In the Democratic Review of January, 1958, a group of Chinese intellectuals of Hongkong and published a manifesto entitled "Chinese Culture and the World." It was signed by four scholars: Carson Chang, Tang Chun-i, Hsu Fu-kuan and Mou Tsung-san. These gentlemen are convinced that Chinese culture, in its deepest inspiration, is fundamentally different from that of the West, and that it has the secret of that genuine human wisdom sought for so eagerly by the modern world.
Chinese thought long has been challenged by that of the West. The introduction of Indian Buddhism, whose main ideas were developed and written in an Indo-European language, is considered by the members of this group as the first cultural impact of the West on . The Buddhist penetration took place during the centuries of the Northern and Southern dynasties, or from the Sui dynasty to the Tang (4th to 10th centuries A.D.). Mingling of the two cultural streams resulted in a rich synthesis. To prevent native Chinese thought from being swept into a philosophic museum by triumphant Buddhism, Chinese thinkers, at the beginning of the Sung dynasty (960-1280) had to revolutionize their traditional ways of thinking. The revolution resulted in a new synthesis of Buddhist and Confucian ideas. The most precious fruit that resulted from the grafting of the two systems of thought was a new system of moral, wisdom. Foreign writers refer to this new system as Neo-Confucianism.
This philosophic grafting brought about by the Sung thinkers was bound to fascinate the Chinese scholars of the 20th century who set themselves the task of midwife for a new Confucian humanism. Once again the West had entered the lists and thrown down the gauntlet to Chinese culture. The Chinese on their part, while rejecting the materialistic dogmatism of Communism, readily concede the strong points of the Western challenger, which to them are science, democracy and Christianity. Like their forebears in the time of the Sung, they propose to enrich Chinese thought by borrowing the best of others.
Western philosophy, in the opinion of this group of writers, became fascinated by study of the things and by analysis of the value of our knowledge of things. Hence, logic, critical analysis of human knowledge and studies for an objective knowledge of the universe were rather important areas of research. But logical, critical or scientific knowledge cannot satisfy the deepest aspirations of the human heart. Disappointed by the philosophers, Western man turned to his theologians. For this reason, Christianity answered an essential need in the West.
In , on the contrary, religion and philosophy have never been separated. To the Chinese sages, the principal object of study was the human heart, man himself, the subjective, not the objective universe. Abstract or pure objective knowledge, though useful, was of secondary importance.
From the very beginning, Chinese thought concerned itself with man's everyday life. The ancient sages were emperors to whom the moral good was evidenced in the art of governing. The strivings of man in the battleground of actual life were the object of primary concern. The sage acts on and comes in contact with other men, history and Heaven. If he adapts himself harmoniously to men and events in his life and duty, he governs with success. Modern Confucianists insist that such harmony depends essentially on the action of the subject. This line of thinking proves that they are much more loyal disciples of Kant, with his subjective moral rationalism, than of the first masters of authentic Confucianism. For these moderns, the providence of Heaven has little meaning. It is the sage himself, who, by his moral action, is instrumental in diffusing the divine dew of Heaven on the practical moral life of man.'
Being rationalists, the authors of the Manifesto seek a rational foundation for the obligation that would give it a transcendental value despite its immanence. According to the Confucian Analects, Confucius was already fifty years old, and had been preaching the virtue of Jen (benevolence) long before he truly came to understand the Law of Heaven. But once he understood it, his heart was filled with ching wei (respectful veneration) for Heaven. Confucius, emphasize the writers, had a true intuition of the supernatural. Indeed, many passages of the Analects seem to suggest that he conceived Heaven as so remote and so transcendent that he must have been referring to a personal God. But, our modern exegets are quick to add, subsequent ages failed to explore this vein of thought. Instead, another vein of thought, typified by the I Ching (Book of Changes) and Chung Yung (Doctrine of the Mean) came to characterize Confucianism. For the Confucian sage in the ages after the Master, it is not Heaven which interferes continually in human history, but rather men, by their moral conduct, who specify the action of Heaven's Law. The Law of Heaven resides within the sage. By being incarnated in the heart of man, the Law of Heaven fashions his basic human nature and inspires him to become conscious of his true subjective self. Therefore, moral obligation is both transcendent and immanent.
The authors of the Manifesto fall back on ancient Chinese cosmology, which was developed especially by the great Taoist masters, to explain this transcendent and immanent moral obligation. According to Mou Tsung-san, man lives in harmony with the universe as it undergoes change induced by the interplay of Yin-Yang. It is necessary to follow the action of the creative force principle which continuously begets the ten thousand creatures. Man is conscious of being an individual in the universe and of being in rapport with the physical universe. Being constantly in touch with the elemental nature of all things, he must conform himself to that nature.
The moral conscience is a subjective affirmation which gives value to the universal nature of all things. This point of view stresses the dignity of man. Man walks erect by his own power, conferring his humanistic values to every facet of culture. This reinterpretation of Confucianism offers to the world a real humanism which it needs.
The neo-Confucian humanism portrays Chinese culture as the best in the world: It is the leitmotif of the new world humanism. Such a rosy promise should have a magic appeal to young Chinese intellectuals. Yet, the Chinese young intellectuals remain unimpressed. The vast majority of 's youth are riding full sail on the crest of another wave. Though dead for some years, Professor Hu Shih still wields considerable influence on the minds of students and scholars. Being one of the chief promoters of the new humanism which sanctioned the spoken idiom as a literary medium, Hu Shih still symbolizes the push for a radical reform. The present generation inherited his admiration for John Dewey and Bertrand Russell.
Hu's work is being carried out by the largest universities outside of Red China and by men who received their final training in the . They hold forth a logical empiricism based on mathematics and semantics. These men also want to lend a hand in the evolution of a one world-humanism, but they insist on weeding out all non-scientific lore that slows down progress. In the eyes of today's youth, the teachers of this group pose as champions of the new humanism.
While the West was laying the foundations of modern scientific humanism, China remained sealed off within her cocoon, all the time considering herself the center of the universe and encouraging an immature sense of her own importance. The fountainhead of all knowledge was the wisdom of the ancients. Since Chinese culture was superior to all others, the rest of the world was asked to learn from the Chinese sages. But instead of learning from the Eastern sages, the brutal West with gunboat and sword ripped open the Chinese cocoon. This violent shock led to a crisis. Instead of gradual contact between East and West that would set the stage for a mutual meeting of minds on progressively comprehending levels, had to plunge from the imperial to the modern era without being given time to adjust herself to the stunning transition. The effort required to accommodate herself immediately to the tempo of a new world occasioned a critical review of the values of Chinese culture.
In analyzing the characteristics of Chinese culture, Chinese writers of an empiricist penchant adopt a very different approach to that of the rationalist group. Instead of analyzing the basic ideas of Chinese thought, they use the modern sociological method in analyzing the social structures which have contributed to the formation of Chinese culture. They regard Confucianism as reflecting a feudal type of society, hierarchically structured and basically authoritarian. At the apex of the structure is the emperor to whom all inferiors owe unquestioned obedience. In the family, the paterfamilias enjoys full authority. The opinions of elders receive a sort of religious deference owing to the cult of ancestors. To challenge such opinions would be sacrilege. With such a mentality, philosophic thought consisted in handing down from one generation to the next the same petrified canon of orthodoxy. A teacher could comment on this canon, but could not add to or subtract from it. This intellectual conservatism hindered any social evolution or progress. One had to follow the traditional blueprint in every detail and could never change it. The so-called doctrine and social traditions of Li (ceremonies) demanded a religious obedience of the subject to the emperor and of the son to the father. The crusading reformer was dangerous. He imperiled the liturgically established order.
The brutal impact of the West shivered the structures of this ancient social order. Confucianism, the spiritual blueprint of these social structures, is a way of life that has had its day. It is incapable of giving answers to present day problems. It failed to satisfy all the aspirations of the human heart. Its narrow moralism was silent about the enigma of death, the desire for immortality, the problem of suffering and a Spiritual adaptation with the cosmos. Buddhism and Taoism, however, filled two of these lacunae. The former filled a religious need, while the latter supplied a romantic philosophy of nature.
Younger writers, demanding a radical remedy for the present crisis, would jettison the entire cargo of these ancient traditions, which only impede progress. On the other hand; the more thoughtful among them insist that Confucianism is too complex a system to be totally devoid of valuable insights on human life. Instead of a blind approval of the Confucian system in its entirety, values that can stand the test of an objective and critical analysis should be preserved, keeping in view the progressive trends of contemporary society.
Those who advocate a new Confucian humanism admire the thinkers of the Sung dynasty, and following in their footsteps, seek to distill a new Confucian synthesis that would give a new lease on life to traditional Chinese philosophy.
But the promoters of the so-called empirical school of thought reject the efforts of such a synthesis. They say that the Sung thinkers were influenced too much by Buddhism. Originally, Confucianism taught a practical code of morals. But from this practical code the Sung philosophers constructed an ideal system, in which Li, the fundamental principle, is distinguished from Chi, the material reality or visible nature. By arbitrarily postulating this abstract separation in nature, they devoted themselves to barren speculation that for centuries led down a cul-de-sac, as far as scientific research was concerned. The Neo-Confucianists who admire them today are on the same wrong road. They involve themselves in patent contradictions. In trying to breathe new life into the corpus of Confucian doctrine, and nurse to life a living synthesis that would come to grips with contemporary problems, they borrow many ideas from Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard. The result is not a living system of authentic Chinese thought, but an abstract rationalism, basically Western, packaged in voluminous quotations from the Chinese classics. Despite their pains, their effort is not a pregnant 'synthesis but a barren syncretism. Not being well trained in the discipline of exact analysis, they fail to identify the original source of their ideas.
Trying to avoid this intellectual syncretism, some writers propose a different solution to the present impasse of Chinese culture. must modernize. She must make up her mind to domicile technological progress of the West. Yet she should remain loyal to her own cultural past.
Towards the end of the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911), the modernist Chang Chih-tung published a manifesto entitled An Exhortation to Learning in which he suggested Chinese learning for the fundamental principles but Western learning for practical application. This program fascinated many. In as late as 1935, ten professors echoed Chang's program in a declaration entitled Manifesto for the Formation of a Culture Specifically Chinese.
The followers of Hu Shih reject this second solution. They say it bypasses the heart of the problem. Inevitably, the way one lives calls into play basic cultural values. At an ever accelerating pace, the industrialization introduced from the West is changing the habits and reactions of every Chinese. The attitudes of children to parents, as well as those of one sex to the other, are no longer what they were. The values which classical Confucianism upheld do not answer any more the needs of modern life. This is why it fails to appeal to Chinese youth. The impact of the West on the East cannot be papered over any longer by mere subterfuges. The West has to be faced courageously, and must impartially review the respective values of both cultures.
The influential class is no longer the conservative literati, but scholars, professors, philosophers, artists, novelists, economists, engineers and many others. This revolution on the cultural level called into question to what extent the heritage of the past would have to be jettisoned.
In the closing years of the 19th century, the first reforms tried to begin the task of modernization under the patronage of Emperor Kuang Hsu. Reformers K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao founded the Society for Studying National Reform. But the Emperor was made a palace prisoner, by order of Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi and these reform pioneers either fled the country or like Tan Sze-t'ung in 1898 became martyrs of the cause. Among the other promoters of 's modernization were Yen Fu, the translator and disciple of John Stuart Mill, and Wu Yu, whom Hu Shih called "the arch anti-Confucianist of ."
The followers of Hu Shih favor a rational program of modernization. They say that value judgments, made a priori, nullify any attempt at renewal. They form a value curtain. The task of the intellectual at present is to lead his contemporaries in this review of cultural values, whether such values be old or new, Chinese or Western. By such leadership, the intellectual will have made his contribution for the formulation of the new scientific humanism for which today's world is waiting.
Confucian morality was formulated for a hierarchical society. All critic and smacks of heresy. Obedience to elders and superiors is necessary in the interest of law and order. But this law and order came to be costly in terms of certain human values. The absolute obedience of child to parent and the superiority of man to woman gave rise to inequalities which impeded the all-round development of the individual. Excessive contempt for material goods encourages idleness and slows down scientific research. The thesis that human nature is intrinsically good ignores the complexities of the human condition. In the heart of man, as well as in society as a whole, evil exists alongside the good. In primitive man, whose life was dominated by his biological needs, human nature was neither good nor bad. Confucian ideas on human nature preceded an objective analysis of biological, psychological, anthropological and sociological data.
The Chinese made interesting scientific discoveries. However, the Confucian pan-moralism blanketed everything. Even scientific truths were subjected to the test of moral standards, many of which lacked objective validity. Pan-moralism led to absolute political centralization and autocracy. Society became sewed up within a cocoon, atrophied and incapable of progress.
One of the most famous promoters of cultural renaissance defines the Chinese cultural ideal as "a truly scientific and genuine humanism." He objects to the term Jen Wen, used by the Confucian school for humanism. The term confuses the human condition as such and other elements of the purely cultural level. He used the term Jen Pen instead to express the idea of the genuine reality of man. He then makes a list of the values recognized as basic to this scientific humanism: liberty, equality, happiness, goodness, integrity, the spirit of collaboration, the will to increase the well-being and joy of all and finally respect for life and the dignity of the human person. In summing up his ideal in one word, he writes: "Love is the basic virtue for contributing to the development of all mankind."
Scientific humanism is not crass materialism. It is an effort to understand the human condition on a natural plane. It does not demand sacrificing the real joys of the present life for an unknown life beyond the grave. It tries to analyze the needs of modern man, to discover a norm that would help him strive constantly toward deeper self-realization. It rejects all absolutes, propaganda pressures and social structures that lead to depersonalization. It defends the dignity of the human person. It is a humanism that encourages the development of all man's talents in order that he may realize his full development. This personal development should be pursued hand in hand with that of all mankind. One should rise above irrational egoism. "Disinterestedness and charity will bring a sense of deep fulfillment to all the secret yearnings of the heart."
Out of respect for Hu Shih, those who oppose him avoid trenchant criticism. Yet, in commenting on the ideas of his disciples, they accuse him of betraying Chinese culture and of inculcating amoralism. The new scientific humanists are candidly atheistic in this sense. They ignore everything that lies beyond the level of empirical experience. Nevertheless, the principal champions of scientific humanism, with the exception of a few young writers, are not hostile to religious belief. A prior hostility would betray a lack of objectivity. They oppose intolerant fanaticism but respect honest faith. For them, religious faith is beyond the reach of scientific knowledge.
The intellectual heirs of Hu Shih voice some of the deepest yearnings of contemporary man. This is the only explanation for their success in getting the ear of Chinese youth. These scientific humanists are a symbol of modernity. Their love of truth is evident in their regard for intellectual honesty, and their social program, their democratic ideal, their will of devoting oneself for the happiness of all is an evident proof of their regard for the human person.-Lefeuvre, S. J.
Chinese Culture - Matter of values
Renaissance does not mean a revival of the old. A cultural renaissance does not refer to a restoration of everything that was prevalent in ancient society. Instead, it entails lending new meaning to the superior spirit of the past and allowing this spirit to prosper. The concept of culture has two different connotations: one is literal and the other is expressed in terms of value. Literal culture refers to any fact that has occurred in the history of . In terms of value, culture means that which has been rational, valuable and beneficial to the customs and systems of the nation and society. What we seek is a renaissance in culture in terms of what is valuable. For example, for more than a thousand years, Chinese women had their feet bound. Although foot-binding was widely practiced, it cannot be taken as a valuable part of culture. The same is true of opium smoking. The paraphernalia connected with smoking opium has its artistic merits, and can indeed be called a part of culture. However, in terms of value, they fall far short of being cultural.
's culture is based on morality, democracy and science. Morality is developed concomitantly with democracy and science. These are like the three legs of a tripod. The comparison bespeaks the importance of all three principles and the importance of equal development of the three. A tripod must have three legs. With only two, it will not stand. If two of the legs are longer than the third, the tripod will not stand firm. The same is true should two of the legs be short and one long. To ensure the stability of the tripod, all the legs must be of equal length. The tripod simile expresses the external relationship of the three legs but not the inner relationship.
Interdependence of morality, democracy and science entails the Christian concept of Trinity. The three comprise a unity, yet each is an independent entity. Culture is the unity of these three elements. Principles of morality must be practiced in the democratic system of government. Principles of democratic systems must be followed in scientific pursuits. Scientific methods must be employed in betterment of the democratic system of government.
The Chinese have always stressed the equal importance of emotion, reason and law. To accomplish something satisfactorily, it must appeal to the emotions and be reasonable within law. The three can also be said to be three-in-one, indivisible and not isolated from one another. Emotion, reason and law are comparable to morality, democracy and science. Morality is based on emotion, democracy on law, and science on reason. Morality cannot ignore law and reason. Law and reason cannot stand alone. There must also be emotion to make things work. Confucius said: "They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it." To know the reason for an act, but to dislike doing it, does not enable one to do it well.
The morality that Confucius advocated contains elements of the democratic spirit. Confucius said: "There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father and the son is son." A prince must take on the responsibilities of princedom; a minister must assume the duties of a minister; a father must shoulder the responsibilities of fatherhood; and a son must fulfill the duties of a son. Mencius made it clearer: "When the prince regards his ministers as his hands and feet, his ministers regard the prince as their belly and heart; when he regards them as his dogs and horses, they regard him as any other man; when he regards them as dirt or grass, they regard him as an enemy." If a prince acts benevolently toward his ministers, then the ministers will respond accordingly, and vice versa.
Mencius also said: "There must be no reproving admonitions between father and son; such behavior leads to alienation." Confucian morality is replete with the spirit of equality. Confucius also said: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." The Western version is: "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." This involves individual desires which may differ between persons. Professor Chen Ta-chi has cited a personal experience. A host invited him to share an opium couch. How to refuse the insistent invitation? He took a puff and started coughing in agony. The host had followed the positive instead of the negative version of the Golden Rule. To him, opium smoking was desirable. -Chen Liang-yueh