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THE ABDUCTION OF
MODERNITY
Part 3: Rule of law vs
Confucianism
By Henry C K Liu
Part 1: The race toward barbarism
Part 2: That old time
religion
The rule of law has been touted frequently by
Western scholars as a central aspect of modernity.
According to that measure of periodization, since the
rule of law was the basis of the first unification of
China in the 2nd century BC, modernity occurred 23
centuries ago in China.
Researchers have pointed
out that at the end of the 17th century, while the
Chinese empire often appeared in English literature as a
metaphor for "tyranny", such as in the works of Daniel
Defoe, best known for his 1719 novel Robinson
Crusoe, it was also at times praised for its legal
code long established on ideals of order, morality, and
good government, such as in the work of Lady Mary
Chudleigh, to the more uniform perception of China's
legal system at the turn of the century, when George
Henry Mason published The Punishments of China
(1801). Michel Foucault's analytical approach to history
highlights the limitations of European efforts to
comprehend China's moral, juridical and legal
structures.
The promulgation of a new edition of
law, known as the Tang Code of Perpetual Splendor
(Tang Yonghui Lu), in the 10th lunar month in the
fourth year of the reign of Perpetual Splendor
(Yonghui) of the Tang Dynasty, in AD 653, was in
reality just an update effort, based on the original
Tang Code (Tang Lu), which in turn was based on
the Sui Code (Sui Lu), which had initially been
compiled 73 years earlier by the late founding Civil
Emperor (Wendi) of the preceding Sui Dynasty and
updated ever since by every succeeding sovereign. But
the Tang Code of Perpetual Splendor is singled out by
history, mostly because of its definitive
comprehensiveness.
The original Tang Code was
promulgated 29 years earlier, in 624, by the founding
High Grand Emperor (Gaozu) of the Tang Dynasty.
It would become in modern times the earliest fully
preserved legal code in the history of Chinese law. It
was endowed with a commentary, known as Tanglu
Shuyi, incorporated in 653, the fourth year of the
reign of Perpetual Splendor, as part of the Tang Code of
Perpetual Splendor.
The Tang Code was based on
the Code of Northern Zhou (Bei Zhou Lu, 557-581),
promulgated 89 years earlier in 564, which was in turn
based on the earlier, less comprehensive and less
elaborate Code of Cao Wei (Cao Wei Lu, 220-265)
and the Code of Western Jin (Xi Jin Lu, 265-317)
promulgated almost four centuries earlier in 268.
Western perception on the alleged
underdevelopment of law in Chinese civilization is based
on both factual ignorance and cultural bias. Chinese
dismissal of the rule of law is not a rejection of
modernity, but a rejection of primitiveness. Confucian
attitude places low reliance on law and punishment for
maintaining social order. Evidence of this can be found
in the Aspiration (Zhi) section of the 200-volume
Old Book on Tang (Jiu Tang Shu), a magnum opus of
Tang historiography. The history classic was compiled
under official supervision in 945 during the Late Jin
Dynasty (Hou Jin, 936-946) of the era of Five
Generations (Wudai, 907-960), some three
centuries after the actual events. A single chapter on
Punishment and Law (Xingfa) places last after
seven chapters on Rites (Liyi), after which come
four chapters on Music (Yinyue), three chapters
on Calendar (Li), two on Astronomy and Astrology
(Tianwen), one on Physics (Wuheng), four
on Geography (Dili), three on Hierarchy of Office
(Zhiguan), one on Carriages and Costume
(Yufu), two on Sutras and Books (Jingji),
two on Commodities (Chihuo) and finally comes a
single chapter Punishment and Law, in that order.
The Confucian Code of Rites (Liji) is
expected to be the controlling document on civilized
behavior, not law. In the Confucian world view, rule of
law is applied only to those who have fallen beyond the
bounds of civilized behavior. Civilized people are
expected to observe proper rites. Only social outcasts
are expected to have their actions controlled by law.
Thus the rule of law is considered a state of barbaric
primitiveness, prior to achieving the civilized state of
voluntary observation of proper rites. What is legal is
not necessarily moral or just.
Under the
supervision of Tang Confucian minister Fang Xuanling,
500 sections of ancient laws were compiled into 12
volumes in the Tang Code, titled:
Vol 1: Term and
Examples (Mingli)
Vol 2: Security and Forbiddance
(Weijin)
Vol 3: Office and Hierarchy (Zhizhi)
Vol
4: Domestic Matters and Marriage (Huhun)
Vol 5:
Stables and Storage (Jiuku)
Vol 6: Impeachment and
Promotion (Shanxing)
Vol 7: Thievery and Robbery
(Zeidao)
Vol 8: Contest and Litigation
(Dousong)
Vol 9: Deceit and Falsehood (Zhawei)
Vol
10: Miscellaneous Regulation (Zalu)
Vol 11: Arrest
and Escape (Buwang)
Vol 12: Judgment and Imprisonment
(Duanyu)
The Tang Code lists five forms of
corporal punishment:
1. Flogging (Chi)
2.
Caning (Zhang)
3. Imprisonment
(Tu)
4. Exile (Liu)
5. Death
(Si)
Leniency is applied to Eight
Considerations (Bayi):
1. Blood relation
2.
Motive for the crime
3. Virtue of the culprit
4.
Ability of the culprit
5. Past merits
6. Nobility
status
7. Friendship
8. Diligent character
Criminals above age 90 and those under age seven
received only suspended sentences. For others, sentences
could be redeemed by cash payments. A death sentence was
worth 120 catties of copper coins (1 catty = 1.33
pounds). Officials were entitled to discounts on
sentences on private civil offenses: those of Fifth
Ranks and above were entitled to a reduction of two
years; those of ninth rank and above were entitled to
one year; but for public crimes, an additional year was
added to the sentence for all officials.
Exempt
from leniency are 10 Categories of Wickedness
(Shiwu): 1. Conspiratorial sedition
(moufan) 2. Conspiratorial grand rebellion
(moudani) 3. Conspiratorial insubordination
(moupan) 4. Conspiratorial vicious rebelliousness
(moueni) 5. Immorality (budao) 6.
Disrespectfulness (bujing) 7. Deficiency in
filial virtue (buxiao) 8. Antisocial behavior
(bulu) 9. Unrighteousness and disloyalty
(buyi) 10. Instigation of internal chaos
(neiluan)
The Chinese term for "law" is
fa-lu. The word fa means "method". The
word lu means "standard". In other words, law is
a methodical standard for behavior in society. A musical
instrument with resonant tubes that form the basis of
musical scales, the Chinese equivalent of the tuning
fork, is also called lu. In law, the word
lu implies a standard scale for measuring social
behavior of civilized men.
The first
comprehensive code of law in China had been compiled by
the Origin Qin Emperor (Qin Shihuangdi, reigned
246-210 BC), unifier of China. Known as the Qin Code
(Qin Lu), it was a political instrument as well
as a legal one. It was the legislative manifestation of
a Legalist political vision. It aimed at instituting
uniform rules for prescribing appropriate social
behavior in a newly unified social order. It sought to
substitute fragmented traditional local practices, left
from the ancient regime of privileged aristocratic
lineages. It tried to dismantle Confucian exemptions
accorded to special relationships based on social
hierarchies and clan connections.
The pervasive
growth of new institutions in the unifying Qin Dynasty
(221-207 BC) was the result of objective needs of a
rising civilization. Among these new institutions was a
unified legal system of impartial rewards and
punishments according to well-promulgated and clearly
defined codes of prescribed behavior. The law was
enforced through the practice of lianzuo (linked
seats), a form of social control by imposing criminal
liability on the perpetrator's clan members, associates
and friends. Qin culture heralded the later emergence of
a professional shidafu (literati-bureaucrat)
based on meritocracy. It also introduced a uniform
system of weights, measures and monetary instruments and
it established standard trade practices for the smooth
operation of a unified economic system for the whole
empire. The effect of Qin Legalist governance on Chinese
political culture pushed Chinese civilization a great
step forward toward forging an unified nation and
culture, but in the process lost much of the richness of
its ancient, local traditions and rendered many details
of its fragmented past incomprehensible to posterity.
In the first half of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD
220), the Han imperial government adopted the Legalist
policies of the Qin Dynasty it had replaced. It
systemically expanded its power over tribal guizu
by wholesale adaptation of Legalist political structure
from the brief (15 years) but consequential reign of the
preceding Qin Dynasty. Gradually, with persistent advice
from Confucian ministers, in obsessive quest for
dependable political loyalty to the Han dynastic house,
Legalist policies of equal justice for all were
abandoned in favor of Confucian tendencies of formalized
exemptions from law, cemented with special relationships
(guanxi) based on social positions and kinship.
The Tang Code, promulgated in AD 624, institutionalized
this Confucian trend by codifying it. It would lay the
foundation for a hierarchal social structure that would
generate a political culture that would resist the
proposition that all men are created equal to mean
similarity. In Confucian culture, civilized man is
created as closely connected individuals to form
building blocks of society. It is the universality of
man that celebrates individualism, not the Western
notion of alienation as individualism.
Elaborately varied degrees of punishment are
accorded by the Tang Code to the same crime committed by
persons of different social stations, just as Confucian
rites ascribe varying lengths of mourning periods to the
survivors of the deceased of various social ranks.
According to Confucian logic, if the treatment for
death, the most universal of fates, is not socially
equal, why should it be for the treatment for crime?
William Blake (1757-1827), born 23 centuries after
Confucius (551-479 BC), would epitomize the problem of
legal fairness in search for true justice, by his famous
pronouncement: "One law for the lion and the ox is
oppression." Confucians are not against the concept of
equal justice for all; they merely have a sophisticated
notion of the true meaning of justice.
In
Chinese history, the entrenched political feudal order
relies on the philosophical concepts of Confucianism
(Ru Jia). The rising agricultural capitalistic
order draws on the ideology of Legalism (Fa Jia).
These two philosophical postures, Confucianism and
Legalism, in turn construct alternative and opposing
moral contexts, each providing rationalization for the
ultimate triumph of its respective sponsoring social
order.
The struggle between these two competing
social orders has been going on, with alternating
periods of triumph for each side, since the Legalist Qin
Dynasty first united China in 221 BC, after 26 years of
unification war. The effect of this struggle was still
visible in the politics of contemporary China,
particularly during the Great Proletariat Cultural
Revolution of 1966-78, when the Gang of Four promoted
Legalist concepts to attack the existing order, accusing
it of being Confucian in philosophy and
counterrevolutionary in ideology. To the extent that
"left" and "right" convey meaningful images in modern
political nomenclature, Taoism (Dao Jia) would be
to the left of Confucianism as Legalism would be to the
right.
Modern Legalists in China, such as the
so-called Gang of Four, were the New Left, whose
totalitarian zeal to promote social justice converged,
in style if not in essence, with the New Right, or
neo-conservatives of the West, in its reliance on
authoritarian zeal to defend individualism. Thus the
notion that modernity is a Western phenomenon is highly
problematic.
The flowering of Chinese philosophy
in the 5th century BC was not accidental. By that time,
after the political disintegration of the ancient Xi
Zhou Dynasty (Western Zhou, 1027-771 BC), Chinese
society was at a crossroads in its historical
development. Thus an eager market emerged for various
rival philosophical underpinnings to rationalize a wide
range of different, competing social systems. The likes
of Confucius were crisscrossing the fragmented political
landscape of petty independent kingdoms, seeking fame
and fortune by hawking their moral precepts and
political programs to ambitious and opportunistic
monarchs.
Traditionally, members of the Chinese
guizu (the aristocracy) were descendants of hero
warriors who provided meritorious service to the founder
of a dynasty. Relatives of huangdi (the emperor),
provided they remained in political good graces, also
became aristocrats by birthright, although technically
they were members of huangzu (the imperial clan).
The emperor lived in constant fear of this guizu
class, more than he feared the peasants, for
guizu members had the means and political
ambition for successful coups. Peasant uprisings in
Chinese history have been rare, only seven uprisings in
4,000 years of recorded history up to the modern time.
Moreover, these uprisings have tended to aim at local
abuse of power rather than at central authority.
Aristocratic coups, on the other hand, have been
countless and frequent.
In four millennia,
Chinese history recorded 559 emperors. Approximately
one-third of them suffered violent deaths from
aristocratic plots, while none had been executed by
rebelling peasants.
The political function of
the emperor was to keep peace and order among
contentious nobles and to protect peasants from
aristocratic abuse. This was the basic rationale of
government as sovereign. A sovereign, whether an emperor
or a president, without the loyal support of peasants,
euphemistically referred to as the Mandate of Heaven
(Tianming), would soon find himself victim of a
palace coup or aristocratic revolt. This is the
socialist root of all governments. The neo-liberal claim
of the proper role of government as ensuring a free
market is a capitalist cooptation of government.
The Code of Rites (Liji), the ritual
compendium as defined by Confucius, circumscribed
acceptable personal behavior for all in a hierarchical
society. It established rules of appropriate
socio-political conduct required in a feudal
civilization. Unfortunately, ingrained conditioning by
conservative Confucian teaching inevitably caused
members of the aristocratic class to degenerate in time
from truly superior stock into mediocre and decadent
seekers of unearned privileges. Such degeneration was
brought about by the nature of their privileged life and
the false security derived from a Confucian superiority
complex. Although the process might sometimes take
centuries to take shape, some dynasties would crumble
within decades through the unchecked excesses of their
ruling classes.
Confucianism, by promoting
unquestioning loyalty toward authority, encouraged the
powerful to abuse their power, despite Confucianism's
reliance on ritual morality as a mandate for power.
Confucianism is therefore inescapably the victim of its
own success, as Taoists are fond of pointing out.
Generally, those who feel they can achieve their
political objectives without violence would support the
Code of Rites. While those whose political objectives
are beyond the reach of non-violent, moral persuasion
would dismiss it as a tool of oppression. Often, those
who attacked the Code of Rites during their rise to
power would find it expedient to promote, after
achieving power, the very code they belittled before,
since they soon realized that the Code of Rites was the
most effective governing tool for a sitting ruler.
To counter hostile tendencies toward feudal
values and to ensure allegiance to the feudal system,
keju (civil examinations), while providing equal
opportunity to all talented, were designed to test
candidates on their knowledge of a syllabus of Confucian
doctrines contained in the Five Classics
(Wujing). Confucian ethics were designed to
buttress the terms of traditional social contract. They
aimed to reduce potential for violent conflict between
the arrived and the arriving. They aimed to channel the
powerful energy of the arriving into a constructive
force for social renewal. Confucian ethics aimed to
forge in perpetuity a continuing non-violent dialectic
eclecticism, to borrow a Hegelian term for the benefit
of Western comprehension.
The violent overthrow
of the government, a criminal offense in the United
States, is a moral sin in Confucian ethics. It is
therefore natural that budding revolutionaries should
attack Confucian ethics as reactionary, and that those
already in power should tirelessly promote Confucian
ethics as the only proper code of behavior for a
self-renewing, civilized socio-political order. In
Chinese politics, Confucianism is based on a theory of
rule by self-restraint. It advocates the sacredness of
hierarchy and the virtue of loyalty. It is opposed by
Legalism, which subscribes to a theory of rule by
universal law and impartial enforcement. Again, the
Western claim that the rule of law is a unique
foundation of modernity peculiar to the West is
historically unsubstantiated.
Although Buddhists
have their own disagreements with Legalist concepts,
particularly on the issue of mercy, which they value as
a virtue while Legalists detest it as the root of
corruption, such disagreements are muted by Buddhist
appreciation of Legalist opposition to both Confucianism
and Taoism, ideological nemeses of Buddhism (Fo
Jiao). Above all, Buddhists need for their own
protection Legalism's opposition to selective religious
persecution. Legalism, enemy of Buddhism's enemies, is
selected by Buddhists as a convenient ally.
Legalism places importance on three aspects. The
first is shi (authority), which is based on the
legitimacy of the ruler and the doctrinal orthodoxy of
his policies. The second is shu (skill) in
manipulative exercise of power, and the third is
fa (law), which, once publicly proclaimed, should
govern universally without exceptions. These three
aspects Legalists consider as three pillars of a
well-governed society. If the rule of law is a
characteristic of modernity, then modernity arrived in
China in 3rd century BC.
According to Confucian
political theory, the essential political function of
all subjects is to serve the emperor, not personally,
but as sovereign, who is the sole legitimate
personification of the political order and sovereign of
the political realm. Legalists argue that while all
powers emanate by right from the Son of Heaven, the
proper execution of these powers can take place only
within an impartial system of law. While people should
be taught their ritual responsibilities, they should at
the same time be held responsible by law not only for
each person's individual acts but also for one another's
conducts, as an extensive form of social control within
a good community. Therefore, punishment should be meted
out to not only the culprit, but also to his relatives,
friends, associates and neighbors, for negligence of
their ritual duties in constraining the culprit. This is
natural for a society in which the individual is
inseparable from community.
Efficiency of
government and equal justice for all are cardinal rules
of good politics. Legalists believe that administration
of the state should be entrusted to officials appointed
according to merit, rather than to hereditary nobles or
literati with irrelevant scholarship. Even granting
validity to the extravagant Taoist claim that ideas,
however radical, are inherently civilized and noble,
Legalists insist that when ideas are transformed into
unbridled action, terror, evil, vulgarity and
destruction emerge. Freedom of thought must be balanced
by rule of law to restrain the corruption of ideas by
action.
Whereas being well versed in
Confucianism bound the shidafu class culturally
as faithful captives to the imperial system, such rigid
mentality ironically also rendered its subscribers
indifferent to objective problem-solving. Thus
Confucianism, by its very nature, would ensure eventual
breakdown of the established order, at which point
Legalism would gain ascendancy for a period, to put in
place new policies and laws that would be more
responsive to objective conditions. But Confucians took
comfort in the fact that, in time, the new establishment
that Legalists put in charge would discover the
utilitarian advantage of Confucianism to the ruling
elite. And the cycle of conservative consolidation would
start once again. Generally, periods of stability and
steady decay would last longer than intervals of violent
renewal through Legalist reform, so that Confucianism
would become more ingrained after each cycle. Western
capitalism is in essence a feudal system, supported by a
legal system that legitimizes property rights and class
distinction based on private capital ownership. In
contemporary Chinese political nomenclature, the
proletariat is defined not merely as workers, but the
property-less class.
This perpetual, cyclical
development proves to the Taoist mind that indeed "life
goes in circles". It is an astute observation made by
the ancient sage Laozi, father of Taoism, who lived
during the 6th century BC and who was the alleged
ancestor of the Tang imperial clan of 7th century AD.
The so-called Gang of Four promoted Legalist
politics in China in the 1970s. They used Marxist
orthodox doctrine, reinforced by the Maoist personality
cult, as shi (influence), Communist party
discipline as shu (skill) for exercising power,
and dictatorial rule as fa (laws) to be obeyed
with no exceptions allowed for tradition, ancient
customs or special relationships and with little regard
for human conditions. Legalists yearn for a perfectly
administered state, even if the price is the unhappiness
of its citizens. They seek an inviolable system of
impartial justice, without extenuating allowances, even
at the expense of the innocent. When a priori
truth appears threatened by fidelity in logic,
Confucians predictably always rely on faithful loyalty
to tradition as a final argument.
Confucius, the
quintessential conservative, the most influential
philosopher in Chinese culture, admired the idealized
society of the ancient Xi Zhou Dynasty, when men
purportedly lived in harmony under sage rulers.
The fact that the Zhou Dynasty had been a feudal
society based on slavery did not concern Confucius. To
the idealist Confucius, hierarchical stations in human
society were natural and symbiotic. If everyone would
contentedly do his duty according to his particular
station in society, and with an accepting state of mind
known as anfen, then all men would benefit as
social life meliorates toward an ideal state of high
civilization.
To Confucius, the lot of a slave
in a good society was preferable to that of a lord in a
society marked by chaos and uncivilized immorality.
Violent social changes would only create chaos, which
would bring decay and destruction to all, lords and
slaves alike. Such violent changes would kill the
patient in the process of fighting the disease.
Confucius apparently never sought the opinion of any
slave on this matter.
Like Plato, Confucius
conceived a world in which the timeless ideal of
morality constitutes the perfect reality, of which the
material world is but a flawed reflection.
The
Zhou people, according to Confucius - in stark contrast
to historical fact - aspired to be truthful, wise, good
and righteous. They allegedly observed meticulously
their social ritual obligation (li) and with
clear understanding of the moral content of such rites.
Confucius never explained why the Zhou people failed so
miserably in their noble aspirations, or the cause of
their eventual fall from civilized grace.
In the
Confucian world view, men have degenerated since the
fall of the Zhou Dynasty. As a result of barbarian
invasions of Chinese society and of natural atrophy,
social order has broken down. But, being fundamentally
good, men can be salvaged through education, the key to
which is moral examples, emanating from the top, because
the wisest in an ideal society would naturally rise to
the top. And they have a responsibility to teach the
rest of society by the examples of their moral behavior.
Chinese audiences always enjoy hearing that
greatness in Chinese culture is indigenous while
decadence is solely the influence of foreign barbarians.
Collective self-criticism, unlike xenophobia, has never
been a favorite Chinese preoccupation. Chinese
narcissism differs from Western narcissism in that
superiority is based not on physical power but on social
benevolence. From the Chinese historical perspective,
the defeat of civilized Athens at the hand of militant
Sparta set the entire Western civilization on the wrong
footing. It represented the triumph of barbarism from
which the West has never recovered.
The Zhou
people that Confucius idolized traced their ancestry to
the mythical deity Houji, god of agriculture. This
genealogical claim had no factual basis in history.
Rather, it had been invented by the Zhou people to mask
their barbaric origin as compared with the superior
culture of the preceding Shang Dynasty (1600-1028 BC),
which they had conquered and whose culture they had
appropriated, just as the Romans invented Aeneas,
mythical Trojan hero, son of Anchises and Venus, as
father of their lineage to give themselves an ancestor
as cultured and ancient as those of the more
sophisticated Greeks. The Tang imperial house was at
least humble enough to coopt only Laozi, a real
historical figure rather than a god.
The
historic figure responsible for the flowering of Zhou
culture was Ji Dan, Duke of Zhou, known reverently as
Zhougong in Chinese. Zhougong was the third-ranking
brother of the founding Martial King (Wuwang, 1027-1025
BC) of the Zhou Dynasty. The Martial King claimed to be
a 17th-generation descendant of the god Houji, who
allegedly gave the Chinese people the gift of
agriculture. In Chinese politics, appropriation of
mythical celebrities as direct ancestors of political
rulers started long before the claim by the Tang
imperial house on Laozi, founder of Taoism.
Zhougong introduced to Chinese politics the
practice of hereditary monarchy based on the principle
of primogeniture. He put an end to the ancient tribal
custom of the Shang Dynasty of crowning the next younger
brother of a deceased king.
In defiance of
established tradition, after the death of the Martial
King (Wuwang) of the Zhou Dynasty in 1025 BC, Zhougong,
third-ranking brother, arranged to usurp the dragon
throne for his nephew, Cheng Wang, 12-year-old son of
the deceased Martial King. The move bypassed Zhougong's
older, second-ranking brother, Ji Guanxu, the legitimate
traditional heir according to ancient tribal custom. Ji
Guanxu rebelled in protest to defend his legitimate
right to succeed his deceased older brother. But he was
defeated and killed in battle by Zhougong.
Hereditary monarchy based on the principle of
primogeniture as established by Zhougong has since been
viewed by historians as the institution that launched
modern political statehood out of primitive tribal
nationhood. It has been credited with having
fundamentally advanced Chinese civilization. Modernity
began with the nation-state, and in China that
transition occurred more than a millennium before the
birth of Christ.
Having acted as regent for
seven years on behalf of Cheng Wang (1024-1005 BC), his
under-aged nephew king, the fratricidal Zhougong
returned political power, some would say involuntarily,
to the fully grown Cheng Wang. The descendants of Cheng
Wang upheld hereditary monarchy in the Zhou Dynasty for
three more centuries and firmly established
primogeniture as an unquestioned tradition in Chinese
political culture.
Zhougong gave Chinese
civilization the Five Rites and the Six Categories of
Music, which form the basis of civilization. Confucian
idealism manifests human destiny in a civilization
rooted in morality as defined by the Code of Rites,
without which man would revert back to the state of wild
beasts. Zhougong was credited with having established
feudalism as a socio-political order during his short
regency of only seven years. He institutionalized it
with an elaborate system of Five Rites (Wuli)
that has survived the passage of time.
The Five
Rites are:
1. Rites governing social
relationships
2. Rites governing behavioral
codes
3. Rites governing codes of dress
4. Rites
governing marriage
5. Rites governing burial
practices
He also established Six Categories of
Music (Liuluo) for all ritual occasions, giving
formal ceremonial expression to social hierarchy.
Confucius revered Zhougong as the father of formal
Chinese feudal culture. The son of Zhougong, by the name
of Ji Baqin, had been bestowed the First Lord of the
State of Lu by Cheng Wang (1024-1005 BC),
second-generation ruler of the Zhou dynasty who owed his
dragon throne to Zhougong, his third-ranking uncle. Five
centuries later, the State of Lu became the adopted home
of Confucius, who had been born in the State of Song.
However, the pragmatic descendants of Zhougong
in the State of Lu did not find appealing the revivalist
advice of Confucius, even when such advice had been
derived from the purported wisdom of Zhougong, their
illustrious ancestor. Confucius, as an old sage, had to
peddle his moralist ideas in other neighboring states
for a meager living. In despair, Confucius, the
frustrated rambling philosopher, was recorded to have
lamented in resignation: "It has been too long since I
last visited Zhougong in my dreams."
The
essential idea underlying the political thinking in
Confucian philosophy is that fallen men require the
control of repressive institutions to restore their
innate potential for goodness. According to Confucius,
civilization is the inherent purpose of human life, not
conquest. To advance civilization is the responsibility
of the wise and the cultured, both individually and
collectively. Enlightened individuals should teach
ignorant individuals. Cultured nations should bring
civilization to savage tribes.
A superior ruler
should cultivate qualities of a virtuous man. His virtue
would then influence his ministers around him. They in
turn would be examples to others of lower ranks, until
all men in the realm are permeated with noble, moral
aptitude. The same principle of trickle-down morality
would apply to relations between strong and weak nations
and between advanced and developing cultures and
economies.
Rudyard Kipling's notion of "the
white man's burden" would be Confucian in principle,
provided that one agrees with his interpretation of the
"superiority" of the white man's culture. Modern
Confucians would consider Kipling (1865-1936) as having
confused Western material progress with moral
superiority, as measured by a standard based on virtue.
Confucius would have thoroughly approved of the
ideas put forth by Plato (427-347 BC) in the
Republic, in which a philosopher king rules an
ideal kingdom where all classes happily go about
performing their prescribed separate socio-economic
functions.
Taoists would comment that if only
life were so neat and simple, there would be no need for
philosophy.
Confucian ideas have aspects that
are similar to Christian beliefs, only down side up.
Christ taught the pleasure-seeking and power-craving
Greco-Roman world to love the weak and imitate the poor,
whose souls were proclaimed as pure. Confucius taught
the materialistic Chinese to admire the virtuous and
respect the highly placed, whose characters were
presumed to be moral.
The word ren, a
Chinese term for human virtue, means "proper human
relationship". Without exact equivalent in English, the
word ren is composed by combining the ideogram
"man" with the numeral 2, a concept necessitated by the
plurality of mankind and the quest for proper
interpersonal relationship. It is comparable to the
Greek concept of humanity and the Christian notion of
divine love, the very foundation of Christianity.
Confucius' well-known admonition, "Do not unto
others that which you not wish to have done to
yourself," has been frequently compared with Christ's
teaching, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Both lead to
the same end, but from opposite directions. Confucius
was less intrusively interfering but, of course, unlike
Christ, he had the benefit of having met Laozi, founder
of Taoism and consummate proponent of benign
non-interference. A close parallel was proclaimed by
Hillel (30 BC-AD 10), celebrated Jewish scholar and
president of the Sanhedrin, in his famous maxim: "Do not
unto others that which is hateful unto thee."
By
observing rites of Five Relationships, each individual
would clearly understand his social role, and each would
voluntarily behave according to proper observance of
rites that meticulously define such relationships. No
reasonable man would challenge the propriety of the Five
Relationships (Wulun). It is the most immutable
fixation of cultural correctness in Chinese
consciousness.
The Five Relationships
(Wulun) governed by Confucian rites are those
of:
1. Sovereign to subject
2. Parent to
child
3. Elder to younger brother
4. Husband to
wife
5. Friend to friend
These relationships
form the basic social structure of Chinese society. Each
component in the relationships assumes ritual
obligations and responsibility to the others at the same
time he or she enjoys privileges and due consideration
accorded by the other components.
Confucius
would consider heretical the ideas of Jean Jacques
Rousseau (1721-28), who would assert two millennia after
Confucius that man is good by nature but is corrupted by
civilization.
Confucius would argue that without
a Code of Rites (Liji) for governing human
behavior, as embedded in the ritual compendium defined
by him based on the ideas of Zhougong, human beings
would be no better than animals, which Confucius
regarded with contempt. Love of animals, a Buddhist
notion, is an alien concept to Confucians, who proudly
display their species prejudice.
Confucius
acknowledged man to be benign by nature but, in
opposition to Rousseau, he saw man's goodness only as an
innate potential and not as an inevitable
characteristic. To Confucius, man's destiny lies in his
effort to elevate himself from savagery toward
civilization in order to fulfill his potential for good.
The ideal state rests on a stable society over
which a virtuous and benevolent sovereign/emperor rules
by moral persuasion based on a Code of Rites rather than
by law. Justice would emerge from a timeless morality
that governs social behavior. Man would be orderly out
of self-respect for his own moral character rather than
from fear of punishment prescribed by law. A competent
and loyal literati-bureaucracy (shidafu) faithful
to a just political order would run the government
according to moral principles rather than following
rigid legalistic rules devoid of moral content. The
behavior of the sovereign is proscribed by the Code of
Rites. Nostalgic of the idealized feudal system that
purportedly had existed before the Spring and Autumn
Period (Chunqiu, 770-481 BC) in which he lived,
Confucius yearned for the restoration of the ancient
Zhou socio-political culture that existed two-and-a-half
centuries before his time. He dismissed the objectively
different contemporary social realities of his own time
as merely symptoms of chaotic degeneration. Confucius
abhorred social atrophy and political anarchy. He strove
incessantly to fit the real and imperfect world into the
straitjacket of his idealized moral image. Confucianism,
by placing blind faith on a causal connection between
virtue and power, would remain the main cultural
obstacle to China's periodic attempts to evolve from a
society governed by men into a society governed by law.
The danger of Confucianism lies not in its aim to endow
the virtuous with power, but in its tendency to label
the powerful as virtuous. This is a problem that cannot
be solved by the rule of law, since law is generally
used by the powerful to control the weak.
Mencius claimed that the Mandate of Heaven was
conditioned on virtuous rule. Mencius (Meng-tzu, 371-288
BC), prolific apologist for Confucius, the equivalent
embodiment of St Paul and Thomas Aquinas in
Confucianism, though not venerated until the 11th
century AD during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), greatly
contributed to the survival and acceptance of the ideas
of Confucius. But Mencius went further. He argued that a
ruler's authority is derived from the Mandate of Heaven
(Tianming), that such mandate is not perpetual or
automatic and that it depends on good governance worthy
of a virtuous sovereign.
The concept of a
Mandate of Heaven as proposed by Mencius is in fact a
challenge to the concept of the divine right of absolute
monarchs. The Mandate of Heaven can be lost through the
immoral behavior of the ruler, or failings in his
responsibility for the welfare of the people, in which
case Heaven will grant another, more moral individual a
new mandate to found a new dynasty. Loyalty will inspire
loyalty. Betrayal will beget betrayal. A sovereign
unworthy of his subjects will be rejected by them. Such
is the will of Heaven (Tian).
Arthurian
legend in medieval lore derived from Celtic myths a
Western version of the Chinese Mandate of Heaven.
Arthur, illegitimate son of Uther Pendragon, king of
Britain, having been raised incognito, was proclaimed
king after successfully withdrawing Excalibur, a magic
sword embedded in stone allegedly removable only by a
true king. Arthur ruled a happy kingdom as a noble king
and fair warrior by reigning over a round table of
knights in his court at Camelot. But his kingdom lapsed
into famine and calamity when he became morally wounded
by his abuse of kingly powers. To cure Arthur's
festering moral wound, his knights embarked on a quest
for the Holy Grail, identified by Christians as the
chalice of the Last Supper brought to England by St
Joseph of Arimathea.
Mencius' political outlook
of imperative heavenly mandate profoundly influences
Chinese historiography, the art of official historical
recording. It tends to equate ephemeral reigns with
immorality. And it associates protracted reigns with
good government. It is a hypothesis that, in reality, is
neither true nor inevitable.
It is necessary to
point out that Mencius did not condone revolutions,
however justified by immorality of the ruling political
authority or injustice in the contemporary social
system. He merely used threat of replacement of one
ruler with another more enlightened to curb behavioral
excesses of despotism. To Mencius, political immorality
was always incidental but never structural. As such, he
was a reformist rather than a revolutionary.
Nicolo Machiavelli, in 1512, 18 centuries after
Mencius, wrote The Prince, which pioneered modern
Western political thought by making medieval disputes of
legitimacy irrelevant. He detached politics from all
pretensions of theology and morality, firmly
establishing it as a purely secular activity and opening
the door for modern Western political science. Religious
thinkers and moral philosophers would charge that
Macchiavelli glorified evil and legitimized despotism.
Legalists of the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), who preceded
publication of The Prince by 17 centuries, would
have celebrated Machiavelli as a champion of truth.
Mencius, an apologist for Confucian ethics, was
Machiavellian in his political strategy in that he
deduced a virtuous reign as the most effective form of
power politics. He advocated a utilitarian theory of
morality in politics. A similar view to that of Mencius
was advocated by Thomas Hobbes almost two millennia
later. Hobbes set down the logic of modern absolutism in
his book Leviathan (1651). It was published two
years after the execution of Charles I, who had been
found royally guilty of the high crime of treason by
Oliver Cromwell's regicidal Rump Parliament in
commonwealth England. Hobbes, while denying all subjects
any moral right to resist the sovereign, subscribed to
the fall of a sovereign as the utilitarian result of the
sovereign's own failure in his prescribed royal
obligations.
Revolts are immoral and illegal,
unless they are successful revolutions, in which case
the legitimacy of the new regime becomes unquestionable.
In application to theology, God is the successful devil;
or conversely the devil is a fallen god. It is pure
Confucian-Mencian logic. As Taoists have pointed out,
there are many Confucians who evade the debate on the
existence of God, but it is hard to find one who does
not find the devil everywhere, particularly in politics.
Confucius, during his lifetime, was ambivalent
about the religious needs of the populace. "Respect the
spirits and gods to keep them distant," he advised. He
also declined a request to elucidate on the supernatural
after-life by saying: "Not even knowing yet all there is
to know about life, how can one have any knowledge of
death?" It was classic evasion.
Confucianism is
in fact a secular, anti-religious force, at least in its
philosophical constitution. It downgrades other-worldly
metaphysics while it cherishes secular utility. It
equates holiness with human virtue rather than with
godly divinity. According to Confucius, man's salvation
lies in his morality rather than his piety. Confucian
precepts assert that man's incentive for moral behavior
is rooted in his quest for respect from his peers rather
than for love from God. This morality abstraction finds
its behavioral manifestation through a Code of Rites
that defines proper roles and obligations of each
individual within a rigidly hierarchical social
structure. Confucians are guided by a spiritual
satisfaction derived from winning immortal respect from
posterity rather than by the promise of everlasting
paradise after God's judgment. They put their faith in
meticulous observance of secular rites, as opposed to
Buddhists, who worship through divine rituals of faith.
Confucians tolerate God only if belief in his existence
would strengthen man's morality.
Without denying
the existence of the supernatural, Confucians assert its
irrelevance in this secular world. Since existence of
God is predicated on its belief by man, Confucianism, in
advocating man's reliance of his own morality,
indirectly denies the existence of God by denying its
necessity. To preserve social order, Confucianism
instead places emphasis on prescribed human behavior
within the context of rigid social relationships through
the observance of rituals.
As righteousness
precludes tolerance and morality permits no mercy,
therein lie the oppressive roots of Confucianism. Most
religions instill in their adherents fear of a God who
is nevertheless forgiving. Confucianism, more a
socio-political philosophy than a religion,
distinguishes itself by preaching required observation
of an inviolable Code of Rites, the secular ritual
compendium as defined by Confucius, in which tolerance
is considered as decadence and mercy as weakness.
Whereas Legalism advocates equality under the law
without mercy, Confucianism, though equally merciless,
allows varying standards of social behavior in
accordance with varying ritual stations. However, such
ritual allowances are not to be construed as tolerance
for human frailty, for which Confucianism has little
use.
St Augustine (354-430), who was born 905
years after Confucius, in systematizing Christian
thought defended the doctrines of original sin and the
fall of man. He thus reaffirmed the necessity of God's
grace for man's salvation, and further formulated the
Church's authority as the sole guarantor of Christian
faith. The importance of Augustine's contribution to
cognition by Europeans of their need for Christianity
and to their acceptance of the orthodoxy of the Catholic
Church can be appreciated by contrasting his affirmative
theological ideas to the anti-religious precepts of
Confucius.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who was
born 2,275 years after Confucius, developed the theme of
"Transcendental Dialectic" in his Critic of Pure
Reason (1781). Kant asserted that all theoretical
attempts to know things inherently, which he called
"nounena", beyond observable "phenomena", are bound to
fail. Kant showed that the three great problems of
metaphysics - God, free will and immortality - are
insoluble by speculative thought, and their existence
can neither be confirmed nor denied on theoretical
grounds, nor can it be rationally demonstrated.
In this respect, Kantian rationalism lies
parallel to Confucian spiritual utilitarianism, though
each proceeds from opposite premises. Confucius allowed
belief in God only as a morality tool. Rationally, Kant
declared that the limits of reason only render proof
elusive, they do not necessarily negate belief in the
existence of God.
Kant went on to claim in his
moral philosophy of categorical imperative that
existence of morality requires belief in existence of
God, free will and immortality, in contrast to the
agnostic claims of Confucius.
Buddhism, in its
emphasis on a next life through rebirth after God's
judgment, resurrected the necessity of God to the
Chinese people. Mercy is all in Buddhist doctrine.
Buddhist influence put a human face on an otherwise
austere Confucian culture. At the same time, Buddhist
mercy tended to invite lawlessness in secular society,
while Buddhist insistence on God's judgment on a
person's secular behavior encroached on the
sovereign/emperor's claim of totalitarian authority.
Similar to Confucian-Mencian logic that revolts
are immoral and illegal, unless they are successful
revolutions in which case the legitimacy of the new
regime becomes unquestionable, John Locke in 1680 wrote
Two Treaties of Government, which was not
published until 10 years later, after the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, as a justification of a triumphant
revolution. According to Locke, men contract to form
political regimes to better protect individual rights of
life, liberty and estate. Civil power to make laws and
police power to execute such laws adequately are granted
to government by the governed for the public good. Only
when government betrays society's trust may the governed
legitimately refuse obedience to government, namely when
government invades the inviolable rights of individuals
and their civil institutions and degenerates from a
government of law to despotism. An unjust king provides
the justification for his own overthrow.
Locke,
like Mencius two millennia before him, identified
passive consent of the governed as a prerequisite of
legitimacy for the sovereign. Confucius would insist
that consent of the governed is inherent in the Mandate
of Heaven for a virtuous sovereign, a divine right
conditioned by virtue. In that respect, it differs from
unconditional divine right claimed by Louis XIV of
France. However, the concept of a Mandate of Heaven has
one similarity with the concept of divine right.
According to Confucius, just rule is required as a
ritual requisite for a moral ruler, rather than a
calculated requirement for political survival.
Similarly, the Sun King would view good kingship as a
character of greatness rather than as a compromise for
winning popular support.
Both Hobbes and Locke
based their empiricist notions of political legitimacy
not on theological or historical arguments, but on
inductive theories of human nature and rational rules of
social contract. Confucius based his moralist notion of
political legitimacy on historical idealism derived from
an idealized view of a perfect, hierarchical human
society governed by rites.
For Taoists,
followers of Laozi, man-made order is arbitrary by
definition, and therefore it is always oppressive.
Self-governing anarchy would be the preferred ideal
society. The only effective way to fight the inevitably
oppressive establishment would be to refuse to
participate on its terms, thus depriving the
establishment of its strategic advantage.
Mao
Zedong (1893-1976), towering giant in modern Chinese
history, with apt insights on Taoist doctrines,
advocated a strategy for defeating a corrupt enemy of
superior military strength through guerrilla warfare.
The strategy is summed up by the following
pronouncement: "You fight yours [ni-da ni-de]; I
fight mine [wo-da wo-de]."
The strategy
ordains that, to be effective, guerrilla forces should
avoid frontal engagement with stronger and better
equipped government regular army. Instead, they should
employ unconventional strategies that would exploit
advantages inherent in smaller, weaker irregular
guerrilla forces, such as ease of movement, invisibility
and flexible logistics. Such strategies would include
ambushes and harassment raids that would challenge the
prestige and undermine the morale of regular forces of
the corrupt government. Such actions would expose to
popular perception the helplessness of the immoral
establishment, despite its superficial massive power,
the paper tiger, as Mao would call it. Thus such
strategies would weaken the materially-stronger but
morally weaker enemy for an eventual coup de
grace by popular forces of good.
Depriving
an immoral enemy's regular army of offensive targets is
the first step in a strategy of wearing down a corrupt
enemy of superior force. It is classic Taoist
roushu (flexible methods). Informed of conceptual
differences of key schools of Chinese philosophy, one
can understand why historiographers in China have always
been Confucian. Despite repeat, periodic draconian
measures undertaken by Legalist reformers, ranging from
the unifying Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), during whose
reign Confucian scholars were persecuted by being buried
alive and their books burned publicly, and up to the
Legalist period of the so-called Gang of Four in modern
times, when Confucian ideas were vilified and
suppressed, Confucianism survives and flourishes, often
resurrected by its former attackers from both the left
and the right, for the victor's own purposes, once power
has been secured.
Feudalism in China takes the
form of a centralized federalism of autonomous local
lords in which the authority of the sovereign is
symbiotically bound to, but clearly separated from, the
authority of the local lords. Unless the local lords
abuse their local authority, the emperor's authority
over them, while all-inclusive in theory, would not
extend beyond federal matters in practice, particularly
if the emperor's rule is to remain moral within its
ritual bounds. In that sense, the Chinese empire was
fundamentally different than the predatory empires of
Western imperialism.
Confucianism, through the
Code of Rites, seeks to govern the behavior and
obligation of each person, each social class and each
socio-political unit in society. Its purpose is to
facilitate the smooth functioning and the perpetuation
of the feudal system. Therefore, the power of the
sovereign/emperor, though politically absolute, is not
free from the constraints of behavior deemed proper by
Confucian values for a moral sovereign, just as the
authority of the local lords is similarly constrained.
Issues of constitutionality in the US political milieu
become issues of proper rites and befitting morality in
Chinese dynastic or even contemporary politics.
Confucian values, because they have been
designed to preserve the existing feudal system,
unavoidably would run into conflict with contemporary
ideas reflective of new emerging social conditions. It
is in the context of its inherent hostility toward
progress and its penchant for obsolete nostalgia that
Confucian values, rather than feudalism itself, become
culturally oppressive and socially damaging. When
Chinese revolutionaries throughout history, and
particularly in the late 18th and early 19th century,
would rebel against the cultural oppression of
reactionary Confucianism, they would simplistically and
conveniently link it synonymously with political
feudalism. These revolutionaries would succeed in
dismantling the formal governmental structure of
political feudalism because it is the more visible
target. Their success is due also to the terminal
decadence of the decrepit governmental machinery of
dying dynasties, such as the ruling house of the
three-century-old, dying Qing Dynasty (1583-1911).
Unfortunately, these triumphant revolutionaries in
politics remained largely ineffective in remolding
Confucian dominance in feudal culture, even among the
progressive intelligentsia.
Almost a century
after the fall of the feudal Qing Dynasty house in 1911,
after countless movements of reform and revolution,
ranging from Western moderate democratic liberalism to
extremist Bolshevik radicalism, China would have yet to
find an workable alternative to the feudal political
culture that would be intrinsically sympathetic to its
social traditions. Chinese revolutions, including the
modern revolution that began in 1911, through its
various metamorphoses over the span of almost four
millennia, in overthrowing successive political regimes
of transplanted feudalism, repeatedly killed successive
infected patients in the form of virulent governments.
But they failed repeatedly to sterilize the infectious
virus of Confucianism in its feudal political culture.
The modern destruction of political feudalism
produce administrative chaos and social instability in
China until the founding of the People's Republic in
1949. But Confucianism still appeared alive and well as
cultural feudalism, even under Communist rule. It
continued to instill its victims with an instinctive
hostility toward new ideas, especially if they were of
foreign origin. Confucianism adhered to an ideological
rigidity that amounted to blindness to objective
problem-solving. Almost a century of recurring cycles of
modernization movements, either Nationalist or Marxist,
did not manage even a slight dent in the all-controlling
precepts of Confucianism in the Chinese mind. Worse,
these movements often mistook Westernization as
modernization, moving toward militant barbarism as the
new civilization.
In fact, in 1928, when the
Chinese Communist Party attempted to introduce a soviet
system of government by elected councils in areas of
northern China under its control, many of the peasants
earnestly thought a new "Soviet" dynasty was being
founded by a new emperor by the name of So Viet.
During the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution
of 1966, the debate between Confucianism and Legalism
was resurrected as allegorical dialogue for contemporary
political struggle. At the dawn of the 21st century,
Confucianism remained alive and well under both
governments on Chinese soil on both sides of the Taiwan
Strait, regardless of political ideology. Modern China
was still a society in search of an emperor figure and a
country governed by feudal relationships, but devoid of
a compatible political vehicle that could turn these
tenacious, traditional social instincts toward
constructive purposes, instead of allowing them to
manifest themselves as practices of corruption. The
Western notion of rule of law has little to contribute
to that search.
General Douglas MacArthur
presented post-World War II Japan, which has been
seminally influenced by Chinese culture for 14
centuries, with the greatest gift a victor in war has
ever presented the vanquished: the retention of its
secularized emperor, despite the Japanese emperor's
less-than-benign role in planning the war and in
condoning war crimes. Thus MacArthur, in preserving a
traditional cultural milieu in which democratic
political processes could be adopted without the danger
of a socio-cultural vacuum, laid the socio-political
foundation for Japan as a postwar economic power. There
is logic in observing that the aggressive expansion of
Japan would not have occurred had the Meiji Restoration
not adopted Western modernization as a path to power. It
was Japan's aping of British imperialism that launched
it toward its militarism that led to its role in World
War II. Of the three great revolutions in modern history
- the French, the Chinese and the Russian - each
overthrew feudal monarchial systems to introduce
idealized Western democratic alternatives that would
have difficulty holding the country together without
periods of terror. The French and Russian Revolutions
both made the fundamental and tragic error of
revolutionary regicide and suffered decades of social
and political dislocation as a result, with little if
any socio-political benefit in return. In France, it
would not even prevent eventual restoration imposed
externally by foreign victors. The Chinese revolution in
1911 was not plagued by regicide, but it prematurely
dismantled political feudalism before it had a chance to
develop a workable alternative, plunging the country
into decades of warlord rule.
Worse still, it
left largely undisturbed a Confucian culture while it
demolished its political vehicle. The result was that
eight decades after the fall the last dynastic house,
the culture-bound nation would still be groping for an
appropriate and workable political system, regardless of
ideology. Mao Zedong understood this problem and tried
to combat it by launching the Great Proletariat Cultural
Revolution in 1966. But even after a decade of enormous
social upheaval, tragic personal sufferings, fundamental
economic dislocation and unparalleled diplomatic
isolation, the Cultural Revolution would achieve little
except serious damage to the nation's physical and
socio-economic infrastructure, to the prestige of the
Chinese Communist Party, not to mention the loss of
popular support, and total bankruptcy of revolutionary
zeal among even loyal party cadres.
It would be
unrealistic to expect the revival of imperial monarchy
in modern China. Once a political institution is
overthrown, all the king's men cannot put it together
again. Yet the modern political system in China, despite
its revolutionary clothing and radical rhetoric, is
still fundamentally feudal, both in the manner in which
power is distributed and in its administrative
structure. When it comes to succession politics, a
process more orderly than the hereditary feudal
tradition of primogeniture will have to be developed in
China.
History has shown that the West can offer
little to the non-Western world beyond rationalization
of oppression and technologies of exploitation. If after
four centuries of Western modernity the world is still
beset with violence, hunger, exploitation and weapons of
mass destruction on an unprecedented scale, it follows
that its Mandate of Heaven is in jeopardy.
Next: Taoism and modernity
Henry C K
Liu is chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment
Group.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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