Naked jogging is a long way from the essence of Confucianism, a system usually seen as standing for discretion, order, and family values rather austerely practiced.
But harmony achieved through ritual is nevertheless one of Confucianism's key principles, and towards the end of British author Anthony Powell's 12-volume novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time (1951-75) the central comic character, Lord Widmerpool, joins a hippie-style organization in the 1960s, the aim of which is to achieve spiritual harmony though ritual. He is later reported as having collapsed and died while on a communal, naked jog.
The aloof and fastidious Powell subjects the entire enterprise to both open and covert mockery. Such goings-on, however, were very characteristic of the era, and the East was where the participants looked for their inspiration and enlightenment. Powell's characters may not have consulted the Taoist classic I Ching (The Book of Changes), but real-life young people all over the Western world were immensely busy doing so.
The West had experienced periods of interest in what was seen as oriental mysticism before, in the 1890s and the 1920s especially. (Powell acknowledges this by making his hippie cultists echo phrases that first appear in part of the novel set at the time of World War I). But in that earlier period Confucianism in China itself, as this new study makes clear, was in fact at its lowest ebb.
The May 4th reformers of 1919 had condemned it as being at the root of China's troubles. "All thread-bound books [thus including the Confucian classics] should be thrown into the toilet!" they proclaimed. They thought Confucianism blocked modernization, and was the prime reason why China, once so strong, had fallen behind the expansionist, rapacious, but scientifically advanced Western powers.
Umberto Bresciani's survey is exceptionally lucid on a subject, neo-Confucianism, that isn't always easy to understand. The complexities involved in differentiating the transcendent and the imminent, for example, are not for the faint-hearted. But Bresciani makes such things as clear as anyone could, and this in itself is a major recommendation.
One remarkable feature of the enterprise is that the author is described as having spent the last 20 years as a businessman. Who would have believed that among the sober-suited, briefcase-carrying community there dwelt such scholarship and appetite for learning! It's heartening indeed, and makes you wonder how many more philosophers there are out there busily perusing share prices and the fate of the US 30-Year Bond.
Bresciani's method is to outline the New Confucian movement as it has developed over the last 80 years, and then to give a more detailed exposition of the lives and thought of 11 major thinkers who have contributed to it. These digests, which make up the bulk of the book, are in considerable detail and will be of great interest to readers wanting to get to grips with the inner dynamics of the phenomenon.
In China itself, Confucian ideas were effectively banned under Mao. They were considered relics of feudalism, and only Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong (毛澤東) thought was permitted. This changed after Mao's death. Today, some Chinese intellectuals are arguing that Marxism is a Western import unsuited to China in an unmodified form, and that a revised version of Confucianism, (當代新儒家) contemporary neo-Confucianism) should be the guiding principle of the state in the long term. Such views have not been seen as hostile by the authorities, and books have been published in China that survey and expound the concept, plus related ideas.
This is understandable. Confucianism favors a strong state, respect for authority, and civic order generally. It doesn't concern itself with any supernatural entities that might be seen as offering an alternative to state power. Moreover, it emphasizes China's intellectual self-sufficiency, and proud independence from Western thinking. These ideas do not in themselves present any fundamental threat to the government in Beijing.
Bresciani's conclusion is that Confucianism has a major future in the West. This, he claims, is because it is a comprehensive system of thought that possesses a spiritual dimension but doesn't depend on revelation to authenticate it, as Christianity does. It doesn't oppose science, but is merely hostile to the idea that human beings can be defined solely by what science calibrates. It is, in other words, an ideal system for a largely secular, yet spiritually hungry, world.
This is a substantial and handsomely produced book, and a tribute both to the Taipei Ricci Institute, and to its author, a Taiwan resident for 30 years but with research contacts in, and degrees from, both the US and Italy.
Because Confucianism is immensely old, it has experienced set-backs and resurrections before. There were times under the First Emperor, when the penalty for possessing the writings of Confucius was to be sawn in half, lengthways. And there was an earlier Neo-Confucian movement under the Song Dynasty. News, then, that the system is being revived is less surprising than reports would be of its permanent demise.
In video footage in the exhibition Joseph Needham in War-time China currently at the National Taiwan Museum in 228 Park, the great Cambridge historian of science in China is asked why he thinks the country fell behind the West in scientific matters when it had pioneered so many developments in earlier times. He answers that the main reason was probably the growth of a middle class in the West that had no inherited land and so was constantly badgering scientists for technological ideas that would help them make more money. But he adds that another reason was the presence in China of an enormously powerful bureaucracy largely dedicated to keeping things as they were. This bureaucracy's guiding philosophy was, of course, Confucianism. Even so, the attractions of Confucianism, new or old, have rarely been lost on Roman Catholics, and the Ricci Institute is of course a Catholic organization.
Catch the excellent Needham exhibition, incidentally, if you possibly can. Its last day is today, and the museum closes at 5pm. Entrance is NT$10.
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