There is in the United States a movement to make the birthday of Confucius "Teacher's Day." This alone will be sufficient to show how modern Confucius really is. Of all ancient philosophers, Confucius has shown the greatest vitality through the centuries. The desperate efforts on the part of Maoists of the China mainland to persecute and ostracize Confucius are eloquent evidence of how deep-rooted his influence is in the minds and hearts of the Chinese people. The fact is, Confucianism is bred in the bones and runs in the blood of every Chinese. History has shown that the more it is persecuted the more it will thrive. It has emerged from every crisis with greater splendor and a richer content than before.
In free China, of course, Confucianism is in full flower. During the last 30 years, there has been a spontaneous upsurge of interest in Confucianism among Chinese scholars. Accompanying this has been a vigorous Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement under the sponsorship of President Chiang Kai-shek. With his usual perceptiveness, he has summed up the essence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles in three words: ethics, democracy and science. He carries on the great tradition of Confucius and Sun Yat-sen in viewing ethics as the soul of Chinese culture, democracy as congenial to China and science as a means "to foster virtue, to enhance the utilization of natural resources and to enrich human life." A few years ago he announced Dr. Sun Yat-sen's birthday was also to be Chinese Cultural Renaissance Day. The whole nation was jubilant.
The term "Humanism" in Western philosophy generally connotes any man-centered philosophy and implies a movement away from religion. What distinguishes the Humanism of Confucius is that although man-centered, it is nevertheless explicitly based on the Will of God. It is therefore a movement away from materialism and toward faith in God. To understand Confucian Humanism, it is best to take for our starting point the magnificent opening passage of Chung Yung or the Book of Golden Mean, which is generally attributed to Tzu Sze, the grandson of Confucius:
What is ordained of Heaven is called Human Nature; the development of this Nature is called the Tao or Natural Law; the cultivation and refinement of this Natural Law is called Culture.
The whole passage presents a continuous series which may be likened to a tree. Heaven is the hidden root, human nature the tender sprout, and education and culture the branches, leaves and flowers. I may add that the fruit the tree bears is an integral personality, which is the necessary starting point to reach the ultimate goal of a harmonious world order.
The term Tao, which I have translated here as Natural Law, is rendered by James Legge as "the path of duty" and by Ku Hung-ming as "the moral law." Both translations rightly bring out the dominantly moral connotation of the term Tao as used by Confucius and his followers. I have used the term "Natural Law," which is also moral in connotation but at the same time preserves the metaphysical and religious back ground of the moral law as an extension of the eternal law of Heaven. It is precisely this metaphysical and religious foundation of the moral law that prevents Confucian humanism from degenerating into a rootless humanism or a humanism without backbone.
To my mind, Christopher Dawson showed profound insight into Confucian humanism when he said: "The spirit of the Confucian teaching is dominated by the concept of a sacred order which governs the life of society as well as the life of nature." He also said: "Confucius never attempted to deny the transcendental character of the sacred order. He sought only to make it a living principle of social behavior and personal conduct instead of the esoteric lore of diviners and priests." "But though China has never been a theocratic civilization in the sense of a civilization that is governed by a priesthood, it has been more than any other culture a culture based on the Natural Law."
Confucian humanism is an integral and organic philosophy of man. On the one hand, it does not tear itself away from the Will of God. On the other, it does not segregate itself from the material world.
What is Confucius' conception of the Natural Law? Basically, it is the law of Jen or Love. Jen has the three aspects. First is the love of Heaven. As Confucius says: "The man of Jen serves his parents as he would serve Heaven, and serves Heaven as he would serve his parents." Second is the love of oneself. A man must be true to himself, true to his Heaven-endowed nature as man. This trueness to oneself is called Chung. The third is the love of others; one must treat others on the same basis as oneself. This is called Shu. In the Confucian system, Heaven is taken for granted and left more or less in the background. Both Confucius and his greatest exponent Mencius believe that the best way to serve Heaven is to cultivate oneself to the full and to love others as oneself; for by so doing one carries out the Will of Heaven. Love of oneself is the measuring rod for the love of others. As Confucius says: "Render not to others what you do not desire to have rendered to yourself." This is usually known in the West as the Golden Rule of Confucius. But it is to be noted that the teaching of Confucius on the love of others is not limited to the negative mode: it has its positive counterpart. "The man of Jen," says Confucius, "is he who desiring to establish himself goes on to establish others, and desiring to develop himself goes on to develop others. To be able from one's own self to draw a parallel for the treatment of others - that may be called the art of Jen."
There can be no question that Confucian humanism is centered in Goodness, but it is to be remembered that Confucius conceives of Goodness in terms of Beauty. As Confucius once said: "It is beautiful, indeed, to live in the neighborhood of Goodness (Jen). If a man does not choose to make his home in Goodness, how can he be called wise?" This cryptic saying reveals that in his mind Truth, Goodness and Beauty form an organic and harmonious whole.
Harmony is the soul of his personality and philosophy. His personality represents a marvelous harmony of qualities which in a lesser man would jar on one another. An inborn sense of balance served as the salt that kept all the good qualities from degenerating into their opposites. As his disciples testify of him: "The Master was affable yet firm, dignified but not overbearing, courteous and yet completely at ease." Likewise, we may say, Confucius was moral without being moralistic, reasonable but not rationalistic, serious and yet not without a salutary sense of humor, a great lover of learning and yet not a bookworm. On simplicity and refinement, he has this to say:
"Where simplicity overrides refinement, you get the boorishness of a rustic. Where refinement overrides simplicity, you get the pedantry of a scribe. Only when simplicity and refinement are harmoniously blended do you get the true gentleman."
To Confucius, harmony is not something which can be achieved once and for all; it is something which must be achieved every day anew, for every day presents new problems to be resolved harmoniously. Confucianism is not a static system but a dynamic tradition founded on the living example of Confucius.
Confucius' love of learning is well known. He loved the study of History, he loved Poetry, he loved Music, he loved the Book of Changes and he loved the Rites and Rituals. To take just one instance, he was once so absorbed in the study of certain types of music that "for three months he hardly knew the taste of meat." His appetite for learning seems to have grown keener with the growth of his age. In the evening of his life, he described himself as "a man so wholeheartedly absorbed in learning as to forget his meals, so happy in his pursuits as to forget his sorrows, being quite oblivious to his advancing age."
But the wonder of it is that with all his immense learning and his avowed love of the ancient sages, he was still an original and creative thinker. He himself claimed to be only a "transmitter," not an "originator." This is why many who studied his philosophy only superficially have marked him down as a confirmed conservative. The truth is that he was a most creative scholar: his creativity springs from his selectiveness. He had an unerring discernment for what is of permanent value and vital importance in the cultural tradition as he knew it, while discarding whatever is moribund and worthless. He was dedicated to history but at the same time aware that culture is a growing process and must constantly adapt itself to the conditions of the succeeding ages. It must never cease to assimilate new elements and turn them into living tissues in its own system.
Confucius was not the disciple of a single master. He drew his learning and wisdom from all sources. As he put it, "Even when walking in a party of three, I am sure to find my master. I can select their good qualities and copy them, and discern their bad qualities and correct them in myself." Again: "I hear much, select the good and follow it; I see much and take due note of it."
His interests were many-sided. Nothing human was alien to him. Yet his teaching was not with out a visible strain of the Taoistic philosophy of non-attachment. For instance: "How sublime were Shun and Yü (ancient sage rulers)! The whole world was theirs, yet they remained detached from it." Apparently he had absorbed grains of wisdom from Lao Tze.
Confucius had an open mind. It is precisely this open-mindedness that the best Confucian scholars of the later centuries have inherited from him. Men like Cheng Hao (1032-85), Chu Hsi (1130-1200), Lu Hsiang-shan (1139-1193) and Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529) were all deeply versed in Taoism and Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, which stimulated their minds, broadened their outlooks and deepened their insights. They brought their new knowledge to bear upon their rich Confucian heritage and gave it a new life.
The same tradition of open-mindedness and selective assimilation is still very much alive today when Chinese culture comes into vital contact with Western civilization. After the fashion of Confucius, Chinese leaders in political and intellectual fields have been grafting democracy and science upon Chinese ethics. The renaissance of Chinese culture is well on the way.
Confucius' aesthetic way of looking at moral life and human personality has been kept alive through the centuries. Confucius used to liken the virtue of the true gentleman to jade. Once his disciple Tze Kung asked him, "How is it that the true gentleman sets such a high value on jade but little on soapstone. Is it because jade is rare and soapstone plentiful?" Confucius replied:
"It is not because the soapstone is plentiful that he thinks little of it, nor because jade is rare that he sets high value on it. The true gentleman of ancient times found in jade the symbol of virtue. Soft, smooth and glossy, it symbolizes loving kindness; fine, compact and solid, it symbolizes intelligence; angular but not sharp and cutting. it symbolizes justice; when suspended on a thread, it looks as though it would fall to the ground - in this it is akin to humility; when struck, it emits a note, clear and prolonged, yet sharply defined in its termination - in this it is like music; its flaws do not cover its beauty, nor its beauty its flaws - in this it represents truthfulness; bright as a brilliant rainbow, it is like heaven; its mysterious essence being formed in the hills and streams. it is akin to the earth; standing out conspicuous in the symbols of rank, it can be likened to virtue; esteemed by all under the sky, it can be likened to the Tao."
This blending of Goodness and Beauty is a typical feature of Chinese ethics. That this way of looking at life is not outdated but is still of vital importance to the modern world finds an unexpected corroboration in the Nobel Lecture of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Commenting on the enigmatic saying of Dostoevsky: "Beauty will save the world," Solzhenitsyn has this to say:
"There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe.
"A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, sustained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them.
"Perhaps then the old trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is not simply the dressed-up, worn-out formula we thought in our presumptuous, materialistic youth? If the crowns of these three trees meet, as scholars have asserted, and if the too obvious, too straight sprouts of Truth and Goodness have been knocked down, cut off, not let grow, perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will work their way through, rise up to THAT VERY PLACE, and thus complete the work of all three?
"Then what Dostoevsky wrote - 'Beauty will save the world' - is not a slip of the tongue but a prophecy. After all he had the gift of seeing much, a man wondrously filled with light."
It is plain that Solzhenitsyn is fundamentally a humanist. His humanism, like that of Tolstoy and Pasternak, belongs to the category of Confucian humanism. From the standpoint of religion, Confucian humanism is centripetal, distinguished from the Comtean humanism, which is centrifugal.
The Confucian humanist never forgets that man's dignity lies in the moral law which Heaven has imprinted in his nature. This moral law which man bears within him is his badge of nobility. This is one of the reasons why Confucian humanism has proved of such perennial vitality and enduring influence. A further reason is that it has made ethics into a living work of art, and the work is still in the process of growing.
I am far from claiming that Confucianism constitutes the whole of Chinese culture. Still less do I claim that Confucius originated Chinese culture. In fact, one of the most precious ideas Confucius inherited from the cultural tradition of ancient China was the idea of harmony which may be said to be the soul of Chinese people.
Harmony is the common goal of all schools of Chinese philosophy. Confucianism seeks primarily the harmony of human relations. Taoism seeks the harmony of man with the Cosmos. Chinese Buddhism seeks the harmony between this-worldly and the other-worldly. These three main currents of Chinese culture are in harmony with one another. They are like three mighty rivers springing from the Eternal and flowing toward the Eternal.
In his profound study on the mysticism of Chuang Tzu, Dr. Ting has remarked, "Self-will and self-seeking are essentially out of harmony with the great whole and with other individuals. To work against the eternal laws of nature is to cause disharmony within oneself and with fellow creatures. Disharmony breeds evil destruction and punishment." In this, he has touched the common denominator of all schools of Chinese philosophy.
The Christian vision of Peace and Harmony is essentially at one with the Chinese vision. In his Message for the Celebration of the Day of Peace January 1, 1974, Pope Paul VI pointed out that "true Peace must be based on a sense of the untouchable dignity of the human person, from which arise inviolable rights and corresponding duties." If Confucius were living today, he would respond to these words with a hearty Amen.