This is a paper I'm working on that involves Politics and Virtue from an East Asian Confucian Point of View. Please leave feedback on the content, I will correct the grammer in the a.m. You Kosians made me proud this last election. Now we must work towards 08 with even more vigor and conviction than 06. At any rate, leave Mojo Please and check out my paper.
Ben Franklin once said, "It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous." Confucian Politics is alive and influential in East Asia. Politics is defined in terms of leadership and flourishing. Power is apart of every day human life. Politics in the Confucian tradition is about selecting and retaining good qualified leaders. How do you get good leaders? Not just effective but good in a moral, as well as material sense. Confucians define politics in two ways: Leadership as Excellence or Virtuous and second; flourishing materially and morally. In East Asia there is a belief that humans are as needy of a moral life as material goods. Politics in the Confucian tradition is about creating the conditions for a flourishing world for human beings. It’s about getting good leaders in every level of life from the family to the empire. Confucianism say’s a great deal about politics. One might enquire how Confucians go about getting excellence or good leaders. Are they excellent at leading people family, friend’s, roommates, or corporations? In the west people would say politics can give you good things like wealth, status, or power. If you’re powerful you can gain wealth, status, and possibly more power. Politics similarly allows for interest maximization. Why do we value democracy? Democracy is a brand of politics that allows us to maximize our interest. In my essay I hope to illuminate the role of virtue in Confucian theory.
Let me start with perhaps a foreign concept to those of us from the western tradition. The Confucian solution to life is Ren. Ren translated is humaneness. In the following essay I’m going to try and capture some of the essence of Ren which is a very difficult task being that I’m a white, western educated, non-Chinese speaking, pseudo Buddhist, pseudo Confucian, pseudo Christian, and overall cafeteria philosopher potentially unable to see my own bias.
Anton Schmidt 1944 was a sergeant in the German military who fought on the eastern front and was a catholic from Austria. He decided that he could not live that life and he decided to help them in the underground (the Jews) because he couldn’t go on watching in Poland the innocent Jews being slaughtered. I cannot live this life I must make this choice I can’t see all this suffering and still be human. You have to make a choice about your existence and what kind of life you want to live. This is the premise of Ren. Anton Schmidt was executed for his compassion that he showed towards the victims of the Holocaust.
Being a good neighbor is a principle of Ren. How do you cooperate – find away to solve the problem? Before you go to any extremes find a way to resolve the problem by meeting with the person in question and negotiate and cooperate. That is a mark of a superior person who will be happier in life. Ren is thinking rationally about empathy and truly understanding those around you and their difficulty, pain, and joy. Ren is trying to understand others, there situation, what kind of people they are and how you can help them. Since we are interdependent we can understand people because we are the same yet different. Depending on the person attempt to rationally understand them and their situation and apply the appropriate emotion or response. Then you will have basic knowledge of how to solve problems, how to turn small conflicts into good neighbors. Ren provides a way of living life and helping other people.
Ren teaches to establishing yourself by establishing others and others by establishing yourself. Make yourself better of by contributing to the lives of other people. Don’t sacrifice your self. In an interdependent world you can’t just think about yourself because then you will create problems. We are all fundamentally interdependent on other people at given times in our lives. If you want to be happy individually you have to help others. One must exercise judgment. When people really need help try to help them when you can but if people don’t need help don’t force yourself upon them. You will have to be wise enough to know when establishing self by establishing others and others by establishing self. Ren can be followed by any human being. People can use Ren for practical and moral success. But you have to cultivate the strategy of Ren by making it apart of your being your heart and mind.
Confucius said, "Virtue will not live alone it will have neighbors." A Ren person will have neighbors but the person will be liked. Ren is a strategy a core moral value a strategy for solving problems and dealing effectively with the self and society because we are interdependent.
Where does virtue come from? Confucians argued that if you want to lead a virtuous life, get close to agriculture. The honest people who live close to the land are not corrupted by luxuries and urban lives and so can generate virtue.
The five constant virtues; in East Asia with respect to Confucianism but by no means is this list exhaustive:
Virtue one: Ren The parent-child relationship. Ren is the most important moral or human virtue. Humaneness the parent-child is thought of as a core natural human relationship. The Core Institution is the Parent and Child. A Parent establishes a child to establish a parent. Ren is primary and at the heart of the family. To understand Ren is what it is to understand humanity and morality.
Virtue two: Ritual Propriety - Respect the relationship between the Husband-Wife; In the Family you learn the importance of respecting other Human beings. For a Confucian you should show people respect. The core institutional relationship is the Husband and Wife from which life springs. This teaches people how to act in a proper way and treat each other with respect and engage in civility. East Asia is a patriarchal society. A husband must respect his wife. They should be respectful towards each other. If the Husband and wife fight this is conflict that can tear the family apart.
Virtue three: Justice - Mutual obligation is the core relationship between ruler and official or ruler and minister. Who should get what share of power? How you hold power this is contained in the idea of Yi. Where could it be more important to know what is Just or right than in the political relationship between a ruler and minister where lives can be lost and civilization disordered. If hierarchy is to work it must be beneficent. Between ruler and official the most important bond is justice. People learn about what justice is through this relationship. It’s not a list of what you must do or not do. People want justice in their lives, they do not have to dominate one another but can achieve and work towards justice and rightness.
Virtue four: Wisdom; Moral values, you have an obligation to your family and society. This idea of wisdom, it is useful to be wise or smart. The Core relationship illustrated here is the relationship between sibilings. Brother and brother, sister and brother, sister and sister. To be wise you should have wisdom. In Confucian thought each is distinct. As a human being you have an obligation to yourself. You have to develop the mental abilities that you have. People should be encouraged to develop themselves as fully as they can. Wisdom is necessary for a human moral life. And the wiser you are the more well rounded you’ll be. This is embedded in the sibling relationship. Why is wisdom fully expressed between brothers and sisters?
Siblings compete for the attention of their parents. They must be wise. Although they sometimes compete in the end they are mutually obligated they must learn in order to make the sibling relationship work and help one another and the family succeed in life.
Virtue five Trust; Trust is seen as a way that you should or ought to live. You should not simply trust others but rather be trustworthy yourself and assume others are trustworthy until they show you otherwise. Act one way all the time until it’s shown not to work. This is the view that human beings are basically good, and you have an obligation to trust them until they prove you wrong. In the normal course of events you must try to be trustworthy in your life. All relationships are relationships of interdependence. Outside the family what is the most important virtue that friends need? You need trust. Unlike the family what holds you together is not blood or political relationships, a relationship between friends is equal and can only flower and survive on the basis of trust.
We are all obligated to cultivate ourselves to the maximum extent possible. If we are interdependent then to cultivate oneself is to benefit oneself, family, and state. In the end self cultivation is not simply to make you happy but to allow you to serve. Service in science, politics, military, education, and family are all equally important. In East Asian thought self cultivation and service are seen as essential to human development. If you do not cultivate yourself then you cannot be truly happy.
The East Asian point of view looks at individualism differently than it does in the west. The East Asian idea of Individualism starts with interdependence. Much of our character is shaped by our family. To be a real individual is to accept that interdependence. If you want to be a true individual it can only be done with an audience. Whatever the starting point, you will find yourself interdependent, creating yourself out of nothing.
In Confucianism Politics is thought of in terms of Excellence. If this way of viewing the world is correct then this requires you to take this standpoint: There is an optimistic idea in East Asia that politics is about excellence. Politics is fundamentally about doing things that make a positive difference for the world. Politics is not simply about a clash of interest or using the power of the state to further self interest. Politics is seen as a methodology and management, if done well Politics is and does involve excellence. That excellence is what Politics has always been about. We in the west are skeptics and cynics. The Confucian point of view is if you look too hard you miss what’s important. The politics that are best are those used for human beings. This Confucian point of view stands in sharp contrast to Western Politics.
The most important political goal is to create a flourishing world. It isn’t an argument for big or strong government. In East Asia Politics has been seen as basic to the human condition. Creating the preconditions of a flourishing world is the highest value. If a Confucian has to choose between freedom in the legal sense and flourishing s(he) would choose flourishing. Democracy in East Asia is still an issue of debate. Flourishing is more real, basic, and substantive.
East Asian thought believes that people are not just material maximizers. They have a taste for living a moral life. How important are moral incentives? What are they willing to do for their morals are they willing to fight and die? Many of our theories of human nature are skeptical or neutral; a function of biology and wiring, or something to be suspicious of self interested without institutional constraints will lead to violence and corruption. The dominant East Asian view of Human Nature is a Hopeful Theory of Human Nature. Humans have a tendency to want to do what is good, what is right. In the East Asian view of Human Nature every Human being has the ability to be better. This hopeful theory see’s everyone of us as an important contributor to history.
In closing, Ren or humaneness is the core philosophy of virtue. Politics in the East is viewed in terms of excellence, doing good for the people. While some of the concepts maybe foreign to those of us in the west there is much to be learned from different cultures, civilizations, religions and languages. Personally I feel that self cultivation through education and service to my fellow brothers and sisters will occupy my remaining day’s and this chore I wholeheartedly accept.