Confucius Analects

Classical Confucianism as a vision for the exemplary treatment of persons---a contribution to the East-West discourse on human rights

Dissertation
Author: William Keli'i Akina
Classical Confucianism, through its repository of canonical texts, offers a compelling vision for the exemplary treatment of persons that is ancient in origin, relevant to the needs of present-day China, and contributory to future East-West discourse on human rights. The first of two independent prongs in this dissertation argues that Classical Confucianism generates a foundation for cultivating human creativity and excellence. Imbedded within a picture of the ideal functioning society in the Da Xue , (conventionally translated "Great Learning") and explicated as exemplary personhood (junzi ) within the Lun Yu (the "Analects") are the rudiments for a universal, normative standard of exemplary treatment of all members of society. The metaphysical roots for this standard are presumed by Classical Confucian literature such as the Shujing ("Book of History") and most notably the Yijing ("Book of Changes") in which principles such as the harmonization and creativity of nature are understood also as human processes which society is called to cultivate within all individuals. Through the application of Onto-hermeneutics (a hermeneutical method developed by Professor Chung-ying Cheng) to the relevant texts, the concept Tianming as moral authority (conventionally, Mandate of Heaven ), emerges as the universal, normative standard for the exemplary treatment of persons. The effective implementation of the Classical Confucian vision, resulting in such widespread personal cultivation at the level of self-actualization (as in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs), entails the prior satisfaction of lower order human needs. The second-prong of this dissertation examines the notion of human rights within the Western liberal democratic tradition (i.e., Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, et al.) and considers the analysis of rights by Wesley Hohfeld and conceptions of justice by John Rawls. As a work in comparative philosophy, this dissertation argues that the virtues and duties in Classical Confucianism implicitly generate the standard of universal humane treatment of persons sought after in the liberal democratic (i.e., social contractarian) tradition. A definition of human rights is offered in which the content of rights is differentiated from the mechanism of rights, thereby providing a framework for recognizing comparable outcomes (i.e., the content of rights) between two otherwise incommensurable systems (i.e., incommensurable at the level of mechanism). This analysis makes possible the translation of virtues-duties language into claim-rights language, yielding a set of comparable foundational concepts for an East-West approach to human rights. It is the author's conviction that China, by drawing upon its rich philosophical heritage, is in a position to offer the world a system of values for the exemplary treatment of persons, contributory to the human rights discourse.

Two mutually exclusive views concerning the relationship between Lunyu and Confucius have dominated academia for decades, which can be named the “Correspondence theory” and “Separation theory,” respectively. The correspondence theory holds that the contents of Lunyu are the cumulative result of a long tradition, and hence constitute the most important and original source of Confucius’ life and teachings. Yet, the separation theory emphasizes the process of compilation and circulation of Lunyu in the Han dynasty and tends to defer the dating of the book to a later time, with the conclusion that the “textual Confucius” described in the Lunyu is not the same as the “historic Confucius.” Both views are well-grounded and have supporters. Regrettably, neither party is willing to engage in dialogue with the other, with the result that no basic consensus can be reached. The studies of Lunyu thus seem to split into two parallel universes, whereby each side conducts its own other research with no regard to the efforts of the other side. In view of this, this article aims to analyze the justifications and limitations of the two theories and reconsider the issue of the dating of Lunyu’s contents in light of the concept of author-function. Taking the doctrine of ren (仁) as an example, the last section of this article offers a preliminary demonstration of the possibility of adopting a sort of diachronic typology in the study of Confucius’s life and teachings, with the hope of synergizing the merits of the two theories and using a new method to reaffirm the pre-Qin origins of the Lunyu, so as to overcome the prevalent dilemmas in the field.

The proposed paper presents an overview on the matter of virtue from different philosophical angles. It concentrates on three different schools of thought coming from the West and the East and their respective concepts of virtue. These schools of thought and the therewith-associated personalities and works discussed in this paper are Aristotelian virtue ethics, Confucianism and Daoism. The paper focuses specifically on the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) by Aristotle, the Analects belonging to Confucianism, and the Dao De Jing coming from Daoism.
The paper is divided into three major parts. First, the concept of virtue of each school is outlined. In the second part, the concrete virtues as such according to each school are explained. In the third part, these virtues are then applied in specific business contexts like business practice, corporate culture and leadership, illuminating each school’s characteristic approach. The paper closes with a summary and conclusion.
In the conclusion the paper outlines differences as well as similarities between Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics. Yet, the author generally takes a critical stance towards comparisons merely for the sake of finding similarities. Particularly between Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics there is a significant difference when it comes to the cultural and historical background of these schools, which should not be ignored. Besides, even within Chinese philosophy there are already significant differences when it comes to concepts and practice.

Throughout the past two thousand years, the Lunyu has been unanimously regarded as the most original and essential materials for the studies of Confucius. The extreme transparency of the Analects tends to conceal the textual nature of its own, which almost makes the “textual Confucius” in the Analects identical to the “historic Confucius”. However, since the discovery of many unearthed documents in the last few decades, the central status of the Analects has been undermined, and its textual and narrative attributes have drawn much more attention. From a hermeneutical point of view, the present Analects inevitably reflects the editors’ understanding of Confucius’ doctrines because they could selectively extract related materials in the compilation process and thus construct their own Confucian doctrines. Furthermore, the aphoristic style of extraction tacitly altered the meaning of Confucius’ discourses, which restricted and guided scholars of the later generations in interpreting the book. Given that these issues are not yet fully addressed, this article will compare similar narratives arising in the Analects and other extant or unearthed documents. Through the analysis of the subtle similarities and differences among them, which includes the length of narratives, their academic ideas and the themes in the discussion, the article will illustrate how the compilation of the Analects shaped the characteristics of Confucian doctrines and examine the interpretative significances derived from such kind of genre.

過去兩千多年以來，《論語》一直被公認為是研究孔子最原始和最重要的材料。《論語》這種高度的「透明性」很容易令人忽略了它自身的文本性質，「《論語》中的孔子」與「歷史上的孔子」幾乎可以劃上等號。然而隨著近數十年出土文獻的發現，《論語》的中心地位漸漸動搖起來，其文本敘述的性質亦開始受到關注。從詮釋的角度看，今本《論語》多少滲透著編者對孔子的理解，因為編纂的過程不免對孔子學說有所別擇與剪裁，呈現出編者企圖建構的孔子學說。除此之外，《論語》箴言式的引錄形式亦令書中所述孔子話語出現獨特的意義轉化，制約及引導著後世學者對該書的解讀。鑒於這方面的問題尚未得到充分的討論，本文擬通過《論語》與其他傳世及出土文獻中相似記述的比較，從敘事詳略、學術觀念和論述重點等細微異同的分析中，闡明《論語》以輯記編纂的方式所建構的孔學特徵，並且探討這種文體所衍生的各種詮釋效果。

在全面探討先秦儒家哲學之聖人觀及其豐富內涵之前，我們必須追本溯源、尋根究底，重新認識儒家創始者孔子對於「聖」及「聖人」概念的理解與運用，以作為後世儒家聖人觀之流變及發展的主要根據和參照系。本文將分為五個部分展開論述。一、提出本文所關切的問題、解決問題的方法以及問題的發展趨向。二、通過梳理《詩經》、《尚書》中所使用的「聖」概念，以探究
聖人觀在儒家之前的歷史淵源。三、以《論語》為主要的文本依據，深入探討「聖」及「聖人」概念在孔子及其弟子的思想世界中所發揮的功能與作用，主要分成三種解釋層面來進行闡述：（一）以「聖」表聰明睿智；（二）以「聖」表至善之實現；（三）以「聖」表聖人事功。四，探討《論語》中「君子」與「聖人」兩種理想人格形象之間的適當義理關係，一方面指出這兩組概念具有不可相互化約的差異性，另一方面試圖證明「聖人」在孔子及其弟子的思維情境中並非某種高深莫測、懸浮虛幻的抽象理念，而是能夠對現世君子之修養與實踐提供切實的引導與示範。五，總結本
文的核心觀點與立場，並簡單說明《論語》之聖人觀對於後世儒家之聖人觀的重要意義及巨大影響。

Pre-publication version of “Interlocutor Collections, the Lunyu, and Proto-Lunyu Texts.” Published in Michael Hunter and Martin Kern, eds. *Confucius and The Analects Revisited: New Perspectives on Composition, Dating and Authorship*. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018, pp. 218-240.

Nearly all of the scant comparative work on Søren Kierkegaard and Confucius places the two starkly at odds with each other. Kierkegaard is pictured as the paradigmatic exemplar of the Western self: a discrete rights-bearing and volitional atom who is quite alone in the world, while Confucius, by contrast, is the paradigmatic exemplar of the Eastern self: a complex and irreducibly embedded communitarian bundle of relations and rich social roles. In this article I challenge this oppositional approach, since it is both erroneous and obscures fruitful dialogue between the two on conceptually commensurate problems. In this article, I argue (1) that Kierkegaard offers a relational ontology of the self that moves in a Confucian direction, (2) subjectivity and relational reciprocity not fundamentally at odds in the two thinkers, (3) that both thinkers value a life of harmonious integration that entails right relation to others, and finally (4) that Confucius' appeal to Heaven as a source of normativity allows for salutary social critique of prevailing ethical norms and practices, in a way that provides important comparative insights with Kierkegaardian theism.

1. Paradoxical Rivers: Flowing and Standing in the Midst of Change; Lunyu 9.16.
Monday (Dec. 23, 2019)  9:00-11:30  Room 2114
2. Positioned Against Fixed Positions: Flexibility and Normativity; Lunyu 4.10, 9.30.
Tuesday (Dec. 24)  9:00-11:30  Room 2114
3. Teaching the Unteachable: Transforming Oneself-Transforming Others; Lunyu 9.11.
Thursday (Dec. 26)  9:00-11:30  Room 2114

This paper is intended as a gateway to two 2,000 year old Analects manuscripts. The first two sections discuss the tombs, discoveries, and analyses of the manuscripts. They describe characteristic features of the bamboo strips and the texts inked thereon, and they mention notable differences between these and other Analects versions. In these sections, I also critically evaluate present-day Analects studies, offering alternative hypotheses when theirs leave room for debate. The third and final section of the paper discusses what I consider the most fascinating (and most complex) issue regarding the manuscripts: their provenance. In that section, I examine when, where, and why the Analects was copied onto the bamboo strips. The ultimate goal of this paper is to present a nuanced understanding of the two bamboo manuscripts that conveys the fascinating insights they offer yet also explores the limitations of what these manuscripts can actually tell us.

Early Confucian “moral psychology” developed in the context of undoing reactive emotions in order to promote relationships of reciprocal recognition. Early Confucian texts diagnose the pervasiveness of reactive emotions under specific social conditions and respond with the ethical-psychological mandate to counter them in self-cultivation. Undoing negative affects is a basic element of becoming ethically noble; while the ignoble person is fixated on limited self-interested concerns and feelings of being unrecognized. Western ethical theory typically accepts equality and symmetry as conditions of disentangling resentment; yet this task requires the asymmetrical recognition of others. Confucian ethics integrates a nuanced and realistic moral psychology with the normatively oriented project of self-cultivation necessary for dismantling complex negative emotions in promoting a condition of humane benevolence that is oriented toward others and achieved through self-cultivation.

Critics of Confucius, particularly in the anti-Confucius Campaign during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s, often regard these two passages as evidence that Confucius advocated a policy of keeping people in ignorance, while his defenders, particularly during the Confucian revival in Mainland China today, usually argue that the passages are
merely Confucius’s lamentation over the fact that people are ignorant. So it seems that both critics and defenders of Confucius agree that Confucius regarded common people as ignorant, differing only over whether he held that people are originally ignorant (minyu) or that they are made ignorant (yumin). In CHENG Yi’s view, however, neither interpretation captures the true meaning of these two passages because both are content with providing a literal interpretation without an understanding of the normative principles embodied by the Confucian classics. In the following, I shall contrast CHENG Yi’s philosophical interpretations of these two passages with more conventional interpretations and show that the former are superior to the latter, not as an apology for Confucianism but as a of these two passages with more conventional interpretations and show that the former are superior to the latter, not as an apology for Confucianism but as a significant contribution thereof.

The main purpose of the present article is to explicitly link the Analects to the embodiment theory (ET). As indicated in the introduction, embodiment has been an important topic in recent Sinological research, but until now rather few explicit connections have been made with the ET. In relation to the embodied knowledge, the article discusses the following topics: embodiment, embeddedness, enactment, extendedness, emotivity, implicitness, emergence, joy and apprenticeship or self-cultivation. The same themes are found to be important in the Analects, with a plethora of examples. Arguably ET could thus be a useful paradigm for discussing several important themes of the Analects. And the Analects being one of the founding texts of the Chinese philosophical tradition (though similar concerns are manifest also in other texts), it could also be beneficial to further developments in the ET itself, on the condition that its proponents familiarize themselves with the Chinese philosophical traditionwhere important issues of ET have been explicitly discussed for two and a half millennia.

In the last decades of the 20th century, the revival of traditional Confucianism assumed increasing importance and relevance. The revitalization of its complex philosophical heritage thus became part of the most important theoretical currents in contemporary East Asian societies. Due to its potentially stabilizing social function and compatibility with capitalism, Confucianism is often seen as the Asian equivalent of Max Weber's " protestant ethic ". In modern sinology, this view is known as the " post-Confucian hypothesis ". The appearance of the 'vacuum of values' in modern China and its problem-atization and connection to the transformation of the structure, role, and function of social knowledge provide a good example of the consequences of explosive social transformation. This also raises the question of whether the Confucian modernization model is indeed capable of generating a non-individualistic version of modernity. Proceeding from this hypothesis, the present paper aims to show that the purported relation between modernity and individualism, which international modernization theories have always viewed as " inevitable " or " intrinsic " , is, in fact, little more than an outcome of Western historical paradigms.

A b s t r a c t. The paper discusses the realm of sacred in Confucius' Analects, on the basis of western sacred-profane dichotomy. It contains analysis of following concepts: heaven (tian), order of heaven (tianming), under heaven (tianxia), fate (ming), natural order (dao) and ritual (li). The author argues that some features of above-mentioned concepts could be described as sacred in spite of cultural differences and the general view that Confucius' thought was mainly perceived as agnostic. Those concepts constitute symbolic space that is sacred in a specific Con-fucian way. The feeling of being associated with what is sacred emerges from taking part in rituals and maintaining a natural order dao according to heaven's instructions tianming.

In the last decades of the 20th century, the revival of traditional Confucianism assumed increasing importance and relevance. The revitalization of its complex philosophical heritage thus became part of the most important theoretical currents in contemporary East Asian societies. Due to its potentially stabilizing social function and compatibility with capitalism, Confucianism is often seen as the Asian equivalent of Max Weber’s “protestant ethic”. In modern sinology, this view is known as the “post-Confucian hypothesis”. The appearance of the “vacuum of values” in modern China and its problematization and connection to the transformation of the structure, role, and function of social knowledge provide a good example of the consequences of explosive social transformation. This also raises the question of whether the Confucian modernization model is indeed capable of generating a non-individualistic version of modernity. Proceeding from this hypothesis, the present paper aims to show...

В статье рассматривается вопрос происхождения и значения названия сборника изречений Конфуция – «Лунь юй». Автор производит краткий этимологический и текстологический анализ входящих в него иероглифов, а также приводит исторические обстоятельства появления памятника. На основании исследования автор делает вывод о том, что наиболее оптимальным вариантом перевода названия «Лунь юй» является синтагма «Избранные беседы».