanW. Van Norden, eds., Readingsin ClassicalChinese Philosophy(New York:Seven BridgesPress,2001), pp. 260-272. 3 - The books to which Neville refersare David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking throughConfucius(Albany:State Universityof New York Press, 1987); idem, Anticipating China (Albany:State Universityof New YorkPress, 1995); and idem, Thinking fromthe Han: Self, Truth,and Transcendencein Chineseand WesternCulture(Albany: State Universityof New YorkPress,1998). Foran alternativecritiqueof theirapproach, see StephenA. Wilson, "Conformity,Individuality,and the Natureof Virtue,"in Bryan W. Van Norden,ed., Confuciusand the Analects:New Essays(New York:OxfordUniversityPress,2002), pp. 94-115. 4 - Hall and Ames, ThinkingthroughConfucius,p. 13. This statementimmediatelyraises one minorissue that Neville does not address.Formallyspeaking,what Hall and Ames have given is a sufficient condition for something being transcendent. Sufficient conditions are of the logical form "P, if Q." One suspects that Hall and Ames meant to give necessaryand sufficientconditions,which would be of the form "P if and only if Q." 5 - Ivanhoeand Van Norden, Readingsin ClassicalChinese Philosophy,p. 171. 6 - Hall and Ames, ThinkingthroughConfucius,p. 13. 7- David S. Nivison, "Moral Decision in Wang Yang-ming:The Problem of Chinese 'Existentialism,"'in David S. Nivison, The Ways of Confucianism(Chicago: Open CourtPress, 1996), p. 235 (originallypublished in PhilosophyEastand West23 [1-2] [January-April1973]: 121-137. All referencesin this review are to the reprintedversion. Note that Nivison'sessay was publishedseveralyearspriorto TuWei-ming'swork on this topic). 8 - Nivison, "MoralDecision in Wang Yang-ming,"p. 236. 9- Ibid. 10 - On this point, see David S. Nivison, "The Philosophyof Wang Yang-ming,"in Nivison, The Waysof Confucianism,pp. 217-231. 11 - One of Nivison'sstudentshas addressedthis issue in even moredetail:PhilipJ. Ivanhoe, "'Existentialism'in the School of Wang Yangming,"in Ivanhoe, Chinese Language, Thought,and Culture(Chicago:Open CourtPress,1996), pp. 250-264. Response to Bryan W. Van Norden's Review of Boston Confucianism RobertCummingsNeville Boston University Professor Van Norden's gracious claim that much of my point in Boston Confucianism was already known and accepted in his graduate school somehow makes me feel the way the Chinese emperor must have felt when he stood in the doorway looking south and the empire just fell into order. Whew! Philosophy East & West Volume 53, Number 3 July 2003 417-420 ? 2003 by University of Hawai'i Press 417