The Theory of the Confucian World-Society.

The various types of protest against the development of states and the consequent anarchy of the Chinese society considered as a whole cannot be considered in this work; many were primarily religious; Taoism, while ranking as one of the most conspicuous religions of the world, has little bearing on politics. Even Confucianism, which merits careful study, must be summarized and re-stated as briefly as possible. Confucianism has suffered from an ambiguity and exoticism of terms, when presented to the West; its full significance as a political philosophy can become fully apparent only when it is rendered in the words of the hour.

What was it that Confucius did in protest against the established discord of the world he knew? He struck directly at the foundations of politics. His criticisms and remedies can be fully appreciated only by reference to a theory of ideology.

Confucius perceived that the underlying problem of society was that of ideology; he seems to have realized that the character of a society itself essentially depends upon the character of the moral ideas generally prevalent among the individuals composing it, and that where there is no common body of ideas a society can scarcely be said to exist.29 He did not consider, as did Han Fei-tzŭ and the legalist school of philosophers, questions of law the preëminent social problem. He realized that state and law were remedies, and that the prime questions of organization were those anterior to the political, and that the state existed for the purpose of filling out the shortcomings of social harmony.30

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In a society—such as Confucius dreamed of—where there was no disagreement in outlook, policy would not be a governmental question; if there were no disharmony of thought and of behavior, there would be no necessity of enforcing conformance to the generally accepted criteria of conduct. From this standpoint, government itself is socially pathological, a remedy for a poorly ordered society. Men are controlled indirectly by the examples of virtue; they do good because they have learned to do good and do it unquestioningly and simply. Whatever control is exercised over men is exercised by their ideology, and if other men desire control they must seek it through shaping the ideas of others. At its full expression, such a doctrine would not lead to mere anarchy; but it would eliminate the political altogether from the culture of man, replacing it with an educational process. Ideological control would need to be supplemented by political only if it failed to cover the total range of social behavior, and left loopholes for conflict and dispute.

This doctrine is framed in quite different terms by Confucius, who spoke and wrote in an age when the mystical elements of the old feudal ideology still exercised powerful and persuasive influence, and when there was no other society than his own which he might make the object of his study. The central point of his teachings is the doctrine of jên. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, one of the most brilliant modern exponents of ancient Chinese philosophy, wrote of this:

In the simplest terms, “Jen” means fellow-feeling for one's kind. Once Fan Chih, one of his disciples, asked Confucius what [pg 031] “Jen” meant. Confucius replied, “To love fellow-men”; in other words this means to have a feeling of sympathy toward mankind....

Intellectually the relationship becomes common purpose; emotionally it takes the form of fellow-feeling.31

This doctrine appears more specific in its application when it is realized that Confucius regarded his own society and mankind as coterminous. Barbarians, haunting the fringes of the world, were unconscious of jên; not being in sympathy with mankind, they were not as yet fully human.

Jên is a word which cannot be exactly translated into English. It is laden with a burden of connotations which it has acquired through the centuries; its variability of translation may be shown by the fact that, in the standard translations of the Chinese classics, it is written “Benevolence.” It might equally well be given as “consciousness of one's place and function in society.” The man who followed jên was one who was aware of his place in society, and of his participation in the common endeavors of mankind.

Jên, or society-mindedness, leads to an awareness of virtue and propriety (têh and yi). When virtue and propriety exist, it is obligatory that men follow them. Behavior in accordance with virtue and propriety is li. Commonly translated “ethics,” this is seen as the fruition of the force of jên in human society. Jên underlies and establishes society, from the existence of which spring virtue and propriety; these prescribe principles for human conduct, the formulation of which rules is li.32 Auxiliary to li is chêng ming. Chêng ming is the rightness of names: [pg 032] li, the appropriateness of relationships. Li, it may be noted, is also translated “rites” or “ceremonies”; a rendering which, while not inexact, fails to convey the full import of the term.

Chêng ming, the rectification of names, may be regarded as a protest against the discords in language that had developed during the transitional period from feudalism to eventual unity. Confucius, of course, did not have as sharp an issue confronting him as do the modern Western innovators in social and political ideology. Nevertheless, the linguistic difficulty was clear to him. The expansion of the Chinese written language was so great at that time that it led to the indiscriminate coining of neologisms, and there was a tendency towards a sophisticated hypocrisy in the use of words.33

Confucius saw that, in obtaining harmony, language needed to be exact; otherwise long and fruitless disputes over empty words might be engaged in or, what was even worse, words might not conform to the realities of social life, and might be used as instruments of ill-doing. Confucius did not, however, present a scheme of word-worship. He wanted communication to cement society, to be an instrument of concord. He wanted, in modern terms, a terminology which by its exactness and suitability would of itself lead to harmony.34 In advocating the rectification of names, Confucius differed from many other founders of philosophies and religions; they, too, wanted names rectified—terminology reorganized—to suit their particular doctrines; but there they stopped short. Confucius regarded the rectification of names as a continuous process, one which had to be carried on unceasingly if communication, for the sake of social harmony, was to remain just and exact.

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Chêng ming is highly significant in Confucian thought, and exhibits the striking difference between the Chinese and the older Western political study. If the terms by means of which the communication within a society is effected, and in which the group beliefs of fact or of value are to be found, can be the subject of control, there is opened up a great field of social engineering. Chêng ming states, in recognizable although archaic terms, the existence of ideology, and proposes the strengthening of ideology. In recognizing the group (in his case, mankind) as dependent upon ideology for group existence, Confucius delivered Chinese political thought from any search for an ontology of the real state. It became possible to continue, in the traditional pragmatic manner,35 thinking of men in simple terms referring only to individual men, avoiding the hypostatizations common in the West. In pointing out the necessity for the control of ideology by men, Confucius anticipated theories of the “pedagogical state” by some twenty centuries.

Li, in the terminology of the present work, is the conformity of the individual to the moral ideology, or, stated in another manner, the control of men by the ideology.36

Li, conformity to the ideology, implies, of course, conformity to those parts of it which determine value. Li [pg 034] prescribes the do-able, the thinkable. In so far as the ideology consists of valuations, so far do those valuations determine li. Hsü lists the operations of li in six specific categories:

(1) it furnishes the principles of political organization; (2) it furnishes details for the application of the doctrine of ratification; (3) it discusses the functions of government; (4) it prescribes the limitations of governmental authority; (5) it advances principles of social administration; and (6) it provides a foundation for crime and lawsuits. These are only the political functions of li. Its force is to be regarded as equally effective in every other type of human behavior.37

The approach to society contained in the doctrines of jên, chêng ming, and li is, therefore, one which largely eliminates the necessity for politics. Its influence may be estimated from three points of view: (1) to what degree was government different from what it might have been had it followed the line of development that government did in the West? (2) what was the range of governmental action in such a system? and (3) what was the relation of government to the other institutions of a Confucian society?

In regard to the first point, it will be seen immediately that government, once chêng ming has been set in motion, is not a policy-making body. There is no question of policy, no room for disagreement, no alternative. What is right is apparent. Politics, in the narrow sense of the word, ceases to be a function of government; only administration remains.

Secondly, government needs to administer only for two purposes. The chief of these is the maintenance of the ideology. Once right views are established, no individual is entitled to think otherwise. Government must treat the heterodox as malefactors. Their crime is greater than ordinary crime, which is a mere violation of right behavior; [pg 035] they pollute right thought, set in motion the forces of discord, and initiate evils which may work on and on through the society, even after the evil-thinkers themselves are dead. To protect the society actively against discord, the government must encourage the utterance of the accepted truth. The scholar is thus the highest of all the social classes; it is he who maintains agreement and order. The government becomes, in maintaining the ideology, the educational system. The whole political life is education, formal or informal. Every act of the leader is a precept and an example. The ruler does not compel virtue by law; he spreads it by his conspicuous example.

The other function of the government in maintaining the ideology lies in the necessity of dealing with persons not affected by the ideology. Barbarians are especially formidable, since both heretics and criminals may be restored to the use of their reason, while barbarians may not, so long as they remain barbarians. Accordingly, the government is also a defense system. It is a defense against open and physical disruption from within—as in the case of insurrectionaries or bandits—and a defense against forces from without which, as veritable powers of darkness, cannot be taught and are amenable only to brute force.

In connection with the third point, government itself appears as subject to li. It has no right to do wrong. The truth is apparent to everyone, and especially to the scholars. In this wise the Chinese governments were at the mercy of their subjects. No divine right shielded them when public opinion condemned them; ill-doing governments were twice guilty and contemptible, because of the great force of their examples. An evil emperor was not only a criminal; he was a heresiarch, leading many astray, and corrupting the virtue upon which society rested—virtue being the maintenance of a true and moral ideology, and conformity to it.

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The consequence of these teachings was such that we may say, without sacrificing truth to paradox, that the aim of Chinese government was anarchy—not in the sense of disorder, but in the sense of an order so just and so complete that it needed no governing. The laissez-faire of the Chinese was not only economic; it was political. The Great Harmony of Confucius, which was his Utopia, was conceived of as a society where the excellence of ideology and the thoroughness of conformity to ideology had brought perfect virtue, perfect happiness.

The other doctrines of Confucius, his practical teachings on statesmanship, his discourses on the family—these cannot be entered into here. Enough has, perhaps, been shown to demonstrate the thoroughness of Confucius' reaction against state and nation.38 This reaction was to continue, and to become so typical that the whole Chinese system of subsequent centuries was called Confucian,39 until the exigencies of a newer, larger, and more perilous world led to Sun Yat-sen's teaching of modern Chinese nationalism. Before taking up the doctrine of min tsu, it may be worthwhile to summarize the manner in which Chinese society, deliberately and accidentally, each in part, followed out the doctrines of Confucius in its practical organization.