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.
RSS