Understanding creativity in East Asia: insights from Confucius' concept of junzi

Abstract

Research shows that East Asians generally value creativity when it brings about evolutionary changes and promotes moral and social values. With an aim to further understand the concept and cultural foundation of creativity in East Asia, this article focuses on Confucius' concept of junzi (exemplary or paradigmatic person). It is argued that a junzi embodies creativity in three main ways. First, a junzi exercises creativity by actively interpreting experiences and constructing personal meanings within one's sociocultural context. Second, a junzi's creativity is grounded in and motivated by one's moral duty to achieve humanity and social harmony. Third, a junzi manifests creativity by bringing about an intermediate rather than radical domain change in society. The article concludes with the key implications of an East Asian concept of creativity for design creativity and innovation.

Keywords::

• Confucius
• creativity
• East Asia
• junzi
• the West

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. This article adopts Niu and Sternberg's (2006) definition of ‘the West’ as ‘the culture of Europe and the people who share the same root or have religious link to Europe. Geographically speaking, it includes most parts of Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand’ (p. 20). ‘East Asia’ refers to China and other Confucian Heritage Culture societies such as South Korea and Japan. By referring to ‘the West’ and ‘East Asia,’ I am not assuming that the cultures within the respective regions (the West and East Asia) are homogenous and monolithic. I am also not assuming that all East Asians interpret and practice creativity in the same way, or that there are no similarities between East Asians and their counterparts in the West on their views on and application of creativity. Rather, my references to ‘East Asia’ and ‘the West’ serve only as useful conceptual tools to direct our attention to the influential role of culture and broad characteristics of different cultural groups, as identified by researchers. In doing so, I join Carlile and Jordan (2012) in viewing culture as part of what Hofstede (1991) calls ‘software of the mind’ where we highlight the general cultural traits of a group of people.

^2. Some readers may object to the classification of creativity into specific categories (e.g. ‘Big C creativity,’ ‘pro-c’) on the ground that it is misleading to dichotomize creativity in such an artificial and rigid manner. My response is that such categorization is useful and acceptable as long as we guard against over-simplifying the nature and application of creativity, and are aware of the overlaps between the categories of creativity in reality.

^3. It should be clarified that the focus of this article is on Confucius as a philosophical and cultural figure, whose sayings attributed to him were passed down to us in the Analects. This article therefore is not concerned with the debate on the extent to which the Analects accurately records and transmits the teachings of Confucius as a historical figure (for further reading on the above-mentioned debate, see Shun, 1993; Slingerland, 2001; Li, 2007). Another note is that all the citations from the Analects are translated by me, unless otherwise stated. To ensure accuracy of my translations, I have consulted the translations and commentaries published in both English and Chinese by established scholars, including Ames and Rosemont (1998), Fu (2011), Lau (1979), Yang and Liu (2009), Slingerland (2003), Sun (1993), and Yang (2010).