Deeper Unity

Via The Western Confucian, Francesco Sisci writes:

Let's be fair. The issue is so real that it is puzzling to us even now: how can one be both Christian and Confucian? In the 16th and 17th centuries, at the time when the West was torn by cruel wars between Catholics and Protestants, Jesuits - the Catholic soldiers of Christ - fought blasphemy, and Protestants were arguing from the farthest East that a man could be both Catholic and Confucian.

They were suggesting a path of communion with the Protestants, but were also brooding on something that was exotically different from the European and scholastic tradition, elaborating on the finest differences. The deeper unity of man, suggested in their approach, was a leap of reason for the West that ended only temporarily in the 18th century, when they were ordered to leave China.

However, Confucianism and its talent for bringing things together still lurked in China when Westerners came back en masse in the 19th century. Then China started to officially renounce its Confucian tradition, and embraced the Western tradition of distinctions: one would be either Christian or Buddhist, either Confucian or communist, either Western or Chinese. Most Chinese "converted" to the Western mindset, and yet a handful of Chinese didn't accept it.

Liang Shuming, who died in 1988, insisted that Western distinctions didn't make sense, and Guy Alitto, an American, used his Western sensibility to bring up this issue for ears in both the East and West that had grown deaf to this old knowledge. Thirty years after being written in Chinese, the conversations between Liang, the old man from the Yellow River basin, and Alitto, the young man from Southern Italy via the US, have just been published in English (Guy Alitto, Has Man a Future? Dialogues with the Last Confucian, Foreign Language Teaching Research Press, 2010).

Confucius is confusion in Western terms, Liang explained to Alitto. Liang claims to be Confucian and communist, Buddhist and Christian. Faith or belief is a way of life, an experience first:

What, in my view, to my knowledge, is the difference between Chinese culture and Western culture, and Indian culture? It is that Chinese culture knows of human "rationality". Chinese cultures believe in the human; not in God, as with Western culture or in Allah as in Islamic culture. Chinese culture is built upon and trusts the human. The distinguishing characteristic of Confucianism is that it relies on, and is built upon, humans, not some other being. (p 17)

The human experience brings everything together: ''Confucianism is with an 'all encompassing, empty and impartial mind' '' (p 139).

This unity breaks the distinctions we are used to dealing with in the West. It is not enough in Chinese tradition to know things or to be ethically ''good'', but one man has to be both. This deeper unity has also crept into the communist tradition, where decades ago cadres were called on to be ''red and expert''. The sentiment is evident now since the party organization wants officials to be virtuous (de) and capable (cai). Alitto investigates and translates - for readers in the East and West intoxicated by the Western analytical mind - the eclecticism and the capability to eat, digest, and transform everything in a ''Confucian confusion'' called China. This tradition is alive and strong in China now, at a time when China is moving into the world, having eaten large chunks of Western tradition.

The distinguishing feature of Chinese culture lies in this. Chinese culture puts importance on human relationships. It expands on familial relationships into broader society beyond the family. For example, a teacher is called "teacher-father", a schoolmate is called a "school brother". In ways like this, a person always has the close, family-like, intimate feelings. Applying such relationships to society, it seems to bring distant people close together, to bring outsiders inside. This is the distinguishing feature of China and Chinese culture. To put this feature into a few words, it is the opposite of the individual-centered, egocentric way. What is that, then? The essence of the matter is mutually to value and respect the other party. (p 23)

Thirty years ago, Alitto saw this undying trend - long before the beginning of the Confucian revival in China and Asia. Is Confucius ready for a big cultural invasion of the West? Liang and Alitto, three decades ago, at the time when they were conversing for the book, thought the West needed Confucius as much as China did, and Beijing thinks so now. And it is not simply about the spread of soft power - it is a spiritual need of all men trying not to be separated from one another through tiny and ultimately insignificant cultural distinctions.

Distinctions also exist in China, as Liang illustrates by delving into differences between Buddhism and Confucianism, but in a nutshell, they are distinctions of experience, not of abstract knowledge or of religious faith, which remain separate. This was a path already envisioned by the Jesuits centuries ago when they tried to bring Catholicism and Confucianism together and failed because some Western cardinals thought their own tradition was being endangered. In a way, Confucius was a vessel and Christianity the content, they argued, as early Christianity absorbed Greek thought in its early stages, and this helped the understanding and spread of the new religion.

Now an American, Alitto raises the issue again, giving voice to the deep and very subtle reasoning of a Chinese master coming from an ancient time. He does it with extreme modesty, which is the true hallmark of a giant, yet he leads the conversation and makes clear what is shrouded in mystery - the unclear connections of the different branches of Chinese cultural tradition. Then who is the teacher in these conversations? The Chinese would argue it is Liang, who responds to the questions of the younger Alitto, as if Confucius was explaining the questions of his followers. Yet looking from another perspective - the Western one - the teacher could be Alitto, as in Plato's dialogues in which Socrates leads the reasoning by asking questions to his interlocutors.

Looking from another point of view again, it is not important who is teacher as long as a greater truth comes up.

The greater truth is probably this: Confucian is the name to the "confusion" of the Chinese tradition. And this is valuable: you cannot limit yourself by excluding other ways of knowledge. This brings tolerance and respect, yet it does not ignore the fact that differences exist and that improvements on other traditions can be achieved - as long as they're based on respect. Knowledge and rationality is not simply cold calculus, but it also has an ''emotional basis'' that can't be ignored. Otherwise emotions will pop up unexpectedly from some other parts. Experience is very important and thus the experience of teaching and learning together is fundamental. The West may need this, as also China does.

Politically - and Confucius was very politically minded - can this be translated into Chinese soft power? It will not be easy, and it goes well beyond teaching Chinese language in a few Confucius Institutes. Meanwhile, China will have to go further down the road of reforms and opening up by fully digesting into its systems and “Confucianizing” some harder parts of the Western tradition - like, for instance, democracy.