Interpreting Confucius : the Aesthetic Turn and Its Challenges

This document is downloaded from DR‑NTU (https://dr.ntu.edu.sg) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Interpreting Confucius : the aesthetic turn and its challenges Li, Chenyang 2018 Li, C. (2018). Interpreting Confucius : the aesthetic turn and its challenges. Dao, 17(2), 247‑255. doi:10.1007/s11712‑018‑9604‑z https://hdl.handle.net/10356/105148 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712‑018‑9604‑z © 2018 Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved. This is a post‑peer‑review, pre‑copyedit version of an article published in Dao. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11712‑018‑9604‑z Downloaded on 30 Sep 2021 05:16:16 SGT Interpreting Confucius: the Aesthetic Turn and Its Challenges Chenyang Li (Forthcoming in Dao, 2018:2) Peimin Ni’s book on Confucius: The Man and the Way of Gongfu1 is remarkable not only because it is lucidly written and rich in information but also, more importantly, because it launches a major shift in interpreting Confucius. In his reading, Confucius’s teachings are more about how to lead lives artistically than about moral conduct. We may call Ni’s shift the “aesthetic turn” in interpreting Confucius. This work deserves serious attention and careful treatment by pertinent scholarly communities. Ni’s book consists of 6 chapters. Chapter 1 “Confucius as a Historic Figure” places Confucius in historic contexts, covering his birth, his life, and his legacy through the two millenniums until contemporary times. It depicts Confucius as a forerunner of a great living tradition that defines China since antiquity. Chapter 2 “Confucius as a Spiritual Leader” introduces the religiosity of Confucius in the light of such key notions as “Heaven” (tian 天), “Mandate and Destiny” (ming 命), and immortality. It highlights the religious dimension of Confucius’s tradition in close connection to its understanding of the meaning of life. Chapter 3 “Confucius as a Philosopher” makes the case that the Confucian tradition should be considered philosophical in the broad sense of the pursuit of wisdom, centering on key issues of becoming human, ren and li, rectification of names, and zhongyong. Chapter 4 “Confucius as a Political Reformer” explicates the political efforts exerted by Confucius and his followers in order to achieve the good society. Chapter 5 is on “Confucius as an Educator,” illustrating the education 1 philosophy and program as initiated by the master. Finally, Chapter 6 “Confucius as a Person” portraits the main character of the book as a historic person in real life and discusses issues related to elitism and sexism. Ni makes explicit the importance of concluding the book this way and writes, “the Master was, after all, human. By portraying Confucius as a real person who enjoyed fine food, liked music and singing, had peculiar personal preferences for clothing, and was liable to make mistakes and encounter awkward situations, the greatness of the Master appears so much more real and accessible to everyone” (151). In my view, the most significant feature of Ni’s project lies with his tackling of an issue that has long posed challenges to scholars of Confucian philosophy, namely a conspicuous difference between Confucius’s Analects and other classic texts of the Confucian tradition. It has been common knowledge, and to some troublesome knowledge, that the Analects does not present highly intellectual, theoretical and philosophical—in the sense of studying the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence2--articulations on matters of importance even though it touches upon many of these subjects. Readers often wonder, what do such things as maintaining good body posture, eating fine food and yet not eating too much (Analects 10.4, 10.8) have to do with the moral life? In comparison with some other classic Confucian texts such as the Yijing, the Zhongyong, the Mengzi, and the Xunzi, the Analects appears rather thin and minimal as a philosophical text. We may call this issue that of the non- philosophical characteristic of the Analects. Ni’s solution to the problem is to bite the bullet and argue that the intellectual, theoretical, and philosophical is not what Confucius is about. Confucius, according to Ni, is about how to live a good life; 2 Confucius is concerned with the “art” of good living. At the core of Ni’s move is the concept of “gongfu,” which stands for “the arts of life that require cultivated abilities and effective skills” (xii). “Gongfu” serves as a lens through which we can see things in a certain way and understand things from a particular angle. A gongfu approach can be better understood by contrasting with a theoretical system of teaching. While a theory usually begins by laying out premises and reasoning to reach a conclusion, a gongfu system “starts from the existing condition of the practitioner and, through step-by-step guidance and practice, gradually reaches higher levels of artistic perfection” (xii). In such a system, different constituents are linked together through their practical rather than theoretical implications. Ni notes that such a reading of Confucius is not his own invention. He traces a source of his interpretation to Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi. He writes, Cheng and Zhu have both pointed out the difference between two approaches to reading—one is intellectual, and the other is the gongfu approach. The former requires only intellectual understanding, while the latter requires self-reflection of what is learned and application of it in practice. The former leads only to bookish knowledge, while the latter leads to embodied understanding and holistic growth. The former reader passively receives information from the text, but the latter interacts with the text, making it come alive through personal engagement with it (xiv). In Ni’s view, there is a fundamental difference between the two approaches. One is propositional whereas the other is instructional. These two differ so much that “it might not be too far-fetched to say that using the intellectualist approach to read Confucius is like eating the menu instead of the food” (xiv-xv). In understanding Confucius, we 3 should opt for the “food,” namely his instructional message in regard to living the good life, instead of the intellectualist “menu.” Ni’s approach gives us a way out of the predicament in making sense of Confucius’s Analects. If we can read Confucius the way Ni advocates, we can avoid some serious problems with interpreting Confucius in an “intellectual way.” That argument alone makes Ni’s book noteworthy. If I understand it correctly, Ni’s view is different from those who read the Analects as advocating a moral life by providing two mutually complementing accounts of a moral philosophy. That is, the text not only presents theoretical and moral teachings for the good life but also provides concrete examples of human conduct in practice. Amy Olberding, for example, has argued that an important purpose of the Analects is to provide “moral exemplars” to complement and help operationalize Confucius’s moral teachings.3 The various descriptions of Confucius’s demeanor in the text not only provide concrete instances of exemplary behavior but also give readers a strong sense of what it is like to act virtuously in real life. The main difference between this view and Ni’s view is that, for Olberding, although Confucius’s various acts described the Analects possess esthetical and artistic value, their real significance lies in fleshing out the theoretical aspect of his moral teachings. For Ni, however, the esthetical and artistic value of Confucius’ s life as depicted in the Analects is of primary significance and should be taken as such in our understanding of the text. Ni’s view may remind us of Kierkegaard’s separation of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious life. For Kierkegaard, the aesthetic life and the ethical life are incompatible and perhaps even incommensurable. The aesthetic is characterized by immersion in sensuous experience, nihilistic boredom, and egotistic flight from it. The 4 aesthetic is opposed by the ethical; yet both are to be superseded by the religious. In Ni’s view, the aesthetic in the Analects is far more profound and sophisticated than what Kierkegaard has characterized with the same label. Ni will not see the aesthetic in his Confucian sense as opposed to the ethical; instead it is a different perspective on the good life. If we can use the label of “religious” on Confucianism, Ni’s view implies that, rather than being superseded, the aesthetic is also “religious” as it makes life meaningful and significant. As often is the case with tackling problems in philosophical discourse, however, opting for one solution may give rise to new problems. In Ni’s move, cautious readers may sense a danger of anti-intellectual tendency. But this concern may not be as well- grounded as it first seems. If there is anything anti-intellectual in Ni’s book, it is against reading Confucius exclusively in intellectual ways or it is against overly intellectualizing Confucius’ teachings, rather than being anti-intellectual per se. It is opposed to an intellectual approach to interpreting Confucius’ teachings rather than taking Confucius or his teachings to be anti-intellectual. Others may dispute Ni’s argument for rejecting theoretical interpretations of the Analects and may insist that there is adequate ground for reading the Analects as a theoretical and philosophical work. I will not engage in such dispute here. My concerns with Ni’s book are different. While I find persuasive Ni’s argument for his interpretation of the Confucius in the Analects, I am not fully comfortable with Ni’s treatment of the relation between the Confucius as presented in the Analects and the Confucius as found in other classic texts of the Confucian tradition, and of the relation between Confucius, “the man,” as highlighted in the subtitle of Ni’s 5 book, and Confucianism, the philosophical tradition that has been closely associated with Confucius’ name.

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