The Ideological Development of Confucianism in the Global Age

Abstract

Certain Western cosmological assumptions have led to differences between Western intellectual tradition and philosophy and thus political thought currents in the Chinese tradition. Ru xue or rujia sixiang, although translated as “Confucianism” in English, does not contain any sense of “-ism” and indicates doctrine, theory, and system of principles. Confucianism preceded by “neo-” or “post-” only causes confusion and miscomprehension for the usage's Western implications. The exact issue is indeed “Confucianism in the Postmodern Era”; that is, an extension of influence from China to the West, suggesting that Confucianism go global in the global age in order to make its perspectives accessible as an important part of global culture.

Notes

¹ Chenshan Tian, “Tongbian: A Chinese Strand of Thought,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 27:4 (2000), pp. 441–468.

² Manfred B. Steger (ed.), Rethinking Globalism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), p. 2.

³ David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking Through Confucius (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987), pp. 11–25. It may be worth pointing out that the limit of the dualistic mind-body conception is also critiqued from within the Western tradition as well, particularly via postformal psychology and integral studies.

⁴ Chenshan Tian, Chinese Dialectics: From Yijing to Marxism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), p. 174.

⁵ For example, Mou Zongsan complains that Chinese culture was not successful in developing rational conceptions such as “constructive presentation” or “frame presentation.” For him, generally speaking the superiority of rational thinking referred to nothing but two things, science and democracy. Hence, he concludes that the reason for China not to have developed science and democracy was that China had not been adequate in rational constructive or frame presentation. Mu fails in identifying the structural differences that characterize the modality of correlative thinking in Chinese tradition, which did not lead to the domination of the kind of Western-styled rational assumption. Mu Zongsan, Zhi Dao yu Zheng Dao [The Ruling Way and the Political Way], (Guilin: Guangxi University Press, 2006), pp. 44–45.

⁶ For a study of these terms, see Tian, Chinese Dialectics, op. cit., pp. 175–178.

⁷ Manfred B. Steger, Globalization, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 97–110.

⁸ For example, since economic reform there has been a popular circulation of the Deng Xiaoping assertion: “In addition to improving productive forces, what else socialism means has not been that clear to us.” Also, scholars of Marxism started an attack on the theory of class struggle in Marx and Mao.

⁹ Roger T. Ames, “Mengzi Zhexue yu Zhixu de Weijuexing [Cosmos in the Accosmotic Han Dynasty],” in Li Minghui, Mengzi Sixiang de Zhexue Tantao [A Philosophical Exploration of Mencius's Thought], (Taipei: Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Zhongguo Wenzhe Yanjiusuo Choubei chu, 1995), p. 39.

¹⁰ President Hu Jintao's Important Speech, April 24, 2002, Malaysia, available at: < http://www.china.org.cn>.

¹¹ Even China's resistance in this respect is rather ambiguous since, according to Francesco Sisci, “Around the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008, the Central Party School, the top research and training institution for leading Chinese cadres, spearheaded a movement to analyze the positive sides of democracy. Its journal, Study Times, published a spate of articles, and three Party School teachers, Zhou Tianyong, Wang Changjiang, and Wang Anling, even edited a comprehensive book on the subject, Gongjian (‘storming the stronghold,’ or democratizing the political system). The authors argued that political reforms had to proceed from economic development, although they admitted that, ‘China's most innovative viewpoint was in favor of studying the Western political civilization, and wanting to realize popular suffrage and a multiparty system, the army under the rule of the state (rather than of the Party, as presently in China), freedom of press, etc.’” Francesco Sisci, “China Lost Worship for the West,” La Stampa, February 20, 2009, available at: < http://www.lastampa.it/_web/cmstp/tmplrubriche/giornalisti/grubrica.asp?ID_blog = 98&ID_articolo = 325&ID_sezione = 437&sezione = >.

¹² Li Xianghai, “Modern Neo-Confucianism in the Context of Postmodernity,” available at: < http://www.artx.cn/artx/guoxue/15647.html> (Accessed February 27, 2009).

¹³ Jian Xiao, “Postmodern ‘Neo-Confucianism’ and China's Modernization,” Hunan Social Sciences, No.1 (1991), available at: < http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFD1991-FLSH199101013.htm>.

¹⁴ Lin Anwu, “The Social Philosophy of Post-‘Neo-Confucianism’: Contract, Responsibility, and the One-Way Humaneness,” available at: < http://www.tecn.cn/data/detail.php?id = 14082> (accessed February 27, 2009).

¹⁵ Jia Songqing, “A Debate: Lifting the Status of Postmodernism-like Elements in Confucianism,” available at: < http://xcb.hnie.edu.cn/eweb/UploadFile/20071018195250477.doc>.

¹⁶ Jin Huimin, “Preface,” The Confucian Turn (Hou ruxue zhuan xiang), available at: < http://www.literature.org.cn/article.asp?ID = 32289>.

¹⁷ Song Hongbing, “A Reading of the Façade of the Current Confucianist Scholarship,” available at: < http://bbs.tecn.cn/thread-238377-1-1.html>.

¹⁸ Jin Huimin, “Post-Confucian Turn: The Premodern after the Modern,” China Books Review, No. 6 (2008), available at: < http://www.literature.org.cn/article.asp?ID = 32289>.

¹⁹ Jia Songqing, “A Debate: Lifting the Status of Postmodernism-like Elements in Confucianism,” available at: < http://xcb.hnie.edu.cn/eweb/UploadFile/20071018195250477.doc>.

²⁰ Minzhu is a classical idea of Chinese political thought, meaning the common people are masters while kexue means something different from Western science. It has more reference to contextualist views, or perhaps worldviews, rather than mere rational means.

²¹ Lin, “The Social Philosophy of Post-‘Neo-Confucianism’,” op. cit.

²² Lin, “The Social Philosophy of Post-‘Neo-Confucianism’”, op. cit I have translated Li's liang duan zhi zhi into the view of dualistic subject and object, due to his explanation as follows: In the view that the public is a composition of loose and separate individuals, its social practice is focused upon from the dualistic view of two extremes—subject vs. object ( ).

²³ Song Hongbing, “A Reading of the Façade of the Current Confucianist Scholarship,” available at: < http://bbs.tecn.cn/thread-238377-1-1.html>.

²⁵ Sisci, op. cit.

²⁴ Li Xianghai, “Modern Neo-Confucianism in the Context of Postmodernity,” available at: < http://www.artx.cn/artx/guoxue/15647.html> (accessed February 27, 2009).

²⁶ Gan Yang, “From the First to the Second Ideological Revolution,” Shijie jingji baodao [World Economy Report], December 27, 2008.

²⁷ “Under the banner of ‘postmodernism,’ cultural critics have raised questions about the viability of the present forms of those very institutions of capitalism, democracy, and technology that seem to promise the Chinese the opportunity to again become one of the great nations of the world.” David Hall and Roger Ames, The Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China (Chicago and Lasalle, IL: Open Court, 1999), p. 81.

²⁸ David L. Hall and Roger Ames, Anticipating China: Thinking through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995), p. 158.