Boston University OpenBU http://open.bu.edu Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations 2016 Confucian ritual and solidarity: physicality, meaning, and connection in classical Confucianism https://hdl.handle.net/2144/19736 Boston University BOSTON UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Dissertation CONFUCIAN RITUAL AND SOLIDARITY: PHYSICALITY, MEANING, AND CONNECTION IN CLASSICAL CONFUCIANISM by BRIAN SIAN MIN LOH B.A., Northwestern University, 2004 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 © 2016 Brian Sian Min Loh All rights reserved DEDICATION Being a work on Confucianism, this dissertation is naturally dedicated to my family: first and foremost to my parents, Michelle and Wah Kit Loh, to my brother, Steven Loh, and to my fiancée, Carolyn Herman. In accordance with prototype theory, this dedication also extends to the vital people who have so kindly been 師父 Shi-fu and 師母 Shi-mu to me over the many years of my education. Without the personal and professional support, guidance, and inspiration I received from all of you, this work would not have been possible. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the many teachers, colleagues and friends who have given me their unflagging support through the various and lengthy stages of this project, and whose efforts helped bring this project to completion. Deep thanks go to John Berthrong, who oversaw and encouraged the large majority of my graduate education as major advisor and whose guidance and incredible breadth of knowledge provided an embarrassment of intellectual opportunity. Though we were sadly unable to finish this project together, his rich influence can be found throughout this work, and I will always be grateful for his cheerful personal and professional support over so many years. I am similarly grateful to Diana Lobel, under whose generous mentorship I most often sharpened the critical skills of deep textual analysis and comparative thinking. Amidst the stress of dissertation writing, our lengthy conversations, which ranged in topic from Aristotle to Dogen, hedonic tone to wu-wei, were a constant reminder of the joys of collegial intellectual life. Professor Lobel is the first well accomplished, professional academic to engage me as a professional in my own right, and what confidence and surety of voice may be deserved in the coming pages owe a debt to her sincerely expressed interest in my views. I also owe a debt of gratitude to v Adam Seligman, whose stimulating mentorship in the earlier part of my time at BU served as a catalyst for many aspects of this project, and to the BU GRDS for its kind, patient support of me over the years, particularly through the efforts of Professors Jonathan Klawans and Jennifer Knust, as well as those of Karen Nardella, Wendy Czik, and Claire Sadar-Lake. To each of the members of my committee, I am of course indebted for their hard work and efforts on my behalf, but to each I owe particular and unique debts that I would like to acknowledge. To Professor Korom, who was also willing to hire me as an editorial assistant for Asian Ethnology, I owe both my continued financial capacity to see this project through to its end and my exposure to numerous anthropological methodologies and resources, many of which influenced this work in oblique, surprising ways. To Professor Neville, whose stimulating work and kind instruction brought an infusion of excitement to the final, difficult days of the writing process, I owe many exciting new ways of expanding this work, particularly in regards to Peirce’s semiotic theory. To Professor Weller and his work, I owe my initial fascination with the issues of unity and multiplicity, sincerity and subjunctivity, and the ultimately the realization that Confucianism is just as exciting outside of the books as it is inside of them (if not moreso). Finally, to Professor Ziporyn, to whom I owe my desire vi to join academia in this field in the first place. It was his illuminating and stimulating instruction that sounded the bell for me as an undergraduate, and it is my professional hope that my work and I be able to impart to others the excitement and joy his mentorship has passed on to me. His comments on this work have continued to sharpen my thinking, and it has been a pleasure and honor to have him rejoin my circle of instructors. Last but certainly not least, I thank my family, to whom I owe so much more than can ever be written here. I write about the family a good deal in this work, but it is you who taught me the true richness of what that means, literally from day one. It is my life’s greatest joy to be your son, brother, and (soon to be) husband. vii CONFUCIAN RITUAL AND SOLIDARITY: PHSICALITY, MEANING, AND CONNECTION IN CLASSICAL CONFUCIANISM BRIAN LOH Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2016 Major Professor: Robert Weller, Professor of Anthropology and Religion ABSTRACT Consensus scholarship notes that the ethics described in the Confucian textual corpus focuses its attention primarily on concrete relationships, specific roles, and reciprocal duties. This has occasioned concern about whether Confucian ethics can offer adequate moral guidelines for interactions between people who have enjoyed no prior contact. In response, this dissertation suggests that early Confucianism does guide interactions with strangers, but that this guidance is to be found less in its ethical concepts or moral precepts than in its embodied ritual practices. To substantiate this claim, I carefully apply theories drawn from the fields of cognitive science, cognitive philosophy, American pragmatism, and ritual viii theory to several early Confucian texts: the Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, and the ritual manuals of the Liji and the Yili. From pragmatism and cognitive philosophy, I assemble lenses of conceptual and pre-conceptual meaning and use them to examine the effects of ritual practice on the creation of group boundaries and the generation of solidarity. In so doing, I reveal that the solidarity generated by embodied practice and physical co-presence shapes the boundaries and structure of early Confucian groups as much as concepts or shared values. I further outline the neural and psychological processes by which the physicality of Confucian ritual practice creates pre-conceptual solidarity, then highlight the ways that solidarity is framed and given a meaningful direction by the varied Confucian exemplars. Ultimately, I demonstrate that mutual engagement in ritual practice allows strangers to bond quickly, without the benefit of prior relationship or shared proposition. This, I argue, is the heart of the Confucian treatment of strangers. Ritual practice simultaneously creates a relationship between new contacts and energizes that relationship with strong, pre- conceptually-generated solidarity. This dissertation also analyzes a number of related topics, including the relationship between ritual practice and group boundaries and the influence of the body upon concepts and categorization. In its broadest goals, this study ix offers insight into the rich character of early Confucian physicality, suggests novel guidelines for the analysis of contemporary Confucianism, and reflects possible ways in which solidarity might be formed between members of groups with different value orientations. x TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION .................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................ v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................... viii TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................... xi LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................ xv Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 Statement of the Problem ................................................................................ 1 Methodology and Chapter Summary ......................................................... 17 Chapter 1: The Confucian In-Group ............................................................. 44 1.1. Identity as Membership in a Moral Community ................................ 46 1.1.1 Confucian Community? ................................................................... 62 1.2 Prototype Grouping ................................................................................ 83 1.2.1 The Applicability of Prototype Grouping to Chinese Thinking and Confucianism ..................................................................................... 92 1.3 Confucianism Through the Lens of the Prototype Theory of Categorization ........................................................................................ 101 1.4 The Confucian Group – Who is a Brother? ........................................ 113 1.5 Summation .............................................................................................. 137 Chapter 2: Building a Self on the Way: Harmony, Intersubjectivity, and Mutual Integration.......................................................................................... 142 2.1 Self as Contextual and Constituted ..................................................... 146 2.2 Starting at the Beginning: Harmonic Reciprocity and Filial Reverence