Abstract
“Humaneness” is a core category in Confucian philosophy. This article attempts to highlight the subtle connections among a set of concepts that are central to this philosophy, namely “reproduction” 生 (sheng), “familiarity” 親 (qin), “love” 愛 (ai), and “humaneness” 仁 (ren), and thus to investigate how Confucius appropriated “humaneness” as an exclusively Confucian term.
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Notes
- 1.
I want to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Huang Kejian 黄克剑 for the invaluable guidance and feedback that he gave me in the writing of this paper. He has influenced this papers understanding that ren 仁 in its earliest form had the connotation of “reproduction” and that the term should be comprehended primarily in association with humanity instead of any other things. Furthermore, Professor Huang has suggested a new view on the original meaning of ren in a recent article where he writes that “ren” was originally written with shen 身 (body) and xin 心 (heart) as . It means that a person who is conceiving has deep love for another person who is being conceived, but the meaning of “reproduction” is still included in ren 仁. See his article in Wen Dao 问道 (Questioning the Way), issue no. 4, 2010.
- 2.
I have opted to leave this word untranslated so as to avoid the connotations of a transcendent creator that the standard glosses of “God” and “Supreme Being” carry in English.
- 3.
According to Shang myth, a swallow was commissioned by Heaven to descend to earth and give birth to the first ruler of the dynasty, thus the swallow came to represent the ancestral line of the rulers.
- 4.
See also Chen (2008), particularly the first section entitled “Shengming Chongbai yu ‘Di’ Chongbai” 生命崇拜与“帝”崇拜 (“The Worship of Life and the Worship of Di”).
- 5.
While I have consulted James Legge’s English translation, all translations herein are my own.
- 6.
- 7.
But these sorts of extensions are not limited to ancient people, and Schopenhauer provides a modern version of this. At one point in his The World as Will and Representation, he expanded the “will” that he had derived from humankind to animals, plants, and even organic and inorganic things like waterfalls and iron filings. He called this method “efficient naming.”.
- 8.
For more on this idea pertaining to the “sage,” see Huang (2006).
- 9.
Lunyu 7.6.
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Chen, H. (2017). Reproduction, Familiarity, Love, and Humaneness: How Did Confucius Reveal “Humaneness”?. In: Yao, X. (eds) Reconceptualizing Confucian Philosophy in the 21st Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4000-9_3
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