The virtues we have looked at so far are very much “ inner ” virtues. But, in Confucius ’ thought, virtues are not cultivated for our private amusement or heavenly salvation. Moral virtues are meant to act out into the world; morality is not merely a private achievement. The last virtue on our list moves us outside of our private universe and has to do directly with dealing with other people.
Confucius startled his students one day by saying that all his teachings could be hung together on a single thread. Zengzi, one of his brighter students, explained to the others that this thread consisted of two things: loyalty/dutifulness and understanding/sympathy/compassion. 34 In other pas-
sages, Confucius defi nes what he means by the term shu , which we translate as “ understanding, ” “ sympathy, ” or “ compassion. ” It means, Confucius
says, “ not doing to others what one does not want done to oneself. ” 35
This may sound familiar: it is often called the “ negative golden rule. ” The positive golden rule would be given by Jesus in another context about fi ve hundred years later as “ Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. ” Scholars, naturally enough, have debated which version, the positive or negative golden rule, is the most effective, but for our purposes we can see that both of them mean that we should put ourselves in another ’ s shoes. For Confucius, the message is simple: treat the other person as you yourself would like to be treated. 36 With the knowledge of others that we
have cultivated, we can understand another person ’ s situation. Knowing that, we imagine ourselves in their place and try to act as we would want others to act toward us. This is especially important for the times we are in positions of authority, as a teacher or employer, for example. We can remember how we were treated, and, if we were treated badly, we should not do the same to those we now have power over.
In other situations, sympathy is just imagining the other person ’ s situa- tion: if the woman has three screaming kids in the car, give her the parking space. If someone drops all their papers on the fl oor, help them pick them up. If someone is passed out on the sidewalk, do something about it. We should imagine ourselves in another person ’ s shoes not because we hope they will do the same for us, nor should we do it because it will be, in some way, to our advantage. Understanding or sympathy takes us outside of ourselves and beyond our personal inclinations and greed.
Sympathy works with all the other moral values. We can express fi lial piety not just by following certain rules, but by putting ourselves in a par- ent ’ s place and anticipating what they would like. Sympathy works with honesty in tempering our honest response so that we do not hurt someone ’ s feelings. Sympathy is often the catalyst that brings out the other moral virtues.
There can be too much of a good thing. Any virtue, taken to an extreme, can be dangerous. Courage can be excessive and, when it is, become recklessness. When someone asks how you like their new Hummer and you respond that it is an ugly gas - guzzling vehicle displaying the owner ’ s self - indulgence, this may be honest, but certainly not polite. Too much honesty, without regard to the situation, can work against moral behavior. Too much loyalty, to the point where it is blind loyalty – my country, right or wrong – may well mean that one is ignoring other responsibilities like wisdom and moral courage. Too much of a search for knowledge could lead to a bookishness that does not act out into the world. Too much insistence on a standard of right and wrong, especially when these are not important issues, can lead to infl exibility and offi ciousness. Ji Wenzi, a minister in the state of Lu, was well known for his meticulous attention to his duty. When told that Ji Wenzi thought about things three times before he acted,
Confucius sarcastically responded, “ Twice would be enough. ” 37 Too much
wisdom can be misused. Expressing too much sympathy, without good judgment, can lead to us being taken advantage of. All the virtues can be taken to extremes, and when they are they become not virtues, but faults. These virtues should be understood as dependent on one another and working together. We have seen how fi lial piety leads to dutifulness or loyalty, a love of learning leads to wisdom, honesty and sincerity mirror each other. Not only do we need all these virtues, but they work together. In introducing these virtues, I have arbitrarily separated them so we can look at each one in turn, but Confucian texts rarely talk about one virtue without another and never in the kind of shopping list that we have here. Moral virtues of any kind are not something we develop instantly. Thinkers in classical China all talk about “ cultivation. ” Just as one plants a seed in the ground, waters, and weeds, in order to cultivate a plant, so too moral behavior is built up over time. By studying the ancients and seeing good and evil behavior, one can see more clearly how one ought to behave.
Humanity
What we have seen of moral virtues so far sounds a bit like the Scout law: be thrifty, clean, and helpful. Confucius tells us to be fi lial, honest, sincere, dutiful, wise, courageous, sympathetic, and so on, but there seems nothing exceptional in this: many traditions say much the same. But for Confucius all of these virtues are just the building blocks to bring us to a moral atti- tude. This is ren . The word ren was originally used to mean something like “ handsome, ” “ manly, ” or a “ man ’ s man, ” and had nothing to do with morality. 38 Confucius reshaped the word to mean a moral, rather than
macho, strength. The development of virtues and learning was meant to lead to this overarching attitude.
I have so far tried to avoid using Chinese terms, because they can be diffi cult for introductions: they can be found in the Glossary. A precise English translation of ren , however, is not easy. Ren has been translated as “ benevolence, ” “ humanity, ” “ co - humanity, ” “ love, ” “ altruism, ” “ good- ness, ” “ the Good, ” “ authoritative person, ” and “ self. ” 39 The choice of one
of these English words as a translation will often depend on the interpreta- tion the translator makes. I will use “ humanity ” as the translation for ren because it is the most common one and comes closest to expressing what we mean here.
Humanity is a moral attitude. Humanity is the umbrella that includes all the virtues – being honest, sincere, wise, courageous, practicing fi lial piety, and sympathy toward others. All of these moral building blocks bring us to the attitude of humanity. “ Working your shopping list, ” as one of my
students said, is how one develops the overarching attitude of humanity. Humanity is the pervasive moral attitude that we bring to the world we live in.
Having humanity requires that we overcome the greed and egocentric- ity of the self. Humanity is defi ned as the opposite of self - interest, profi t, and looking for possessions. 40 Confucius said that if we could restrain our
selfi shness and return to practicing rituals, we would attain humanity. If we could manage to do it for an entire day, we could lead the whole world back to humanity. 41 This is not an easy thing to do, for, as Confucius says, he
has yet to fi nd a man who loves virtue as much as he loves female beauty. 42
How do we become good people? “ Focus your mind/heart solely on humanity and you will be entirely without evil, ” says Confucius. 43 If our
aim in life is the cultivation of the building blocks of moral behavior so as to act out into the world with humanity, we will not be considering our self - interest nor putting greed for possessions or power fi rst. No matter what is happening in our life, the attitude of humanity allows us to endure bad times and to be careful and generous in good times. An ideal person lives in a state of humanity.
Confucius ’ description of the building blocks of morality and the over- arching attitude of morality allows us to see how he defi ned evil. Although he does not discuss evil as a concept, we can see what he meant by it by looking at the opposite of what Confucius defi ned as good. Evil is being rude; being careless; it is pride; it is the lack of self - refl ection, self - awareness, and self - knowledge. Evil is deceit. Evil is greed for money, possessions, and power. Evil is a desperate need to be famous and to indulge in sensual pleasure. Confucius lived over 2,500 years ago and yet his relevance to the evils of our times is uncannily accurate.
The moral virtues and their culmination, humanity, are within us. But they must be practiced in social and political situations in the world. For Confucius, these inner moral values are expressed in ritual, and that is what we will look at next.
Ritual
Nowadays when we use the word “ ritual, ” we use it in three ways. First, we talk about religious ritual – baptism or funeral rituals, for example. Second, we often use the word “ ritual ” in place of the word “ habit ” : so it is my morning ritual to fi rst drink a cup of coffee before I do anything else. Here it is a habit, something I do every morning. No prayer or incense need be involved. Finally, we often say something is just “ empty ritual, ” meaning that the form has no content. For example, when someone asks how we are, we ritually respond and say that we are fi ne. We may not be fi ne at
all, but we will, nevertheless, make the ritual response. Most of us tend to think that this kind of empty ritual is insincere and has no real meaning. As Confucius will show us, we are wrong to think that.
In the stories about Confucius ’ life, we have seen that he closely associ- ated with ritual. As a child he was said to have played with ritual utensils and, as he grew, he studied with the masters of ritual. These rituals were of two kinds: fi rst the religious rituals of the time, such as ancestral veneration, and, second, the rituals of noble etiquette and proper behavior.
There were many rituals involving supernatural powers carried out in Warring States China. The rituals of ancestral veneration, for example, are described at length in ancient texts, like The Book of Poetry . The ances- tors, present in their ancestral tablets, were offered food in proper bowls and cups; jade discs and scepters were also placed on the altar. The texts describe the laying out of grain and wine, the invitations to the ancestors, and the impersonator of the dead. The impersonator of the dead, a descend- ent of the ancestor, took the place of the deceased and was thought to be possessed by the ancestor ’ s spirit. The impersonator announced when the spirits had drunk their fi ll and when the spirits returned to their place.
Ritual specialists would need to know the proper utensils, their place- ment, the times to make offerings, when to bow, and who stood where. These were all things Confucius studied and taught. His students might then have gotten jobs as ritual specialists at court, managing the ancestral rituals, noble marriages, and funerals.
Confucius would also have taught all the proper forms of noble etiquette: that a lord enters a room before a duke; proper salutations from one rank to another; how to carry on diplomatic negotiations with another state, and so on. 44
These were the two forms of ritual that Confucius grew up with. Confucius combined these two senses of ritual, religious ritual and noble etiquette, and then expanded on them for his defi nition of ritual. He noted that carrying out rituals requires reverence, for the ancestors, for example, and respect, for a duke or lord, and then expanded this to explain ritual as reverence and respect for all the people one deals with in social situations. Confucius concluded that ritual is a moral action that ensures a proper, civilized society.
This defi nition may be surprising, but when we think about it, it should not be. Let us look at some everyday examples. You meet a friend, you say, “ Hi, how are you? ” and the friend replies, “ Fine. And you? ” or words to that effect. Your fi rst question, “ How are you? ” is not really a question about your friend ’ s health. If the response you get is something like, “ Oh, last night I couldn ’ t sleep because I had a headache, but by this morning it was gone, though I ’ m still experiencing back pains from the pickup bas- ketball game, ” then you know that your friend didn ’ t really understand the
question. Your “ Hi, how are you? ” is an acknowledgement of the other person and offers respect.
We notice this more when the ritual breaks down. If our friend ignores our question or refuses to answer, we will be hurt or insulted because, by not participating in the ritual, the friend is saying that he or she does not respect or value us. If, as commonly happens now, the friend responds only by saying “ I ’ m fi ne, ” but not asking you how you are, the ritual is unbal- anced and your friend has clearly been rude.
Meeting someone and offering to shake their hand works in the same way. If a hand is not offered in response to yours, the person has been rude and you feel like an idiot standing there with your hand in the air.
We practice rituals all the time, mostly not noticing them until they break down. The next time you feel annoyed at someone ’ s behavior, try to think what your expectations were. The person who butts into line, for example, is ignoring ritual and disrespecting everyone else in the line. We are annoyed by this because this person has not followed the proper ritual. When we were young, our parents spent a lot of time and effort to teach us the very basic rituals of “ please ” (what ’ s the magic word?) and “ thank you. ” We were taught to wait our turn, to share our toys, and not have a tantrum when we did not get our way. While it is true that today many people seem not to have been taught these basic rituals, our society is still based on the expectation that people will follow them.
We perform rituals all the time, whenever we interact with others. Because we do so many rituals every day, we tend not to notice them at all. Take the example of going to a lecture. We are going into a room where the chances are that we know no one there, yet, generally, we do not go in fear of our life. That is because people come in and take their places. They are relatively quiet and they set out paper and pens – all proper ritual indicating that they too have come for the lecture and not a fi ght. People do not usually dance on the desks, mug someone, or pull out a submachine gun. If they did, you would feel uncomfortable, or, in the latter cases, you would fl ee. The lecturer appears and, when it looks like the lecturer is ready to begin, people stop talking to each other and look toward the lecturer. If some people continue to talk to each other, even though the lecture has begun, the lecturer has to stop and say something to them. This is embarrassing to most of the people in the room – though often not to those who want to continue their conversation – because we should not have to be reminded of the proper ritual. The fact that we can go to theaters, classrooms, or meetings full of strangers and not be afraid is because everyone practices ritual when they come into the room and during the show, class, or meeting.
In times of war, or in places where ritual has broken down, we cannot trust strangers to behave in predictable and courteous ways and so become
afraid. Ritual is essential for a civilized society and it is a moral action where one party shows respect for the other, whether this is saying hello, standing in line, or bowing to the Queen.
There are a few things to note when it comes to ritual. First, rituals are almost always balanced: even when one person is superior, they are required to play some part in the ritual for it to work. If one is introduced to the Queen, one bows or curtseys, and the Queen acknowledges the introduc- tion in some way.
Second, ritual is learned. Our parents spent time teaching us the rituals of our culture; we were not born knowing them. This also means that ritual will vary from culture to culture: some shaking hands when meeting, others bowing.
Third, ritual teaches us proper behavior: for Confucius, rituals have less to do with the power of the spirits than with forms that instruct us in moral- ity. In other countries and in other times in history, people have understood rituals as something that dealt with supernatural powers and that had to be acted out with each word spoken correctly, down to the most minute action and pronunciation. Confucius does not look at ritual like that: he sees rituals as the ways in which we practice civilized behavior. 45
Finally, rituals are actions outside of us. We can carry on a ritual even when we do not like the ritual, do not like the person we are being polite to, and desperately wish we were somewhere else and not visiting great - uncle Henry. Ritual is an exterior action and does not, in itself, require any internal commitment. Confucius argues that ritual should not be morally empty; ritual should be an external expression of an inward morality. In turn, ritual should teach us how to cultivate internal ethical attitudes.
Later Confucians will also argue that ritual functions as a way to restrain our selfi shness and channel our emotions. Even though we may be tired