Post date: Oct 7, 2016 2:02:42 PM
This is the first post in a planned series for those who:
1- desire to read or teach Confucius' Analects as philosophy, but
2- lack knowledge about classical Chinese language, culture, history, philosophy.
(The translations from Chinese are my own; bear in mind, I'm still learning and practicing.)
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On The Analects
Generations of people have studied Confucius’ teachings in the Analects (論語 Lúnyǔ, meaning spoken discussions). I'll refer to the Analects as an authoritative source about his ideas. But Confucius himself did not leave any writings. While he was alive, people came to study with him. These students would ask Confucius questions, they would attend meetings between Confucius and various political leaders, and they sometimes would follow Confucius on his travels throughout the empire. After Confucius died, his students (and their students, and so on) compiled a book of conversations. These are the Analects.
The Analects are not written for posterity. They supplement an oral tradition, beginning with Confucius’ students and continuing through their own students. That tradition contains much that remains unwritten, not only common cultural knowledge but also knowledge conveyed between teacher and student. We have access to some of this knowledge, in the form of historical documents and later commentaries by those working in the Confucius tradition. So interpreting the Analects is not a matter of “anything goes.” Nor, however, is it a matter of “close reading,” because the text by itself often underdetermines its intended meaning. In this way, the Analects is akin to New Testament from the Christian tradition.
The Analects divides into 20 chapters. Each chapter further divides into passages. Hence, in order to cite a passage in the Analects, scholars refer to the chapter number followed by the passage number for the chapter. For example, Analects 1.3 refers to the third passage in the first chapter. It says,
子曰： 「巧言令色，鮮矣仁！」
Zǐ yuē: “Qiǎo yán líng sè, xiān yǐ rén!”
The Master said: “Skillful words and splendid appearances rarely [accompany] humaneness!”
Other passages are similar, albeit often slightly longer. Each records a remembered conversation. The conversations have minimal context. Analects 1.3, for example, shows the Master, Confucius, berating those who suppose that being well-spoken and well-dressed are marks of respectable and authoritative persons. But it does not reveal how the discussion arose. Nor does it reveal Confucius’ reasons for resisting the association.
This absence of explicit reasons has led some to hold that Confucius is not a philosopher, and that Confucianism offers neither philosophy nor morality. Immanuel Kant, for example, remarks,
Philosophy is not to be found in the whole Orient…. Their teacher Confucius teaches in his writings nothing outside a moral doctrine designed for the princes … and offers examples of former Chinese princes. … But a concept of virtue and morality never entered the heads of the Chinese. In order to arrive at an idea … of the good [certain] studies would be required, of which [the Chinese] know nothing. (Quoted by H. von Glasenapp, Kant und die Religionen des Osten (1954), 105-106, trans. Julia Ching.)
Kant’s concern, in part, is that finds none of the terms about virtue and morality with which he is familiar from his studies of ancient Greek thought. This is a parochial concern, and we ought to dismiss. For, through parity of reasoning, it equally follows that the ancient Greeks lacked philosophy and morality by virtue of using none of the terms familiar from studies of ancient Chinese thought.
There is, beneath the surface of Kant’s remarks, a better concern, namely, that philosophy essentially involves the giving of reasons for one’s views, and that morality essentially involves generalizing beyond particular cases to generalities about goodness and virtue. This concern rests upon more solid ground. The Analects, for example, rarely exhibits Confucius’ supporting reasons for his various declarations, and Confucius rarely generalizes his examples. But, despite these textual absences, reasons are available. They would have been transmitted orally between teachers and students, and we find them made more explicit by later commentaries from the Confucian tradition. Confucius’ reasoning, moreover, often proceeds by way of (implicit) analogy. So paradigmatic particular cases, together with a proper sense of analogical relevance, often substitutes for generalities.
All of this is to say that studying the Analects resembles studying the Christian New Testament more than studying Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Proper study involves using passages that discuss similar themes in order to better understand central concepts. Proper study of the Analects also involves discerning relations among themes in order to better understand the kinds of inferences central concepts support. Both of these tasks require reading non-linearly. Classical studies of the Analects thereby demanded thorough familiarity with the text.
Contemporary technology obviates some of this demand by facilitating direct textual search for relevant concepts. But these searches require some care, because of translational variations between Chinese and English. (Digital versions of the Analects that contain Chinese text in addition to English translation are especially helpful, because translators sometimes use different English words for the same Chinese character. For example, a search at <http://ctext.org/analects> shows James Legge variously translating 仁 (rén) as humanity, virtue, and benevolence.) For beginners unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Chinese characters and translational nuances, commentaries on the text provide more explicit direction.