The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge
became complete. Their knowledge being
complete, their thoughts were sincere.
Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons
were cultivated. Their persons being
cultivated, their families were regulated.
Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the
whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.
From the Son of Heaven down to the
mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of
everything besides. It cannot be, when
the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered.
End
quote. These words from the great man of
the East would be warmly endorsed in the West by ancient thinkers like Plato
and Aristotle and medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas. But they run counter to the modern West’s
liberalism, including the libertarian brand of liberalism that too often passes
for “conservatism.” The liberal attitude
is that the moral character of individuals does not matter for social order so
long as the right rules and institutions are in place. Part of Confucius’s point, and that of any
conservatism worthy of the name, is that rules and institutions are ineffectual
without individuals willing to subordinate their desires to them. And individuals who do not seek the good (so
as to “rectify their hearts”) and the true (thus pursuing the “investigation of
things”) can neither curb bad desires nor cultivate good ones. The brute force of legal coercion cannot
substitute for this missing moral fiber.
As we read in chapter 2 of The
Analects:
The Master said: “Lead them by political
maneuvers, restrain them with punishments: the people will become cunning and
shameless. Lead them by virtue, restrain
them with ritual: they will develop a sense of shame and a sense of
participation.” (Simon
Leys translation)
And again:
Someone said to Confucius: “Master,
why don’t you join the government?” The
Master said: “In the Documents it is said: ‘Only cultivate filial piety
and be kind to your brothers, and you will be contributing to the body
politic.’ This is also a form of
political action; one need not necessarily join the government.”
And in
chapter 12:
The Master said: “I could adjudicate
lawsuits as well as anyone. But I would
prefer to make lawsuits unnecessary.” (Leys translation)
In such
passages, Confucius reminds us that the personal is the political, not in the
totalitarian sense that absorbs the personal up into the political and tries to
mold attitudes and actions via state coercion, but on the contrary in the
humane sense that devolves the political down to the personal level, in the
recognition that social order depends more fundamentally on prevailing morals
and mores than on legislation.
In Our
Oriental Heritage, the first volume of his famous Story of
Civilization series, Will Durant glosses the passage quoted above from The Great Learning as follows:
This is the keynote and substance of
the Confucian philosophy; one might forget all other words of the Master and
his disciples, and yet carry away with these “the essence of the matter,” and a
complete guide to life. The world is at
war, says Confucius, because its constituent states are improperly governed;
these are improperly governed because no amount of legislation can take the
place of the natural social order provided by the family; the family is in
disorder, and fails to provide this natural social order, because men forget
that they cannot regulate their families if they do not regulate themselves;
they fail to regulate themselves because they have not rectified their hearts –
i.e., they have not cleansed their own souls of disorderly desires; their
hearts are not rectified because their thinking is insincere, doing scant
justice to reality and concealing rather than revealing their own natures;
their thinking is insincere because they let their wishes discolor the facts
and determine their conclusions, instead of seeking to extend their knowledge
to the utmost by impartially investigating the nature of things. (p. 668)
If this analysis
applied in Confucius’s day 2,500 years ago, and when Durant wrote these words
in 1935, it applies a thousandfold today.
Consider what, specifically, Confucius would regard as among the marks
of either a well-ordered character or a disordered one. Chapter 1 of The Analects expresses what is perhaps the best-known of Confucian
themes:
Master You said… “To respect parents
and elders is the root of humanity” …
Master Zeng said: “When the dead are
honored and the memory of remote ancestors is kept alive, a people’s virtue is
at its fullest.”
(Leys translation)
Chapter 4
admonishes us as follows:
The Master said: “Do not worry if you
are without a position; worry lest you do not deserve a position. Do not worry if you are not famous; worry
lest you do not deserve to be famous.” (Leys translation)
Chapter 12
advises:
The Master said: “The practice of
humanity comes down to this: tame the self and restore the rites… The practice
of humanity comes from the self, not from anyone else.” (Leys translation)
In chapter
16, we read:
Confucius said, “There are three
things which the superior man guards against.
In youth, when the physical powers are not yet settled, he guards
against lust. When he is strong and the
physical powers are full of vigor, he guards against quarrelsomeness. When he is old, and the animal powers are
decayed, he guards against covetousness…
There are three things of which the
superior man stands in awe. He stands in
awe of the ordinances of Heaven. He
stands in awe of great men. He stands in
awe of the words of sages. The mean man
does not know the ordinances of Heaven, and consequently does not stand in awe
of them. He is disrespectful to great
men. He makes sport of the words of
sages.”
And in
chapter 17, we’re told:
The Master said: “I detest purple
replacing vermilion; I detest popular music corrupting classical music; I
detest glib tongues overturning kingdoms and clans…
I cannot abide these people who fill
their bellies all day long, without ever using their minds!” (Leys translation)
Needless to
say, the modern character type is the opposite of that of which Confucius would
approve. Youthful insolence is esteemed
and ancestors and tradition are held in contempt. “Irreverent,” “subversive,”
“rebel,” and the like are stock terms of approbation. Power and fame are prized for their own sakes,
regardless of merit. The self is not
tamed but indulged, driven by covetousness, lust, and the filling of the
belly. Tastes become ever more vulgar; the
very notions of great men and sages, let alone heavenly ordinances, are sneered
at; and popular opinion is molded instead by the glib tongues of a relentlessly
cynical, mocking, and quarrelsome commentariat.
Longstanding morals and customs have been shredded and social order increasingly
depends instead on legislation, regulation, and the threat of litigation. Confucius, like
Plato in his analysis of democratic egalitarianism, might as well
have been describing twenty-first century America.
As hearts
are ever further from rectification and thoughts from sincerity, people increasingly
conform their ideas about the nature of things to their wishes, rather than conforming
their wishes to the nature of things.
Among the consequences is the
ideologization of language, so that it distorts reality rather than
revealing it and becomes a
tool for manipulation rather than rational discourse. Confucius warned of this too, in a famous
passage from chapter 13
of The Analects:
Tsze-lu said, “The ruler of Wei has
been waiting for you, in order with you to administer the government. What will you consider the first thing to be
done?” The Master replied, “What is
necessary is to rectify names.” “So!
Indeed!” said Tsze-lu. “You are wide of the mark! Why must there be such rectification?” The Master said, “How uncultivated you are,
Yu! A superior man, in regard to what he
does not know, shows a cautious reserve.
If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of
things. If language be not in accordance
with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”
Unfortunately,
we are very far from having a government capable of rectifying names. Nor
could disillusioned citizens trust it to do so if it tried. One more passage from The Analects, from chapter 12:
Tsze-kung asked about
government. The Master said, “The
requisites of government are that there be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of
military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler.” Tsze-kung said, “If it cannot be helped, and
one of these must be dispensed with, which of the three should be foregone
first?” “The military equipment,” said the Master. Tsze-kung again asked, “If it cannot be
helped, and one of the remaining two must be dispensed with, which of them
should be foregone?” The Master
answered, “Part with the food. From of old,
death has been the lot of all men; but if the people have no faith in their
rulers, there is no standing for the state.”…
The Duke Ching, of Ch’i, asked
Confucius about government. Confucius
replied, “There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is
minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.” “Good!” said the duke; “if, indeed, the
prince be not prince, the minister not minister, the father not father, and the
son not son, although I have my revenue, can I enjoy it?”
End quote. Ours is indeed an age in which fathers do not act like fathers, and authorities in general do not act like authorities. They either shirk their duties and flatter the mob, or go to the opposite extreme of exerting power in an arbitrary and despotic way. But that is, in the long run, inevitable in a liberal polity, where neither citizens nor rulers understand leadership in paternal terms, but rather as merely one more prize to be competed for in the marketplace. Sovereign individuals get the leaders they deserve – good and hard, as one of our own sages once put it.
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