Abstract
We begin this chapter on family reverence (xiao 孝) from the assumption that within the interpretive framework of the Analects, associated, interpersonal living is taken to be an uncontested, empirical fact. Every person lives and every event takes place within a vital natural, social, and cultural context. Association being a fact, our different roles lived within family and society are nothing more than the stipulation of specific modes of associated living: mothers and grandsons, teachers and neighbors. While we must take associated living as a simple fact, however, the consummate conduct that comes to inspire and to produce virtuosity in the roles lived in family, community, and the cultural narrative broadly—what we have called Confucian role ethics—is an achievement; it is what we are able with imagination to make of the fact of association.
Confucian role ethics are perpetuated through family lineages that have complex political, economic, and religious functions. One way of understanding the dynamics of “family reverence” (xiao) as intergenerational transmission is to appeal to two cognate characters that are integral to the continuities of the family lineage: ti 體 (“body,” “embodying,” “forming and shaping,” “category, class”) and li 禮 (“ritual,” “achieving propriety in one’s roles and relations”). The living body and our embodied living is the narrative site of a conveyance of the cultural corpus of knowledge—linguistic proficiency, religious rituals, the aesthetics of cooking, song, and dance, the modeling of mores and values, and so on—through which a living civilization is perpetuated.
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Notes
- 1.
All quotations from the Analects in this chapter are based on our translation, Ames and Rosemont 1998 .
- 2.
Earlier we have translated ren as “authoritative conduct,” and others have rendered it “benevolence,” “humaneness,” “human-heartedness,” and the clumsy and sexist “manhood-at-its-best.” It would probably be best to provide a competent gloss for the term, and thereafter simply transliterate it; but herein “consummate conduct” captures fairly well what we are saying about xiao, and about the roles in which people endeavor to live xiao throughout their lives.
- 3.
Zengzi is best remembered as a proponent of xiao—the devotion and service that the younger generation directs to their elders and ancestors, and the pleasure that they derive from doing so. A natural extension of this affection for one’s family is friendship, and Zengzi is portrayed in the Analects as being able to distinguish between the sincerity of his fellow student, Yan Hui 顏回, and the rashness of another student, Zizhang 子張. In exploring the meaning and function of xiao in the Analects by recourse to those seminal passages that shed light on this untranslatable term, we will also be able to appeal to the references to Zengzi himself where he appears as the personal embodiment of xiao. Xiao has conventionally been rendered “filial piety” in English but we translate it as “family reverence.” What recommends “family reverence” as a translation is that it in degree disassociates xiao from the duty to God implied by “piety” and from the top-down obedience that is assumed in paterfamilias. “Family reverence” also retains the sacred connotations that are certainly at play in the ritualized culture of ancestral sacrifices. For details of our semantic and philosophical analysis of this term, see Rosemont and Ames 2009: “Introduction.”
- 4.
And a negative implication of this claim would be that the notion of the autonomous individual is a modern fiction that has little relevance for this classical Confucian text. The concept of the autonomous individual that underlies modern moral and political philosophy has at least two malevolent effects. First, it enables libertarians, growing in their numbers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, to claim moral purchase in justifying an unfettered human freedom as the basis of political justice, and then to reject any conception of social justice that retards such freedom as fundamentally immoral. The notion of the autonomous individual thus continues to provide a moral basis for a more or less laissez-faire free market capitalist global economy that is exponentially compounding gross inequalities of human well-being within and between nation states.
The second reason the concept of the autonomous individual is pernicious is its pervasiveness in the consciousness of Western intellectuals, entrenched at a depth that makes it almost impossible for them to see any alternative to an individualism so defined except a more or less faceless collectivism. Indeed, we would claim the assumption that the essential characteristics and actions of human beings are best evaluated by treating them as fundamentally free, autonomous, and rational individuals has itself become an unquestioned ideology.
- 5.
Yiqun Zhou argues “The home, where one engaged in daily practices of kinship-centered moral precepts and religious ceremonies, was the site for the most fundamental education in Zhou society” (Zhou 2010: 147).
- 6.
This process of cosmic co-creativity is the defining theme of the Zhongyong 中庸—a text that we have translated as Focusing the Familiar to underscore family and community relations as the ultimate source of cosmic growth. Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200), the Southern Song philosopher who compiled the Four Books, takes the Zhongyong as the fourth and highest expression of the Confucian project. The cosmic proportions of a sage such as Confucius is pervasive in the literature. For example, Analects 19.24 reads: “The superior character of other people is like a mound or a hill that can still be scaled, but Confucius is the sun and the moon that no one can climb beyond.” See also Ames and Hall 2001: 30.
- 7.
That lun 倫 means “class,” “category,” and “order” as well as “relations” might seem somewhat odd at first blush, but it suggests that classification is dependent upon analogy and association rather than on some essential feature or characteristic. The later Wittgenstein is making a similar point when he insists that words are not defined by core meanings present in all uses of that word. Rather, we should approach words historically and contextually, mapping them through “a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing” (Wittgenstein 1953: 66). Wittgenstein surrenders his earlier concern for certainty and exactness and fixed boundaries when he introduces the expressions “family resemblances” and “language games”—that is, when he appeals to similarities and associations rather than strict identity and formal definitions.
- 8.
That is, to say “Confucian role ethics” more explicitly in Chinese as ruxue juese lunlixue 儒學角色倫理學 would in fact make “role” redundant. See Liu 1995: 316 for the Han dynasty sources of this term lunli.
- 9.
In their comparison of Greek and Chinese philosophy and science, Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin add their authority to an analogous contrast in modes of inquiry that has long been argued for: that is, a proclivity of the early Greeks for an exclusive dialectic in pursuit of apodictic truth and a classical Chinese search for a relationally constituted, inclusive harmony and consensus:
The dominant, but not the only, Greek way was through the search for foundations, the demand for demonstration, for incontrovertibility. Its great strengths lay in the ideals of clarity and deductive rigor. Its corresponding weaknesses were a zest for disagreement that inhibited even the beginnings of a consensus, and a habit of casting doubt on every preconception. The principal (though not the sole) Chinese approach was to find and explore correspondences, resonances, interconnections. Such an approach favored the formation of syntheses unifying widely divergent fields of inquiry. Conversely, it inspired a reluctance to confront established positions with radical alternatives (Lloyd and Sivin 2002: 250).
Lloyd and Sivin underscore the primacy and dominance of relationality and synthetic growth in this classical Chinese worldview as producing the predominance of a distinctive mode of inquiry. Such a claim reinforces Fei Xiaotong’s argument that an emphasis on hierarchical kinship relations also produces a distinctive kind of morality, a family-centered relational conception of moral competence we have termed Confucian role ethics.
- 10.
See for example Analects 1.4 and 1.8. There is an ambiguity in the expression “associates and friends” (pengyou 朋友) as it is used in the documents of the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu 春秋) period where these texts do not distinguish between non-related friends and agnatic male relatives—that is, paternal relatives such as brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins, and so on. Some have argued that pengyou becomes a term commonly used to denote non-kin friends specifically only in the Warring States (Zhanguo 戰國) period (453–221 B.C.E.). See Zhou 2010: 110–111, 137–139.
- 11.
For an explanation of why our rendering of this passage concludes ungrammatically, see the Introduction to our translation of the text, Ames and Rosemont 1998: 28–44.
- 12.
In the early Shang, the ancestors—at least those of the king and the noble families—were believed to be directly and significantly responsible for the good or ill fortune in the lives of their descendants, necessitating a propitiating of them through sacrifice. This belief died out only slowly, which helps to explain Analects 2.24: The Master said, “Sacrificing to ancestral spirits other than one’s own is being unctuous.” A part of the genius of Confucius was to see and appreciate that these ritual sacrifices could provide a good deal of meaning to human lives, and serve as a binding force in society overall—even when the supernatural raison d’être for their performance was no longer credited, at least among the intelligentsia. A not dissimilar sentiment was expressed by the American philosopher George Santayana: “I reject altogether the dogma of the Roman Church; but rejoice in the splendor and the beauty of the Mass.” Yiqun Zhou in her analysis of the dominance of kinship and the inalienable bond between ancestors and their progeny in early Zhou society points out that “Nearly one-sixth of the Odes pertain to ancestral sacrifices, including the ceremony proper and the subsequent feast. These pieces demonstrate the central importance of the ancestral banquet for our understanding of the Zhou discourse of sociability (Zhou 2010: 104). And further, that “ancestor worship entails not only memorial rituals that are regular, systematic, and continuous, but also, more important, incorporation of the dead into a descent group as permanent members endowed with an essential role in forging group solidarity” (Zhou 2010: 112).
- 13.
In earlier work (Rosemont 2001) we have argued that despite great theological and metaphysical differences the world’s religions have a number of interesting parallels, one among them being the provision of a variety of instructions very similar across the traditions for how to practice approaching the sacred from our decidedly profane daily lives—spiritual disciplines, as we believe they are—in their sacred writings that adherents may follow in order to live with dignity, learn to maximally appreciate the pleasures of this earth that come to them, and learn as well to deal with the sorrows that must also attend every human life. Above all they proffer paths for developing a sense of belonging, an attunement with something larger than oneself, the experience of which may legitimately be described as religious experience, in our opinion. Because the texts of classical Confucianism also contain such instructions, we take it to be a religion on all fours with the others, despite the absence of any theology, or much metaphysics. There are, moreover, no churches, monasteries, nunneries, ashrams, synagogues, or mosques in early Confucianism, but as our quotes from the Analects throughout this essay demonstrate, the basics of the spiritual discipline are centered in another edifice—that is, the family home—thus making “family reverence” all the more felicitous as a translation for xiao than “filial piety.” Cf. fn.1.
- 14.
Much commentarial ink has been spilled on trying to argue against the claim of this passage that xiao as the root produces ren. Zhu Xi in his commentary on the Analects worries over this problem, and cites the interpretation of his philosophical predecessors, the Cheng brothers 二程, that disputes this claim. The Cheng brothers argue for a distinction between “becoming ren” (weiren 為仁) and “practicing ren” (xingren 行仁), insisting that ren as integral to human nature must be prior to xiao, and that xiao only enables us to “practice” ren rather than to “become” ren. See Ames 2011: 88–90.
- 15.
The graph zhi 知, uniformly translated as “to know,” “knowledge,” or “wisdom,” is less abstract than these English terms, as each of us has argued elsewhere (Hall and Ames 1987; Rosemont 2012). In our Analects translation we used “to realize,” and “realization” for zhi whenever possible in an attempt to convey the performative as well as the cognitive dimension of knowing—that is, the importance of the activity and experience of knowing. If “to finalize” is to make final, then “to realize” can be taken as “to make real.”
- 16.
The contrast with Soren Kierkegaard on these planes of living could not be more stark. Without denigrating the work of the great Dane in any way, it is clear that his planes are exclusive: once you leave the aesthetic life for the ethical, you do not—cannot—return; and to leave the ethical plane for the religious requires “a leap to faith” of great proportions. The Confucian planes on the other hand are always subject to change, are intertwined, mutually dependent and interdependent, and they must be integrated throughout our lives. See Kierkegaard 1985, especially “The Preamble of the Heart.” The reader might also want to contrast our treatment of xiao with that of Philip J. Ivanhoe, who takes it to be a virtue in the philosophical (Aristotelian) sense of the term. See Ivanhoe 2004.
- 17.
Translating shu 述 as “to follow the proper way” enables us to maintain the “path” (dao) metaphor that it suggests and that is a key to a coherent reading of the text. Throughout the early corpus, the term meaning “to initiate” (zuo 作)—translated here as to “forge new paths”—is frequently associated with the term “sageliness” (sheng 聖). Hence Confucius’s description of himself might be read as an expression of modesty. “Old Peng” is Peng Zu 彭祖, a minister to the court during the Shang dynasty whom legend has it lived to be some 800 years old. With the name “Peng Zu”—literally “Peng the Ancestor”—and with his remarkable longevity, Old Peng is certainly emblematic of historical continuity.
- 18.
See also Analects 8.20: Shun 舜 had only five ministers and the world was properly governed. King Wu 武王 also said, “I have ten ministers who bring proper order to the world.” Confucius said, “As the saying has it: ‘Human talent is hard to come by.’ Isn’t it indeed the case. And it was at the transition from Yao 堯 monarchy to Shun 舜 that talented ministers were in greatest abundance. In King Wu’s case with a woman, perhaps his wife, among them, there were really only nine ministers. The Zhou, with two thirds of the world in its possession, continued to submit to and serve the House of Yin. The excellence of Zhou can be said to be the highest excellence of all.”
- 19.
This being the case, it is not surprising that Zhu Xi 朱熹 canonizes the Analects as the second of the Four Books for the explicit reason that it not only provides the fundamental vocabulary of the tradition, but it also provides a narrative example of personal cultivation that is at the heart of the Confucian project described in the first of his Four Books, the Great Learning (Daxue 大學).
- 20.
Indeed, before Zhu Xi’s time it is not even accurate to refer to “Confucianism” at all—there is no graph for it in classical Chinese—because it was basically the learning of the literati or “gentlefolk” (ruxue 儒學). And thus it bears repeating, we think, that the classical texts that have been classified as “Confucian” should be read on their own, and not as collectively cohering as to have a “correct” interpretation that it is ours to find; there are far too many inconsistencies among and between them, the Mengzi 孟子 and the Xunzi 荀子 being among the more notorious examples. At the same time, if its use be clear, “Confucianism,” especially in its classical forms, may be conceived as an extension of the xiao dynamic, where each generation inherits the cultural tradition, uses it to address the pressing issues of the age, and thus reauthorizing it, passes it along to the next generation with the recommendation that they do the same.
- 21.
According to the biography of Confucius in Sima Qian 司馬遷 (1959: 1919), Confucius had left Wey and was on route to Chen when he passed through Kuang. The people of Kuang had recently been ravaged by Yang Huo, also from the state of Lu, and mistook Confucius for him. See also 11.23.
- 22.
- 23.
A popular written form of the character for “body” (ti 體) that has become the standard script in Japanese and the simplified Chinese form is (ti 体) that combines the character “person” (ren 人) and the graph for “root” (ben 本).
- 24.
The sense of immortality implied by the expression “living on” is difficult to see if the body is taken as “belonging” only to an individual. The Xiaojing makes clear that for Confucius, it does not, as evidenced in the several quotes below in fns. 38–40. See also Rosemont 2007.
- 25.
The Liji 禮記 (Record of Rites) 25.36/128/6 says:
The Master said: “Among those things born of the heavens and nurtured by the earth, nothing is grander than the human being. For the parents to give birth to your whole person, and for one to return oneself to them whole is what can be called family reverence. To avoid desecrating your body or bringing disgrace to your person is what can be called keeping your person whole.”
- 26.
Analects 15.36: “The Master said, ‘In striving to be consummate in your person, do not yield even to your teacher.’”
- 27.
Analects 6.30: “As for consummate persons, they establish others in seeking to establish themselves; they promote others in seeking to get there themselves. Correlating one’s conduct with those near at hand can be said to be the method of becoming consummate in one’s conduct.”
- 28.
Analects 7.8: “The Master said, ‘I do not open the way for students who are not driven with eagerness; I do not supply a vocabulary for students who are not trying desperately to find the language for their ideas. If on showing students one corner they do not come back to me with the other three, I will not repeat myself.’” And 7.22: “The Master said, ‘In strolling in the company of just two other persons, I am bound to find a teacher in them. Identifying their strengths, I follow them, and identifying their weaknesses, I reform myself accordingly.’”
- 29.
Analects 9.17: “The Master was standing on the riverbank, and observed, ‘Isn’t life’s passing just like this, never ceasing day or night!’”; 2.11: “The Master said: ‘Reviewing the old as a means of realizing the new—such a person can be considered a teacher.’” and 15.29: “The Master said: ‘It is the person who is able to broaden the way, not the way that broadens the person.’”
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An earlier version of this chapter, in Chinese, has appeared in the journal Huazhong Shifandaxue xuebao 2013 no. 5.
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Ames, R.T., Rosemont, H. (2014). Family Reverence (xiao 孝) in the Analects: Confucian Role Ethics and the Dynamics of Intergenerational Transmission. In: Olberding, A. (eds) Dao Companion to the Analects. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7113-0_7
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