Modernization and the Confucian World

Colorado College's 125th Anniversary Symposium
Cultures in the 21st Century: Conflicts and Convergences

Delivered at Colorado College on February 5, 1999 at 11:00 AM
in a discussion forum entitled "The Confucian World."

by

Li Zehou

"One material civilization, multiple spiritual cultures" (I prefer the German distinction of civilization and culture) is a favorite topic of mine. The first part of the topic means that modernization is irresistible in the world. People almost everywhere (there may be a few exceptions) prefer electric lamps to oil lamps, air conditioners to hand fans, cars to horses for transportation, houses to tents for living. Modernization has made great improvements in diet, clothing, housing, travel, and longevity, no matter the culture, religion, morality, or "nationality" of a people. I totally disagree with those who, emphasizing the negative aspects of modernization, intentionally overlook these fundamental facts. I raised the controversial topic of "a return to classical Marxism" and titled my philosophy jokingly as "a philosophy of eating."

"Food before morals" is a plain, homely, but important truth. Some people, especially intellectuals (who have no problem of food) easily forget it. So it seems to me that it is still important to repeat that economic development, especially the development of science and technology (according to classical Marxism, this is the determinative element of the productive force), is a presupposition for essential changes of other aspects of civilization. The material life of common people is the foundation of any civilization. It is economy, not culture, which decides the modern appearance of peoples everywhere, and this is the real reason why modernization is so powerful that it destroys almost every kind of obstacle and causes a series of cultural shifts. After all, people are not celestial spirits but physical beings who want to maintain their life—and hope for a better one in this world. For this reason, millions and millions of people, boys and girls, are leaving their traditional villages, coming to modern cities, enjoying the new life styles (getting and changing jobs by themselves, living in small families or living single), and accepting new values (individual autonomy, equal rights of competition). This is exactly what is happening in China today.

Today, [when] students everywhere spend a lot of time learning math, physics, chemistry, and computer science, science and technology (especially the "the free flow of information") become a universal language that more and more plays a determinate role in people’s lives. This means that modern technology and its partner, the modern economy, have not only changed living conditions, transportation, entertainment, family size, and life styles but have also brought to people new ideas and modern values, such as competition, privacy, equality, and freedom that people were not familiar with in their traditional cultures. Compared to one hundred years ago, different peoples and civilizations engage in much more communication and understanding, and they enjoy more and more things in common in material life and also in the world of thought. In the long run, people cannot refuse to acknowledge that, in modern life, there are some common values that were first carried out in the West, and that the important difference is not between the West and the East, as Samuel Huntington exaggerated, but between the traditional and the modern. Chinese people, through hard struggle over one hundred years, associated with the complexity of a long, painful resistance to imperialism, first accepted modern "Western" science and technology, and then acknowledged the ideas and theories of Western economics, politics, and philosophies (including Marxism). Today, young Chinese scholars are eager to learn and accept the philosophies of existentialism, liberalism, communitarianism, feminism, and postmodernism. Intellectuals in China, as you know, have always had a position of leadership of the nation and people.

There are two main schools among young, influential Chinese scholars today. One is liberalism. The other is populism (using the original Russian meaning). The former stresses the market economy, private ownership of property, globalization, democratic politics, human rights, and individualism, taking all these as universal values. The school of populism focuses more on the negative aspects of the market economy, strongly criticizes capitalism and multinational corporations, emphasizes the great gap between the rich and the poor in today’s China, and acclaims social justice, the interests of masses, national traditions (even nationalism), and the politics of recognition. [Populists] are against homogeneity, Euro-centrism and Orientalism, using Neo-Marxism, multiculturalism, and post-colonialism as their banners and weapons. These two schools argue with each other. But the main theories of both are much closer to contemporary Western ideas than to traditional Confucianism or Taoism. It is natural, after all, that following the domination of Marxism-Maoism over several decades, not only Hayek and Karl Popper are attractive, Foucault and Derrida are also not alien to them.

But China has her long and strong tradition, the struggle and compromise of which with modernization has produced a tragic and colorful history in modern ideology. Today, [the] Chinese government claims to be "building up socialism" (which the populist school also inclines to, although with a different meaning), while Westerners say this is capitalism (which the liberal school supports). The real point lies in how to qualify this "socialism" or "capitalism" (both of which are connected with modernization). For the school of liberalism, this "capitalism" is almost equal to "total Westernization," which ordinary Chinese have difficulty accepting. The socialism of the populist school rouses the painful memory of Mao’s pan-moralist utopia and easily agrees with the idea of the clash of civilizations. The weakness of both schools shows that Chinese people need to search for a new way and their own model of modernization. Although the material civilization in China can be almost the same as in the Western world, there must be a different spiritual culture there. This spiritual culture will have important impacts on the material civilization. The "miracle" and crisis of the East-Asian economy of modernization showed this. What will happen to China is the next question. The relationship between material civilization (modernization) and spiritual culture (tradition) then becomes a key point. Therefore, I think it is better to return to the Chinese tradition to learn something from history, especially to return to the history of Confucianism that dominates Chinese tradition.

Roughly speaking, Confucianism has passed through three main periods. The root of Confucianism (and also Taoism) is the ancient shamanism rationalized. Following in the steps of the Duke of Chou, it is Confucius who made this breakthrough in the axis age (around 500 BC). He emphasized "humanity" (or "benevolence," "jen") and "rites" to interpret the ancient shamanistic rituals and mystic experience, built up the "pragmatic rationality" (as I named it) of the Chinese tradition in place of a real religion. The second stage of Confucianism started around 100 BC (in the Han dynasty). The characteristic of this stage lies in that, while absorbing teachings of Taoism, Legalism, Mohism, and the Yin-Yang school, Confucianism made a feedback system consisting of a "yin-yang and five functions" cosmology, which is a comprehensive picture of the whole world including the natural world, society, politics, morals, soul, and body. This cosmology in some degree still maintains its influence on common people even today. The third stage of Confucianism began around 1200 AD (in the Sung dynasty). Confucianism at this stage accepted and assimilated Buddhism, which had come from India, and constructed its moral metaphysics as a quasi-religion that had a great impact on the whole of society over seven hundred years.

Following changed material circumstances, Confucianism, compared to other real religions, easily changes its doctrines, concepts, structures, and interpretations. What Confucianism always keeps is the spirit or characteristic of "pragmatic rationality" (compared to Western speculative rationality or pure reason), "a culture of happiness" (compared to the Western culture of sin), and a "one world view" (compared to the Western "two worlds view," as in the Bible, Plato, and Kant). Confucius, who was not the son of God, emphasized that he never possessed any a priori knowledge and stressed the learning of "principle" and "flexibility." This implies that there is no unchangeable tradition. Confucius said, "to attack different viewpoints is harmful." The "flexibility" of Confucianism is not just the principle of tolerance, it is the acceptance, absorption, and, in the end, assimilation of different and even opposite ideas. Today, for the modernization of people’s material lives, just as it absorbed and assimilated the Yin-Yang school and Buddhism before, Confucianism will absorb and assimilate Marxism, liberalism, and existentialism and change its notions and forms again, take another development, and enter a new period. Based on this argument, we can say yes and no to the imported liberalism and populism mentioned above.

Confucianism was fiercely attacked by modern Chinese intellectuals from the May-Fourth Movement (1919) through the Marxist-Maoist revolution. The critics bound politics with culture and wanted to destroy them as a whole. Instead, they built up Marxism-Maoism as the new political-moral culture. Although neither Confucianism nor Marxism-Maoism is a real religion, they are political-moral cultures and play religious functions. But what China badly needs today is the separation of religion from politics, of "church" from state. In Chinese circumstance, this is the discrimination and separation of "social morals" (connected with politics) from "religious morals" (connected with faith in Confucianism or Marxism). Both schools, liberalism and populism, overlook this key point.

The main theory here is that we should acknowledge that "social morals" (the value of individual autonomy, equal opportunities, freedom of competition, and human rights) are based on the modern life of common people in an industrializing country. We have to respect them and turn them into legal forms. That the liberal school emphasizes these is correct. But this recognition or respect has nothing to do with an acceptance of so-called "universal values" (beyond concrete time and space) or "transcendent principle." The liberal school always intends to explain democratic politics, human liberty, or equal rights as universal truths, possessing a holy character that came from Christianity or Western culture. This anti-historical theory is harmful. As I emphasized at the beginning of this paper, it is the concrete historical situation, the market economy, and modern life that demands these values and principles. These modern requirements will push Confucianism, according to its "pragmatic rationality," to divide itself into two morals. "Social morals" adopt the above-mentioned principles of modern life and ask people as members of society to obey and carry them out. And Confucianism will also insist on its traditional ideas, such as sympathy, harmony, cooperation, common welfare, [and] family values ("kindness of father and filial pity of son"), as "religious morals." Through education and traditional customs, Chinese people are and will be familiar with them and will make their own judgments and choices, consciously and unconsciously.

This means that people can take or not take these traditional ideas as their "ultimate concern" to direct their lives and affect their social behavior. This means also that people can choose other faiths (such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Communism) as their moral doctrines to direct their behavior. The prerequisite of this free choice is that we make the discrimination between "social morals" and "religious morals," as we would make a distinction between "respect" ("shu," to others) and "loyalty" ("zhong," for oneself ) in Confucius’ original teaching. The former deals with the problem of justice, while the latter deals with the problem of goodness. The one concerns the private, spiritual life of individuals, and the other determines the public, social behavior of individuals. Ethics divides [them] into two yet [they] are still complementary. This distinction and complementarity will let "social morals" get sufficient application, on the one hand, but not go to extremes on the other. In other words, we respect individual interests and rights, but also recognize for individuals (not for society) that there may be something more valuable—higher—than personal interests and rights. While recognizing this as "more valuable," we do not let these "higher things," such as religious "calling," "proletarian policy," or "national dignity," become a constitutive principle to organize social life, inappropriately overriding individual rights and interests.

Our school of populism strongly appreciates communitarianism. Communitarianism and Marxism both, in their source, are more or less connected with Hegelianism. In practice, the unit of "community" would likely take superiority over individual basic rights. In this aspect, we have already learned many lessons in Mao’s period. Therefore, for Confucian pragmatic rationality, this "something higher" cannot be any kind of "community" but only can be the psychological feelings, which will smooth but not control the relationships of individuals. This "something higher" in human psychology adds warm emotional sensibility and sympathetic thinking to legal rights and the judicial field. Thus, there will be more private negotiation than court judgements, more flexible mediation than reliance on legal codes, more voluntary cooperation than cruel competition, more coexistence and melding of religions than assertion of the superiority of any religion, more ethnic conciliation than racial struggle, and more self-ordering and less coercion of the small community (neighborhood committee, unit administration, local police substation) than distant, powerful authorities’ domination there. We take the social contract—individual autonomy, human rights, and democratic politics—as the "constitutive principle" of a Chinese modern society pragmatically. We also revive the Confucian worship of "Heaven, Earth, Country, Parents (ancestors), Teachers" as a "regulative principle" to direct people’s thinking, feeling, and behavior and influence society. Chinese modernity, then, will have a different face from that of the West, and this is exactly "one material civilization, multiple spiritual cultures." But this is definitely not the academic multiculturalism that possesses the character of radical relativism I oppose.

The separation of the two morals seems to coincide with the common sense of the American separation of church and state. For Chinese, it is a more difficult task, not only because the combination and penetration of these two morals is a thousands years’ tradition but also because Confucianism is not a real religion (so it is less clear how we can make or why we need to make this separation.) The realistic point here is that, clothed in political organization, the Chinese Communism Party is, in essence, the "church." It is difficult to separate its religious morals (such as a communal utopia and the "Lei Feng spirit") from social morals. If we can successfully make that separation in Confucianism, it may be helpful to argue for something new in this field of political philosophy. The Chinese acceptance of Marxism was related to their Confucian tradition in depth psychology. (This is another long story.)

The separation of these two morals would also smooth the confrontations of different peoples and different civilizations. While social morals can find "overlapping consensus" (John Rawls, Political Liberalism) among peoples for communication and peaceful coexistence in the modern world, religious morals still preserve their own special doctrines and independence. Believing in God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Confucius, or Communism, or having no belief in anything, including the good, does not matter, because belief is not the constitutive principle of society. And we prefer to pay more attention to the common elements of social morals associated with modern life among different peoples than to exaggerate the domination of religious morals, even under the fashionable flag of "cultural recognition." Of course, the relationship of these two morals is more complicated than I have described above (cf. Michael Sandel’s "critique of minimalist liberalism," Democracy’s Discontent); there are contradictions and conflicts between the two, and the attainment of some modern social morals would damage traditional religious morals. For China, it is a painful deconstruction of tradition (including Confucian tradition and Mao’s revolutionary tradition). But, as Thomas Sowell said, "it would be contrary to all experience if there were no losses accompanying the gains" (Race and Culture). Although there are many difficulties and obstacles in practice and in theory, the main idea of the distinction and complementarity of the two morals, I think, is still viable.

This separation and complementarity of the two morals is indeed not easy to attain, especially in some cultures. In China, it is the "pragmatic rationality" of the Confucian tradition that affords this possibility. This "pragmatic rationality" stresses the melding and penetration of emotion and rationality. In some senses it is quite different from the Western cultural tradition that emphasizes the guiding, controlling, pressure, and rule of intellect, reason, or rationality over feeling, emotion, and sensuality. As Freud ironically put it, "Our best hope for the future is that intellect—the scientific spirit, reason—may in the process of time establish a dictatorship in the mental life of man." Instead of rational control, Confucianism emphasizes the mutual penetration and merging of sensuality and rationality, individuality and sociality, physiology and sociology, from consciousness to unconsciousness. It will not allow the dictatorship of the intellect over sensuality, nor allow the terrible exposure of blind, primitive emotion. The harmony of the whole psyche of Confucianism is in opposition to the alienation of rationality and the alienation of sensuality.

This is a big topic that connects with "human nature," and there is no space to explain it here. I raise this here only because that many horrible events have happened in the banner of nationalism, religious extremism, or fundamentalism, which are always a mixture of the blind emotion of faith and the dictatorship of the intellect. This dictatorship of the intellect uses the name of God, Jesus, or Allah to call people to fight cruelly. In history, the clash of Muslim and crusaders of the Middle Ages was a tragic lesson. Today, a good theory and clear consciousness of making the necessary distinction or separation of the two morals is still lacking. Maybe tomorrow, in the possible clash of Muslim and Christian, who both bind politics with religion, mix social morals with religious morals, Chinese culture, with its pragmatic rationality and tolerant tradition (Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism enjoyed peaceful coexistence over a thousand years) and with so large a population, can play a major role as mediator and compromiser. (In the Islamic world, there is almost no separation of church from state. In the Christian world, the separation is at the level of institutions and forms, not really in morals, since there have been horrible violent attacks on abortion clinics and gays.)

In fact, real clashes always come from the contradiction and conflict of economic-political interests but are often disguised under the banner of culture, religion, and nationality. Politicians like to use the name of culture as a flag to cover their real interests and intentions. Therefore, we cannot take governments as representatives of cultures. The policies and strategies of governments, and governments themselves, change from time to time, but the cultures do not. Culture also has no absolute independence; it changes with developments of material life of people but does not necessarily clash with other cultures. If we do not put any religious moral (such as Christianity or Islam) or traditional culture (such as the American democracy) as a universal truth or transcendent value, if we do not encourage the invention of a new cold war theory, there would be no proof of the necessity of a clash of civilizations in logic and in reality. And "there are far too many politicized people on earth today for any nation readily to accept the finality of America’s historical mission to lead the world" (Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism). Thus, a harmonious coexistence of multiple cultures accompanying the same modern material civilization will be the future of humankind, a future for which we have to struggle.

© 1999 by Li Zehou