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Rob LaFleur on Confucianism and Being All in on Life (Episode 104)
643 Plays1 year ago
In this conversation, Caleb speaks with Rob LaFleur, Professor of Anthropology & History at Beloit College and teacher of The Great Courses Books That Matter: The Analects of Confucius.
Stoics care about virtue and role ethics – two things central to Confucianism. Understanding the similarities and differences between the two philosophies can only enrich one’s philosophical theory and practice.
But going directly to the Confucian works is difficult. Conversations with experts like Professor LaFleur then are essential.
https://www.beloit.edu/live/profiles/270-robert-lafleur
(07:47) Understanding The Analects
(14:19) Reading Passages From The Analects
(21:32) Virtue Ethics
(28:34) Relationships
(36:34) Hierarchy
(44:42) Filial Piety
(50:18) Grieving
***
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Transcript
Introduction to Confucianism and Western Individualism
00:00:00
Speaker
I also see limitations in the way that sometimes we have over-learned individualistic lessons in the West. And how should I live my life? What should my character be? Without properly understanding that whatever character I have is formed in relation to others.
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros, and today I have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Rob Leflore, professor of anthropology and history at Beloit College, and teacher of the great courses, Books That Matter, The Analects of Confucius, a course that I got a lot of value out of, so it comes highly recommended. Thanks for joining.
Confucianism: Philosophy and Life Approach
00:00:52
Speaker
Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.
00:00:56
Speaker
Well, let's start with this first question. Would you describe Confucianism as a philosophy of life? Do you think that's an apt description?
00:01:07
Speaker
It's more than apt. I think it's the best description and it's actually something that comes up in one of the first lectures in my series. There's a conference every four years called the World Philosophers Conference that I've been going to all the way back to the mid 2000s in Honolulu.
00:01:29
Speaker
And during one of these conferences, a number of years ago, I was talking with a colleague about the lectures that I was about to do for the great courses that now Wondrium.
Confucianism vs. Stoicism: Presence and Awareness
00:01:41
Speaker
I was saying, you know, I want to find just the right way to explain what Confucianism is about to the audience in a larger sense and
00:01:52
Speaker
funny thing, we both started thinking we were on this bus from this event. And coming back on the bus, just as the bus was about to unload, we both spurred it out the same time. It's about getting good at life. And so getting good at life is, to me, what Confucianism broadly speaking, but also the analytics themselves, the text,
00:02:18
Speaker
which we can get into in a minute, but the text of Confucius's Analects.
00:02:24
Speaker
are about what another colleague just on Friday said, an anthropologist said, I've been talking to my students about humaning. And again, I'm confused about the idea that we have all these social relations, we have our own complex emotions, and getting good at those is precisely what it's about.
00:02:52
Speaker
Very good. Yeah, the way I think of that from the stoicism angle is, well, philosophy is a way of life because it has an account of what the good life is. It says this is what it looks like to live well. And then it also has a practical aspect. Like these are the practices, exercises, and this is what it looks like concretely.
Confucian Practices: Ritual, Text, and Action
00:03:15
Speaker
And those two aspects make it fit philosophy of life as it were.
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that clearly. And that's one of the things that I find both parallels to and contrasts with Confucianism, broadly speaking. And so the kind of specific vision of what a good life is, is harder to get at through the Analects, the Confucius Analects, or even more broadly speaking through Confucianism.
00:03:49
Speaker
But but I like to also describe it sometimes as being all in with life, not just phoning it in or at the same time, not just parceling out your day as here's my work day where I have to be on. Now I'm off. There's a sense of being all in that your relationships are around the clock and that it matters to be to be on.
00:04:17
Speaker
not in a pressure-packed sense, but in a sense of being aware of your surroundings, being aware of what is needed in the situation. Confucianism is very much situational, that you are in your situation, you do your best in that situation, and those situations over time build into a life.
00:04:43
Speaker
But there's less of a picture of this. Here is the good life. Right, right. Yeah, that's interesting. It does seem like, and I know we'll get into this, but one of both an area of significant.
00:04:59
Speaker
overlap and also some difference is the focus on presence. So in stoicism you have a large emphasis on paying attention and in particular paying attention to the impressions that you're given from the world and judging them.
00:05:14
Speaker
appropriately managing them well, and that has this idea of presence, almost a kind of mindfulness, even a kind of stoic mindfulness, which I think one can accurately say, although it takes on perhaps a somewhat different flavor, one also sees in Confucianism, right? There's a famous
00:05:34
Speaker
line, you know, if I was not present at the sacrifices or at the ritual, it's as if it did not happen. And I think Stoics can agree with that as well. Yeah. And that's, it's again, that idea of, and we'll get into the importance of ritual in all of this, maybe a little later, but the idea of being there, I mean, in many ways,
00:06:00
Speaker
I'm drawn to a passage, I'm looking at it right now, but that can be translated as the master said, if people can recite all of the 300 songs, and this is from the book of songs, very, very important text to Confucius and in early Chinese thought, but if people can recite all of the 300 songs,
00:06:25
Speaker
And yet when given official responsibility failed to perform effectively, or when sent to distant quarters are unable to act on their own, their own initiative, then even though they have mastered so many of them, what good are they? You know, what good are they to them is what it comes out. But, but I would even expand that in my own translation to what good are they to the broader society?
00:06:53
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In other words, you've studied, you've studied, you've studied, you've memorized. And yet if you're unable to perform in the situation, what's the use? And so there's the parallel being drawn here to, yes, again, it's all important in the Confucian tradition to study. But if that's all that it's leading you to is a kind of rote memorization, you've accomplished nothing.
00:07:22
Speaker
You have to be good at life. But according to the Confucians, the study is part of that. Moving from what my teacher, actually, Paul Ricoeur at Chicago, I'm called from text to action. Moving from text to action is the whole point of getting good at life in the Confucian tradition.
00:07:46
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Hmm, got it, got it. Well, thinking about text then, what is the role of the analytics for Confusions? How should we situate it when we're approaching it?
00:07:58
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Well, the first tricky thing that is that for 2000 years, people have assumed the text we more or less have today, about 500 entries as the solid unmoving text that then has been used in curricula in China and now beyond for 2000 years.
00:08:24
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And what we hadn't realized until the just explosion of archaeological findings in the last 50 years or so, 50, 60, 70 years or so, is that the Analects took about 500 years to come into the form where they are today. And so one of the things to think of it as is, number one, and this is shocking to people who aren't familiar with it,
00:08:55
Speaker
is Confucius did not write one word of it. Confucius's voice is in it in the form of, it comes across as two Chinese characters, the master said.
00:09:11
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or the old Confucius said, but the master said, and then out it comes as a quotation, but at the same time, it was every bit of the intellect, every one of the entries was put together over the course of two or 300 years, and then the parts were moved around. And we know this through archaeology now, through robbers,
00:09:37
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cracking into a tomb and trying to steal, not the intellects, a jade coat of some kind, and then the intellects trail their way out with them, the bamboo. And so all of these different things, we've come to know by piecing these together over the last decades that it took a long time for it to come into final form. But the challenge is the text
00:10:07
Speaker
is hard to read. I don't mean that necessarily in a kind of grammatical sense. It's not particularly hard to read in terms of like the complexities of early Chinese grammar. But the challenge is that the text is a jumble.
The Analects: Reading and Interpretation Challenges
00:10:26
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And especially Westerners have a very difficult time with this, but it's even challenging to Chinese readers. All I have to do is ask my students from China and they say the same thing, that they just can't make heads or tails of it unless they're just asked to memorize certain things by their teachers.
00:10:47
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And the reason for that is that the approach to reading the analytics, if we read it from the perspective of, say, a continuous argument, I like to use the example of Kant's critique of pure reason. If we're reading it along like we're looking for definitions and then we move on from the definition to some examples, et cetera, et cetera, we're not going to find it. It's an absolute chaos.
00:11:16
Speaker
And in the way that this was, I explained this in the lectures, is that I was telling a friend this in Greece. We were actually at a conference in Greece and she's from China. She said, oh, on the one hand, it's so wonderful you're going to be explaining this to Western readers.
00:11:35
Speaker
And so that was nice. The second thing she said is that I don't know how you're going to do it because the Analect is such a jumble. It's like 500 fortune cookies falling from the sky and then just put together into chapter form. And that is a very apt description of what the reader faces.
00:11:58
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And so I've had colleagues who've said, I always get to the second or third book and completely confused and I put it down and then I pick it up after another five years and the same thing happens.
00:12:14
Speaker
And it's because, through no fault of their own, they're reading it wrong. And how would anyone know? Because we were used to, even in China, readers today are used to having an argument and following an argument. And so the way to kind of wrap this up is that I had a teacher, the amazing Greek scholar, scholar of ancient Greek, David Green at the University of Chicago,
00:12:44
Speaker
And he translated Herodotus and many of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and the like. But one of the things he said in commenting on Shakespeare, of all things, is he said, if you're reading the plays like a scholar, you are misreading the plays. You have to imagine the stage.
00:13:06
Speaker
At every moment that you are reading, say Richard II, you have to envision the state, what is happening, who is on there, even the background.
00:13:17
Speaker
And finally, years and years later, that comment resonated for me in trying to explain the intellect. You have to envision a teaching experience. You have to envision the semester, let's say, or even an entire education.
00:13:39
Speaker
Because what comes up is something about ethics, for example, as we'll get into. Something about ethics will come up. And then it will be discussed in one context and then dropped and moving on to other things. And then it'll come up again. And it'll come up again later. And then later, it's punctuated like a semester is, emphasizing certain things, but then having to get into other content. And if you envision it like the classroom
00:14:08
Speaker
all of a sudden the book starts to make sense. And at the end, it's like the end of a good semester where it's like, okay, I've learned a lot. That's how the book works. So of course, it's difficult to choose and parse through, but if you were to select several passages to help people make sense of the work, give them a sense of that classroom, if you will, what comes to mind?
00:14:38
Speaker
predictable as it might sound, one, one.
00:14:43
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entry one in chapter one and of course this makes sense even given what I've just said here it makes sense in a way given that the book did take a while to be formed and it was formed over time to the extent that I've often said that the first chapter and there are 16 entries in the first chapter they're called zhuan in Chinese and so that can be translated as book
00:15:11
Speaker
Chapter I mean there's any number of translations, but I'll go with chapter for our conversation It was put there I mean these are authorial choices not happenstance at least in terms of the way it seems to me the way chapter one was framed the rest does feel like a little bit arbitrary like those fortune cookies and
00:15:35
Speaker
But one one can be translated as the master having studied, the master said, having studied and then repeatedly to apply what you've learned. Is this not a source of pleasure? But then that's continued with, and I'll get back to it, but that's continued with to have friends come from distant quarters. Is this not indeed a source of enjoyment?
00:16:05
Speaker
And then the very, so let's just stay with that for a second. And so you have these two linked ideas of you yourself have studied, and then you've applied what you've learned. Is this not indeed a source of pleasure, okay? And maybe even more than pleasure, but let's stay with that. And then immediately, it seems jarring, but then immediately to connect, to have friends come from distant quarters.
00:16:33
Speaker
And this is repeated so often in China when people get together. I probably heard it 300 times in my own experience where I get together with someone from China and they repeat that phrase to have friends come from distant quarters. But I think what the Analects is getting at here is something, again, maybe a little bit more nerdy, if you will. And the idea that
00:17:00
Speaker
to have friends come from distant quarters for discussion, for kind of being all in and talking about how do we get better at this life thing. Okay, I'm extending the idea here, but at the same time, I see a real linkage in all these passages. And I think that traditionally it's read as three different thoughts.
00:17:23
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And I'm about to get to the third because it's very, very different. But I see a linkage between the I on my own have studied and then now come the friends.
00:17:35
Speaker
And I don't see them as just getting together for a trail mix and watching the game. I see something more of a kind of engaged discussion about this larger, we're all in this larger, how do we get better at this life thing?
00:17:54
Speaker
OK, and then so I see a linkage is what I'm saying. And then finally, the almost jarring third part of the first entry, one one is to go unacknowledged by others without harboring frustration. Is this not indeed the mark of an exemplary person? And this so in some ways is we get to get I know I study on my own, we get together and we talk about ideas and then
00:18:24
Speaker
to not to be overly frustrated by the fact that I'm not acknowledged, that I'm making only a small dent in the world.
00:18:33
Speaker
Is this not indeed the mark of an exemplary person? I see a deep linkage between all
Virtue Ethics in Confucianism
00:18:41
Speaker
of these. And maybe it's because, and I joke as I say this, but maybe this is because I teach at a small liberal arts college. I joke often that being an unknown professor at an obscure liberal arts college, this actually has its benefits.
00:19:01
Speaker
Okay, because all of these different things, you can go study Chinese mountains and then Confucius. And again, I'm joking. But but the idea in a larger sense is make your place in the world. And if fame comes fine, but that's not the point of it all. And so I see a real linkage again in one one, but I wanted to add just one more.
00:19:26
Speaker
And that's my favorite intellect because I feel, number one, that it's been misread quite badly over the years. But here is how it's maybe traditionally been translated. The master said, governing with excellence. And again, I'll get back to that. The governing with excellence, duh, can be compared to being the North Star.
00:19:55
Speaker
The North Star dwells in its place firmly, and the multitude of stars encircle it.
00:20:05
Speaker
What I see, what most people see is one exemplary person firmly in place and then everything else moves around the one exemplary person. I don't see it that way. I see exemplarity, you know, being an exemplar, which again, connects very closely with the Greeks. But being an exemplar as there are multitudes, multitudinous stars,
00:20:34
Speaker
of influence, each of which have their own kind of gravitational pull, our influence in life over a series of other people. And this can vary, we can also be influenced, but the idea is that there are many of these in place.
00:20:53
Speaker
I think what has been misread in the translations, which is why I'm doing my own this year, is that I think it's misread as there's one person. And I think what Confucius is getting at is that we need this influence in many places. And that's the connection to being the unknown person who may be of influence in a local area, that if we have many, many of those, we're a better society.
00:21:24
Speaker
Right, right. So one, one and two, one are my choices. Excellent. Well, would you say that Confucianism is properly understood as a virtue ethics and to say a little bit more about what I mean?
00:21:46
Speaker
for listeners is that stoicism, it's an account of how to live. And one way of answering that question, how should you live is live according to nature. That means be the kind of person who lives well. And instead of taking these other frames that many
00:22:04
Speaker
might be tempted to take for different ethical reasons or different ethical systems like trying to maximize a certain outcome or following certain rules. The focus for Stoics and indeed for many of the Greek philosophers was being a specific kind of person. You could even say being an exemplar and usually that meant fulfilling your life as a human being, being an excellent human being.
00:22:29
Speaker
Do you think that's a useful way to think about Confucianism as well or do complications? Of course, I imagine some complications arise, but it could first pass. Do you think that's a good way to think about Confucianism as well?
00:22:42
Speaker
I do, I do. There are of course some differences and the kind of stereotypical critique which I must admit that I fell into in college and for part of graduate school before I reread Confucius and really kind of started to see the larger issues behind it was that it's a bunch of kind of frozen rules
00:23:10
Speaker
And that's how it's been mocked throughout Chinese history by another group called the Taoists who specifically aim to live in accordance with nature. And again, it's a very specific connection in that way of thinking, which I have always found appealing, I must admit.
00:23:35
Speaker
But the thing is, is that if you look at the Analects in the larger sense, that I came to see it. And what brought me to that, and I'm not alone, many people who do what I do were encouraged to look at the Analects in a different way by a book by Herbert Fingeret is the author.
00:24:01
Speaker
and it's called Confucius, the secular as sacred. And the thing is, is that Fingeret's book really gets back to some of the core ideas of Confucianism as life is lived. And he starts with the handshake, which in China, you know, is more often a bow and certainly in Japan is a bow. But, um,
00:24:26
Speaker
But I like to get at it through the core principle of Ren, it's called. And this is a Chinese character. It's the most dominant kind of philosophical framing idea in the Analects. And it's kind of the peak goal is to be Ren. The Chinese character is very simple. It's a person next to the number two.
00:24:55
Speaker
Now, I'm not saying that's the etymology. The etymology is more complex too, but I'll just say that for any sinological China Studies listeners out there. But the thing is, is that it's a useful way to think of it as a person always in the social realm, the two. You know, this is kind of a way of kind of mnemonic almost for thinking about the relationality
00:25:25
Speaker
of human beings. This very key character is a real problem for translators and one that I've struggled with myself because of the challenge built in to translating it smoothly in an English text while bringing out all the potential of its meaning.
00:25:53
Speaker
So it's often translated as humanity or humaneness, sometimes as benevolence, often as benevolence, I should say. And even in a 1930s translation by a Harvard professor, tried to get out everything in its potential, called, and again, this is 1930s language, but man being at his best. The problem is when you translate in English, a
00:26:19
Speaker
a phrase that is used 400 times in the Analects as something that's seven or eight characters, eight English words long, it gets to be pretty clunky. And so benevolence sort of works, but it's much more than that. And so I like to think of it, and this is where I get into the ethical realm,
00:26:41
Speaker
is a virtue ethics, as you're saying, is if I could translate it precisely the way I want, I would want to call it social, moral, ethical virtuosity.
Relational Identity and Virtuosity
00:26:53
Speaker
Bring all those together, the social relations, morality, ethics, and morality in the larger sense of caring about the larger society. But also ethical virtuosity, and I think of it in the framework of
00:27:10
Speaker
From the individual to the larger social realm of like a cellist likes yo-yo ma Or a violinist, but I'm using yo-yo ma as my example is the great cellist and we could just listen to the solo and be moved and changed and yet that's so low with an orchestra and
00:27:34
Speaker
where the feedback is going back and forth, where Yo-Yo Ma gets back to Analects 2-1, this idea of the person of influence, and all the way back to the cellist performing with and above the orchestra.
00:27:56
Speaker
That's life. That's what we're getting at. And so always keeping that larger sense of what virtuosity is not just virtuosity as a solo realm. It's virtuosity that influences others and, you know, encourages others to be at their best as well. Now the problem as much as and as I'm translating right now, I want to use that phrase.
00:28:24
Speaker
and bring out the virtuosity in every one of those 400 passages. And yet it gets pretty clunky if you do so. It is a bit clunky, right? Right. Well, so I think one distinct feature of Confucianism is this relational aspect and seeing yourself
00:28:48
Speaker
not just as an individual who needs to live virtuously and who needs to be skilled, but I think really in a fundamental way you note how
00:29:03
Speaker
you're not merely just an individual and atomized unit. And not even in the sense that of course you're connected to others, but really in the deep sense of your identity, I think is what many want to say is you can't make sense of this idea of an atomized unit who needs to live virtuously. But instead you really need to think of yourself as belonging, being dependent on caring for others.
00:29:31
Speaker
in a way that I think you almost can't be extricated from. I wonder if you could speak to that some as well. Yeah. This idea of being all in is partly a decision that a person can make actively that I will be aware of these relationships and I will be at my best
00:29:54
Speaker
when I'm in them. This does not mean that we can't rest. In other words, that is built in as well, of course. But there is a kind of, and I don't know where I heard this, and it's not in the analytics, but the idea that the downside in selling Confucianism sometimes was that live long, work hard, and death is a good rest.
00:30:22
Speaker
That's not a great message if you're trying to sell the idea. But if you read the analytics and you see a kind of rhythm of life where there is recharging, but it means when you're on, you're on. I remember a story my wife tells me that for one of her PhD advisors where he was saying to his students that you don't have to be on all the time, but when you're
00:30:48
Speaker
when you're in the classroom or you're giving a lecture, you need to be on. And I think that's what Confucius would say of relations in life is is on doesn't mean, you know, bursting with energy. Sometimes it means just listening carefully. I feel even in a recent I think was just last week, David Brooks, The New York Times was on to this kind of message of being a good relational person.
00:31:17
Speaker
You know, I just had a piece in the New York Times on this and you know, means listening more means so being on doesn't necessarily mean that you're always teaching. It means that you are paying attention to the nature, what the what the relationship needs right now. And so I would say that the biggest challenge for for the Confucian tradition is this idea of
00:31:46
Speaker
And this is specifically what you were asking, but I think it needs to come up, is I think what is left hanging in some ways with the Analects is how do we recharge? How can we be on consistently and well for the benefit of ourselves and others and have the energy to do so? I'm not sure that's addressed all that well in the Analects, to be fair.
00:32:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. Like how do you use leisure? Well, how do you write a rest rest? Well, I have spoken.
00:32:23
Speaker
with a number of people who think, well, a Chinese people who think it's high status to almost be sickly to communicate that you've worked so hard writing your physician and you have this image of almost like a sickly bureaucrat, right? I'm trying to cover my laughter because it's so true. I've heard, of course, all the same stories and seen the images over the years, through the centuries.
00:32:50
Speaker
You know, yes, yeah. I'm not sure that sells well as a larger way of living. And that gets back to that old kind of saying that it was specifically used as kind of an argument from the Taoists and the Buddhists against the Confucians that, you know, death is a good rest. You know, it may appeal to a few people, but it's not a universalist message, that's for sure.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Another possible connection to Stoicism here, when thinking about relations with the Stoics, they had at least a later Roman Stoics. They had this idea of roles and thinking about your role as a human being and being a virtuous person and fulfilling that general role, but also thinking about what your own capabilities were.
00:33:46
Speaker
thinking about the roles that you're occupied as a matter of your society, you know, like being a good citizen, being a good neighbor, and then also thinking, of course, about these
Confucian Hierarchy and Society
00:33:56
Speaker
unchosen roles of being a good family member, a good brother, what have you. And they had a hierarchy where you have, of course, that general role, being a good human comes at first, and then you think about, okay, well, what about these other roles, eyes and individual, occupy and,
00:34:16
Speaker
what the right path is, as it were. There are no easy rules here, but what the right path is, is guided by your capabilities, your circumstance, and the relationships you happen to find yourselves in. Which, as I read the analytics the very first time, struck me as a potential very large overlap with Confucian approach. Yes. Absolutely. I'll put a plug in for my good friend and
00:34:45
Speaker
mentor and I will say right now editor for a major translation I've done Roger Ames a University of Hawaii professor and now retired now at Beijing University what they call Peking University in Beijing and Roger Ames has a book and then a second follow-up book on specifically titled Confucian Role Ethics
00:35:14
Speaker
And so anyone who's interested in going deeper into this question, I encourage looking into Roger Ames's work here. But one of my favorite intellects, and it's also the favorite of my students who find the Chinese the easiest to read, because Confucius has asked, how do we keep society in order?
00:35:39
Speaker
And he answers with just eight Chinese characters. Well, four Chinese characters, but each one repeated. And he says, ruler, ruler, minister, minister, father, father, son, son. Or it can be read as father, mother, and children, children. But in other words, keep to your roles. Be aware of them. Be aware of them. But also kind of work on them.
00:36:09
Speaker
And that's where I want to bring up something that I call the forgotten Chinese philosophical principle. I've written a lot about this in my life. It goes all the way back to my doctoral dissertation, but it's the Chinese character Jin, but at the same time, it can be translated as remonstrance.
00:36:34
Speaker
And the most important part of understanding roles is to understand where you are. And in the Chinese sense, you are always in a hierarchical situation.
00:36:46
Speaker
This is something that's sometimes harder for Westerners to handle, although I've never had a problem with my French and German students and others from Europe, but I'm thinking of countries I've spent a lot of time in. Americans can have a very large problem with this often though. To understand what Confucius is getting at, you have to understand that for every situation you are in a hierarchical situation. This does not mean
00:37:16
Speaker
better, worse, or much more power, lesser power. It's not that. And the way I like to explain this is when a friend, this friend of mine, we went to University of Chicago together. We were friends there. He was in the history department. I was in this program called the Committee on Social Thought.
00:37:35
Speaker
And every time we get together, it's almost like a kind of social thumb wrestling going on. And we're fighting to be the inferior in the dyad, in the social network. And so he'll say things like, oh, you were in the more prestigious program. Then I'll say, which is not true. But then I will say, but you've published more than I have.
00:38:03
Speaker
And then we'll go back and forth. It's very friendly, of course, but it's this back and forth that, ironically, American business people, at least early on when they started to go to East Asia, this would start to happen and the American would happily accept the superior position in this little haggling going on.
00:38:22
Speaker
And of course, that's exactly what you're not supposed to do. You're supposed to at least fight for it, like you're fighting for the check, you know, in a restaurant. But the idea is that if you are the junior in any kind of particular social diet, you're the child and you're talking to your parents, there is the duty, and it's the duty of remonstrance.
00:38:49
Speaker
you must correct the senior. And the reason this is the forgotten principle, as I call it in East Asian thought, is because it's really hard to do. It's, you know, in other words, giving the person who is in whatever way in charge criticism,
00:39:15
Speaker
is difficult to do. But what Confucius and then later Confucians even more so kept stressing was this is absolutely necessary or the social kind of vitality will die.
00:39:30
Speaker
And the assumption built in, and I'll just stop here, but the assumption built in is that the senior, I'll just call it the senior here, but the senior person in the dyad is on the social dyad, does know better. In other words, and it's a reminder of the foundations. It's more of father or boss or whatever. Remember what you've learned.
00:40:00
Speaker
I'm here to remind you so we don't go astray as a family or as a, you know, state or as a nation. I'm reminding you of what we both know.
00:40:14
Speaker
And let's not go astray. Let's fix this together. And so this duty of remonstrance is important at all levels of society. And it's hard to do. It sometimes doesn't go well. There are historical examples of awful stuff. And yet, this is the built-in correction.
00:40:40
Speaker
in the assumption of roles always are hierarchical.
00:40:47
Speaker
Right. Right. Yeah. I do. I just seem like in many Western cultures, particularly in the States, hierarchy is always present, but it's hidden and that's important. Right. I only laugh with particular stories. Right. Right. Like all the employees in the company are on the same footing, of course, you know, and they maybe dress in more casual ways, show up to meetings slightly late. It's no big problem. Of course, as soon as a big problem occurs, then that's when, you know,
00:41:17
Speaker
You see who has the decision-making power and so on. No, I actually think this is something that Americans should explore much more deeply than they have. I always see it at even little colleges like mine when we just had an inauguration of our president and it was a wonderful event last Friday.
00:41:38
Speaker
But when we line up in our robes, we're at least supposed to be in the order in which we were hired and our seniority and all those things. And even the robes and all that goes back to an assumption of hierarchy.
00:41:57
Speaker
And so, you know, just call me Rob or just call me, you know, Julie, maybe the way we act in the classroom. But then all of a sudden there are these situations, this situational hierarchy where it pops up again. I think Americans should be more attuned to this.
00:42:16
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if you want to speculate on this much further, but some positive upsides of this organization is that social relations may be more fluid. There's more uncertainty around who's at the top. There's maybe the assumption people can move around a little bit more. And then one cost is
00:42:37
Speaker
I think many people are computing where exactly do I stand, whereas if you were in a more hierarchical situation, you would know where you stand, you would know what you're expected to do, and you would know what to do if you wanted to rise, as it were.
00:42:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, but the way it was explained by a northern Song Dynasty Confucian, this is the 11th century, and that's where I started in my Chinese studies, is with 11th century scholars.
00:43:09
Speaker
But the way one of those scholars back then explained it is it's almost as though speaking to an American 10 centuries later. It's really funny. But it said it's not a matter of the top is unmoving and all of the in the sense of absolute authority. That's not what hierarchy is. But hierarchy is like the notes on a scale.
00:43:35
Speaker
all the notes are being played and there's beautiful harmony that comes from it. And so the idea, I think Americans and people who at least aren't, I mean, there are examples of rigid hierarchy in East Asia. I mean, I'd be lying, I'm an anthropologist, I'd be lying if I said otherwise. But at the same time, when it works, the idea is not absolute authority, because that won't work is the idea, but you're playing the notes on a scale.
Mourning and Ancestor Respect in Confucianism
00:44:05
Speaker
almost like a piano. This key happens to be here, but it's because it's playing an important note and then on and on and on. It doesn't even mean that this doesn't work with the piano metaphor, but that the actual people can't move on the scale. But that note has to be played.
00:44:28
Speaker
Okay, and this other note has to be played and together they create an amazing melody. That's closer to the ideal of what the roles need to be.
00:44:42
Speaker
Do you think one critique one could make of many people in modern society is that they have lost that relational aspect of themselves that is more filial, more family-oriented? And maybe even when it comes to how we treat our ancestors today, do you think there's a modern Confucian take-on?
00:45:02
Speaker
thinking about, you know, how should we better respect ancestors, better respect the family than many than many do in the more liberal, more individualistic West? What are your thoughts on that? A big question, of course. Yeah, no, it is. And, you know, I I'm a Westerner. I like, you know, being a Westerner. This is one of the things that goes back all the way to my early studies. I remember a friend of mine who was so frustrated. We were both in Taiwan and he was so frustrated
00:45:31
Speaker
that he wasn't born Chinese, so he would get the jokes better and all these things. And I always thought of, no, there's a long Western tradition of studying other societies, at least back to Herodotus.
00:45:46
Speaker
Okay, I mean, I mean I just that's kind of was my framework is you know Herodotus was was kind of where I started with with all this and and so I see a long western tradition a long western ideal of studying other societies other languages, you know, the the the Importance is to be good at those languages. You can't just you know, just just just play with it
00:46:09
Speaker
So I mean that there's a high expectation, but that there is a long tradition of this and that there are some advantages in doing that. Having said that, I also see limitations in the way that sometimes we have over-learned individualistic lessons in the West. And how should I live my life?
00:46:35
Speaker
What should my character be without properly understanding that our whatever character I have is formed in relation to others. So I think sometimes in our conversation, even in our everyday life, certainly in our kind of everyday language.
00:46:54
Speaker
we often speak in a kind of individualistic idiom to the point where, even in my translation of Confucius, the most basic translational decision I've made is to assume
00:47:09
Speaker
the relational in any passage, often translated as, here's how to be this kind of a good person. I assume the social until the language itself forces me to say, okay, this is really about an individual. And so just this assuming of the plural, this assuming of the relational in the intellects, which is there, I believe that is firmly there and it's been mistranslated often,
00:47:38
Speaker
is almost a kind of signal, a connection to where I think we should be rethinking some of our ways of what it is to have a good life in everyday modern society. This is what I teach. I teach a course I call the Life Syllabus with Confucius and Rousseau, where we're really thinking, what kind of people do we wanna be, but in relation to others?
00:48:06
Speaker
Confucius and Rousseau, by the way, make a really interesting set of parallels, but that's its own thing. But the thing is, just to get specifically to your question, I had the luxury of knowing all four of my grandparents for most of my first 20 years, and even knowing my great-grandmothers,
00:48:27
Speaker
quite well for most of those 20 years and so I've had the privilege just by chance of you know at least having several generations of influence there and I talk to students and sometimes that's there but often we're seeing
00:48:47
Speaker
that there's just more the nuclear family. And I think that there are issues in terms of experience there. Now, how is that solved? There's complex issues at the heart of smaller families and all those things that create a challenge. But I do think that we could use a kind of societal reset if there were a way of having a better sense of time
00:49:17
Speaker
and of the many decades of influence. And I'll just say, just one quick thing is ironically, my students are probably more adept at understanding the world of 40 or 50 years earlier.
00:49:34
Speaker
even than I was, and I thought I was pretty good at it, because, and it's because of music. It's because of the power of 1960s and 70s music to kind of bring them back. And I've had students with more of a connection than say, I born in the, you know, the Eisenhower administration.
00:50:01
Speaker
had of the world of the 20s or 30s. And so there's a little bit, there are ways we could do it. There are ways we could do it, but I think that this focus on relationality could be healthy for all of us. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
00:50:23
Speaker
I think one thing that I've always thought was interesting are some of the social norms around grieving practices and reading biographies about some, you may hear about some exceptionally promising political advisor who's rising up and some ranks moving from the regional to a larger scale. And then all of a sudden he interrupts his career because he's going to spend three years grieving for it.
00:50:52
Speaker
his parents. And you think on one hand, that is just so inefficient, right? Like, okay, how could you do that? But on the other hand, it's like a beautiful expression of how much these people matter and actually pain, you know, showing that in your actions in some way.
00:51:09
Speaker
It actually comes up in the Analects where one of the kind of more ornery students, Zulu is his name, and he brings up just what you and I immediately would think of, which is the inefficiency of it. A parrot dies and you mourn for three years. What it is, the mourning is quite intense for the first month or so.
00:51:36
Speaker
And then it becomes just this idea of being there, continuing in the ways and influence of your parents, being aware, being in the moment with that, but also a chance to recharge.
00:51:51
Speaker
And so I've actually done a little study. I've only given it as a conference presentations up to now, but I plan to write as an article about this idea of a career as being interrupted by these sabbaticals of mourning, where there's both the emphasis on paying attention, being present for the family,
00:52:17
Speaker
around the deceased family member, but also a chance, it's actually 27 months, but it's called the three years morning, but to recharge a little bit, to do some reading after a life of administration up till then, and one you'll pick up with again. And so there's a kind of almost like sabbatical process at work here,
00:52:41
Speaker
And it continued throughout Chinese history pretty consistently the three years morning. And Confucius puts a great emphasis on it. And to your precise point, I sometimes think that it's more than just the direct mourning. In other words, that's important. Do not get me wrong. Of course it is. And that's central to Confucius. But I also think it is a kind of recharge.
00:53:10
Speaker
You know, I've talked about there aren't places in the analytics with recharge specifically. Well, this is one where at least it can happen. Getting back to basics, getting back to family relationships after a busy administrative life, getting back to those things, having time to read and reflect.
00:53:31
Speaker
And so maybe there is a little potential of recharge in that. How do we do this in America in our own society? I talk to students all the time. I lost my mother when I was very young and I'm painfully aware of how that can shape a life as well. And I often talk to students who are going through mourning of one kind or another and I just tell them one thing.
00:53:51
Speaker
And I say, you know, be in the moment. Do not just rush through. Like, I have to rush through this for others. And maybe this is ironic, but, you know, recharge. And again, you know, this idea that in time you come to see the loss in a larger sense where you can even smile, you know, about happy memories. This is important. And if we rush,
00:54:20
Speaker
This maybe sums up everything. If we rush, we will miss those things. That we have to take the time to be present in the moments and with the social situation we're in, even the loss and the whole network of things can come into place. But if we rush, it's not going to work.
Modern Applications of Confucian Principles
00:54:43
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, one final question.
00:54:47
Speaker
I want to ask is are there other practices? We've mentioned a few, but that's a big thing in the Stoics is they have different practices or techniques for becoming more Stoics. But what sorts of techniques would you want to techniques or rituals would you want to mention for someone might think of as things to do in order to become more Confucian?
00:55:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, my glib answer is still serious, but my glib answer is bow more. You know, I have, you know, again, just having come back from Japan, I'm just struck by how much bowing there is at all points. And what is that really? It's not the actual bowing. It's, again, the being in the situation.
00:55:42
Speaker
where I may be just asking for a newspaper, but I'm aware of the relationship with the person who's selling me the newspaper. And that's all that matters in this one micro moment. And then I've always struck like the bus going to Narita Airport, and everyone puts the bags on, and then the entire staff that was putting the bags on all bows to the bus as it goes. And it even gets to the extreme case
00:56:10
Speaker
a story I tell in the lectures. But of where the ATM, it's three in the morning, I'm in Tokyo, and I'm getting my yen from the ATM. And the machine image bows to me and here it is 3am. And I'm bowing back to a machine. And so but but it's built in there's a journalist who recently wrote a book about Confucianism that said, you know, if you're bowing on the phone, while you're on the phone, you know, you've internalized these things.
00:56:40
Speaker
And so even though it's a glib kind of joking answer, Bao more, there's something to it. Not literally, it won't work in American society. And I'm not sure that it transfers to shake hands more. But the idea is that be in the moment of your role.
00:57:03
Speaker
And that's why the glib answer of bowing is actually a serious answer because in the East Asian setting, and Korea is this way as well, is that the bowing is a reflection of the being in the moment.
00:57:23
Speaker
if you're looking at your phone and checking something and also getting your newspaper as I often see standing in lines and things like this, although nobody gets newspapers anymore, but you do in Japan. But the thing is, is that be in that social moment. Don't be multitasking. And again, so bowing is a reflection of that in East Asian society. Can we do it here?
00:57:51
Speaker
I think we can. And I think if we really think about it, we know people who are good at this, who are in the moment. And then we also know what it looks like not to be in the moment. So that's what I mean by being all in. It doesn't mean being consumed with energy all the time. It means being in that relational moment at all times.
00:58:18
Speaker
In East Asia, we're bowing while we're doing, while we're in those moments. But here, maybe we can, we can set ourselves the task of, of, and maybe I don't, I don't want to think of it as a task. Maybe we set ourselves the, you know, the kind of life goal of being better at these things. Very good. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add or places where you'd like to point listeners to learn more?
00:58:42
Speaker
Definitely, as I said, there are many translations of Confucius. By the way, if it sounded like I was criticizing them, that's not what I mean. I would say just pick up any good translation, and they're all good, and just start. But also, getting back to this key idea that if you're going to read the Analects,
00:59:07
Speaker
Picture it as a classroom. If you're reading for definitions, you're not going to find them. It's going to come up the way that a teacher brings up key issues in a great class.
00:59:18
Speaker
And of course, I would be lying if I said that I didn't think my lectures on Wondrium wouldn't be somewhat helpful. But again, dive in wherever you want. Herbert Fingeret's book, Confucius the Secular is Sacred, also a very good place. But if you're getting frustrated, that's the last thing I would say. If you're getting frustrated or you're shouting out, that's a contradiction. That's a contradiction.
00:59:46
Speaker
You're doing it wrong. And I mean that respectfully and with care because that is not the pacing. In other words, you almost have to get into the social relational pacing as you learn about these things because contradiction is built in in profound ways because it's situational.
01:00:10
Speaker
And I could go on for another hour about the situational nature of things, but one will see it as soon as one starts reading. Excellent. Well, thanks so much. Thank you.
01:00:26
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to Stoa Conversations.
Conclusion and Course Promotion
01:00:29
Speaker
If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. And if you'd like to practice stoicism with Michael and I as well as others walking the stoic path, we are running our three-week course on stoicism applied. It'll be live with
01:00:51
Speaker
a forum, interactive calls, that I think will be an excellent way for a group of people to become more stoic together. So do check that out at stomeditation.com slash course. And if that's not to your fancy, you can find links to the Stoa app as well as the Stoa Letter, our newsletter on stoic theory and practice at stomeditation.com. Thanks for listening. Until next time.