Rethinking the World in East Asia 1850s-1990s

Our introduction to some of the key Confucian texts, including Mengzi (Mencius) continues to be useful as we examine the intellectual history of later thinkers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In my last posting I mentioned some of the passages in Mengzi that easily stretch across the centuries to resonate in any discussion about political reform. In our elective readings about the socialist and anarchist figure Kōtoku Shūsui (1871-1911) from Robert Tierney’s Monster of the Twentieth Century: Kōtoku Shūsui and Japan’s First Anti-Imperialist Movement we see that a selective reading of Mengzi could be deployed to politically radical ends.

Kōtoku claims in 1904 to have become a socialist thanks to Kōtoku, and is influenced by the creative reinterpretation of Mengzi found in the work of Nakae Chōmin (1847-1901), who saw him, among other things, as an example of an East Asian democratically-minded thinker.¹ Kōtoku’s most interesting, and again selective, use of Mengzi comes in his arguments against patriotism (aikoku 愛国). Deploying a classic Chinese binary in an unorthodox way,  he argues that patriotsim as an emotion is to show preference for the private (shi 私) over the public (ooyake 公), as here public would require a more global perspective.² Kōtoku uses the famous example  in Mengzi of the naturally caring nature of humanity to press his case for a level of undifferentiated caring that seems much closer to the Mohist followers of Mozi, than their Confucian opponents:

I agree with Mencius that any human being would, without hesitation, rush to rescue a child about to fall into a well…On second thought, however, a human being moved by such selfless love and charity does not pause to think whether the child is a family member or a close relative. When he rescues the child from danger, he does not even ask himself whether the child is his own or belongs to another. For the same reason, righteous and benevolent men in every nation in the world pray that the people of the Transvaal will win their freedom and that the people of the Philippines will gain their independence. There are many such men even in England and the United States, even though their countries are belligerents in these wars. How is it possible for a patriot to adopt such a stance?

…In America, patriots revile fellow citizens who hope for the independ- ence of the Philippines and condemn their hatred of their own country. But even if these people are lacking in love for their country, they are certainly filled with compassion, charity, and generosity. For this reason, we can conclude that patriotism is an emotion far removed from the profound feeling that leads a human being to rescue a child from impending danger.

I am saddened that patriotism has nothing to do with compassion and charity. In fact, the love a patriot feels for his country stops at national borders. He only cares about the human beings who live in his own country. A patriot who does not care for the people of other countries and only loves his fellow countrymen is like a man who only loves members of his own family and immediate relatives and is indifferent to everyone else…

This is a good example of how ancient Chinese thinkers are selectively embraced and deployed for new, sometimes radical, causes. Though I find myself nodding sympathetically with Kōtoku on this point, as suggested in the discussion of Mengzi vs. the Mohists here, it is unlikely that Mengzi himself would have approved of Kōtoku’s formulation of his cosmopolitan vision:

…[the Mohist] Yi Zhi said, “According to the Way of the Confucians, the ancients treated the people ‘like caring for a baby.’ What does this saying mean? I take it to mean that love is without differentiations, but it is bestowed beginning with one’s parents.”

Xu Bi  told Mengzi this. Mengzi said, “Does Yi Zhi truly hold that one’s affection for one’s own nephew is like one’s affection for a neighbor’s baby? The passage from the [Classic of the] Documents is only using that as a metaphor.  When a crawling baby is about to fall into a well, it is not the baby’s fault. Furthermore, Heaven, in giving birth to things, causes them to have one source, but Yi Zhi gives them two sources. ³

This passage follows a discussion about the Mohist criticism of Confucian practices of lavish funerals for parents that betray their preference for the care of family over strangers. It is difficult to parse, particularly at the end. Commentators on Mengzi that were included by Bryan van Norden in his translation of this section argue that the technical point Mengzi is trying to make here is that Yi Zhi is suggesting that there are two sources of compassion: the natural compassion we have for our parents, and a separate impartial love for all humanity, instead of the Confucian perspective that our strongest love for our family merely radiates outward, with naturally (and appropriately) decreasing intensity to those beyond.  Mengzi might argue that it is the same love for parents which justifies the increased attention to their funeral, but also motivates us to save a child in need who we do not know. Kōtoku might respond that it still allows him to say we should care about desperate opressed peoples beyond the nation, but if he wanted to stay loyal to Mengzi, instead of Mozi, he would have to change his rhetoric of the pettiness of patriotic sentiment.

1. Tierney, Robert. Monster of the Twentieth Century: Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s First Anti-Imperialist Movement. Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 2015, pp66-68. [↩]
2. ibid., p59. [↩]
3. Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries trans. Bryan W. van Norden, Book 3A5.3a-c, p74. [↩]

In this module we will explore the ideas and lives of East Asians who offered stark new visions of social and political order or creatively reconfigured and redeployed ideas from the rich philosophical and religious traditions of the region. We will move beyond some of the best known political figures of East Asian history and learn about a broad cast of interesting characters. We’ll learn about He Zhen, who believed that world revolution could not find success without first crushing the tyrannical rule of men. We’ll meet a retired warlord Yan Xishan, who wanted to create a “Cosmopolitan International,” that could destroy the twin evils of capitalism and communism and recreate something similar to China’s imperial examination system to build a global meritocratic order of sages. We’ll read about Onisaburo Deguchi, who saw himself as the messianic figure of Maitreya Buddha come to reorder the world and explore the career of the leader of a peasant uprising, Ch’oe Che-u, whose synthesis of teachings was to teach the world how reconnect to the ultimate reality of the universe. Our goal is to better understand how the intellectual history of the region allowed ideas and traditions to weave together and evolve across the past hundred and fifty years or so.

A PDF of the module handbook for the module can be downloaded here here via its github repository where changes will be made as the module evolves in the future:

MO3354 Rethinking the World in East Asia 1850s-1990s – Handbook

 

All three of the Confucian philosophiers we are discussing this week, Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi have plenty to say about how to rule, but if we are imagining how thinkers in recent times might want to deploy these classic writings to the ends of political reform I find that Mengzi stands out in articulating political sensibilities that might well fit into contemporary policy discussion. Let us examine just three examples of this, one which we might relate to environmental issues, one to the responsibilities of the state in crisis, and the third an argument which might well be discussed in the context of examining the structural origins of crime in society.

“If one does not disrupt the farming seasons with building projects, but only waits until after the crops have been harvested, the grain will be inexhaustible. If overly fine nets are not used in the ponds, so that sufficient fish and turtles are left to reproduce, they will be inexhaustible. If people bring their axes into the mountain forests only in the proper season, the wood will be inexhaustible.” 1A3.3¹

Here we see encapsulated a Confucian resource management policy. Clearly, the fruits of nature are there at the disposal of human societies, but their management is not merely a matter of quantities: it is a matter of timing (in the case of grain or logging) or of methods and tools (the nets used in fishing).

“No one knows to limit how much of the food is consumed by dogs and sows. Then no one knows to disburse food from the granary when there are bodies in the street dead of starvation. When someone dies, You say, It wasn’t me. It was due to the harvest.’ How is this different from killing someone by stabbing him and saying, ‘It wasn’t me. It was due to the weapon’? If Your Majesty does not blame the harvest, then the people of the world will come to You.”  1A3.5²

Here Mengzi offers a clear statement of about state responsibilities: they should not blame the vicissitudes of nature for their own insufficient policies. The claim is stronger yet: for Mengzi is implying these policies should not merely be seen as indirect responsibility, but the direct responsibility of the one who wields the knife.

“This is the Way of the people: those who have a constant livelihood have a constant heart; those who lack a constant livelihood lack a constant heart. No one who fails to have a constant heart will avoid dissipation and evil. When they thereupon sink into crime, to go and punish them is to trap the people. When there are benevolent people in positions of authority, how is it possible for them to trap the people?”  3A3.3 ³

Finally, in this quote we see Mengzi’s view that what differentiates the moral conduct of the people in society is, as he puts it in 6A7.1,  “the richness of the soil and to unevenness in the rain and in human effort” that composes their environment, rather than inherent differences. If we were to think of this as it might be deployed in a more recent debates over crime and society, Mengzi’s sympathies, presumably, would lie with those who emphasise the structural origins of criminal behavior such as poverty or lack of education. A state which places greater emphasis on a highly punitive legal system is failing to understand the problem.

1. These quotes from Bryan W. Van Norden trans. Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries Hackett, 2008.  1A3.3 [↩]
2. Ibid., 1A3.5 [↩]
3. Ibid., 3A3.3. See also 6A7.1 for his barley example. [↩]

Welcome to the student blog of MO3354. This module on the intellectual history of late modern East Asia explores the ways social, political and religious movements, as well as the evolving ideas of key individuals in Korea, Japan, and China hoped to transform or reimagine the social and political order of their times Literary and visual sources as well as philosophical or religious texts, debates, and the political tracts of various movements will be at the core of the module and offer opportunities to explore the multiplicity of inspirations and dynamic nature of the intellectual history of the region that challenges some common depictions of the relationship between tradition and modernity, as well as assumptions about the simplistic adaptation of Western ideologies in East Asian history.

The postings found here are authored by students during the semester and will offer their reflections on assigned and further reading.¹

1. Students will not be using their real names [↩]