Sincere Performance, Ruist Ritual, and the Leap from Sincerity to Profilicity

Abstract

There is a shift afoot in the global semantics of identity, and the previously dominant paradigms of sincerity and authenticity as proposed by Lionel Trilling are being supplanted—although not in toto—by the ascendant paradigm of “profilicity.” Crucial to this new paradigm is “second-order observation,” in which behaviors are enacted performatively in order to construct an “identity” which is then presented to the observation of a “general peer.” Such are the contentions of Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio. In the Chinese case, the relationship between sincerity and profilicity becomes particularly important for understanding the transition towards the latter, given that the authenticity paradigm had less influence historically in shaping Chinese identities. For Moeller and D’Ambrosio, the regime of sincerity is represented by the Ruist (Confucian) ritual order. However, on another conception of sincerity also putatively inherited from Trilling, the regime of “sincerity” is explicitly “antiritualistic,” and focuses much more on how internal belief states shape individual identities. I contend that this other conception of sincerity (which I call “P-sincerity”) in which social behavior is primarily downstream of belief states actually properly belongs to the authenticity paradigm. I then rehearse how Ruist identities are formed subjunctively via the sincere performance of rituals guided by “second-order observation.” In this mode, belief states are primarily downstream of social behavior. I conclude by arguing that a leap from this mode of sincerity directly into the new paradigm of profilicity will smooth the way for the formation of digital identities in China.

Notes

1 In Simler and Hanson, Elephant, “Advance Praise,” front matter.

2 In a similar vein, Lionel Trilling—whose seminal study Sincerity and Authenticity backgrounds this entire discussion—quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was of course writing more than a century before the development of evolutionary psychology: “There is no deeper dissembler than the sincerest man.” See: Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, 119.

3 Simler and Hanson, Elephant, chapter 14.

4 Miller, Mating Mind, chapter 9; Simler and Hanson, Elephant, chapter 12.

5 Baojianpin 保健品 are medical and/or dietary supplements—often fairly expensive—which lend themselves well to conspicuous demonstration of concerned solicitude despite many of them being backed by only very marginal scientific evidence suggesting any benefit whatsoever to their use, let alone a benefit significant enough to justify their cost.

6 The gaokao 高考 is China’s notoriously onerous and thoroughly performative university entrance examination.

7 The closest English equivalent to ketaohua 客套话 is probably “pleasantries”—lots of compliments and modesty, scrupulous avoidance of expressing any strong or potentially controversial opinions, and highly platitudinous engagement with current affairs.

8 Note that it is not yet my intention here to give examples of performativity that are strictly profilic in nature (though they may have aspects of the profilic). We are still here in the realm of anecdote: I am paraphrasing my wife a little, but these are all real-life examples we have actually discussed, and at present the emphasis is mainly on performativity and the difference between object-level and meta-level motives rather than specifically with profilicity (with which we will deal later).

9 See Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity”; Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile.

10 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity,” 582, 593.

11 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 33–34.

12 On this term, see D’Ambrosio and Moeller, “Critical Response,” 10.

13 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 1–3.

14 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 157.

15 Ames, “The Emersonian Henry Rosemont,” 9. There has been some significant pushback against this characterization (which Ames has been fleshing out since the late 1980s at the latest) from Chinese scholars in recent years. Some salient examples are: Huang, “The Starting Point”; Chen, “The Ethics of Self”; and (albeit on a slightly different tack) Wang, “‘The Self’ and ‘The Other.’”

16 See D’Ambrosio, “Ming as Identity.”

17 Rosemont, Against Individualism, 14.

18 See Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, 53–57.

19 Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, 56.

20 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity,” 585.

21 Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 115.

22 Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 118.

23 Among the four authors of Ritual and Its Consequences, I will metonymically single out Michael Puett as the nominal representative of this alternative taxonomy, because his work elsewhere on the subjunctive mode in Chinese thought will be important throughout the rest of this paper.

24 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity,” 584–85; Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 118.

25 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity,” 584–85; Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 128.

26 Seligman et al, Ritual and Its Consequences, 103. I could not find an explicit identification of authenticity with opposition to ritual anywhere in Moeller and D’Ambrosio’s published works, but I think this is a defensible portrayal nonetheless. It can be inferred, for instance, from the more general rejection of conventional social constructs (as cited above), and from their identification of Daoist and particularly Zhuangzian thought—which has a strong antiritualist tenor—with the authenticity paradigm (see Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity,” 585).

27 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 167; Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 124.

28 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity,” 583; Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 104.

29 Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 118–19, 128.

30 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity,” 585.

31 Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 103.

32 Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 111–12.

33 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, “Sincerity, Authenticity and Profilicity,” 585.

34 Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, 114–15.

35 Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, 115. Italics in original.

36 I refer here, of course, to the zhenren 真人 of the Zhuangzi, and the pun “zhenuine” is lifted from Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 242.

37 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 74. I have used the Burton Watson translation, but interpolated the word “harm” for Watson’s original “repel”—this reflects Fang Yong’s 方勇 understanding (in the Zhonghua Shuju 中华书局 edition of 2010) that the character juan 捐 was a mistaken substitute for sun 損 (see Fang, Zhuangzi, 97). I don’t have any more solid philological grounding for endorsing this reading other than deference to the authority of Fang and the fact that it seems to fit the context better.

38 Watson, Chuang Tzu, 85.

39 Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences, 116.

40 It is worth mentioning that it is rather important, in this context, that this strategy was known to be aimed at fostering such desires, rather than unwittingly aimed at fostering such desires. As Puett argues, the Durkheimian strategy of “unmasking” some religious practice as “actually” being underlain by some social function which contemporary secular scholarship can accept as a more palatable explanation for the practice itself is often impotent when applied to early Chinese religion (Puett, “Critical Approaches,” 95–101). This is because the social function was already recognized as such by the proponents of the ritual (as in the example of Confucius given later in this section)—there is no need to “unmask” these practices, because the proponents have already done it for us! And, in fact, the urge to unmask is a symptom of a P-sincerity-based style of thought.

41 Frankfurt, The Importance, 159–76. For some more reflections on how these themes relate to moral motivation in early Ruist philosophy, see also Chan, “Evaluative Desire,” 1174–77.

42 Mencius 6A14.

43 Mencius 7B24.

44 Of course, this does not at all imply that there is no need for evaluative reflection and cognitive effort. Mencius, for example, places a great deal of emphasis on the need for evaluative reflection (Mencius 6A15) to ensure that compliance with the ritual order—which is itself still absolutely indispensable (Mencius 4A1)—is not merely facultative and deceptive, as in the case of the “village worthy” (Mencius 7B37).

45 Puett, “Critical Approaches,” 95–101.

46 Analects 2.4. Slingerland, Analects, 9.

47 Another excellent example of this indifference is supplied in the person of Wei Yuan 魏源, who gives a very prominent role to morally concerned punishing and rewarding “ghosts and spirits” (guishen 鬼神) in his system of thought, and also gives a proto-Durkheimian explanation of the social utility of belief in such extrahuman entities similar to that found in the extant part of the “Ming Gui” 明鬼 chapter of the Mozi. Critically, however, despite the great emphasis Wei Yuan placed on ghosts and spirits, nowhere does he attempt to prove their actual existence–as do the epistemologically foundationalist and P-sincere Mohists in the “Ming Gui” chapter–or refute the arguments of skeptics such as Wang Chong 王充. For the epistemologically pragmatic and sincere Wei Yuan, it is sufficient that such entities are believed in. On these points, see my recent paper: Martin, “‘Qing Period Eclectic’ Wei Yuan,” 31–39.

48 Matthew 6:6 (KJV).

49 There is a close parallel here with the account Lauren Bialystok gives of the relation to sincerity and authenticity of “shtick,” in which I might take some attribute which is genuinely characteristic of my own identity and performatively exaggerate it such that “next time … my behaviour might be more fully sincere, because this is indeed how I have come to regard myself” (Bialystok, “Refuting Polonius,” 228). As such, “the notion of ‘shtick’ exemplifies [a] movement between the person we start out as and the person we become through role-playing and experimenting with identity” (Bialystok, “Refuting Polonius,” 229). I think Bialystok’s notion of “shtick” neatly captures a way in which performative behavior can be sincere, and packages it all up nicely for a P-sincere readership—although perhaps some Ruists might view “shtick” as somewhat impoverished and frivolous relative to the depth of philosophical thought applied to these topics in early Ruist texts.

50 The hongbao 红包 is the decorative “red envelope” used for making gifts of cash. The Chinese mega-app WeChat has a digital equivalent for making interpersonal financial transactions below a certain limit.

51 Of course, for someone who has a material interest in obtaining a reliable assessment of my trustworthiness, he/she can make recourse to other less easily counterfeited indices than my own profilic identity constructions, just as Confucius—who was famously hostile to dissemblers (Mencius 7B37)—recommended that filiality be assessed by reference to three years’ worth of not-easily-counterfeited posthumous adherence to the way of one’s deceased father.

52 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 159.

53 See Waldrop, “Chips Are Down.”

54 Raja Koduri, the senior vice president of Intel’s Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, seemed pretty confident in 2021: “We believe that the dream of providing a petaflop of compute power and a petabyte of data within a millisecond of every human on the planet is within our reach” (Koduri, “Powering the Metaverse”).

55 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 159.

56 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 159.

57 Moeller and D’Ambrosio, You and Your Profile, 158.

58 My intuition is that it is indeed regrettable in this way, although this would be a very difficult and complex argument to make, one which we certainly cannot embark upon here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jordan B. Martin

Jordan B. Martin is an Australian postdoctoral researcher at Hunan University’s Yuelu Academy, the same institution at which he received his master’s and doctoral qualifications. His doctoral thesis, entitled 演化论视域下的孟荀异同 (An Evolutionary Perspective on Divergence and Concordance in Mencius and Xunzi), was supervised by Zhu Hanmin 朱汉民. His research interests are broad, with a focus on pre-Qin Ruist thought and its evolutionary basis, and he has published several articles in English language journals, as well as in Chinese language journals under his Chinese name, Ma Zhaoren 马兆仁.