Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning

Geir Sigurðsson

Description

Honorable Mention, 2018 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society of Professors of Education

Geir Sigurðsson offers a reconsideration of li, often translated as "ritual" or "ritual propriety," one of the most controversial concepts in Confucian philosophy. Strong associations with the Zhou period during which Confucius lived have put this concept at odds with modernity's emphasis on progressive rationality and liberation from the yoke of tradition. Sigurðsson notes how the Confucian perspective on learning provides a more balanced understanding of li. He goes on to discuss the limitations of the critique of tradition and of rationality's claim to authority, referencing several Western sources, notably Hans-Georg Gadamer, John Dewey, and Pierre Bourdieu. An exposition of the ancient Chinese worldview of time and continuous change further points to the inevitability of li's adaptable and flexible nature. Sigurðsson argues that Confucius and his immediate followers did not endorse a program of returning to the Zhou tradition, but rather of reviving the spirit of Zhou culture, involving active and personalized participation in tradition's sustention and evolution.
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Interpretive Viewpoints and Prejudgments
Subjective Objectivity and Hermeneutic Productivity of Cultural Distance
Chinese Culture, Ritual Propriety, and the Importance of Learning
The Modern Opprobrium of Ritual and the Confucian Tradition

1. First Assemblage: Tradition and Timeliness

From Aversion to Rehabilitation: The Modern Discourse on Tradition
Tradition as Dao 道: The Early Confucian Approach to Tradition
The Temporal Sequence of Practice and the Chinese Notion of Time
Hitting the Mark: Zhong 中, Shizhong 時中, and Zhongyong 中庸

2. Second Assemblage: From Reason to Intelligence

Education and/or Indoctrination: A Borderless Distinction
Reason I: Max Weber’s Paradox
Reason II: The Quest for Reason in China
Reason III: Reasonable Alternatives
Reason IV: The Interplay of Li 禮, Yi 義, and Li 理

3. Third Assemblage: Education as Humanization

Education through Experience: Reconciling Tradition and Reason
Aesthetic Consciousness and Ritual Knowledge
Internalization and Efficacy: Li 禮, Yue 樂, De 德, and Ren 仁
Education as Exhortation and Personal Cultivation

Concluding Remarks
Notes
Literature Cited
Index

Sujets

• Confucianism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438454429
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture

Roger T. Ames, editor
Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning
A Philosophical Interpretation
Geir Sigurðsson
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Geir Sigurðsson, date.
Confucian propriety and ritual learning : a philosophical interpretation / Geir Sigurðsson.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5441-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5442-9 (ebook)
1. Philosophy, Confucian. 2. Tradition (Philosophy). 3. Ritual—China. 4. Education—China. I. Title. B127.C65G45 2015 181′.112—dc23 2014006585
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Interpretive Viewpoints and Prejudgments
Subjective Objectivity and Hermeneutic Productivity of Cultural Distance
Chinese Culture, Ritual Propriety, and the Importance of Learning
The Modern Opprobrium of Ritual and the Confucian Tradition
1. First Assemblage: Tradition and Timeliness
From Aversion to Rehabilitation: The Modern Discourse on Tradition
Tradition as Dao 道 : The Early Confucian Approach to Tradition
The Temporal Sequence of Practice and the Chinese Notion of Time
Hitting the Mark: Zhong 中 , Shizhong 時中 , and Zhongyong 中庸
2. Second Assemblage: From Reason to Intelligence
Education and/or Indoctrination: A Borderless Distinction
Reason I: Max Weber’s Paradox
Reason II: The Quest for Reason in China
Reason III: Reasonable Alternatives
Reason IV: The Interplay of Li 禮 , Yi 義 , and Li 理
3. Third Assemblage: Education as Humanization
Education through Experience: Reconciling Tradition and Reason
Aesthetic Consciousness and Ritual Knowledge
Internalization and Efficacy: Li 禮 , Yue 樂 , De 德 , and Ren 仁
Education as Exhortation and Personal Cultivation
Concluding Remarks
Notes
Literature Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
One who is not a sage is incapable of carrying through a major project without involving a few other persons, and a true sage would surely involve many more. While I of course assume the sole responsibility for the shortcomings of this work, it would not have been brought to conclusion without the direct and indirect help from others.
First of all, I want to convey my thanks to my former teachers in the Department of Philosophy at University of Hawai’i at Manoa, in particular Roger T. Ames, Thomas E. Jackson, and Graham Parkes (now at University College Cork, Ireland), who have generously shared with me, through words and deeds, their insights into and visions of the possibility of a better humanity.
The final phase of research for this book was undertaken at the Nordic Centre, Fudan University, Shanghai, and at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, while I was on sabbatical leave from the University of Iceland in 2012. I am grateful to all parties for having made these fruitful and savory visits possible.
While I was preparing the manuscript for publication, Neal O’Donoghue smoothed out rough edges in the text and made a number of ingenious philosophical suggestions to clarify its arguments.
Last but not least, I owe much gratitude to my wonderful family, Vilma Kinderyte, Viktoría and Emilía, for their patience and loving support. This book is for them.
Introduction
Interpretive Viewpoints and Prejudgments
Most serious students of philosophy in the contemporary West have surely felt themselves confronted with the following dilemma: on the one hand, one needs to undergo the immensely time-consuming process of adequately familiarizing oneself with a philosophical tradition spanning over two and a half millennia. Some of the more richly insightful philosophers and philosophical schools of the past appear to be virtually inexhaustible sources, and thus to merit a lifetime of study as such. On the other hand, philosophers are increasingly being expected, not least in their own camp, to make meaningful contributions to seminal issues and toward finding solutions to the more acute problems of the present. The continuously evolving puzzles arising in all areas of human existence require an ability to come up with fresh approaches and perspectives that would seem to leave little room for a focused concentration on bygone philosophical ventures.
This has brought many philosophers to refrain for the most part from considering the second task and to focus exclusively on the first. Albert Camus described the situation most poignantly when he wrote that “the age of philosophers concerned with philosophy was followed by the age of professors of philosophy concerned with philosophers.” 1
Further exploration of this “dilemma,” however, reveals that it is overstated, resting upon the misconception that the two tasks are clearly distinguishable. It is assumed, in the first case, that we are able to engage in some kind of “pure” philosophy detached from and independent of tradition, culture and historical circumstances; and, in the second case, that further analysis of past philosophies will automatically lead to a better understanding of them. The latter belief presupposes that the scholarship of philosophical interpretation evolves in a qualitatively linear fashion. Certainly, misunderstandings occur, and they will often be revealed and corrected through further investigation. But the “better” understanding we obtain of past ideas will for the most part be better in the sense of being more appropriate to the paradigms of understanding and value within which we ourselves operate. In fact, in both of the above-mentioned tasks, we make past philosophies relevant, with varying degrees of success, to our present circumstances and issues. The difference between nuanced interpretations is predominantly a difference of emphasis and focus, depending on different intentionalities and attitudes of the diversely situated interpreters.
However, because we tend to underestimate the role of our own creativity in our hermeneutical ventures, the application of the philosophy in question tends to result in a detailed discussion and controversy over the “correctness” of its interpretation. And since the detailed interpretations of a particular thinker or school are almost as many as there are specialists, we get stuck again in concentrating on the first task—that of enhancing our understanding of past philosophies.
The present work certainly contains an implicit claim to a reconstruction of meaning. But it is a reconstruction that takes into account the situatedness of the reconstructing agent—namely, in this case, me and the projected audience. Hence, although the main source of this work is the Confucian philosophy of the Warring States period in ancient China, there will be no pretension toward a reconstruction of the “original” meaning of that philosophy. There is, in any case, no available “neutral” standard by which to appraise such a meaning.
It is a commonplace of philosophy and cultural studies to observe that whatever we approach, we always approach from some point of view. There is, as Thomas Nagel pointed out, no such thing as a view from nowhere. Evidently, such perspectivism applies not least to texts. When reading a text, we cannot but approach it from the point of view of the expectations we have of it, however vague they may be. One might object that in some cases we know nothing about the text before picking it up and therefore have no expectations at all. Nevertheless, as soon as we start deciphering it, we are bound to form some. We try to place the text (by language, period, genre, etc.), and as soon as we have made some preliminary categorizations, we have “pre-judgments” about it.
The notion of “pre-judgment” is borrowed from the late Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose hermeneutic philosophy serves as an important inspiration for the approach taken to the topic at hand. Pre-judgment ( Vor-urteil ), a rehabilitation of the more pejorative notion of “prejudice” ( Vorurteil ), refers to the culturally and personally conditioned categories that enable us to meaningfully conceptualize and contextualize the objects of our attention, whereby we begin our journey on the path towards understanding them. Our understanding of things is therefore bound to be conditioned, not only by our particular cultural heritage, language, and environment, but also by our own education, experience, and personality. As Gadamer has written,
[e]very age has to understand a transmitted text in its own way, for the text is a part of the whole of the tradition in which the age takes an objective interest and in which it seeks to understand itself. The real meaning of a text, as it speaks to the interpreter, does not depend on the contingencies of the author and whom he originally wrote for. It is at least not exhausted by them, for it is partly determined also by the historical situation of the i