Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That 9780203804599, 0203804597

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Moral Exemplars in the Analects
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
Part I: Theory
2. An Origins Myth for the Analects
3. The Analects' Silences
4. Exemplarist Elements in the Analects
Part II: Exemplars
5. A Total Exemplar: Confucius
6. A Partial Exemplar: Zilu
7. A Partial Exemplar: Zigong
8. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Index Locorum.

Citation preview

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory

1. The Contradictions of Modern Moral Philosophy Ethics after Wittgenstein Paul Johnston 2. Kant, Duty and Moral Worth Philip Stratton-Lake 3. Justifying Emotions Pride and Jealousy Kristján Kristjánsson 4. Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill Frederick Rosen 5. The Self, the Soul and the Psychology of Good and Evil Ilham Dilman 6. Moral Responsibility The Ways of Scepticism Carlos J. Moya 7. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle Mirrors of Virtue Jiyuan Yu 8. Caste Wars A Philosophy of Discrimination David Edmonds 9. Deprivation and Freedom A Philosophical Enquiry Richard J. Hull

10. Needs and Moral Necessity Soran Reader 11. Reasons, Patterns, and Cooperation Christopher Woodard 12. Challenging Moral Particularism Edited by Mark Norris Lance, Matjaž Potrč, and Vojko Strahovnik 13. Rationality and Moral Theory How Intimacy Generates Reasons Diane Jeske 14. The Ethics of Forgiveness A Collection of Essays Christel Fricke 15. Moral Exemplars in the Analects The Good Person is That Amy Olberding

Moral Exemplars in the Analects The Good Person is That Amy Olberding

NEW YORK

LONDON

First published 2012 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Taylor & Francis The right of Amy Olberding to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global. Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper by IBT Global. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olberding, Amy. Moral exemplars in the Analects : the good person is that / Amy Olberding. p. cm.—(Routledge studies in ethics and moral theory ; 15) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Confucian ethics. 2. Confucius. Lun yu. 3. Philosophy, Confucian. I. Title. BJ117.O43 2011 181'.112—dc22 2011009124 ISBN13: 978-0-415-89705-1 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-80459-9 (ebk)

For Lynn Prantl

Contents

Acknowledgments 1

Introduction

ix 1

PART I: Theory 2

An Origins Myth for the Analects

17

3

The Analects’ Silences

43

4

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

76

PART II: Exemplars 5

A Total Exemplar: Confucius

105

6

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

136

7

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

162

8

Conclusion

180

Notes Bibliography Index Index Locorum

193 215 221 231

Acknowledgments

Throughout my work on this book, I profited from the support and counsel of many people. I am especially grateful to the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation for the research fellowship that enabled me to take a year away from teaching to compose this book and to the University of Oklahoma Research Council, which provided summer support as I got the project underway. Roger Ames, Joel Kupperman, and two anonymous readers for Routledge Press provided helpful comments and suggestions that have improved what I offer here. The work of my colleague at OU, Linda Zagzebski, was fundamentally formative in developing the ideas for this book and some early conversations with Linda importantly refi ned my thinking. The graduate students in my Analects seminar in fall 2008 also helpfully challenged me in discussions of early versions of this work. I am grateful to the many people who facilitated the production and publishing of this book, including: Bruce Tindall, who prepared the indices; Erica Wetter, Felisa Salvago-Keyes, and Diana Castaldini at Routledge Press; and Ryan Kenney at IBT Global. Preliminary versions of some of the arguments and analysis I offer in Chapters 2, 5, 6, and 7 appeared in other outlets. A thumbnail sketch of elements featured in Chapter 2 appeared in “Dreaming of the Duke of Zhou: Exemplarism and the Analects,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35:4 (2008): 625–639. Early sketches of the analyses of Confucius, Zilu, and Zigong offered in Chapters 5–7 appeared in two articles: “The Educative Function of Personal Style in the Analects,” Philosophy East and West 57:3 (2007):357–374 and “Ascending the Hall: Demeanor and Moral Improvement in the Analects,” Philosophy East and West 59:4 (2009): 503–522. I am grateful to these journals for allowing portions of those earlier pieces to be presented in this volume. Most especially, I am grateful to my husband, Garret Olberding. He is the one to whom I show all my work and is in a strong sense the one to whom it is all addressed. From the fi rst time he read (and laughed at) a paper I wrote in graduate school, we have enjoyed the sort of shared working life in which each is better and more joyful in the work because of the other. And this is true whether we are writing or digging post-holes

x

Acknowledgments

for a barbed wire fence. His influence—as a fellow academic certainly, but most fundamentally as my closest friend across an impossibly rich endurance of days and years—is a sustained and sustaining element in all my work. I am also grateful to our daughter, Adelein, who suggested I improve the book by including pictures of dogs and horses. Her suggestions are not included here but were much appreciated nonetheless. She was perhaps my playful Zhuangzi throughout, never allowing me to lodge too long in self-seriousness. Finally, I owe an unpayable debt to my grandfather, Lynn Prantl, to whom this book is dedicated and who is, I suspect, just the sort of person Confucius has in mind with the term ren. My grandfather surely shadows much of what I have to say here about the force and effect of exemplars. For me and for many of my family, he is our fi rst and elemental that.

1

Introduction

The nature of the Analects raises important questions regarding what it means to read it responsibly, what it means to be guided by it. While it is surely true that the best sorts of books retain a suggestively open character, the Analects permits an unusually generous set of possible, and indeed plausible, directions for inquiry. The text itself seems indirectly to acknowledge this. In describing his teaching, Confucius avers that he provides but “one corner” and invites the student to infer the other three.1 To the extent that Confucius’ claim about his teaching applies to the text itself, the reader has work she is charged to do. She must complete the square. What I wish to do in this study may in some measure be understood as an effort to make this shape, to complete the square I believe suggested by the text. However, it is perhaps more accurate to characterize what follows as a struggle with the “one corner.” As Confucius’ claim suggests, the shape we achieve in learning will depend upon where we begin. The “corner” presumably marks a boundary and circumscribes the shape one may make, yet the corner itself, the starting point, is not clearly marked. Because the Analects largely lacks the signals that would unambiguously direct us to its purposes, the reader is perhaps more than typically directed by her own interests. Given what the text offers about the need to devise appropriate conclusions through our own efforts, such is less a liberty one takes with the text than a necessary element of reading it. However, I believe that the interests that motivate our efforts to complete what Confucius offers also often inform where we begin. What is the corner the text provides? Confucius does not say. Nor do the text’s authors. Thus even where we strive to follow faithfully what the text suggests, the fi rst interpretive challenge consists in locating the corner, or at least a corner, from which to begin. My interest, the sort of corner I seek, is self-consciously theoretical. That is, I wish to discern a governing logic that renders the Analects’ compelling moral sensibility intelligible as moral theory. Before I sketch what this entails, I wish simply to distinguish this sort of reading from other approaches and, in so doing, address some of the methodological elements in what I offer. Given the structure and composition of the Analects, there are many obstacles to identifying a governing logic of the text. 2 While I do not ignore these obstacles in what follows, I nonetheless seek to articulate a

2

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

general understanding of the text that largely sets aside issues concerning the authorship or dating of individual passages. I wish, in short, to treat the text as a received text, a text historically presented to readers as containing if not a wholly unified vision, a generally intelligible and coherent vision. In adopting such an approach, I do not discount the worth of efforts to parse the text’s historical strata in order to distinguish features of its composition and locate what may be diverse commitments in evidence in them. Indeed, I see such an approach as complementary rather than competing. Like all complex texts, the Analects invites a diversity of interests and methodological approaches; our sense of it would surely suffer impoverishment were we to insist upon only one. The Analects can, for example, illuminate much about early Chinese history, hagiography, text composition, and political culture. While it is unlikely that any single account can well fit all that the Analects offers, it has operated through millennia of Chinese history and more recently in the west as a source of moral insight. Whatever else it may also be, it is a work of moral philosophy and it is in this way I shall treat it. The moral philosophy presented in the Analects and, more generally, traditionally assigned to Confucius has of course generated a sizeable corpus of work. This work ranges from ostensibly straightforward commentary on the Analects to treatments that self-consciously aim to elaborate upon what the text alone can offer. In what follows, I hew narrowly to the text itself, largely foregoing the supplements of later Confucian tradition. Here too while there are a plurality of possible and valuable approaches, I want, insofar as possible, to treat the text in a most basic fashion as a singular text. While I largely abjure analysis of compositional issues or consideration of the later Confucian tradition, the presentation I provide does selfconsciously distinguish two distinct, and in some ways separable, ways of reading the text: as a moral manual and as moral theory.3 Qua moral manual, the Analects operates as a compendium of practical and direct moral advice. It observes a variety of human circumstances, asserts values that can govern responses to such circumstances, and recommends strategies for navigating common areas of human experience. It suggests ways to direct our feelings toward others, toward events, and toward ourselves. It provides rules of thumb by which to operate, examples to consider and appropriate, and a progression of moral development to follow. In short, the Analects provides a guide for living, serving as a handbook of sorts that can assist anyone who wonders what to do, how to feel, or how to think about the circumstances, people, and events of her life. The historical influence of the Analects owes in no small measure to its having been seen as an especially potent and effective manual, and it is unambiguously clear that whatever else the text does, it aims to do just this, to provide moral direction to its readers. When we approach the text in this way, seeking from it a way of life that immediately answers to our concerns

Introduction

3

and needs, the “corners” it offers are several. Where personal moral cultivation is concerned, Confucius proposes a number of places one might begin and suggests that deciding among them ought to be informed by selfknowledge. There is a full complement of moral commitments or virtues any earnest moral learner would seek to cultivate, but one or another might provide a special focus based on her existing capacities, temperament, and life circumstances. Thus while Confucius suggests that all moral learners aim at ultimately making a defi nite shape, he also seems to expect that the corners from which they begin may appropriately differ in accord with conditions particular to them.4 To read the Analects as a moral manual is just to take it as providing a way of life, a path toward self-cultivation. This sort of guidance is, however, distinct from moral theory and this distinction is critically important in what follows. 5 We can initially distinguish the moral manual from moral theory by observing that, most basically, one may follow the injunctions and instructions a manual provides, and do so successfully, without understanding why one enjoys success. This is clear if we consider the way other sorts of manuals work. I may, for example, follow the instructions provided in a do-it-yourself furniture guide and assemble a fi nished rocking chair absent any specialist appreciation of the craft I undertake. I may know little of the myriad types of wood, how the specific wood with which I work characteristically responds to various techniques and treatments, or understand the logic of assembling this part of the chair in advance of that. I may not even entirely understand what I seek to build. I may, that is, set out to make a chair like other rockers I have seen but have little idea what physical principles are at work in preventing such chairs from tipping over or collapsing. Nonetheless, despite my ignorance, having carefully applied the instructions, I achieve a working rocker and may enjoy the fruits of my labor. So too, I think it clear that human beings can and do operate in accord with moral instruction without ever appreciating why and how their efforts yield success. They may thereby come to enjoy an enriched life, to achieve harmonious relations with those they love, to fi nd a variety of satisfactions otherwise unavailable. Yet even so, they may be hard pressed to adumbrate abstract reasons why their lives are working or articulate more generally what “working” in this context means. As my analogy implies, just as one may craft a working rocking chair by following instructions, so too one may craft a working life. Moreover, just as there is value in having a chair that does not tip over, there is a similar value with life. And this is so whether one can explain the logic at work or not. Much of the Analects, I believe, can be understood to assign priority to “not tipping over,” to achieving a “working” life. It is not, fi rst and foremost, concerned with explaining the more abstruse elements of why this piece of its moral structure attaches to that or with giving a complete abstract or general account of a life that works. It operates most obviously,

4

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

in other words, as a manual. Nonetheless, like any manual, we expect it that it offers the instruction it does informed by a certain, more robust understanding. I may not know why my adherence to instructions yields success, but I expect that the author of my instructions does. Indeed, I operate on some trust that she does, that she has good reasons for directing me as she does. Thus while the Analects may not foreground its wider logic, we expect that it has one, that there resides behind its various injunctions and instructions a governing sense that addresses the why and how. In this study, I propose a theoretical model that I think fits the moral direction the Analects gives. Approaching the text with a markedly theoretical interest requires some important concessions and caveats. First, as is already implied, I acknowledge that the desire to apply a theoretical model to the text is an interest I self-consciously bring to it. And it is a specialized interest, one I do not presuppose need be shared by any able reader of the Analects. While human beings generally do, throughout their lives, reflect on moral questions and engage in moral struggles, it is far less clear that they do, or even should, reflect on or engage in moral theory. As is the case with rocking chair assembly, we often need no elaborate explanation in order to accomplish our ends. Moreover, I believe there is some risk in philosophers protesting the importance of theory too ardently. I take it as a given that the world is populated with many good people who have no explicit moral theory and that their goodness suffers no insufficiency for this. Philosophers, I worry, so emphasize theory that we often lose sight of this or, more severely, simply deny this. We risk a bias against goodness unaccompanied by theory and thereby a disconnection from how morality features in most human lives. While the philosopher’s bias for theory perhaps provokes a general worry about the craft of philosophy itself, I judge it particularly important to foreground this concern in the case of the Analects. For the Analects does not share this bias. As I previously noted, the text appears to function primarily as a moral manual and, unlike some of the manuals in the western philosophical corpus, it does not appear intended to offer conveniently abbreviated “reminders” of more elaborate and theoretical commitments. The Analects is not akin to Epictetus’ Handbook, a work deliberately designed to rehearse shortened and thus practically useful versions of the much more elaborate Stoic arguments its users would have known. Moreover, Confucius is no Socrates, worrying away at whether those who purport to be good can vouchsafe their goodness through abstract understanding. Instead Confucius seems to attend uncommonly closely to the capacity of good people to inspire robust morality. He appears to fi nd ordinary, “unphilosophical” goodness adequate to its purposes and to fi nd no insufficiency in it. As will become clear, my interpretation rests on just this, on theory following the lived experience of goodness rather than serving as a precondition for it. At this stage, however, it is enough to note that insofar

Introduction

5

as more abstract arguments can be said to be at work in the text, they work in ways somewhat hidden or implicit, informing the flow of instruction as a sort of undercurrent below the surface. If I am correct that the Analects most readily lends itself to treatment as a moral manual, then the task of reading it for theory invites a series of questions. Among the most salient are the methodological and motivational. That is, how should one proceed in reading a manual for theory? Why undertake such a reading, given the risk of assigning a misplaced emphasis not intended in the original? How ought we evaluate the outcome of such an undertaking? I shall take these in series. My answers here are necessarily preliminary.

FROM MANUAL TO THEORY Perhaps the most obvious technique for moving from manual to theory is to engage in a process of reverse engineering. We take the instructions offered, examine them as individual elements and as a totality, plumb them for intimations or suggestions of more theoretical commitments, incorporate what we know and can discover about the context in which they are offered, and fi nally devise the account that best takes measure of all of this. While such a procedure would in no way be easy to follow, it nonetheless seems deceptive in its simplicity and embeds assumptions we may not wish to endorse. A fi rst worry with this approach is that inferences from instruction to theory may well go wrong on account of the manual’s mode of presentation. Because Confucius clearly does on occasion tailor his claims to the needs and capacities of his interlocutors, the generality and abstraction theory requires may be frustrated by the particularity of circumstance. An apparently general claim about, for example, the need for patient effort reads differently where it is made to a notably impatient student. While the text often does signal the circumstances in which Confucius’ claims are made and to whom he makes them, we cannot be sure that some passages do not deny us relevant context or that we know enough about Confucius’ various interlocutors to understand the context that is offered. Consequently, there is, and I suspect always will be, an importantly provisional and tentative quality to the sorts of conclusions we can draw. A second and deeper worry concerns the nature of inferential reasoning more generally. The sorts of inferences I will fi nd clearest, most compelling, and most sensible will rely not simply on what is before me, the text I seek to interpret, but on myriad other elements as well. The language in which I speak and reason, the traditions of thought and value I have inherited, and the experiences that have shaped my intellect are but a few such elements. Reasoning is not thereby wholly idiosyncratic and personal, but it is conditioned in ways that render any simple reverse engineering of a classical Chinese moral manual highly suspect. For the capacity to share inferences

6

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

may depend in important ways on sharing some signifi cant measure, if not all, of the elements that structure and inform reasoning more generally, on our being importantly like those we seek to understand. Put simply, there is much debate in the literature about how much like us we can assume the ancient Chinese to be. And, the more unlike us we suspect they are, the less confident we should be that we can reliably draw implied commitments and claims from what they explicitly say. Here too, then, we fi nd cause to hold our conclusions somewhat lightly. Indeed, we may despair of making any at all or at least of trusting any we do make. I shall shortly address why I nonetheless think it worthwhile to try, but fi rst let me address what I think a particularly important potential difference between us and the authors of the Analects. In undertaking this project, I join a host of other scholars who have sought to articulate what underlying general commitments may inform and structure the Analects. The methods employed by these scholars vary considerably, but I think we all agree that there are wider commitments and values in play in the Analects than those that are explicitly given, or at least that the structure of the commitments and values explicitly averred may be more elaborate than what is immediately apparent. A fundamental question we all are obliged to consider, however, is whether any implied commitments, or their implicit arrangement, rise to the level of what we contemporaries would consider “moral theory.” In short, if we aim to move from the instructional manual to theory, are we taking the text in a direction it does not naturally go? I have likened the interpretive process of reading the Analects for theory to reasoning from a particular set of do-it-yourself furniture instructions to a wider understanding of furniture building. This analogy may work in some respects. We do reasonably expect the author of our rocking chair assembly instructions to operate upon, though not necessarily explicitly give, a general wisdom about chairs and woodworking. Does she, however, thereby possess a theory of chairs or woodworking? Indeed, does she need a theory about chairs or woodworking? My own intuitions, with respect to rocking chair makers at least, suggest that she may not and need not. Wisdom—serviceable and even thoroughgoing wisdom—is not identical to theoretical understanding, nor is theoretical understanding a necessary condition for such wisdom. With respect to the Analects, however, I think the case more complicated. That the text has a wisdom of the sort we would ascribe to master rocking chair makers I take as a given, but whether the text has an implicit moral theory or not will depend significantly on how we defi ne moral theory and what criteria we expect theory to fulfi ll. For the purposes of this book, I shall follow Linda Zagzebski in defi ning moral theory as “an abstract structure that aims to simplify, systematize, and justify our moral beliefs and practices.”6 My contention, however, is not that the Analects has a moral theory in this sense. I think that in many respects, our expectations of moral theory just are one of the significant

Introduction

7

differences between ourselves and the authors of the Analects. As I argue more extensively in Chapter 3, particularly where the justification of moral practice is concerned, there is reason to think that the authors of the Analects simply will not have shared some of the concerns contemporary moral theorists bring to their work. I nonetheless suggest that the text can be understood to sufficiently fulfill the other conditions for theory—simplifying and systematizing moral practices—in a way that allows the contemporary moral theorist to address her concerns with justification. Here I simply wish to emphasize, in a necessarily preliminary and abbreviated fashion, that there are important doubts regarding the Analects’ capacity to directly yield a moral theory in the way we have come to expect or with the elements we tend to assume. All of the concerns I raise of course warrant much more detailed treatment and this I seek to offer in the more elaborate arguments that follow. Despite these initial concerns about both the nature of the Analects’ presentation and real historical and contextual issues, however, I judge the Analects to give sufficient indications of a simplified and systematized logic to make a theoretical study both possible and worth pursuing. The move from manual to theory is, however, neither seamless nor historically secure. I thus shall neither claim nor aspire to show that my account reverse engineers the text in any strict sense. Indeed, I expect and hope that the result will offer something new. My interests, as I have emphasized, are particular and I will look to the text with those interests without presupposing their priority for the text’s authors. To treat the text thus entails the acknowledgement that I, as its reader, engage it as an individual for whom certain questions are more pressing than others. In this, I am influenced by Montaigne’s account of the student’s process in education: The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work that is all his own, to wit, his judgment. His education, work, and study aim only at forming this.7 This study has about it an undeniably “here and there” character. I “plunder” the Analects in the hope of formulating what Montaigne calls “judgment” and what I would here characterize as an account of moral practice that can enliven and inform contemporary sensibilities. While some of the motivations for this study are surely evident already, let me address them explicitly.

WHY THEORY? There may be some suspicion that, given all of the above, reading the Analects for theory is, to put it mildly, an odd endeavor. If we retain some

8

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

measure of skepticism that the authors of the text possess theory in a sense we would readily recognize and, moreover, worry that an interest in theory is a somewhat peculiar preoccupation of the contemporary philosopher rather than an interest that is or need be more widely shared, why then query the text’s potential for moral theory? Perhaps a complete answer requires that I begin by acknowledging that one reason to do it is that it is already being done. That is, there exists already a robust body of literature that investigates the Analects’ potential for moral theory and this study merely joins a scholarly conversation well underway. But this of course just makes the question more general and invites us to wonder what motivates the conversation. My own reasons, I suspect, reflect some of the same interests as many engaged in this work, but it is worth stating them plainly. My own conviction is that there are some things the Analects does exceptionally and unusually well. There are few texts in the philosophical corpus that succeed as well as the Analects at rendering a compelling portrait of the moral contours of ordinary experience. The text presents us with a beguiling philosophical hero of sorts, Confucius, but it gives us him in a way that bears close affi nity to the way in which life more immediately affords us our personal heroes, complete with undramatic, prosaic moments and flashes of puzzling personality. It also speaks to our most common troubles—for example, the deaths of parents and anxieties about children—with a gravity that recognizes their significance for us. It speaks to our most common joys, affi rming the pleasures of companionship among family and friends, suggesting not that these are ever and always delight but that they more generally, and with all their complexity, nourish our well-being. It speaks to the sense that our moral lives are often conducted not in the raw tension of dramatic dilemmas, but in the delicate and subtle interactions of daily intercourse with others. The Analects, in short, attends uncommonly well and closely to just the sorts of value too often elided, neglected, or even occasionally and self-consciously dismissed in much of moral philosophy.8 To the extent that we care deeply about these features of moral life and wish, in Montaigne’s idiom, to make a honey that includes them, the Analects constitutes an especially rich and attractive source of pollen. Just as the Analects offers something distinctive to our moral reflections, so too does moral theory. While I shall of course have more to say about what moral theory can contribute, a general sketch will include the elements I have identified, such as simplifying, systematizing, and justifying moral practice. As Zagzebski observes, a moral theory is, first and foremost, an effort to lift from the confusion and complexity of experience an abstract structure that describes, in general terms, the moral domain.9 Unlike a moral manual, it is not most immediately concerned with providing direction, but instead aims to survey, explain, and interconnect the elements that inform direction. The most immediate function of moral theory, then, is to provide an account of the “how” and “why” of actual moral

Introduction

9

practices and beliefs, illuminating broad values implicitly sanctioned by our moral activities and commitments, relationships between these values, and the ways in which these values attach to more basic features of our experience. Less directly, moral theory can serve as the prompt to revise moral practice. For what we discover about moral practices by its offices may reveal heretofore unnoticed tensions or elisions that the necessarily more complex in situ nature of moral practice conceals. We may fi nd that those values we enact in practice are incompletely or poorly expressed by what we do, bear relation to other values that would modify our manner of expressing them, or otherwise require alteration based on what reflection on their general nature has disclosed. In sum, the value of moral theory resides in its capacity both to explain ourselves to ourselves and to change ourselves in response to what our explanations disclose. In aiming to address the Analects from the perspective afforded by moral theory, I operate upon the joint assumptions that moral theory can explain moral experience in important ways and that the Analects depicts features of moral experience that are particularly important to us. Where moral theory aims to survey broadly the moral domain, the Analects points us to features of that domain that I believe require better theoretical expression than they have so far been given. In applying theory to this text, then, I trust that whether we ever understand it in its own right, our effort to understand it from our own perhaps peculiar or idiosyncratic vantage promises to show us something enriched.

EVALUATING THE MOVE FROM MANUAL TO THEORY As the foregoing reflections suggest, evaluating the success of a theoretical model of the Analects cannot simply reference whether or not the model gets the Analects “right” or, more precisely, presents an historically accurate representation of the text’s moral logic. This is a standard perhaps impossible to meet and it is not, at any rate, what I seek to provide. Nonetheless, I do expect that one test of this account will be the extent to which it allows us to make sense of the text, both as a comprehensive whole and with respect to how well its various aspects seam together. The sense we thus make may not mirror that of its authors, but neither should it go markedly astray from or actively distort what they offer. It should, in the idiom of the Analects itself, keep warm the old while appreciating the new (2.11). To “keep warm the old” in my account will mean simply to aim at a reasonable fidelity to the text, and in particular to what I would characterize as its “spirit” rather than its “letter.” The “letter” of the text is of course in some ways opaque, but it is also clear in ways we wish it were not. Like many ancient texts, the Analects appears to endorse, for example, pernicious perspectives on gender.10 We do well to recognize such perspectives and consider carefully the ways in which they may compromise the utility

10

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

of the text for our own moral reasoning. In my account, I will not directly address such issues, but my fidelity to the text will aim at preserving those parts of the Analects I judge to suffer least from such concerns. I will, that is, strive to “keep warm” the elements of the text that can speak effectively to an audience like ourselves and allow to “grow cold” those historical elements that cannot. To “appreciate the new” in my account will entail, as I have described, bringing my own interests and the instruments of contemporary moral theory to bear on the text’s sensibility. In this, I aim at meeting a standard of usefulness. While I believe that the Analects can, on its own and in its own right, speak to a contemporary audience in compelling ways, I seek in some ways to amplify its voice and broaden its vocal range. The result, I hope, will provide both a new manner of reading the text and, with this, a new way of applying the Analects’ insights to our own philosophical circumstances.

EXEMPLARISM Given reasonable doubts about whether the Analects has, simpliciter, a moral theory, it may be too much to hope that we can fi nd a corner from which to begin making the shape of a moral theory. Nonetheless, I want to suggest that the text is fashioned in such a way to recommend one distinctively compelling possibility: its exemplars. Where we look to the text as a manual, the guidance it offers often consists in the recommendation that we seek to emulate notable others or, in the alternative, avoid emulating notorious others. Indeed, I suspect it would be difficult to apply the Analects’ moral instruction in one’s own moral development absent the element of emulation. Many of the text’s more abstract moral recommendations, moreover, come to vivid life in the text, as the authors present us with narrative accounts depicting the text’s various dramatic personae engaged in moral activity. I wish to argue that these exemplars and narrative figures, the people the text describes and enjoins us to take as models, constitute the “one corner” from which we can infer the wider logic of the text and construct a robust moral theory. Many scholars of the Analects recognize the formidable role played by the moral exemplars depicted in the text. The Analects’ treatment of moral learning assigns high significance to the force and efficacy of emulation of exemplars, and there are few who write about the Analects’ ethical vision without making some appeal to its exemplars, and to Confucius in particular. As Donald Munro observes, the early Confucians considered emulation “not just one way of learning; it was by far the most efficient way, and one could inculcate any virtuous behavior in people by presenting the right model.”11 More recently, Sor-hoon Tan has analyzed the role of exemplars in the text and observes that the prevalence and vivacity of moral exemplars in the Analects indicates a robust commitment to a moral

Introduction

11

psychology in which imagination plays a signal role.12 The text’s presentation of “paradigmatic characters” implicitly enjoins the moral learner to engage her imaginative powers, powers that are, Tan observes, often more important for moral learning than reasoning: “Rational argumentation is secondary to the presentation of paradigmatic characters to move us to emulate them. Imagination is crucial to the process of understanding because it is able to give more weight to particularities and because of its closer relation to the emotions and desires.”13 Tan’s argument rests on the observation that the self cultivation both endorsed and modeled in the Analects requires a willingness on the part of the moral learner to be commanded by exemplary others, to fi nd the full complement of human capacities—from emotion to desire to understanding—engaged by her imaginative identification with them. What I offer here may be understood in some measure to press Munro’s and Tan’s suggestions further. Where their focus is largely the role of the exemplar in personal cultivation and moral learning, I suggest for the exemplar a role more ambitious still. The exemplars of the Analects, I maintain, can be counted the origin of a theoretical vision. From them, the text’s various moral conceptual schemata emerge. In making this suggestion, I am much influenced by the recent work of Linda Zagzebski, who argues that moral theory more generally can be grounded in our responses to exemplary moral figures. While Zagzebski’s work aims ultimately to provide a distinctively Christian exemplarist virtue ethic, I believe its application to the Analects promises fruitful insight. Indeed, I believe it stands to render explicit what many readers of the Analects intuitively apprehend: The moral exemplars of the Analects are not merely important, but indispensable and necessary to its ethical vision.

Part I

Theory

The moral theory I ascribe to the Analects is, in its most basic iteration, quite simple and direct. I argue that the general moral sensibility the text proposes results from careful scrutiny of exemplars. Moral reasoning proceeds from observation of particular exemplary figures to increasingly refi ned and abstract moral concepts and prescriptions. Such is to say that Confucius and the Analects’ authors know, in a pre-theoretical, immediate way, whom they judge to be good people and that the various abstract moral concepts and prescriptions the text proposes are an effort to explain and characterize these people. Put simply, the reasoning of the Analects begins with people and ends in theory. Its governing imperative is that we ought to seek to be like our exemplars and its generalized accounts of the virtues reflect efforts to assay, in an organized and careful fashion, what emulation of exemplars entails and requires. While an exemplarist method of the sort I ascribe to the Analects will move from people to concepts, generating its moral schemata and concepts based on what scrutiny of exemplars recommends, in the following chapters, I will proceed in reverse order. I take the Analects’ moral proposals to be the product of such a process and so my analysis treats the text as such. As product, the Analects permits us to divide analysis of the text into two distinguishable domains. It offers us both something of the people from whom its moral insights are derived and the moral insights themselves; it offers narrative accounts of exemplary people and lives, as well as the general and abstract concepts and prescriptions that issue from their examples. My argument will begin with the abstract and general. As I suggest in the Introduction, moral theory of the sort we moderns expect may in some respects fit ill with what we fi nd in the Analects. In this part, then, I seek to assay both what elements of a moral theory the text affi rmatively offers and what it appears to deny us. It surely does afford, for example, a robust abstract moral vocabulary but it does not, or not

14

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

obviously, justify its moral claims in the ways we have come to expect. Any moral theory we might ascribe to the Analects must consequently work in explanation of both the text’s claims and its silences, structuring understanding in a manner well fitted to the materials available. Exemplarism, I believe, is a promising candidate for doing just this. Where we take exemplars as the theoretical “corner” from which the Analects takes its shape, I argue in Part I, both the text’s affi rmative claims and its apparent silences achieve a coherence and sense otherwise unavailable. My argument proceeds in three stages. In Chapter 2 I begin by introducing exemplarist moral theory and offering a preliminary account of the evidence for judging it an accommodating model for understanding the Analects. While exemplarist moral theory operates in the way that many moral theories do—explaining, simplifying, and justifying our moral practices—it can also operate as a story that describes how our moral reasoning proceeds. As a story, exemplarism observes the confidence with which we informally identify exemplars, the ways in which we often achieve an inchoate admiration for others, and seeks to explain our moral reasoning with reference to such experiences. In Chapter 2, I seek to apply this story to the Analects. I propose an “origins myth” in which Confucius and the authors of the Analects are moved to their philosophical activity by their admiration for exemplars. In this, they build on a well-established early Chinese tradition that emphasizes emulation as a key moral practice. What they add to this tradition, what they do to transform informal understanding of exemplars into a formal philosophical program of moral cultivation and the virtues, is to apply a new, heightened attention to the features that account for the power and force of exemplars. In Chapter 3 I seek to address some of the most pressing metatheoretical concerns that arise where we read the Analects for moral theory. Contemporary moral theory often operates with assumptions about the architecture that viable moral theory requires, yet the Analects cannot, or not readily, meet these requirements. The Analects is, for example, largely silent about the foundation for its moral reasoning, about the aims and motivations that structure moral cultivation, and about any decisive account of its signal virtue, ren 仁. Exemplarism, I offer, can manage these silences and, most importantly, can do so while allowing them to be silences. Where other moral theories, and standard virtue ethical accounts in particular, demand a theoretical architecture in which the Analects’ silences register as perilous structural gaps that must be repaired, an exemplarist model of the text does not. I suggest that much of the structural work we expect, for example, from accounts of human nature and of human flourishing can be performed by exemplars and the lives they lead. I also suggest that the opacity of the concept ren reflects the complexity of the models upon which it is based. In sum, we fi nd in exemplarism an architecture that can sustain a viable moral theory without reaching outside the text for materials it denies us.

Part I

15

Finally, in Chapter 4, I apply an exemplarist model in explanation of some of the Analects’ most pronounced commitments and claims. While exemplarism can well manage what the text denies us, I here seek to show that it can also address what the text affi rmatively offers. I look, for example, to the text’s avowed interest in preserving tradition, the development of its moral vocabulary, and its tight wedding of moral and aesthetic value. In each case, I argue, an exemplarist origins myth—a myth that understands the Analects’ commitments and wider sensibility to issue from the moral models it would have us emulate—has considerable explanatory power. We can trace these commitments to features discerned in exemplars or to features of the process by which we identify exemplars. Exemplarism thus works both to account for many of the text’s discrete commitments and to draw these commitments together under a compelling governing logic. Throughout my discussion in Part I, it should be noted, I say comparatively little about particular exemplars. While my thesis is that the ideas we fi nd (and fail to fi nd) in the Analects reflect careful scrutiny of real and definite moral heroes, I here largely abjure discussion of these figures in favor of speaking fi rst to where consideration of these figures takes Confucius and the authors of the Analects. In this, I do adopt something like a process of reversal, if not strictly a reverse engineering of the text. Proceeding in this way can, I hope, both reveal what is entailed in treating the Analects as an exemplarist product and answer the questions such a reading is likely to raise for moral theorists. With respect to the latter, I take it that a moral theorist’s most pressing concerns will be how the various structural needs of theory are met and how the text’s various interests cohere as a totality. Only after this architecture is in place do I move, in Part II, to an examination of some of the narrative figures of the text, the dramatic personae to whom the text directs us and who I believe foundational to all the rest. While my contention throughout is that the people of the Analects are the “one corner” from which its shape emerges, I nonetheless begin with what is most apparently distant from them, with the metatheoretical issues that have, I believe, posed the greatest interpretive challenge for a moral theoretical reading of the text.

2

An Origins Myth for the Analects

In a sermon on gratitude, Ralph Waldo Emerson eloquently observes the force and import of the examples of others for our moral lives. He remarks: [A] cause of lively gratitude is a blessing a little beyond home, the acquaintance we have, near or remote, with persons of great worth. A cultivated heart and mind, a fi nished character, is the most excellent gift of God, the most excellent thing out of us that we can form an idea of. It is the plainest revelation of God, the thing most like God, more plain and persuasive than any book can be. How far more exciting is this spectacle of living virtues than the dead letter which describes the same virtues. I look upon the persons of fi ne intellectual endowments and of magnanimous dispositions whom it is or has been my fortune to know, as my apostles and prophets. They perform to us the office of good angels; they show us to what height active virtue can be carried; the thought of them comes to us in the hour of despondency and of temptation, and holds us up from falling.1 As Emerson suggests, for many of us moral guidance and sustenance are to be found in the examples of others. Such examples may be found in distant quarters where renowned moral heroes of past ages reside in cultural memory and they may be found near to hand in those who share our supper tables, but wherever they are found, they affect us with distinctive force. Whatever apparently profound truths we may gather from explicit moral instruction, other people are compelling with a directness and power rarely matched in abstract moral formulae or principles. We see, we admire, and we seek some measure of what we admire in our own lives and character. It is difficult to overstate the role exemplars play in personal moral development. Much of moral learning, particularly for children, occurs through observation of others. Where we consider carefully what we receive through witnessing the conduct and character of others, we fi nd much to appreciate. Despite how deeply woven into the fabric of moral experience such exemplars are, however, it is difficult to place such figures and their influence upon us in moral theory. That exemplars are practically important to us is a given, but in theory we seek a level of abstraction and generality in some ways out of keeping with the way exemplars function to inspire. As

18 Moral Exemplars in the Analects Emerson implies, exemplars are in no small measure compelling precisely because they are in the mix, doing what they do or being who they are in the often messy and complex conditions of a life. Indeed, to obscure this fact about them in favor of generalizing any abstract moral truths they might indicate would seem to betray the nature of their influence upon us, rendering them the stuff of “dead letters.” Despite the difficulty of capturing exemplars in theory, however, they undoubtedly do inform our theoretical efforts. In fact, in some important sense, they regulate theory. As Linda Zagzebski observes, no matter what moral theory we adopt, any satisfying and acceptable theory will have to answer to our exemplars. Moral theory arises in part out of a desire to explain moral practices and beliefs, and the identification of exemplars is “already embedded in our moral practices.”2 Consequently, the capacity of a moral theory to confi rm and justify our admiration of exemplars is one of the tests it must pass to be judged adequate. 3 More fundamentally, “[i]f a theory has the consequence that neither Jesus Christ, nor Socrates, nor the Buddha is a good person, we should question whether the theory is a theory about what we call a good person. There is a breakdown at the conceptual level, not simply a disagreement about cases.”4 Exemplars, then, operate as a pre-theoretical standard for moral theory, our identification of them one of the bare facts about us moral theory must explain. Indeed, as Zagzebski suggests, where a moral theory fails to include a relevant company of them, we do not merely doubt its adequacy, we doubt whether it qualifi es as a moral theory at all. Exemplars “demand of us therefore the most fervent acknowledgements.” Where we seek personal moral cultivation, they demand appreciation; where we seek moral theory, they demand inclusion. The exemplarist moral theory proposed by Zagzebski, and the one I wish to adapt here, is inaugurated by recognizing the fi xed nature of our identification of exemplars, the way in which they exercise a sort of prior restraint on where moral theory can go. We may occasionally discover that we have been wrong in considering someone an exemplar, but we more typically trust that those we admire are worthy of our admiration. Again, our trust is such that we would confidently dismiss any moral theory that appeared to undermine too many of these more immediate valuations. Exemplarism holds, most basically, that these inchoate, pre-theoretical identifications of exemplars are not merely a test of moral theory—they can be its foundation and structure. We can, that is, conceive moral theory to be a working out in abstract concepts and formal structure how exemplars come to command and summon our admiration. Our appreciation of the “spectacle of living virtues” is not a phenomenon derived from antecedently understood and internalized standards of moral judgment; it is the source of such judgments. Exemplars are, as Emerson would have it and in a quite precise sense, prophets. Their lives prefigure the value to which our theories can

An Origins Myth for the Analects

19

attest and the theoretical charge resides in drawing them out of the mix and muddle of their specific circumstances to relate in abstract form what makes them good and why we have found them so.

AN EXEMPLARIST ORIGINS MYTH Before addressing the formal elements of an exemplarist moral theory and discussing their potential for application to the Analects, let me simply anticipate the direction of my argument and sketch in brief the story about the Analects I aim to tell. Much of what I have to offer here functions like nothing so much as an origins myth, an account that purports to explain, as heuristic if not as fact, how the moral sensibility of the text comes about. This explanation, or myth, derives in no small measure from what the text is like. The Analects most immediately presents itself as a record of the philosophical reflections of Confucius. It details the ethical claims Confucius made, presents his moral assessments of various issues and personae of the day, and illuminates some of the patterns of reasoning he employed. It would, however, miss the mark to consider the text as only doing this, for the Analects is also a biography of sorts. It is not merely about what Confucius claimed, but about what he did and who he was. And what he did and who he was constitute, so the Analects’ authors clearly suggest, compelling reasons to take him as a model, an exemplary moral figure we would do well to emulate. Not unlike Plato’s representation of Socrates, the presentation of Confucius in the Analects yields a doubling effect.5 Moral instruction is delivered through the philosopher’s claims and through his life; we are at once enjoined to attend carefully to what the philosopher says and to attend carefully to him and his manner of life. Philosophy and biography here converge and it is difficult to imagine the abstract claims, be they those of Socrates or Confucius, assuming the same command on the moral imagination absent the man. However, unlike the case of Plato with his Socrates, the authors of the Analects appear to take their lead in offering instruction in this way from the teacher himself. They appear, that is, to proffer Confucius as a model just as Confucius himself proffers others as models. Confucius’ own counsel notably and markedly emphasizes the need to look to the examples offered by others for moral guidance. Confucius avers that the learner ought look to those in her acquaintance for her own cultivation: “When you meet persons of exceptional character think to stand shoulder to shoulder with them; meeting persons of little character, look inward and examine yourself” (4.17). The learner is enjoined to become a careful reader of others (2.10). Confucius also directs his students to specific others. He cites historical figures, including the Sage Kings and the

20 Moral Exemplars in the Analects Duke of Zhou, as providing models of uncoercive, charismatic, and virtuous leadership.6 Closer to home, he lauds his best student, Yan Hui, as a model of extraordinary competency modestly managed.7 That such injunctions trace to the wider logic of the Analects is evident in Confucius’ representations of his own responses. His moral imagination is so enchanted by the likes of the Duke of Zhou that he dreams of the Duke (7.15). Moreover, despite his considerable learning and reflection, he takes the absence of such dreams to indicate regression. If the Duke of Zhou but illustrates commitments Confucius retains independently of his seduction by this formidable exemplar, Confucius’ estimation of his own decline can only seem a flight of fancy. If, however, the Duke of Zhou sources such commitments, the want of a dream is a far more plausible cause for disappointment. The more ambitious conceptual schemata of the text confess their origins in “the dream,” in the felt power and inducements of the text’s exemplars.8 In short, even when we look away from what Confucius does and attend exclusively to what he says, he frequently invites us to consider the doings of others. He appears to fi nd in his dealings with others and his acquaintance with historically notable models a source of personal moral inspiration certainly, but also a way to direct and instruct moral cultivation more generally. In this, it is important to note, he appears to employ a technique already deeply embedded in early Chinese culture. As David Keightley has argued, one marked feature of early Chinese civilization is an optimistic inclination to trust that the past, and past exemplars, set a course that, if it is but followed, would yield social harmony, prosperity, and peace. Unlike the tragic and fl awed heroes of ancient Greece, Keightley observes, in early China, “heroes were heroes precisely because they were models worthy of emulation.”9 The early Chinese hero is, by defi nition, a trustworthy source for moral guidance and the expectation of those who commemorate his legacy is that he marks a path others will fi nd compelling and seek to follow. In this, he often operates as a general and symbolic lesson for others. Indeed, as Keightley notes, the impulse to record and recite the stories of heroes is often pedagogical and culture-building, its motivation “less one of entertainment, and more one of instruction and exhortation.”10 For out of the tradition’s heroes, new heroes may follow, as present lives undertake to map and track what past lives successfully pattern. That is, the moral model achieves his status as such by way of appropriating and internalizing as his own what generations of others have offered, the lessons in virtuous conduct their lives sketch for him and inspire in him. By availing himself of the “instruction and exhortation” of past moral heroes in this way, the “Chinese hero derived his authority from operating within formal boundaries rather than by overstepping them, from emulating previous heroes, who were now ancestors, so that he might be emulated and become an ancestor in his turn.”11 Thus in early China

An Origins Myth for the Analects

21

people were not only enjoined to emulate moral models, they also understood their moral models to be the result of emulation. One would seek to be like the hero who, in his turn, had successfully sought to be like his own age’s heroes. Emulation here operates as both a traditional moral practice and a strategy for explaining moral success. In sum, the state of play in moral discourse when Confucius and his students arrive on the fi eld is already such that the emulation of established exemplars is a trusted moral practice, perhaps even the core moral practice of the day. Where people fi nd themselves wondering what to do or how to be, they have authoritative moral heroes who, it is presumed, can demonstrate a way. Confucius and the authors of the Analects simply take this given and do something novel with it. The philosophical movement of the Analects, I argue, is an effort to draw from early China’s established exemplars, as well as from exemplars newly proposed, an abstract accounting of their power. That they do have power—legitimate and compelling power—is a taken as a given. What remains is to explain why. The abstract value terms and concepts employed in the Analects to characterize virtuous individuals—shu 恕 (“sympathy”), de 德 (“moral charisma”), junzi 君子 (“exemplary person”), xiao 孝 (“fi lial piety”), and zhi 智 (“wisdom”), to name but a few—grow out of a scrutiny of exemplars and reflect an effort to capture more generally the traits they exhibit. Similarly, the Analects’ endorsement of various established traditional moral practices can be understood to owe, in some measure, to the fact that these practices enjoy a prior endorsement in the conduct of notable exemplars. At least part of what commends the li 禮, or ritual, as a moral practice is that it is a practice enacted by historical exemplars such as the Sage Kings and rulers of the Zhou “Golden Age.” That they performed the li constitutes a partial reason for others to do the same.12 Put informally, the origin myth I propose would run something like this. Confucius knows whom he judges to be good.13 His philosophical impulse is to explain why they are good. His more abstract formulations of what is required to be good are but attempts to formalize and articulate what he fi nds in good people, to characterize in more general terms a valuation antecedently present and fi xed. The authors of the Analects detail for us Confucius’ process of reasoning from people to concepts and expand the company of exemplars to include Confucius himself. Indeed, they appear to propose Confucius as the exemplar par excellence. In both cases, that of Confucius himself and the authors of the Analects, moral reasoning begins in seduction. The moral imagination is fi red by compelling people who not only mark a way but magnetically draw others to follow. The Analects, in short, is a document that details how Confucius and its authors attempt to explain, to themselves and others, why they admire the people they do. It is an effort to discover the sources of moral seduction.

22

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

THE THEORETICAL ROLE OF EXEMPLARS We can begin to address the theory I wish to draw from this origin myth by distinguishing the role that it assigns exemplars from other possible accounts. While there are of course myriad specific accounts of the role of exemplars, I shall focus exclusively on the most basic structural roles they can play in theory. My purpose is not to contest any particular account, but merely to distinguish through general contrast. In this regard, it seems to me that there are two significant variables in the way that a moral theory may articulate the role of exemplars. The fi rst, what I will call “sequence,” is concerned with how theory itself comes about or the order in which reasoning out a theory proceeds. The second, what I will call the “conceptual,” concerns the fi nal structure a moral theory achieves, its formal content and arrangement. With these two variables in mind, we can distinguish the structure of exemplarism from two more common models for incorporating exemplars into theory. One way to understand the exemplars proposed in the Analects is as illustrations of the text’s more abstract moral claims.14 On such a reading, exemplars function to enliven and illuminate antecedently developed moral reasoning that, because it is abstract and general, may prove elusive to understand or difficult to apply. Such is to acknowledge that an important struggle in moral philosophy is making the move from abstract moral claims to the application of those claims in practice. While this struggle is most obviously practical, concerning our ability to translate the general into the particular demands of circumstance, it can also inform conceptual learning. For where we cannot make the transition from abstract claim to practice, we must doubt whether our conceptual understanding is secure. Thus, on this reading, the exemplar can function both to direct practice and assure understanding. We may, for example, fi nd a virtue such as de, or “moral charisma,” somewhat mysterious where we seek simply to defi ne or characterize its most general sense. Our ability to grasp its meaning, however, may be significantly improved where we can locate exemplars who appear to demonstrate, in situ, what de looks like, how it features in human interaction and perhaps even in our own experience. In sum, on this reading, the purpose of exemplars is primarily pedagogical. The abstract presentation of moral claims retains both a sequential and conceptual priority. In such an account, understanding sequentially begins with at least a provisional abstract and general moral claim. This moral claim will inform and direct, again perhaps provisionally, the identification of relevant exemplars. Refi ning and securing understanding of the abstract moral claim, however, remains our target. Where this is accomplished, the exemplar has little if any further role and certainly no abiding structural theoretical role. Sequentially, she follows the general and abstract; conceptually, she may prove heuristically valuable but is ultimately unnecessary.

An Origins Myth for the Analects

23

A second manner of incorporating exemplars into theory would assign to them a sequential priority while reserving conceptual priority to abstract and general claims. On such a reading, we understand the Analects to exhibit what we might call a “bottom up” quality in its reasoning, a tendency to move from the particular to the more general.15 Here the sequence of moral reasoning begins with particular cases, exemplars, and abstract accounts of the virtuous person are subsequently constructed based on what we observe and discover in them. While exemplars sequentially initiate moral theory, however, they do not conceptually ground or structure it. As the phrase “bottom up” suggests, there is an implied ascent and indeed I think it helpful to think of exemplars here as functioning akin to a ladder. They do not afford secure theoretical footing but are a means to do so. Conceptual priority and the fi nal structure theory will adopt will be found instead in abstract domains to which exemplars provide initial access. We will fi nd, for example, that morality is ultimately conceptually grounded in human nature or a transcendent natural order (天 tian) and this will secure and structure our more specific moral concepts. Put another way, exemplars here play a significant role in theory development, but not in its fi nal form. They inspire discovery of what human beings are like and the ends that properly belong to them, or of what the world is like and the proper role of the human being in it. Like a ladder, their function is instrumental. Reflecting on what they offer enables access, but so far as theory is concerned, we will not need them once we ascend the heights and fi nd our footing elsewhere.16 Sequentially, we begin with exemplars, but here again, exemplars are, fi nally, conceptually unnecessary as they are left behind once we move to reflection on more general domains. The exemplarist model I propose requires, in contrast, that exemplars enjoy both sequential and conceptual priority. While bearing important affi nities to the “bottom up” model—here too we begin with what exemplars can show us—exemplarism declines any necessity to ascend beyond them to some additional, less particular, conceptual domain. Exemplars here are not ladder but ground and, on this reading, the Analects neither does, nor needs to, fi nd fi rmer footing elsewhere. It does not, that is, need to look beyond our experience of exemplars to derive a complete, conceptually satisfying, and justified morality. Its task instead is, fi rst, to render more transparent the processes and structure of our inchoate admiration of exemplars and, second, to devise an abstract account of virtue that traces to them. Again, we already sufficiently trust these experiences that we will discard theory that does not significantly confi rm them. The exemplarist project, in essence, seeks not only to highlight the pre-theoretical constraints exemplars set on moral theory, but to use this potent confidence as the conceptual structure for moral theory. Sequentially, we begin with exemplars; conceptually, they, and our admiration of them, ground and

24

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

structure our theoretical construct. Let me now move away from the contrasts I here draw and discuss exemplarism in its own right.

DIRECT REFERENCE In assigning sequential and conceptual priority to exemplars, an exemplarist ethic treats our inchoate capacity to identify exemplars as foundational. It takes seriously then the confidence we invest in assertions such as “The Duke of Zhou is a good person” or, nearer to home, “My grandfather is a good person.” Moreover, it takes seriously the way in which such claims are often made. Outside the domain of philosophical ethics at least, claims of this sort are frequently made with little recourse to any formal conceptual schemata against which the exemplar’s qualities are measured and found adequate. We often do not, that is, have any fi xed and abstract account of the good person to which our examples then conform; rather, our identification of the exemplar occurs prior to, and independently of, such an account. Asked to explain what constitutes a good person, we may not have a general answer yet can confidently assert, “He is.” Linda Zagzebski reasons that our capacity to identify exemplars absent any clear or articulated criteria functions in a manner akin to the way that direct reference is held by some philosophers of language to defi ne natural kinds. If the theory of direct reference is correct, we can and do effectively classify some objects in experience without apprehending the precise conditions that warrant the classification we specify. Following Zagzebski, and Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam before her, I will use water as a standard example. We now commonly understand that a liquid is rightly classified as water just when its composition is accurately represented by the chemical formula H 2O. This manner of describing water is of course, however, of very recent vintage and clearly water was identified and understood in some serviceable way prior to the discovery of its precise chemical nature. Kripke and Putnam propose direct reference to explain how appropriate use and serviceable understanding of natural kind terms need not await discovery of the exact properties or refi ned description that would defi ne the kind. We can, that is, meaningfully and appropriately employ the term “water” without knowing its “species essence” as H 2O.17 In the case of natural kinds such as water, as Kripke and Putnam originally argued, definition proceeds through a process of direct reference. For simplicity and brevity, I will give only a very general account, leaving aside subtle variations in direct reference accounts. In both Kripke’s and Putnam’s accounts, the term “water” achieves an appropriate utility in a two part process. First, we imagine, the term originates as some speaker effectively dubs that liquid “water.”18 In so doing, the speaker fi xes the reference of the term, much the way parents fi x the reference of the names they give their progeny; in both cases, there is what

An Origins Myth for the Analects

25

Kripke calls an “initial baptism.”19 “Water” refers to whatever liquid is identical to that, just as “Sam” will refer to whatever infant is identical to that, where that is demonstratively indicated. Reference occurs directly, the speaker indicating what she means by gesturing, literally or figuratively, to what she means. With the “name” assigned, the reference fi xed, a social process is underway whereby other speakers achieve appropriate use of the term via their communication with the reference fi xing act. Kripke likens this process to the construction of a chain: speakers operate by “passing the name from link to link” and, as they do so, they effectively connect subsequent uses of the term “water” to the original gesture, or reference fi xing event. 20 The puzzle that direct reference aims to solve is how speakers can employ terms appropriately even where the descriptive accounts they can offer are inadequate. As Putnam argues, our descriptive accounts, the “meanings in the head” we have for the terms we employ, often do not do the work we would expect were they to account for our appropriate uses of natural kind terms. For much of human history, the descriptive content assigned to “water” would have been something such as “colorless, odorless, fl avorless liquid.” This descriptive account, the meaning most speakers would presumably have had in mind in defi ning water, does not, however, preclude some liquid other than H 2O fulfilling the description. Put another way, the descriptive account does not uniquely and strictly confine ascription of the term “water” to instances of H 2O. 21 Nonetheless, our intuitions suggest that the term “water” was meaningful prior to the discovery of water’s chemical composition. It is just that what was “in the head” did not do the work of securing meaning. Direct reference, by employing what Putnam describes as a “socio-linguistic hypothesis” wherein a chain of social communication secures a term’s meaning, obviates the demand that a speaker possess an adequate descriptive account in order to employ a term appropriately.22 Such speakers instead achieve a linguistic competence through their connection to a community of usage. In Putnam’s imagery, language is not like a hammer, a tool that requires each individual to rely on her own solitary strength, on the force of the descriptive account each speaker can give. It is instead akin to steamship and its proper operation requires many hands, a chain of linguistic activity that makes a term “work.”23 To employ direct reference to natural kinds as an analogue in the domain of ethics is to suggest that we can competently and successfully identify an exemplar, a “good person,” even where we cannot give a satisfying descriptive account of the good person. Just as we can successfully point to water although we have no grasp of its essence, so too we can point to good people. A good person is that, where that refers to a person in our acquaintance. Like our indexical identification of water, we here fi x reference for the term “good person”—good people will just be people like that—and the “kind” we thus identify is shared in a socio-linguistic community. We do not, that is, conceive a set of criteria for the good person and subsequently identify

26

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

relevant examples of good people based on their perceived adherence to our criteria. Instead we begin without fi xed criteria or concepts, employing direct reference, gesturing to what we mean as it features in our experience. This gesturing then becomes the foundation for a social network of communication, the “kind” identified by our term “good person” becomes commonly recognizable through shared usage and meaning. The implications of this are several, but let me here discuss those most immediately relevant for my purposes in examining the Analects. 24 A significant implication of this account is that while reference is fi xed by an originating event, what will count as belonging to the class thus identified is not confi ned to the original sample. Thus while I may dub that to be “water” while pointing to the liquid of a lake, based on the properties I subsequently apprehend the liquid of the lake to have, I may expand upon the original set. I may, that is, see a likeness between the lake and the liquid in the glass on my desk and consequently include the liquid in my glass as belonging to the class “water.” It too is “water” and this capacity to expand the data set based on provisionally identified properties in the original case can enlarge my opportunities to fi nd a satisfying, general account of water. To frame this in terms of exemplars, I may say, for example, that a “good person” is that while gesturing to some company of people.25 But my identification of these “good people,” while yet descriptively incomplete, need not stop there but can expand to include others based on a perceived likeness. Such is to say that I may not yet know what exact properties belong to the class of “good person,” but I can say provisionally that granted that these people are good, so too are the Sage Kings, so too is the Duke of Zhou, so too is Confucius. I apprehend these others to be like my original set, the individuals who fi x the reference, in some apparently relevant way and so can enlarge the company of good people to include them. Such is to say that whether our target is a natural kind or the good person, the original identification initiates a process of discovery whereby we can employ perceived similarities to increase the data set from which we work. As our capacity to enlarge the data set implies, the procedure suggested by direct reference leaves largely intact the confidence we bestow on a somewhat untutored capacity for identifying kinds. Such is to say that while a chemist’s analysis could authoritatively tell us whether what is in the glass on my desk is indeed H 2O, most of the time and for most purposes, my own informal identification of this liquid as water suffices. I lack a chemist’s specialist skill, but I do possess a general, informal competency acquired through my membership in a community of linguistic usage. I consequently, and most of the time adequately and successfully, operate on a technically insufficient but practically useful mode of identifying water where I fi nd it, be it in a glass or falling from the sky or puddling on my front step. So too an exemplarist ethic leaves our general confidence in our informal competency intact. While we may not possess an ethical theorist’s account or a precise “formula” for goodness, we may nonetheless generally

An Origins Myth for the Analects

27

and legitimately trust our capacity to identify good people where we fi nd them, be they historical notables, fictional figures in literature, or our own companions. For our membership in a semantic community vouchsafes that our employment of the term “good person” is meaningfully connected to what the term references. A third implication of this account is that while informal competence is assured, it is readily granted as defeasible. My capacity to use the term “water” appropriately and meaningfully does not entail that I must never err. Put simply, the liquid in the glass on my desk may be vodka, yet I may well mistake it for water if I rely only its presentation as colorless and largely odorless. It does indeed bear a superficial likeness to water, but my mistake in thinking it is water is a generally tolerable sort of error where our informal usage is concerned and does not suggest that a radical skepticism is in order. If on occasion I call a glass of vodka “water,” I do not thereby fi nd cause to doubt any and all identifications of liquids as water. What the error shows is that odorless and colorless, the properties employed in misidentifying the vodka as water, are not by themselves sufficient to classify a liquid as water. Nonetheless, we do not thereby develop skepticism that our functional competency in identifying water where we fi nd it generally succeeds and is generally trustworthy. So too, I may identify an individual as a good person only to discover upon closer scrutiny that she is not. In fact, this sort of error, like a misidentification of vodka as water, is perhaps sometimes to be expected. And it is to be tolerated. We may on occasion be wrong about those we count as exemplars, but here again, we already operate on a supposition that such errors are relatively infrequent and that they are generally discoverable. Just as my identifying vodka as water is a temporary state of affairs, concluding as soon as I taste the liquid, so too we can expect that at least some errors about exemplars will be resolved upon extended acquaintance and closer scrutiny. While securing informal competence in the absence of an adequate descriptive account is part of what the theory of direct reference provides, of greatest interest to me is the way in which it inaugurates the possibility of more precise and exacting understanding. In Putnam’s idiom, the way we treat natural kinds suggests a “division of linguistic labor” in which most people can and do operate with informal and often imprecise accounts of natural kinds while others, specialists of some sort, seek and employ more refi ned accounts. Putnam says, “Today it is obviously necessary for every speaker to be able to recognize water (reliably under normal conditions), and probably every adult speaker even knows the necessary and sufficient condition ‘water is H 2O’, but only a few adult speakers could distinguish water from liquids which superficially resembled water. In case of doubt, other speakers would rely on the judgement of these ‘expert’ speakers.”26 We all employ the term “water,” but it is only the chemist or expert who both discovers and employs a set of advanced criteria that uniquely distinguish water from other, superficially similar liquids. The chemist begins where

28 Moral Exemplars in the Analects all begin, within the semantic community in which “water” is meaningfully employed via a chain of communication tracing back to the moment at which “water” was just that, but she then proceeds to inquire systematically into what conditions produce that and all our subsequent identifications of water. I wish to suggest that the moral theorist operates as a similar sort of “expert,” or that, more modestly, she can bring to the “data set” of exemplars a similar sort of attention. The road traveled by the specialist from that to H 2O is marked by an attention more acute and directed than the norm. Like all people, she encounters water in a variety of circumstances and contexts. The quality of attention a specialist brings to such variety would, I suggest, be organized to encounter variation with particular aims in view. She would seek to identify and distinguish, for example, the features of a liquid that constitute a sufficient condition for its being water, the features of a liquid that perhaps superficially but meaningfully connect to its being water, and the features of a liquid that are trivial and irrelevant to its being water.27 She would, in other words, be interested to characterize the difference between features such as liquid that is H 2O, liquid that is colorless, and liquid that is in a glass. In short, she encounters a liquid and seeks to understand what about it matters and what does not when we call it “water.” She seeks to devise abstract conceptual schemata that will, with a precision unafforded by informal usage, account for water. To suggest that the moral theorist can encounter exemplars in a similar fashion is just to suggest that she too seeks to query what they offer in an unusually focused and organized way. As is the case with the chemist and her water, the moral theorist already has a piece of the world, exemplars, that is identified with confidence and assurance. She wants then to know what divides this piece of the world and distinguishes it from the rest. What are the features of those we deem “good people” that are sufficient to make them so? What features superficially but meaningfully connect to their being good people? What features are trivial and unnecessary? Here the aim is to devise abstract conceptual schemata that will account for good people. What I suggest is that the Analects is pursuing something like this procedure, that Confucius and the Analects’ authors are, if not “chemists” of good people, then protochemists. Let me return now to the origins myth I proposed for the text and couple it with a more explicit focus on the mechanisms direct reference to exemplars provides.

THE ORIGINS MYTH REVISITED The view of the Analects I here adopt begins with the suspicion that both Confucius and the authors of the text are engaged in a process of explanation. They seek, fi rst, to explain and systematize a moral practice well embedded in the culture they inhabit, emulation of exemplars. This in turn

An Origins Myth for the Analects

29

requires that they explain and systematize the power exemplars wield over the moral imagination, the properties that account for exemplars being what they are. While this process takes Confucius and the Analects’ authors, in notable ways, where moral practice had not yet gone in early China, they nonetheless begin where their peers begin, in a semantic community that already knows and readily identifies its “good people.” Here I wish to suggest, in an admittedly somewhat speculative fashion, a more robust narrative of the origins of the Analects’ moral sensibility, to add detail to the myth. We would presume, as a heuristic at least, that there is a “baptismal” event in which “good person” is indexically identified as that, as being persons who are, by gesture, demonstratively indicated. By the time Confucius and the Analects’ authors arrive on the scene, of course, this “event” resides in a distant past. In their lifetimes, there is not only a sizeable company of established exemplars, a data set that has swelled well beyond the original case, there are also provisional criteria by which exemplars are in part and informally explained. Whatever the original set might have been, for example, the company of notable historical exemplars now includes, as I have already indicated, widely and popularly recognized historical heroes such as the Sage Kings and the Duke of Zhou. There is, moreover, already a vocabulary of abstract value terms in currency that aims to capture properties believed to belong to exemplars. In place of properties we would informally and readily locate as belonging to water—properties designated by terms such as “colorless,” “odorless,” and so forth—Confucius’ contemporaries would have informally and readily described their exemplars as being junzi (君子 “noble”), 28 exhibiting xiao (孝 “filial piety”), possessing zhi (智 “wisdom”), and so forth. Confucius and the Analects’ authors join, in short, a chain of meaning with many links already in place. While I have heretofore largely treated Confucius and the authors of the Analects as if they are going about the same business in the same way, adding nuance to the myth requires that we divide them. If we adopt the origins myth, it seems clear that Confucius features as a sort of fi rst “expert,” the fi rst to turn his attention to a close scrutiny of established exemplars. Where we treat him as such, the text appears to offer ample suggestions about what might motivate the innovative acuity of his attention. 29 As I previously observed, Confucius appears to feel the power of exemplars in unusually compelling fashion, to feel something like the deep appreciation Emerson describes. He is both moved by them and trusts their power to move others. However, his relation to them is more complex than personal inspiration and hortatory strategy. As satisfied and confident as Confucius seems to be that he knows who constitutes a moral exemplar, it is clear that he nonetheless harbors dissatisfaction about how exemplars are identified, both with the informal or provisional criteria employed and with the possibility for these criteria to yield errors in identification. With respect to the properties that are informally

30

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

identified as belonging to early China’s “good people,” we frequently see Confucius confessing reservations or openly criticizing the criteria they seem to suggest. To take but one example, being fi lial (xiao) is unambiguously trusted as a property belonging to the good person. Whatever else a “good person” in early China was taken to be, he would have been a good son or, more generally, be loyally and unselfishly committed to family and lineage. The moral giants of the Chinese past—the Sage King Shun and the Duke of Zhou, in particular—modeled natural familial affection elevated to moral purpose and I suspect that models such as these seeded the flowering of filiailty as a core value.30 Despite how well established the value, however, Confucius is clearly uneasy with it or, more precisely, uneasy with how reductively it has come to be understood. He complains, for example, that being fi lial requires little more effort in caring for family than caring for livestock (2.7) and that perfunctory performance of fi lial duty has supplanted willing affection (2.8). What I want to suggest is that if we take being filial to have emerged as a recognized property of the good person via the models offered by figures such as Shun and the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, while confident that these figures are exemplary, clearly believes that the popular, informal understanding of the property they indicate is woefully inadequate, that it effectively misses important features of the models and, consequently, of the value fi liality they indicate. It is as if the “amateur” readers of these models have picked out a most obvious aspect and neglected to notice other subtle but significant features. They notice that the good person materially provides for his family but fail to acknowledge that he is also deeply emotionally disposed to care for them. While meeting material needs is a salient feature, there is more here that is relevant and important. Moreover, as Confucius observes, the provision of material care does not uniquely mark filiality; it is also a feature of keeping livestock. In this, Confucius can be seen as a chemist who protests the limitations of “colorless” as a singular criterion for identifying water. “Colorless” will miss much that is important about water and will allow liquids that are not water to be called so. So too, it is with material care and filiality. Confucius’ efforts to develop a richer picture of filiality can be read, then, as an attempt to clarify and draw into sharper focus a property of the good person incompletely understood or expressed by the informal descriptive accounts in popular currency. Confucius’ worry about this, I think, owes in no small measure to the way in which imprecision or incompleteness can yield error. Because the properties by which exemplars are informally described are wanting in important detail, there appears to be, or at least Confucius appears to perceive, an increased capacity for error. This, I believe, more than any other consideration, motivates the acuity of his attention. For the worry here is that a misreading or incomplete reading of exemplars will give rise to a set of criteria that, if followed, will produce only a simulacrum or even counterfeit of the good person. Where we attend to how particular

An Origins Myth for the Analects

31

people conduct themselves as a way to formulate moral concepts, we have a burden to ascertain that the features we pick out as worthy of emulation are neither too thinly drawn nor merely incidental or trivial features of our model. That a liquid is colorless might, but only might, indicate that it is water. That the water on my desk is in a glass is an incidental feature that, while not uncommon to water, is irrelevant to its being water. Where our target is not water, but good people, the task of distinguishing the thin from the robust and the trivial from the important is significantly more complex and it is into this complexity that Confucius enters. Confucius, it is clear, is concerned with the appearance of goodness, with the capacity of features such as demeanor and manner to communicate virtue, but he is also worried about counterfeits, “village worthies” (鄉原 xiangyuan) who achieve a superficial facility with appearing good while lacking the underlying qualities of character that vouchsafe genuine goodness (17.13). 31 In this, Confucius does indeed seem possessed of a chemist’s temperament and is more likely than the norm be distressed by vodka passing as water, by people who are not good passing as good. This worry is of course amplified where the capacity to tell the difference is compromised by incomplete or poorly formulated understanding. At issue then is not a concern with precision for precision’s sake, but a practical and pressing concern about the efficacy of emulation as a moral practice where what is emulated is not properly understood. 32 There is, as Confucius observes, a peril in thinking that one may be counted filial where one merely dutifully feeds one’s parents. Exemplars surely do feed their parents, but understanding them requires that we press beyond this rather obvious fact about them and discover more. Where we focus on Confucius’ role in this origins myth, we fi nd a protagonist who is personally enchanted by exemplars, worried that their enchanting power is incompletely captured and understood, and driven to query them more carefully. What then of the authors of the Analects? What is their place in this myth? The authors of the Analects are most straightforwardly those who deliver to us this portrait of Confucius. In this, they undoubtedly have their own purposes and their purposes are not necessarily shared.33 Nonetheless and despite the fractured quality of the text, there does seem to be a coherent, stable, and relatively unified narrative attitude toward Confucius. We fi nd Confucius to feature in the text as a recognizable character and personality. While it would surely be naïve to claim that the Confucius we fi nd is literally reported without special emphases, selectivity of attention, and flourish, we do find a sense of a man. That is, while the authors of the text clearly heroicize Confucius, they do not make of him legend, but seem instead to give him flesh and blood, to detail him in ways that answer to the complexity we fi nd in our acquaintance with real rather than merely legendary figures. The distinctive role for these writers in the origin myth resides in just this, in the effort to capture Confucius himself.

32

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

The authors of the Analects, I believe, are engaged in something like an exemplarist project as well and indeed I think their version of it perhaps more telling with respect to the process of exemplarism. The exemplarist ethicist is akin to a chemist who seeks to sort out what about her target of study is relevant to its being what it is. The authors of the Analects are, I suggest, doing just this and their target, what they seek to understand, is Confucius himself. If Confucius figures as one who is captivated by what exemplars offers, he also features in the text as one who is himself an exemplar, one who has so internalized and applied what he has discovered that he becomes for others, as I have already noted, the exemplar par excellence. While the Analects’ authors share Confucius’ cultural inheritance—they also belong to a semantic community with well established exemplars and provisional criteria for explaining them—they are confronted with a different data set than Confucius is. For they have Confucius, an exemplar who seems significantly to surpass all others. He is as sun and moon (19.24) and, I imagine, thereby renders the light of other, less immediate models weak as candles. The evidence that he has this effect resides not only in the many explicit plaudits the authors offer, but also in the close attention they give him, the effort they take even with modest details about him. Their motivation, then, is different from Confucius’ and their work is also less complete. The depiction of Confucius gives us a richer sense of the man, I argue, in part because it mirrors the way we experience more immediate and proximate exemplars, admired people we know more personally and directly. The more direct our connection to an exemplar, the more likely we are to register his power as mysterious. We will experience the exemplar as he lives, in the mix and muddle of a life where what is most significant and salient to our counting him good may not announce itself. In such cases, the data we have from which to account for the exemplar’s goodness features as an embarrassment of riches. An exemplarist ethic acknowledges, as Zagzebski oberves, “If all the concepts in an ethical theory are rooted in a person, then narratives and descriptions of that person are morally significant.”34 What the Analects’ authors present, I argue, is just the sort of detail in description we would expect where the process of sussing out the significance of various details is incomplete. That is, there is a sense in which we can treat the authors of the Analects as having a radically profound experience of that. Whatever they may have learned from what Confucius says, their experience of him is foundationally important. A good person is just that and the text energetically points to Confucius, but the work of expressing conceptually what that offers is incomplete. Does it matter that Confucius only sits when his mat is straight (10.12)? That he occasionally uses vulgar language to express his disapproval?35 I want to suggest that the authors of the text are sometimes unsure about how to answer such questions, that their account of Confucius suggests a force of effect where the cause is incompletely understood. Their role in the origins

An Origins Myth for the Analects

33

myth is, then, akin to one who, lacking a complete descriptive account, nonetheless can point, even energetically and decisively point, to what he means. For them, in some sense, all the text’s abstract discussions reflect just that, Confucius. In sum, what I suggest that early China does not have, and gains through the activity of Confucius and the Analects’ authors, is the sort of careful and acute attention that a specialist can provide, a gathering in of data, a sorting and ordering of features, and the crafting of a general abstract account. The origins myth, as I have detailed it so far, is perhaps in some ways fanciful. It presents the text, and in particular Confucius and the authors, in ways that may not immediately well suit what we fi nd there. There is, for example, something decidedly odd in seeing Confucius as chemist, as harboring an interest in precision. Likewise, there is something perhaps willfully romantic in seeing the Analects’ authors as motivated by captivation with Confucius. While I concede such oddities, I think some of this strangeness dissipates where we couple direct reference with an account of imitation. I want now to move away from the rather technical language of direct reference and begin to assay how the pre-theoretical identification of exemplars coincides with emulation, the moral practice I believe core to the Analects account.

WANTING TO BE LIKE I have so far largely focused on the chain of social communication that accounts for our capacity to speak meaningfully about the “good person” in the absence of a satisfying descriptive account. A core contention in a direct reference account is that we can identify good people pre-theoretically without an articulate set of abstract criteria for goodness. This claim, notably, fi nds supplement and support in the structure of human learning and development. Where direct reference to natural kinds can provide an analogue for how the pre-theoretical identification of exemplars occurs, human development can provide an analogue for the distinctively evaluative responses exemplars inspire. Much of human learning, particularly the early learning of childhood, occurs through the observation of others. The child inhabits a world in which she sees much and understands little. And much of what she sees that most directly bears on her own development and conduct will be what she fi nds in the behavior and comportment of others. Long before the child understands or can apply moral precepts, she will have developed a sensibility about what it is to be a person, and to be a good person, by watching and imitating others. In other words, emulation in the absence of compelling conceptual structures is not only plausible, it is a practice at the heart of human development. As Zagzebski observes, children regularly demonstrate “the contrasting experiences of wanting to be like some persons and

34

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

wanting not to be like some others,” and they clearly do so in the absence of a “prior concept of the good upon which such desires rest.”36 The primitive desire to imitate notably begins long before the child’s cognitive powers are developed and “no conceptual conditions are necessary for the operation of the imitation mechanism.”37 As a child maps and tracks what she observes in others, she neither has nor requires working concepts such as “good” or “imitation.” Instead, she merely and often unconsciously wants to be like some of those she sees and wants not to be like others. With increasing cognitive maturity, the capacity to reflect on such desires develops and these experiences take on an increasing complex character, a character that in some measure tracks the exemplarist’s mode of inquiry. First, it is important to note the scope of the imitative mechanism. Despite its early primitive character, imitation appears to derive from a quite comprehensive attention. For in formulating the desire to be like another, a child displays an interest in appropriating not merely the actions of others, but also the attitudes, emotions, and demeanor. In her brute admiration of others, she aims to do what she perceives others to do, believe as they believe, feel as they feel, and appear as they appear. Admiration registers as a complex experiential phenomenon, its object irreducible to any single element of how others appear to us, and imitation is correspondingly complex. The breadth of this early capacity to observe and imitate across a broad spectrum of features is mirrored in the breadth of the exemplarist theorist’s interest. In seeking to parse and understand the features of exemplars, the exemplarist moral theorist is as much child as chemist. Or, rather, the exemplarist finds in our early capacity to entertain complexity and appropriate it in our moral learning a promising root from which a more systematized but similarly holistic attention can grow. She too is focused on the full complement of qualities a model can display. Second, the primitive desire upon which imitation rests for children, their “wanting to be like,” appears to develop naturally and rather seamlessly from a rather raw desire to a form of basic evaluative judgment. In Zagzebski’s idiom, “the move from ‘I want to be like R and not like S’ to ‘R is better than S’ is not only genetically primitive, but also basic to moral thinking.”38 Increasing maturity and cognitive development inaugurates the potential for reflective comparison. Here again, however, as Zagzebski notes, this capacity seems to develop in advance of the sort of conceptual schemata that we take as adequate to explaining such claims. Young children are unacquainted with the moral vocabulary that could distinguish one potential model from another. Wanting to be like S but not like R transmutes into the “judgment” that S is better than R through some mechanism antecedently present. Whether we can explain this mechanism or not, and whether such primitive judgments prove reliable, “[w]hat is most important is just that we do have such an ability, and that we have it prior to the development of evaluative concepts.”39 For in this we fi nd a natural pattern in human development wherein it is clear that reasoning can and does

An Origins Myth for the Analects

35

follow, rather than leading, raw evaluative responses. Like direct reference to exemplars, we see here a phenomenon in which the pre-theoretical begins rather organically to assume a complexity that foreshadows the theoretical attitude. Just as direct reference marks a path to the provisional identification of properties, so too the primitive desire to be like another appears to mark a path to evaluative claims. Third, while the experience of wanting to be like another registers in small children with what we might consider an undistinguishing generality or holism, their capacity for imitation nonetheless evinces a certain native skill with extrapolating from context. They appear, that is, to display in brute form an ability to discern from a model what is contextuallydependent and what is in some fashion relevant to themselves. Where they imitate, they do not seek to re-create the experience or circumstance of another, but to apply in their own experience and circumstance something of what they see in the model. Even while yet unable to specify what constitutes the something they pick out as imitable, they nonetheless do pick it out, lifting it from one context and applying it in others. Such is to say that children are already, at very young ages, possessed of something like a narrative sensibility, an ability to apply the difference between wanting to be like another and mere replication. Where a child sees his mother drop and break a glass yet react with equanimity, he is unlikely to take from this that he also should drop a glass in order to achieve his own equanimity. Where he wants to be like her, he will instead await some new “challenging” circumstance in his own experience and then approximate her reaction in his own. He is, in this manner, engaged in a primitive sorting process in which a feature embedded in a narrative context is picked out and generalized for appropriation and use in a new context. This too constitutes a brute form of a capacity exemplarism seeks to develop, reflecting the movement from comprehensive attention to many particulars to a selective distillation and generalization that enables emulation across a variety of experience. In sum, the developmental trajectory of childhood suggests important natural affi nities with the exemplarist effort to root moral theory in persons. While exemplarism posits the moral theorist as possessed of an uncommon curiosity, it is to one of the most common of human experiences that she turns her attention. The exemplarist’s attention is, in some fashion, an extension and elaboration of brute desire, the impulse to admire that, to want to be like that. In this way, as Zagzebski observes, exemplarist “method, in spite of its high metaphysical tone, is consistent with a form of naturalism.”40 Where direct reference renders intelligible our pretheoretical identification of exemplars and accounts for the confidence we invest in them, the brute capacity to admire and imitate suggests primitive emotional factors of experience that can help structure a developed account of moral emulation of exemplars. Such is to say that the “expert” perspective that gathers in data and parses it to devise a satisfying abstract descriptive account functions in concert with quite basic capacities for feeling and

36

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

learning. In this way, exemplarism can ride on a phenomenon that shapes our earliest development and that persists throughout life, appearing each time we fi nd ourselves admiring and drawn to emulate. To move beyond the merely given, the exemplarist seeks to lend order and form to the brute, and it is to the elements of this order I will now turn.

THE RANGE OF EXEMPLARS To the extent that early and developmental facts about human beings point to an untutored sensibility of use in a more mature consciousness and an elaborated moral theory rooted in exemplars, they also indicate that both the way we follow models and the models themselves are complicated matters. I expect there are a number of ways an exemplarist theory might seek to sharpen and defi ne these matters, but I here want only to sketch the account of exemplars I think best suited to what the Analects offers. While I shall later consider three specific figures in the text, here I simply outline briefly the more general range of exemplars and scope of imitation I think operating in the text. As is evident in my brief treatment of early childhood, imitation can run along several tracks. We can, and generally do, imitate selectively. Children do this in ways difficult to assay. They may often imitate features of their exemplars based on desires an adult would fi nd opaque or even arbitrary. Worse, they may fi nd a mother’s occasionally bursting into of a string of curses more enticing to imitate than her more typical equanimity. While the imitation capacities of children thus do not sketch any easy path to the moral practice of emulation, they may nonetheless indicate something of its complex structure. The notion of exemplars I wish to employ in discussion of the Analects is not confi ned to treating only the sagely as inspiring emulation. Instead, I judge the diversity of the narrative figures proposed by the Analects to mirror the selectivity of the human capacity for imitation and to recommend that we think of exemplars as presenting to us in a number of broadly defi ned types. The most obvious species of exemplar is just the sort of figure who can “give [the] heart-and-mind free rein without overstepping the boundaries” (2.4). These are the exemplars who present themselves as worthy of emulation in most if not all respects, or who function as moral giants, looming largest where the moral imagination seeks to locate the best of what a human being can be. About these figures, and the singular Confucius in particular, I shall have much more to say, but here it is important merely to observe at the outset that, as I understand the Analects, while these figures are understood to have a uniquely comprehensive virtue, they are not taken as perfect.41 Indeed, as I shall argue, part of what renders this species of exemplar so compelling is that he is understood to have the same opportunities for moral failure and to have the same need

An Origins Myth for the Analects

37

to adapt to shifting circumstance that others do. He must, in other words, persist in an ongoing process of self-development and this entails that while we understand him to be stable in his possession of virtue, he nonetheless changes. There is no point at which an exemplar can be counted as fi nished and fi nal in virtue, or perfect.42 A corollary of this is that total exemplars, or sages, are not all alike. In at least some accounts of sagacity or the maximally virtuous person, we may be led to wonder whether sagacity suppresses difference or, informally, personality. Such is to say that the features of sagacity that necessarily predominate in the character of the sage may be expected to yield a certain sameness. Sages’ possession of virtue may be seen to operate as programmatically requiring certain responses and actions, responses and actions that override or even eliminate variation borne of temperament or idiosyncrasy. However, as I shall argue, the account of sagacity evident in the Analects and the exemplars it proffers require differences in sages. Not only are they not all alike, their differences are morally significant. In this respect they are perhaps less like water and more akin to art works. Where water may vary, it does so in ways that we would ascribe to its context or impurities. It may be in a glass or falling from the sky, it may be discolored or have a pronounced taste, but such differences are conceptually set aside where we seek a precise descriptive account. Variation in art works, in contrast, is necessary to their being counted as art works. Art works must differ from each other and their differences are neither trivial nor merely contextual, but a necessary feature of the value we locate in them. On my reading of the Analects, sagacity similarly requires variation. While these most comprehensive exemplars are the most obvious or, more precisely, the most obviously admirable and compelling, they are also quite rare. Most of the exemplars we fi nd guide us with a much more limited compass. Of these more limited, or partial, exemplars, we can distinguish a few notable types. There are, as Zagzebski observes, “exemplars for particular roles or areas of human activity,” as well as “exemplars for particular virtues.”43 Conceptually parsing the different ways in which exemplars feature in experience naturally does not suggest that specific people are easily divided in this manner—an individual may of course serve as more than one “type” of exemplar. This division, then, serves as heuristic by which to understand different ways in which admiration and emulation may manifest. With that caveat, let me briefly explain the division I think best suited to what the Analects offer. Of exemplars who provide models of more limited scope, perhaps the most immediately recognizable are those who exhibit uncommon skill in a particular domain of human activity. Where I seek to grow a better crop, I will look to the exemplary farmer; where I seek to become better at car repair, I will look to the exemplary mechanic. As such examples make clear, skill in a domain of activity does not, by itself, suggest any special moral acuity. Skills of these sorts are, rather, reflective of a technical mastery

38 Moral Exemplars in the Analects coupled with what we might call acquired instincts. The master farmer both knows the general truths that govern his activity and knows how to judiciously depart from a programmatic application of those truths where circumstances warrant. While I think we see comparably little of this type of exemplar in the Analects, skillfulness of this sort nonetheless features as a significant element. For some of the moral practices endorsed by the Analects, most notably the practice of the li, or ritual, can function as just the sort of activity in which skill readily comes into play. As I will argue, one of the conceptual dilemmas evident in the Analects concerns just how to distinguish morally adequate performance of the li from technical skillfulness. How do we distinguish one who is technically exemplary in performing the li from one who morally exemplary in doing so? The worry I find in the text, in other words, resides in the potential for the merely technically skillful exemplar of ritual performance to be taken as a moral exemplar. A second sort of partial exemplar is one who more keenly than most points to a particular virtue. Like the skilled exemplar, here too we see an uncommon proficiency within a limited scope of demand. An exemplar of this sort may be, for example, distinctively courageous or distinctively fi lial, reliably conveying dispositions and performing actions that suggest a particular virtue. As is the case with skill, the exemplar for a particular virtue is assumed to operate, qua exemplar, within a limited frame. What we admire about the courageous person, for example, may not and often will not extend into a more general admiration. Likewise, where we seek to emulate the courageous person, we will look less generally and will target our attention to those features that appear most closely connected to the exemplar’s ability to inspire a rather narrow or specific admiration. What will command notice, for example, will not be her capacity for empathy or temperance, but her capacity to tolerate risk and regulate fear. The Analects does seem to allow this species of exemplar, recognizing that some individuals are, for example, courageous while not otherwise commending them as more generally or comprehensively virtuous. Moreover, as is the case with skill, I think the Analects attends to this sort of exemplar in part because it represents a conceptual dilemma the text seeks to address. There may often be a kind of confusion generated by admiration of the limited sort I ascribe to exemplars for particular virtues, a confusion I think the Analects is interested to resolve. Specifically, where we admire someone who registers for us as an exemplar for a particular virtue, there may be some ambiguity or difficulty distinguishing happenstance from emulation-worthy traits. Such is to say that some persons are, by dint of native temperament rather than by acquired ability, more likely to tolerate risk well. As we increasingly refi ne a conceptual understanding of courage, there will be some interest in separating the temperamentally bold and brash from more deliberate courage. The merely native, while perhaps appearing akin to virtue is nonetheless closer kin to context. Just as water may be in a glass, a person may be born to better tolerate risk,

An Origins Myth for the Analects

39

but in neither case will we want such accidental features to direct our abstract descriptive account. Put another way, an exemplar inspires admiration in part because we understand that he could be otherwise, that he is not merely enacting impulses that come naturally to him. Certain sorts of temperament may be enviable, but they are not readily imitable. Consequently, where we seek to analyze and emulate apparent exemplars, we will have an interest in knowing how temperament and more cultivated or deliberate responses to circumstances interact, and it is the latter that will matter most. I think we see Confucius engaged in something like this conceptual work with respect to the model offered by his student, Zilu. Zilu, as the Analects makes clear, is temperamentally bold but to the extent that he inspires admiration, its sources reside elsewhere and his native disposition toward a certain fearlessness is, if anything, an impetuosity incompletely mastered. Those aspects of his character that might appear to point to courage also on occasion point to foolhardiness. Finally, I think the most important sort of limited exemplar evident in the Analects is what I will call a “role exemplar.” I understand a role exemplar to be one who occupies a socially and relationally understood position within a community in a defi ning and authoritative way. We can, for example, speak of the exemplary father, the exemplary ruler, and the exemplary student. In each case, we implicitly recognize that at least some of the moral demands indicated in the fulfi llment of these roles are distinguishable and distinctive to them. While there may be qualities of character generally required by any of these roles, they each also have features that uniquely mark them or are uniquely salient to them. Thus we do not assume that a good ruler will also be a good father. Both ruler and father may be, say, decisive, but they will not be ultimately alike, as their examples will point us to features distinctively belonging to the roles they inhabit. On my account, part of what it means to be a role exemplar resides in defining with unusual abundance and clarity what one’s role uniquely requires, both within a wider shared social understanding and in one’s more particular relational circumstances. A role exemplar, then, is one who inspires an admiration keyed specifically to his performance of a particular function for others, his ability to be something to and for them. The significance of role exemplars in the Analects is difficult to overstate but let me just briefly survey some of the more immediately important elements of the conceptual work that they perform. Unlike many western moral theories, the Analects displays an acute awareness of the stages of a human life. It acknowledges that the moral situation of an individual alters as her life progresses and her moral sensibilities must correspondingly alter as she moves through the seasons of her life. More to the point, it emphasizes that these changes are not, or not merely, a largely internal function of natural aging and maturation, but occur because her relations to others and the demands of those relations undergo alteration. What will be asked of her as a child will differ from

40 Moral Exemplars in the Analects what will be asked of her as a grandmother; what will be asked of her as a student will differ from what will be asked of her as a teacher. While any adequate moral theory will aim to incorporate adaptability to circumstance, here “circumstance” is markedly relational and “adaptation” is markedly responsive. That is, the shifts of a life reflect the shifts of many lives and responsiveness to those many lives is cooperatively defined. My hypothesis with respect to role exemplars is that they in part inspire and structure this sensibility. Good fathers or good students do not simply well and maximally define a role, they render us more acutely aware of the role itself and of the spectrum of roles more generally. They illuminate the dependent nature of human relationships in ways that inspire recognition of the many threads that connect the individual to a wider moral fabric of her community. A role exemplar, that is, does not merely inspire those who would aspire to fulfill the same role they see modeled in the exemplar; good fathers are models for more than other fathers. The good father, because he will announce in his conduct both common and unique dependencies, will implicitly recommend recognition of such dependencies wherever they occur. Finally, while I have so far focused exclusively on positive exemplars and the admiration they inspire, negative exemplars are also, I believe, an important, though more modest, element of what the Analects offers. I understand negative exemplars to be figures who inspire aversion, those who, in Zagzebski’s idiom, we register as people we want not to be like. Where we can speak, via direct reference and in pre-theoretical fashion of the “good person,” so too we can speak of the “bad person,” and one task of an exemplarist account is to assay the features of such people in an effort to craft a conceptual account of moral failure.44 Although the Analects is largely aspirational in perspective, focusing most explicitly on the ways in which people can go right rather than where they can go wrong, it nonetheless does occasionally point us to negative exemplars. Like positive exemplars, negative exemplars may be parsed into types. That is, an exemplar can be bad in any of the ways I have identified to be good. A negative exemplar may be rather exhaustively bad much the way a sage can be rather exhaustively good, reliably inspiring aversion of a rather total sort. However, while I think such an exemplar theoretically possible, I judge such figures absent from the Analects and indeed perhaps largely absent from life.45 More relevant to the Analects are the partial negative exemplars, those who are unskillful, those who point us to a particular vice, and those who are distinctively bad at fulfi lling a role. While I elaborate on negative exemplars in Chapter 7, my suspicion is that just as the Analects’ account of goodness emerges from good people, so too its account of moral failure emerges in part from people who are taken to be bad. In other words, moral failure is not merely understood to be the opposite of moral success or merely inferred from the account of goodness. Moral failure instead includes features that confess their origins in what we see in those who inspire aversion.

An Origins Myth for the Analects

41

In sum, exemplars appear in various guises in the Analects. If something like the origins myth is taken as a plausible way to understand the Analects, then it is clear that the narrative elements of the text, the depictions of these exemplars, require a greater share of our attention. In particular, where we fi nd specific individuals described or events recounted, we must, insofar as the text permits, read these as stories that may inspire and inform the text’s conceptual work, its abstract claims about particular virtues, dispositions, and qualities of character. We cannot, in other words, treat the passages that depict people’s behavior or recount events to provide mere supplement to or illustration of the text’s conceptual claims. Nor should we too easily see a conceptual claim as decisively or exhaustively interpreting such passages. The more these passages seem to capture something of the complexity of people and the lives they lead, the more likely they are to root multiple abstract reflections on value and virtue. Moreover, we must resist the tendency to ignore depictions of apparently opaque or prosaic behavior. As Edward Slingerland observes, many of the passages describing Confucius’ personal demeanor and behavior in particular are “often skipped over in embarrassment” by scholars who are “appalled by the seemingly pointless detail and apparent rigidity of behavior.”46 An exemplarist reading of the Analects will not trust blindly that every detail is important, but will see all narrative detail as a target for close scrutiny.

THE EXEMPLARIST APPROACH We can characterize more formally what an exemplarist reading of the Analects will entail by acknowledging, fi rst, the expectation that the text’s various moral concepts will be in some measure traceable to its dramatic personae. We do not of course have access to the presumably rich company of exemplars to which Confucius and the Analects’ authors would have been privy. There are, we should assume, many who inspired Confucius and his students but are never recorded in the text and consequently lost to us. However, insofar as the text captures a sizeable company of exemplars composed of historical figures, Confucius’ contemporaries, and Confucius himself, we should expect to fi nd some of the virtues abstractly characterized in the text rooted in the text’s personae. In addition to reading carefully the narrative figures of the text, an exemplarist account will understand Confucius’ many general remarks as efforts to devise conceptual schemata and a moral vocabulary that capture the force and effect of exemplars. We will, in short, treat the Analects’ philosophical claims as a record of how Confucius, qua expert, assays and parses the exemplars of his experience. In this, to reiterate, Confucius simultaneously builds on an established moral vocabulary and refi nes it. He and the Analects’ authors are linked to a semantic community but are unique in that they seek to lend order and explanation, as well

42

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

as precision, to the informal understanding already in play. Exemplarism thus requires that we look to the text’s schemata and moral vocabulary with a view to how they operate to limn with abstract generality what exemplars offer and how they refi ne and sharpen established explanations that are judged inadequate. Finally, my own sense of the text is that its conceptual work is in some manner unfi nished. By this, I do not mean to suggest that the text itself is incomplete and, in any case, it is difficult to know what assessments such as “complete” or “incomplete” would signify for a text composed in the fashion of the Analects. I mean instead that, on an exemplarist paradigm, we should expect that the work of analyzing exemplars just is the sort of task that has no ready, and certainly no quick, end. Here then we encounter a significant disanalogy between “water” and “good person.” While we can readily recognize a “species essence” of water, a “species essence” of the good person is far more elusive and inquiry is far less likely to yield an answer on the decisive order of H 2O. Instead of an “essence,” I think the Analects pursues a more modest course and largely seeks to assay what makes the exemplar different from other people and what makes our experience of exemplars different from our experiences of other people. Like other virtue ethical accounts of the Analects, an exemplarist account will understand moral cultivation to consist in the development of virtues, understood to be qualities of character expressed holistically in the virtuous person’s actions, dispositions, and demeanor. What distinguishes an exemplarist account from other virtue ethical accounts is that the principal mechanism for the acquisition of virtue rests in exemplars, where acquisition is taken as both personal and theoretical. That is, moral learners acquire virtue by emulating exemplars and cultivating the virtues that exemplars limn and our concepts of the virtues are acquired from investigating the features of exemplars we identify in the pre-theoretical fashion I have described and the responses we have to them. What it means conceptually to be a good person is to be a person like that, and our abstract accounts of the virtues are conceptually rooted in that, in particular good people. While my contention throughout is that the people of the Analects are the “one corner” from which its shape emerges, I nonetheless begin with what is most apparently distant from them and with the metatheoretical issues that have, I believe, posed the greatest interpretive challenge for a moral theoretical account of the text.

3

The Analects’ Silences

Where we seek to lend theoretical form and order to the Analects’ moral reasoning, to fi nd an architectural structure that can effectively blueprint the commitments that undergird its various more specific moral claims, we fi nd little in the text that appears sufficient to this purpose. It appears, that is, to evince little interest in theoretical concerns. While the Analects contains features I believe operate well within an exemplarist paradigm, I also take what the text does not say as significant. One of exemplarism’s most potent advantages, I believe, consists in its ability to well address perceived gaps or omissions in the Analects’ moral reasoning. This explanatory power is also, it should be noted, what most distinguishes exemplarism from what I term a “bottom up” reading of the text’s exemplars, a reading in which exemplars are sequentially privileged but ultimately recede in importance as we secure conceptual footing elsewhere. Thus while I believe exemplarism well fits what the text does say, I begin here, with what it does not say. While it is surely always a perilous strategy to argue affi rmatively for a position based upon what a text does not say, I nonetheless suggest that some of the Analects’ silences are telling. In particular, I want here to address three areas in which we might incline to suspect that the text tells us too little. The fi rst two of these concern distinctively theoretical questions, specifically whether the text forwards what we would count as a foundation in human nature for its moral reasoning and whether it proposes an model of flourishing at which moral cultivation aims. The third concerns the Analects’ signal moral concept, ren 仁, a concept simultaneously core to the text’s account of virtue and singularly difficult to defi ne with any precision or completeness. Each of these three areas minimally represents a significant interpretive challenge to readers of the Analects. The text surely suggests ways in which they may be given account, but it does not do so cleanly or decisively. Where human nature and flourishing are concerned, the text’s explicit suggestions are simply thin; where ren is concerned, the text provides an abundance of comment but this abundance does not readily or easily sort into clarity. In short, I want to suggest that while the text is not literally silent about these matters, it is figuratively so or feels so. Such is to say that, at least from a modern reader’s point of view, the text’s treatment of these areas can readily register as leaving gaps,

44

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

as omitting relevant comment that would allow secure conclusions about human nature, flourishing, and the nature of ren. Given the nature of the Analects, it is perhaps unsurprising that readers sometimes struggle to draw secure conclusions. The history of the text’s composition and its piecemeal, fragmentary quality will naturally work against ease in interpretation. Nonetheless, the areas I here identify as posing problems, pose difficulties with distinctively unpleasant effects. They just are the sorts of areas where abiding in uncertainty will be unsatisfying. Where human nature and flourishing are concerned, there is, at least in some quarters, a worry that the Analects’ promise to provide a viable moral theory that can speak to present concerns will be compromised where we cannot address such matters. Where ren is concerned, its clear, unambiguous, and unparalleled role as a descriptor for the virtuous person entails that where we fail to understand it, we will have failed to understand what is, I think inarguably, the single most important moral concept the text proposes. In short, where gaps in understanding are concerned, tolerating these apparent gaps, leaving them as gaps, will cost the interpreter much. There are a number of ways in which scholars can seek to address such issues, but we can perhaps divide them very roughly into three general and sometimes overlapping approaches. These approaches, I hasten to say, are most in evidence in addressing the accounts of human nature and flourishing traced to the text, those areas where the text is apparently thinnest in its explicit comment. First, one may concede that the text denies us sufficient and salient information to address these issues and seek self-consciously to supplement what it offers in a manner judged to be consistent with, if not contained in, the text. Second, one may fi nd that while the text is less fulsome and clear than would be wished, nonetheless its modest suggestions give sufficient grounds to generate plausible inferences that can thicken and render robust the text’s thinner offerings. Finally, one may seek some way to allow the text’s silences or perceived gaps to remain so, either by devising an account in which they operate as a kind of comment by silence or as indications that any gaps are not felt as such by the text’s authors and by Confucius. That is, one may read the text as implicitly rejecting the need for accounts of human nature or flourishing or as simply not discerning the need for such accounts. My reading is of this latter type. Regardless of which approach one takes to the text and whether these approaches in some cases overlap,1 the interpreter must assess what sorts of conclusions the text can sustain and what thicker explanation we can infer about how the text works. We evaluate what the text can interpretively bear and, based on our evaluation, proceed to a thicker account that grows out of the text in some way, be it in conscious supplement or drawn more directly from the text. A key measure of our efforts is how many and how elaborate our inferences need to be. I take it as a desideratum of any interpretation that the fewer and less elaborate our inferences, the

The Analects’ Silences

45

better off our account will be. While I think a kind of minimal interference through inference certainly and even emphatically necessary where our aim is historical, it is also important where the aim is, like mine, to render an account thickened by contemporary concerns and tools. Simply put, premised on the suspicion that the text has much to say, even more hybrid accounts will want not to drown out the voice of the text or amplify its whispers into distortion. Consequently, one of my aims in what follows is to articulate a way of addressing the text’s perceived gaps in a way that minimizes both the number and scope of inferences. In this, I want to claim that the text is incomplete in its treatment of the three areas I identify, that this incompleteness is not a genuine problem, and that in fact the Analects may offer a style of moral theory that successfully circumvents some of our typical expectations of moral theory. I suggest that an exemplarist reading requires fewer inferences and, most notably for my purposes, fewer than standard virtue ethical approaches in particular. It requires us to assume less about the purposes of the text and to treat fewer of the text’s silences or sotto voce remarks as indicating potentially troubling omissions. I begin with the text’s apparent silence with respect to human nature, often treated as the foundation of moral theory.

THE FOUNDATION PROBLEM Perhaps the most worrisome element in efforts to draw a moral theory from the Analects consists in locating just what in the text can serve as the foundation for moral theory. While the suspicion, expressed in much recent scholarship, is that the Analects proposes something like a virtue ethic, if not a virtue ethic full stop, when we seek to express the Analects’ moral theory in standard virtue ethical terms, the difficulty is quickly discerned. As Bryan Van Norden succinctly explains, the expectation among virtue ethicists is that “a virtue ethic must have at least a vague, implicit account of human nature.”2 Yet unlike its intellectual heirs, the Analects offers only the thinnest of indications about human nature. The single passage that employs the term “[human] nature” (性 xing) in a substantive way is, as Van Norden avers, “painfully vague.” It reads simply: “The Master said: ‘Human beings are similar by nature (xing); they differ on account of practice’” (17.2).3 The only other occurrence of the term appears in a report that Confucius did not discuss human nature (5.13). Consequently, scholars who seek to express the Analects’ moral sensibility in a virtue ethical framework encounter an immediate interpretive gap, a gulf between what we expect the Analects is doing and what it in fact explicitly offers us. While I cannot here do justice to the variety and subtlety of the several ways scholars have sought to close this gap, the approaches in play largely seem to track the rough rubric I outline above and I here briefly rehearse just a few of the conclusions they have drawn.

46

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

All of the scholars who fi nd in the Analects something like a theory of human nature would, I think, agree with May Sim that the Analects “has no explicit theory of human nature.”4 While there are of course important differences in the interpretive procedures employed by these scholars, I think they would likewise agree that drawing a sufficiently robust account from the text entails reasoning one’s way to the features of human nature from the virtues and the account of ethical cultivation given in the text. In short, the suspicion is that the virtues and style of moral learning depicted in the text embed assumptions about what people are like. And these assumptions may be traced to yield an implied account of human nature. Moreover, while this implied account may yet be somewhat thin or tenuous, it may also allow us to fi nd sufficient affi nity between Confucius’ views and those of others, others who may then operate as fitting supplement to what the Analects alone can offer. The great difference among scholars adopting this approach consists in where they believe such a procedure will lead. Bryan Van Norden, for example, fi nds in Confucius’ depiction of the processes of ethical cultivation the suggestion “that human nature is inert and recalcitrant to ethical cultivation.”5 In this, Van Norden observes, Confucius appears to endorse a view of human nature much more closely aligned with Xunzi’s claim that human nature is bad or at least not innately inclined to morality (性 惡 xing e) than with Mencius’ claim that it is good (性 善 xing shan).6 In contrast, Jiyuan Yu fi nds indications that human nature is, for Confucius, implicitly acknowledged as good. For example, how else, he asks, ought we understand Confucius’ claim in Analects 7.30, “Is ren really far away? No sooner do I desire it than it is here.”7 Based on this and the more general schema of relation between dao 道, de 德, and ren, he concludes that the text recommends “an intrinsic continuity between Confucius’ thinking and Mencius’ ‘xing-is-good’ theory.”8 Indeed, the affinity is such that Mencius can act for interpreters of the Analects as a rather natural bridge across the gap, providing an account that can work as a consistent supplement to the Analects’ spare and vague claims. May Sim argues that it is possible to “infer features of a Confucian human nature by reasoning to the traits necessary for ethical qualities—even when Confucius does not frame these in terms of a common human nature.”9 In her analysis of these qualities she seems, like Yu, to see more promise in Mencius than Xunzi, but concludes fi nally that the most promising approach resides in constructing a hybrid in which Aristotle’s more robustly metaphysical view of the self might supplement and “help fi ll a gap in the Confucian tradition.”10 Finally, Edward Slingerland suggests that the clearest evidence in the Analects points not to human nature but to a “theistic justification” in which the “will of Heaven” (天 tian) grounds and sanctions ethical cultivation, operating as the “overarching telos” that vouchsafes the universality of the ethic.11 Nonetheless, Slingerland also notes, the case here remains ambiguous, for at least “one rather late passage—Analects 17.21—seems to move toward grounding

The Analects’ Silences

47

the Confucian way in human biology.”12 On Slingerland’s reading of Analects 17.21, Confucius’ defense of the traditional mourning period for parents seems to suggest that mourning rituals are rooted in human biology, with the duration of natural childhood dependency structuring the duration of morally adequate mourning. In this passage’s linking of natural developmental features of the human being and a moral norm, Slingerland observes, we may see a movement within the text itself that foreshadows the tradition’s shift toward unequivocally positing human nature as the foundation for moral theory. Where we seek an implied account of human nature in the Analects, we have what strikes me as a bewildering array of possibilities. At the risk of oversimplifying, the text seems to suggest that Confucius inclines toward the Xunzian view of a resistant human nature; Confucius inclines toward the Mencian view of an innately good human nature; Confucius’ own view is somewhat unstable and endorses a theistic justification of morality that may be giving way to a nascent account of human nature. Based on which of these views we adopt, we may plausibly look to Xunzi, Mencius, or Aristotle for some supplement. Perhaps most distressing is that none of these possibilities permit any decisive refutation. Each of these views fi nds some sanction in the text and we cannot readily narrow the range of alternatives by appealing to textual evidence that would authoritatively rule some out. Put simply, in my own case at least, I fi nd each of these accounts plausible readings of the selected passages and elements in the Analects to which they individually point us. It consequently seems fair to say that the account one will fi nd of human nature in the Analects will depend in some measure upon which passages and elements of the text one takes as most compelling. However, given the diversity of the Analects’ claims, there will always linger a worry that any account so devised will result from misplaced emphasis, from assigning significance to aspects of the text that point in one direction while declining to do so for those that may point elsewhere. Since none of the textual elements referenced in devising conclusions about the Analects’ view explicitly reference human nature, that is, the interpreter labors under a doubled burden. She must not only show that her inferences about human nature are warranted by some aspects the text, she must additionally demonstrate why the aspects upon which she relies should enjoy priority in settling the matter. Unless we conclude that the case is equivocal and self-consciously choose an account based on extra-textual reasons, a textual case will require, for example, showing why passages that point toward Mencius best those that point toward Xunzi. My own sense is that the diversity of plausible possible accounts of human nature in the Analects in effect renders it implausible that the text can yield the sort of account standard virtue ethical approaches seem to require. Moreover, I worry that the effort to discover an implied account of human nature in the Analects elides a distinction of some importance: the difference between having a view of what people are like and having

48 Moral Exemplars in the Analects an account of human nature. I take it as a given that while most people have the former, few have the latter. Perhaps an analogy can illuminate the difference. In a typical syllabus for a college class, we often fi nd confessed the individual professor’s view of what students are like. We could examine the policies and procedures contained in a syllabus and craft a series of inferences about its author’s view: Does she fi nd students generally trustworthy? With what facility and speed does she think they can learn? Are students recalcitrant and in need of coercion? What model of the “successful student” is implied in the document and what might this say about student capacities and potential more generally? While most syllabi will permit this sort of analysis, I think too that we would rightly hesitate to say that a syllabus thereby reflects any settled account of human nature, or even of “student nature.” The syllabus embeds assumptions about what students are like, but we readily expect such assumptions to fluctuate and change. The professor whose previous term was bedeviled by student problems may subsequently produce a more cynical syllabus. Yet even if her view remains relatively stable over time, it will nonetheless likely reflect bits and pieces of her experiences rather than a comprehensive and conceptually secure account of student, or human, nature. For the latter we would require that she analyze and distill her experiences and observations in a much more focused and careful way, seeking among them stable features that can be generalized in a reliable and abstract conceptual formulation. I suggest that the Analects offers a parallel case. In it we find Confucius making a number of claims that embed assumptions about what people are like, but these have neither the settled quality nor formal expression that an account of human nature would require. Read this way, the fact that the text seems to offer multiple, sometimes incompatible views of what people are like, and what they thereby require in instruction and learning, is but a function of the variety of Confucius’ experiences and observations. He has many informal, and perhaps even casually acquired, attitudes, but they are not, or are not yet, a theory of human nature. This conclusion, it should be noted, is also more consonant with the intellectual climate Confucius inhabits. As both A.C. Graham and Van Norden observe, unlike his intellectual heirs, Confucius never encountered the challenges that later prompted so much attention to human nature in Chinese philosophical discourse.13 He did not, that is, need to defend his views against rivals who adopt different assumptions about what people are like, a need that, we suppose, might have given impulse to conclusions much more developed and formalized. In sum, to have an account of human nature is a commitment of a different order than having views about what people are like. I do not think we have sufficient evidence to believe that Confucius or the authors of the Analects have made such a commitment. Nor should we, without great hesitation, make that commitment for them through a procedure that risks

The Analects’ Silences

49

assigning high theoretical significance to what may be much more modestly pitched remarks. Consequently, the foundation for any moral theory drawn from the Analects will have to reside elsewhere. I propose that exemplars can fulfi ll this function, but fi rst I turn to Zagzebski’s general treatment of foundationalist moral theory as it is important at the outset to understand what is, and is not, at stake in abandoning the search for an account of human nature.

WHY FOUNDATIONS MATTER The importance of human nature for standard virtue ethical accounts can be understood by thinking more generally about what purpose and structural role human nature is meant to serve in moral theory. For many virtue ethicists, human nature serves the same purpose and structural role in theory as reason does for a deontologist or God’s will for a divine command theorist. In each case, the moral theorist seeks a foundation that is external to, and independent of, the system of value concepts she seeks to establish. Zagzebski succinctly explains: A moral theory is a system of concepts. Some concepts in the theory are defi nedin terms of others. But unless we are willing to accept conceptual circularity, some concept or concepts either will be undefi ned or will refer to something outside the domain. Most moral philosophers have done the latter. The basic evaluative concept in their theories is defi ned in terms of something allegedly nonevaluative—typically human nature, rationality, or the will of God.14 Whether a foundationalist looks to human nature, reason, or God, her aim is to secure a connection between her evaluative concepts and a conceptual domain taken to be neutral, presumably more basic, and thus less controversial. The nonevaluative conceptual domain operates as that which vouchsafes a moral theory as justified, effectively connecting evaluative concepts to what is, or purports to be, descriptive truth. Put in a most basic fashion, the virtue ethicist has in human nature a way to assert that how we ought to be is grounded in how we are. While the structural service a foundation such as human nature is meant to provide concerns general expectations regarding justification, these expectations are, it must be emphasized, historically situated. As I suggested in the introduction, while the Analects evinces some interest in explaining and systematizing moral practices, it is less clear that it is concerned with, or even recognizes, the need to justify moral practice. The Analects certainly does defend specific moral practices, most notably the li, as justified, but it nowhere suggests that moral practice itself, in its entirety,

50 Moral Exemplars in the Analects requires justification. This may owe, in large measure, to the pre-modern circumstance of the text. As Zagzebski has argued, the perceived need to justify moral practice itself has only come to be keenly felt with the modern era and it may be anachronistic to look to pre-modern philosophy with the expectation of justification. Increasing clarity about how the natural world operates has diminished considerably or even rendered naïve any easy belief that morality is at home in the natural world. Zagzebski observes that the credentials of empirical science and the features of the natural world to which it attests are a relatively new given, but they are indeed now a given with which moral philosophy must contend and they inspire the need to establish as never before the “credentials of morality.”15 Consequently, in much of modern and contemporary moral theory, a “foundational concept is tied to something else that is not moral and which is accepted by anybody who might be inclined to question the justifiability of moral practice.”16 To the extent, then, that such distinctively modern concerns inform efforts to secure a foundation for morality, we should not expect pre-modern moral philosophers to worry over foundations, or at least to worry in the same way. Even if the Analects had a robust, well articulated, explicit theory of human nature, it would not be self-evident that such a theory would be meant to do what we have come to expect such theories to do. While I judge it unlikely that Confucius or the Analects’ authors would feel compelled to justify morality, a foundation can serve a second purpose that would, I expect, have been somewhat more compelling to them, and that I think is urgently compelling to us moderns who seek to understand the text. In addition to structurally sustaining the value concepts of a moral theory, a foundation can also be understood to serve as what Zagzebski describes as the “hook,” or that which connects and “anchors” our value claims to the world. As metaphors such as “hook” and “anchor” suggest, we want in moral theory some way to save our moral claims from hovering above the world in a disconnected theoretical insularity and isolation. We want them to correspond to what we informally understand about how the world operates, to be grounded in that world. Unlike perhaps more technical philosophical worries about avoiding conceptual circularity and securing justification, the need to anchor theory has a markedly practical urgency: A moral theory needs a hook to connect it to the domain of moral practices of which it is a theory. Just as a map is useless unless we can identify something on the map by reference to something in our experience, a moral theory is useless unless we can find a place where the theory connects to a part of the moral domain we can identify independent of the theory.17 The utility of moral theory depends on its capacity to map a familiar domain and effectively hook what may be unfamiliar, the newly devised

The Analects’ Silences

51

moral concepts, to what is known and recognized, the world of existing moral practice and experience. There is of course no necessary requirement that our hooks and anchors be foundational in nature; a non-foundationalist moral theory, if it is to be credible and useful, will require its own hooks to the world. However, it seems to me that one interest scholars believe to be served by efforts to locate an account of human nature in the Analects consists in just this. Human nature may provide readers of the Analects (and perhaps of the Confucian tradition more broadly) a much needed hook. While I suspect that Confucius and the Analects’ authors would have found their moral claims well and amply connected to experience, for us it is not so easy. As anyone who has struggled to explain the Analects’ demanding injunctions regarding mourning to students will I think recognize, the Analects may readily appear to map what seems a terrain utterly foreign to our own landscape of experience. The more general worry here is that the Analects can appear to freely and even wantonly ascribe high moral significance to practices, parts of experience, that are merely the curious cultural conventions of a distant age. Given this, the considerable temporal and cultural distance between the Analects and ourselves can register as too great to permit a connection to our own experience. If, however, we can explain the Analects’ treatment of convention with reference to human nature, a nature we share with all the text’s mourners and ritual practitioners, we have our hook, a hook with a long and adequate reach. We can then begin to assay with satisfying generality the features a human nature provides. We may, for example, connect our own sorrows to that of the son ritually mourning his parents for three years by referencing native familial affection that generates profound grief when parents die. In sum, the explanatory power that a foundation such as human nature can afford the modern reader of the Analects is considerable. It cannot, however, hook the value system of the Analects to common experience in the secure and reliable way that moral theory, as opposed to moral learners, will require. The difficulties I discern with using human nature as our hook are, I expect, obvious. I simply retain doubt that the Analects can provide a sufficiently consistent and robust account of human nature. To be sure, many readers may fi nd a variety of personally resonant and practically useful hooks afforded by the text, but these, I suspect, reflect the individual reader’s contingent and occasional agreement with Confucius about what people are like. For example, our own sense of life’s sorrows may foster a view of what people are like that conduces to fellow-feeling with the Analects’ moral mourners, and this in turn may enable us to fi nd a useful hook. Affi nity of informal opinion of this sort is of course felicitous and beneficial to the individual reader, providing her opportunities to draw important insights from the text for her own experience. Still, it is a species of affi nity that will render the Analects useful as a manual, a guide for one’s moral life, rather than answer to the structural demands of theory.

52 Moral Exemplars in the Analects In sum, establishing a foundation for moral theory can serve to conceptually structure and justify the theory and can additionally hook theory to experience. While I suspect that the Analects is uninterested in the former and may take the latter somewhat for granted, what is at stake here for contemporary moral theorists is considerable. If the Analects is to speak well to our own interests, we want some way to manage these issues. I suggest that exemplarism is not only a more natural fit for the sensibility of the text, but that it can also answer these concerns. On my reading, we need not burden the Analects with the expectation that there must be something here that sources virtue in human nature. Instead, the text’s moral theory will stem from its people, and of people the Analects offers an abundance. Their lives and narratives about them plant us fi rmly on the ground. We still must of course engage in considerable interpretive work but we no longer do so with the assumption that the text is most laconic where the stakes for viable moral theory are highest. Indeed that the text is laconic in its allusions to human nature no longer appears surprising but reads as a predictable feature of its method and logic. Such is but what we would anticipate where we work our way from identifying “good people” to the more ambitious aim of understanding precisely why they are good. If the Analects cannot yield a reading in which virtue connects to an account of human nature, such is, on an exemplarist reading, a far from fatal blow.

FOUNDATION IN EXEMPLARS To return to the distinction I proposed in Chapter 2, an exemplarist account of the Analects will assign both sequential and conceptual priority to exemplars. This will entail that we not only develop a moral theory by initiating a process of reflection based on exemplars, but that we ground theory in them, making the good person the foundation of moral theory. In this way, exemplars will serve as foundation in both of the senses I identify. That is, they will both justify theory and provide its hook. As I have suggested, the success of a foundationalist moral theory will in some measure ride on how convinced we can be that our grounding concept, our foundation, is sufficiently basic and uncontroversial. The worry with many moral theories of course is that the candidates most often in play— human nature, reason, or God—are simply judged neither genuinely basic nor uncontroversial. At worst, they may be seen as concepts developed post hoc and contoured to suit the needs of moral concepts antecedently defined but not yet justified. A key asset in an exemplarist moral theory, in contrast, is the modesty of what it requires us to accept. We begin here not with a concept we must justify or, worse, simply trust as basic, but with people. Thus, for example, rather than formulate a satisfying conceptual account of human nature out of which we can generate and justify moral concepts, we begin instead with the comparatively simple empirical observation that

The Analects’ Silences

53

people do have moral exemplars and can refer meaningfully to the “good person.” Whether and how this fact about us can link up with an account of a shared human nature, a capacity to reason, or even an endowment from God is a matter we need not settle before the work of moral theorizing can begin. Indeed our theorizing can proceed without ever addressing such matters by granting foundational force to our inchoate identifi cations of exemplars. We fi x the reference for the “good person” with a gesture to the world rather than a concept: “Good persons are persons like that.” Key moral concepts, such as “virtue, right act, duty, good outcome, and so on,” will trace to and be grounded in just that, the exemplars we have indicated prior to and independently of our theoretical constructs.18 What matters here is that our capacity to point with confidence to the “good person” is what “then allows the series of conceptual defi nitions to get started.”19 With the exemplar, that is, we have a piece of experience that allows us to “break the circle,” to reach outside the value concepts we propose to that which is more basic. The ability to ground theory in exemplars frees moral theory from difficulties attached to conceptual foundations and, as is my more particular interest here, better allows us to work with what the Analects explicitly offers, freeing our reading in uniquely potent ways. All we need to make an exemplarist account of the text work is a sufficient sense that the moral structure it limns corresponds in significant measure to features in evidence in its exemplars and that Confucius and the text’s authors do treat their pre-theoretical identifications of exemplars with confidence. In my estimation, the text unambiguously meets both of these conditions.20 There is a tight correspondence between the abstract value concepts endorsed in the text and the narrative representation of the figures it would have us emulate, and these figures can plausibly appear to indexically calibrate those abstract values. Such is to say that whatever virtue will be in the Analects, it will, for example, look like the Duke of Zhou and admiration of the Duke of Zhou operates as a brute given to which value concepts must answer. In allowing us to ground moral concepts in exemplars, an exemplarist model frees our reading of the Analects from the unduly burdensome hermeneutical effort to discover or devise an account of human nature in order to justify a virtue ethic. We can give up this struggle in favor of an account that requires far less, and far less that may be alien to the text. That is, while exemplarist theory can and does provide justification, an exemplarist reading of the Analects need neither ascribe an interest in justification to the text, nor fi nd any lack of such interest compromising. We can simultaneously allow the Analects its silence with respect to justification while also fi nding in it the stuff from which contemporary concerns with justification can be addressed. Finally, with an exemplarist model, we shall have our “hook.” At a general level, any exemplarist ethic will readily attach both to the common experience of admiration for exemplars and to familiar practices of

54

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

imitation that so structure human learning and development. More specifically, this hook will operate to shrink the distance between the Analects and the modern reader, for we will understand the Analects to conceptually map a terrain of experience as recognizable and familiar to us as it is to its authors: We admire exemplars, we want to be like them, and we deeply trust that we know, if not understand, them. Where the Analects points to the moral significance of cultural conventions we do not share, we will have recourse to the exemplar as our common thread. Thus rather than seeking an account of human nature that will sustain the Analects’ treatment of convention, we can query the text’s exemplars for their capacity to close the gap between early Chinese moral practices and our own. In this, we have a ready to hand rubric for both honoring the particular cultural circumstance and that which is more general. Exemplars render narrative relevant in a way that an abstract account human nature cannot, and a part of any narrative will be the interaction of the exemplar with his or her local circumstances. Put simply, an exemplar is always someone somewhere, and what more general insight the exemplar yields will derive in part from his manner of traversing his distinctive landscape of experience. Rather than asking what, presumably universal, features of the human being could give warrant to extended ritual mourning, for example, we ask instead what, if any, generalizable features of character make Confucius, qua exemplar, embrace his culture’s injunctions to perform prolonged ritual mourning. We will look to his life and the lives of other exemplars, seeking in them the sources of their sorrows, the motivating forces that move them, and will seek to make sense of their commitments with reference to these. In sum, an exemplarist account will fi nd its foundation and hook in pre-theoretical experiences of admiration for exemplars. Where we understand the Analects to operate in this way, we no longer need worry that the text denies us a way to ground its moral concepts and successfully link them to the world, for while the Analects cannot readily yield a coherent and decisive account of human nature, it does unambiguously and confidently propose exemplars for our consideration. The text’s silence about human nature is, then, a meaningful silence, but it is not an omission that need inhibit theory. The same, I expect, holds for the text’s silence about human flourishing.

THE FLOURISHING PROBLEM A virtue ethic will typically include not only an account of human nature, but also an account of human flourishing and, insofar as the Analects operates as a virtue ethic, we will expect to fi nd in it such an account. A moral theory’s concept of flourishing is of course often tightly linked to its account of human nature—what it will mean to flourish may be specified by the kind of creature one is, the capacities one has and can

The Analects’ Silences

55

develop. Consequently, if we doubt that the Analects has an account of human nature, we have prima facie cause to doubt whether it will yield an account of flourishing. Despite this initial reservation, I think it nonetheless important to query the text’s potential for yielding an account of flourishing, for we should not reflexively assume that the Analects’ pattern of reasoning will map exactly contemporary expectations for a virtue theory. It may well provide an account of flourishing developed independently of an articulated account of human nature. Indeed, while many scholars concede that it is difficult to discover an account of human nature in the text, flourishing appears more easily addressed. The term “flourishing” has of course gained currency in western moral discourse as an effort to translate the Greek term, eudaimonia. In its classical usage, eudaimonia evoked at once both happiness and more objective standards of doing well. A life that is eudaimon was understood to bring satisfaction to the one who leads it and to have identifi able and defi nable features that correspond to the well-functioning of human capacities. Contemporary virtue ethical accounts of flourishing are of course diverse, but most scholars looking to the Analects for an account of flourishing employ something like the classical model. Using this model, an account of flourishing may emphasize the development of human capacities, it may emphasize the felt quality of satisfaction or happiness one achieves, or it may combine both. In its most ambitious formulation, an account of flourishing will, as Aristotle’s eudaimonia is widely thought to do, operate as the telos of virtue, describing to what fi nal and complete good a life of virtue will lead us. In seeking an account of flourishing in the Analects, we must observe at the outset that, in contrast to the Aristotelian model, the Analects does not offer any obvious term that functions in the way that “eudaimonia” does. There is no term used in the text that singularly serves as a global concept of well-being. While the want of a term that corresponds to the concept of flourishing may not preclude the text’s having an account of flourishing, it does entail that efforts to locate such an account must appeal to inferences drawn from indirect statements. 21 While many scholars do appear to be much more confident in identifying an account of flourishing in the Analects, what we fi nd in their readings of the text in some measure tracks what we fi nd in addressing human nature, a worrisome diversity of views. Let me sketch, again with very broad strokes, some of the possibilities offered in recent virtue ethical readings of the Analects. Yu offers the most ambitious effort to fit the Analects to the rubric of classical Aristotelian virtue ethics. He argues that “Confucius’ dao corresponds to Aristotle’s eudaimonia in the sense that each refers to the highest human good.”22 In Yu’s account, the human dao, or way, is a manifestation of an encompassing dao of Heaven (tian). Moreover, he finds in the Analects’ treatment of de, here rendered as “virtue,” a parallel to Aristotle’s function argument, such that “the human way is thought to be the

56

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

way of Heaven as individualized in a human life. The manifestation of the way of Heaven in humans is human virtue.”23 Like Yu, Slingerland sees a strongly teleological tenor in the Analects’ account of ethical cultivation. However, while Slingerland also reads Heaven as the source and order of the telos, he frames the telos as “the production of a gentleman, one who possesses the overarching Confucian virtue of ren.”24 Employing Alasdair MacIntyre’s more recent virtue ethical model, Slingerland argues that this telos, becoming ren, is what provides the necessary unifying good that can render intelligible the discrete events and acts within the narrative arc of a human life.25 Van Norden has a more conceptually modest presentation of the Analects’ account of flourishing. Rather than positing any of the Analects’ moral concepts as telos, Van Norden’s account highlights the way in which flourishing corresponds to less formal notions of “the good life.” That is, Van Norden’s reading specifies the kinds of practices and satisfactions a Confucian “good life” would include, while retaining a generally thinner account of just how flourishing will function in any resulting moral theory. The Confucian “good life,” he argues, “includes participation in ritual activity, ethically informed aesthetic appreciation and intellectual activity, acting for the good of others, and generally participating in relationships with other people, especially familial relationships.”26 While Van Norden implies that this account of the good life may develop from a view of human nature, his account largely avoids mapping the Analects tightly to any more specific theoretical model. 27 Finally, Sim is skeptical that the Analects can offer a satisfying account of flourishing. She argues that the Analects’ silence with respect to “an explicit teleology and metaphysics” entails that Confucius is “under no demand to defi ne the state of completed human perfection.”28 Where Yu and Slingerland emphasize what we might consider moral achievement terms such as dao, de, and ren, Sim sees li, or ritual, as the concept that enjoys highest priority in any effort to construct an account of the human good based on the Analects. She states, “Whereas Aristotle’s starting point is from a nature that all human beings possess, Confucius’ starting point is from a person in context, where she plays certain roles that are prescribed by the li.”29 However, on Sim’s reading, “Confucius’ reticence on the metaphysics of self,” his failure to provide an unambiguous account of human nature that would ground and structure a telos, entails that the li, qua human good, risk appearing “particularistic or irrelevant.”30 Here again, Sim sees an incentive to bring Aristotle to bear as a helpful supplement to Confucius’ account. The diversity of these accounts of flourishing suggests, I think, two possibilities. First, to the extent that the Analects in some measure supports each of these accounts—ranging from a strong quasi-theistic teleological ethic to a non-teleological particularism—their diversity is troubling. If the text can sustain each of these accounts, the text seems to permit too many

The Analects’ Silences

57

plausible yet incompatible interpretations. As is the case with locating an account of human nature, the Analects’ dearth of explicit comment coupled with its wide variety of suggestive remarks that may (or may not) limn implicit commitments render it difficult to complete a virtue ethical rubric with the sort of decisiveness and clarity we would desire. This may suggest that the rubric simply does not fit. A second possibility is that the diversity of scholarly opinion owes less to inherently different accounts of flourishing than it does to an underlying dispute about how thick an account of flourishing can be reasonably drawn from the Analects. I suspect that few scholars would dispute that whatever “the good life” means in the Analects, it will include the elements that Van Norden cites. Indeed, I think even scholars who incline against a virtue ethical reading might concede this point, for it corresponds to unexceptional and trusted observations about the text’s governing sensibility that many have made. It is when we seek to reach beyond these modest elements to establish a more conceptually robust telos or account of a human good that disagreement becomes pronounced. However, even if a comparably uncontentious view of the good life can be textually secured from the Analects, it is unclear it will constitute an account of flourishing of the sort a virtue ethic will require. As is the case with human nature, I suspect that here much of the trouble stems from the elision of an important distinction, what I will call the difference between having an account of flourishing and having a view about a life we should like. This distinction is well captured by Van Norden’s discussion of flourishing and common intuitions. He observes, “‘Flourishing’ is a technical term in virtue ethics. To flourish is to live a certain kind of life: a life characterized by the ordered exercise of one’s capacities as a human.”31 Nonetheless, “there is nothing particularly esoteric or parochial about the general notion.” For despite the ethicist’s more technical use of “flourishing,” “[m]ost of us at least understand the topic when someone talks about ‘living the good life.’” As Van Norden notes, we frequently and intuitively appeal to something like flourishing when we negatively evaluate, say, a life characterized by indolence and organized around excessive consumption of mindless television programming. While Van Norden is right to point out the connection between more abstruse, theoretical uses of flourishing and our informal, untutored evaluations, the difference between a technical account and informal notions will, I argue, make a difference to moral theory. Indeed, I expect the perceived need to satisfy the moral theorist’s more technical sense of “flourishing” is what motivates Yu and Slingerland to seek more elaborate accounts and Sim to conclude that the text cannot sustain such an account. In my estimation, having an account of flourishing will be different than having a view about a life we should like, and while most people will have the latter, very few will have the former. I expect my parallel is obvious but let me state it plainly. I judge the technical and theoretical use of

58

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

“flourishing” to be akin to having an account of human nature, while the imprecise, informal sense of a life we should like corresponds to having a view of what people are like. In the former, as I argued earlier, we expect an account, be it of human nature or of flourishing, to aim at comprehensiveness with satisfying generality and to bespeak an intellectual commitment of a certain order. In the latter, we merely observe that ordinary experience and observation promote the development of informal views about human preferences, desires, and needs. Having an account of flourishing, like having an account of human nature, presumably requires a settled, stable, and decisive set of conclusions. In contrast, having a view about a life we should like might, like a view of what people are like, be unstable, unorganized, and subject to revision or change in emphasis in accord with how our experiences and observations happen to direct us.32 My suspicion is that while the Analects freely offers a host of reflections about a life we should like, it does not offer an account of flourishing. The conceptual thinness of its most pronounced and secure comments indicates an informality that falls well short of a confident, comprehensive account, much less a telos. We fi nd a host of reflections on the life we should like, many perhaps inspired by the passing circumstances in which they are offered, but nowhere do we fi nd a decisive commitment to an authoritative and singular view of the sort that can direct theory. While my suspicion is in part fed by the conceptual thinness of the fi rmest claims and the want of a clear commitment, it is significantly increased by the way in which our fi rmest claims are vouchsafed. Put simply, I worry that the most straightforward and textually well-sustained accounts of flourishing we can devise from the Analects rely far too much on the text’s depiction of a single, actual life, the life of Confucius. While the Analects does offer a number of general and abstract statements that plausibly point to a good life, it is nonetheless dominated by the model of Confucius’ own life. I take it as notable, for example, that while Van Norden’s account of flourishing is the least contentious, its claims are more secure in part because they are so clearly confi rmed and reflected in the life that Confucius lived. That is, this version of flourishing looks the most unambiguously like Confucius’ own life as it is depicted in the Analects. It is also worrisome that many of the passages cited in support of a telos derived from Heaven, or tian, have a common narrative pattern, showing Confucius claiming tian as his purported ally as he insistently proclaims defiance of corruption, personal peril, and so forth.33 Where we look to the text’s more abstract comments, I think we find both more controversy and far less to work with. This is evident if we consider, as a heuristic, just how difficult it would be to fashion a textually secure account of flourishing without the aid of passages that directly depict Confucius’ life or his and his students’ responses to that life. We would, to be sure, still have recourse to many passages that more generally endorse, say, acceptance of material hardship or promote a life enriched by a heightened aesthetic sense, but

The Analects’ Silences

59

these more general claims track uncomfortably closely to Confucius’ life as he lived it. They can appear, that is, to be abstract representations of the core problems and pleasures of Confucius’ own life. This obliges us, then, to entertain the relation between the example and the account, to consider whether an abstract, general account can or should rely on a single case. This, I think, is an open question. We might conclude that flourishing will look substantially alike across cases and thus one case can reliably provide access to the more general model we seek. However, to reach such a conclusion with respect to the Analects requires evidence we simply do not have. Confucius is, to be sure, a singular presence in the text, but I doubt we can ascribe to him or to the text’s authors the view that human flourishing is completely well-captured by Confucius’ flourishing. While some iteration of the concept of “flourishing” may be in evidence in the Analects, it is unclear that the text can yield an account on the order of what a virtue ethical reading will require. My concern is that in standard virtue ethical accounts, “flourishing” is and can only be understood as a “technical term.” Flourishing has work to do in theory that can be accomplished only where it is treated technically. I think this becomes evident when we consider what structural role flourishing typically plays in virtue ethical accounts.

WHY FLOURISHING MATTERS There are of course many different virtue ethical theories and correspondingly many iterations of how flourishing will feature in such theories, but we can distill from this variety two general ways flourishing can serve in a theoretical structure. For convenience, I here treat these ways as distinct and singular, although in many theories they both appear and will operate in tandem. Moreover, while there are perhaps problems with how they can combine in a theory, I shall focus only on how they individually operate, and fail to operate, in the Analects.34 The fi rst way of structuring theory with reference to flourishing concerns again the foundation problem. Where an account of human nature can ground moral theory in a satisfyingly nonevaluative domain, insofar as our account of flourishing extends from our account of human nature, it too is foundational. Such is to say that human nature will describe core capacities of the human creature and flourishing will capture how the extension of those capacities into developed excellence will appear. Both human nature and flourishing will thus serve to link our evaluative concepts, our catalog of the virtues and moral practices, to nonevaluative observations about how human beings both are and can be. The perceived advantage of linking nature and flourishing in this way resides in a continuity in modeling effect. A moral theory employing flourishing in this sense erects a conceptual structure that patterns structures

60

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

we freely and confidently apply elsewhere. As Aristotle originally indicated, plants and animals can be described as having natures we can specify and corresponding standards for flourishing we can readily recognize. In Philippa Foot’s memorable example, we readily grant that “there is something wrong with a free-riding wolf, who eats but does not take part in the hunt.”35 The wolf has a jointly predatory and social nature; its flourishing rests in part on its successful enactment of the behaviors and dispositions belonging to this nature. Insofar as our mapping of human nature and human flourishing model similar relations, they will achieve something of the confidence we bestow on such nonevaluative biological accounts. Indeed, in its strongest formulation, our accounts of human nature and human flourishing will just be nonevaluative biological accounts. The work of moral theory then becomes an effort to show that the virtues, the evaluative concepts we seek to justify, connect in some causal way to human flourishing or, as Rosalind Hursthouse would have it, constitute at least a “reliable bet” for flourishing.36 Leaving aside the considerable debate about whether any moral theory that connects human nature and flourishing in this way can work, suffice it to say that it is unlikely to work for the Analects. I take it that all of the concerns I have raised about locating accounts of human nature and flourishing in the text would here obtain. So too would worries about whether a theory of this sort imports an anachronistic concern with justification into the text. Perhaps most basically, a reading of this sort joins a series of ambitious and elaborate theoretical claims to the Analects where the Analects is at its most laconic and indirect, requiring that we fi nd not only sufficiently robust accounts of human nature and flourishing, but that we fi nd them connected via a biological perspective that embraces the wider world of creatures and things.37 My own sense is that this model simply requires more than the text can provide. I take it that the more theoretically ambitious a model is, the more it requires a series of strong theoretical commitments interlocked in well-defi ned patterns of relation, the less it is likely to fi nd fulfillment in a text that can only suggest, via indirect, implicit, or nascent reasoning, the relevant commitments and patterns of relation. In short, the hermeneutical demands of joining this model to the Analects are just too high; it requires too many and too elaborate inferences. The second way in which flourishing may work in moral theory is a more plausible fit for the Analects. As Hursthouse’s claim that the virtues constitute a “reliable bet” for flourishing suggests, one function of an account of flourishing is motivational. While people may not, or not reliably, feel motivated to develop virtue, we take it as a given that people do desire to flourish, that they need no prompting to want flourishing lives. One function of an account of flourishing, then, can be to harness this natural desire to the cultivation of virtue. Used in this way, flourishing operates as an uncontroversially attractive goal and the sometimes perhaps unattractive or unappealing aspects of practicing the virtues are

The Analects’ Silences

61

linked to the achievement of this goal. Hursthouse explains this with reference to a medical analogy. 38 Just as particular physical practices, such as healthy eating and regular exercise, conduce to physical health, the practice of the virtues conduces to flourishing. While it is true that in neither case can our practices secure the end of health or flourishing, we consider them sufficiently reliable that we can motivate these practices against competing impulses less likely to promote our good. Flourishing thus structurally serves moral theory by providing an account of what motivates morality. As Zagzebski succinctly puts it, an account of flourishing may operate to solve “the why-be-moral problem.”39 One challenge for such accounts, however, is just how to link a sufficiently robust model of flourishing to the sort of life we naturally desire. Where our aim is to provide a general motivation for morality with an account of flourishing, to motivate the non-virtuous to virtue, the success of our model will depend upon how well our account of flourishing connects to ordinary, untutored desires. An account of flourishing, that is, can only solve the why-be-moral problem if it can show that the flourishing that virtue stands to win us is the flourishing we are naturally inclined to desire. However, as Christine Swanton has argued, in at least some cases the practice of virtue will, in foreseeable and avoidable ways, direct a life away from any basic or brute sense of flourishing of the sort we most natively desire.40 The virtuous can and do suffer great hardship, and sometimes it is precisely their practice of virtue that yields such results. In at least some lives and circumstances, virtue may even be a “reliable bet” for suffering and sacrifice. Such a possibility need not preclude our counting such lives as flourishing, but to the extent that we count them so, we shall require an account of flourishing refi ned to accommodate what ordinary judgment would hold are unhappy and undesirable outcomes. The life satisfaction of a virtuous person may not ultimately be compromised by suffering, for she may well tolerate sacrifice ennobled by virtue and be content without regret where such sacrifices entail losing otherwise desirable elements of a life. Indeed, we would suppose that virtue provides compensations that therapeutically mitigate the felt psychological effects of suffering.41 Yet it is far from clear that when ordinary people want to flourish that they want this. As Zagzebski observes, the motivational force of flourishing rides on its being a species of happiness that the non-virtuous will want, but the flourishing enjoyed by exemplary persons may just not be “the sort of happiness most people are motivated to have.”42 From the exemplar’s point of view, her life may be counted satisfying and even happy, but “that does not give us a motive to be like the exemplar since the real question for us is whether to adopt the point of view of the exemplar.”43 In sum, we will want an account of flourishing to accommodate the sacrifices and suffering virtue may entail, but the better our account can manage this, the less likely it will be to capture the untutored desires that any more general motivating force will require.

62 Moral Exemplars in the Analects I think it comparably uncontroversial to see in the Analects some struggle with motivating morality. However, it is less clear that the Analects registers this problem at the same level or in the same way that contemporary virtue ethical accounts do. Put simply, the Analects seems much more oriented toward sustaining the efforts of those who already enjoy some prior impulse toward morality than toward motivating morality where no such impulse can be assumed. Confucius remarks, for example, that there is nothing he can offer where the learner is not already habituated to asking, “What to do? What to do?” (15.16). Similarly, he insists that he will not instruct students who are not already driven and eager (7.8). While these remarks reflect Confucius’ orientation as a teacher, they confi rm the wider conversational tenor of the text. The audience for Confucius’ various remarks about the rewards and compensations afforded by a life of virtue is most immediately composed of his students, moral learners already in some measure motivated, and it is to such an audience that the text’s various remarks are best pitched. Indeed, the text appears to recognize that that the species of satisfaction and well-being achieved by sages is not what most people prima facie desire. This is evident if we consider the way in which the text presents Confucius’ own life. In broad strokes, Confucius’ life can be counted a failure where we defi ne “failure” along conventional measures of success or even well-being. Confucius never fulfi lls his life ambition to serve in government and exercise the influence over state affairs he would desire. His life consists in peripatetic wandering and we know that he occasionally courted physical peril and starvation in pursuit of his ambitions and aims (9.5, 11.23, 15.2). He was, moreover, sometimes mocked for his mode of life, its moral earnestness absent readily measurable success.44 Confucius’ mode of life, in short, included great suffering and sacrifice without any immediate, obvious reward. While we surely can enumerate many and considerable rewards Confucius does achieve and the text well attends to these, they are nonetheless not the simple stuff of our most basic desires. Perhaps more to the point, the text does not treat them so. The Analects is instead by turns apologetic and hortatory, defending the worth of a virtuous life to those who do not see it so and encouraging those already motivated to persist despite what persistence might cost them.45 In this way, it seems to grant that we may well admire sages such Confucius, but this is a far cry from identifying our own “flourishing” in what we see of theirs or from wanting what they appear to want. Because of this, even if we can locate an account of flourishing in the Analects, it is unlikely to do the generally motivating work we have come to associate with such accounts. The Analects can well speak to those who desire virtue, but it is far less clear that it can provoke this desire into being. Finally, while the Analects may plausibly offer an encouraging, if not prima facie motivating, account of flourishing, here too I think we must worry about the likely reliance of such an account on the text’s depiction

The Analects’ Silences

63

of Confucius’ life. Whether our focus is generating or merely sustaining motivation for morality, we are not burdened to provide ambitious assertions regarding human biological capacities and their fulfi llment, yet we remain burdened to provide a satisfying generality. An account of flourishing will, to be sure, allow for individual variation to accommodate a variety of human projects and commitments, but must still scrupulously avoid the idiosyncratic. Consequently, here too we must worry whether Confucius’ flourishing can sufficiently provision a general account of flourishing without inadvertently fusing idiosyncratic features of Confucius’ felt satisfaction with his life to what should be a general, abstract account. Of the two ways in which flourishing may structure standard virtue ethical theories, both present problems as models for the Analects. Persistent hermeneutical problems with the rather thin and indirect nature of the Analects’ comments render it difficult to join the text to models that include a biological account of flourishing. The motivational model of flourishing is more promising, but the Analects appears less to stimulate motivation than to foster its increase where it already exists. Moreover, the dominance of Confucius’ life in what the Analects offers may be an obstacle in securing a sufficiently general and abstract account. In short, given the sum of worries attached to fi nding the technical sense of “flourishing” that standard virtue ethical accounts require, I think we have incentive to look elsewhere. The desiderata for moral theory that flourishing is meant to fulfill—establishing continuity between foundation and human ends, and providing motivation for morality—can be fulfilled where we read the text as exemplarist. Exemplarism may here again both allow the Analects its silences and provide a suitably fitting structure by which to address foundation and motivation.

THE GOOD LIFE AND EXEMPLARS As I have already argued, an exemplarist model allows us to ground moral theory without committing to a view of human nature. So too, grounding moral concepts in exemplars can obviate the need for a foundational account of flourishing. The work that a more biological account of human nature and flourishing perform in theory can be well performed through a direct reference account of exemplars. Let me connect this account explicitly to the good life and motivation. Where we treat the Analects as exemplarist, I argue, the text’s depiction of the lives of its protagonists, of Confucius and his students, provide material for addressing motivation more generally. A focus on exemplars draws us, perhaps inevitably, to consideration of the good life. As Zagzebski observes, “We identify certain persons as exemplars partly because we find their lives exemplary, and we identify certain lives as exemplary partly because they are the lives of the persons we admire. A person is not independent of her life, although there is a partial independence in that the way a person’s life goes is not wholly in her control.”46 While

64 Moral Exemplars in the Analects circumstance and luck bar completely collapsing the distinction between the exemplar and the life she leads, the exemplar can seed reflection on the good life. A concept of “the good life” can grow from what we apprehend and can abstractly generalize from the many and varied lives exemplars lead. In sourcing understanding of a good life in exemplars, however, we need not thereby commit to the view that all exemplars will flourish or that following their example will increase the probability of our flourishing. Because at least some of our exemplars will lead lives that effectively work against ordinary or more brute desires to be happy or even satisfied, an exemplarist account will not motivate morality with reference to these desires. That is, it will not commit us to the view that virtue is a reliable bet for flourishing. It looks instead to our experience of identifying exemplars. Our identification of exemplars occurs through our admiration of them and this, Zagzebski explains, already contains a species of motivation: “We fi nd the admirable attractive in a way that, given certain conditions, we would imitate or emulate. So the admirable is what we might call the imitably attractive.”47 Conceptually, admiration is an emotion that will motivate us, an attraction that already includes the desire to be like the object of our admiration. Developmentally, admiration transmutes into imitation rather seamlessly, the child who admires formulating the desire to be like even where none of the relevant conceptual structures concerning motivation and imitation are yet in place. Moreover, as I argue more extensively in the next chapter, the Analects clearly does commit to an account of admiration that includes motivation, observing the power of exemplars to stimulate emulation in others. On this model, then, an exemplarist rendering of the Analects will answer the “why-be-moral question” by pre-empting the question itself. Insofar as we do, in a conceptually unmediated fashion, admire, we already are motivated before the question arises; so long as we do admire, we will have some impulse to imitate. As a practical matter, and the more mature our consciousness and complex our lives, we may of course fi nd much that will compete with or undermine this inchoate and immediate motivation. The desire to imitate those we admire may never flower into action where our own capacities are unequal to the task or circumstances constrain us. Nonetheless, what we admire we will want to be like. We may, and perhaps most often will, enact the motivation that admiration generates in partial, modest, and incomplete ways. For example, my admiration for the humanitarian aid worker who suffers great hardship and peril in a war zone may not compel me to live as she, but I may imitate what I can, developing greater sensitivity to human suffering and to my own privilege, giving of my resources, energies, and time at a greater level than I would, without her model, be inclined. As this example suggests, the motivation that admiration stimulates perhaps works best to explain what can generate rather ordinary species of morality. Zagzebski observes, “It is much more difficult to link up the motive to be exceptionally virtuous with the motives of ordinary people than to give

The Analects’ Silences

65

people the motive to be good in the ordinary way.”48 The perceived gap between the humanitarian aid worker’s motivating desires and my own may be considerable. Both I and my exemplar direct our lives in accord with what we judge desirable, but she is distinguished in part because living a life that is admirable is among her most commanding desires.49 She wants and values the life she has despite its costs. If I am to become more like the exemplar, and find motivation in excess of the ordinary, I will need some way to draw closer to her perspective, to include among my more basic desires the desire to be admirable. The primary resource exemplarism brings to motivating more ambitiously virtuous lives is its emphasis on entertaining and understanding the narrative trajectories of exemplars’ lives. Exemplars give rise to abstract concepts, but they are, fi rst and foremost, flesh and blood just as all are. The more we see of the exemplar as she operates in situ, in the conditions of her life, the more likely her life will begin to achieve a discernible sense, the more likely we may understand her commitments as they sound and reverberate against experience. The more we know of the exemplar’s life, the more we may come to recognize its affi nities with our own. Because narrative will “reveal the interconnections among the different elements of a life,” it can serve to illuminate “that what even ordinary people admire commits them to choices that in certain circumstances end tragically.”50 I think we fi nd a pattern much like this in the Analects. Where we look for an account of flourishing rooted in the Analects, we have good reason to be wary of an untoward emphasis on Confucius’ own life, of treating Confucius’ life as the leitmotif for human flourishing. However, if we instead recognize the text as rooted in its authors’ commanding admiration of Confucius qua exemplar, we have a much more potent way to frame the text’s interest in this singular life. Confucius made choices that do not easily recommend themselves to others, but the more we read of his life and embed a brute summary of his activities in the finer details of that life, the more compelling he and his pattern of life are likely to become. We see not only his moral strength, but his vulnerabilities, his gentle pleasures, his close companionship with others. We begin, in short, to see why he would want the life he has even when it costs him much. Where we read Confucius’ life as suggestive of an account of flourishing, we are obliged to discount that which does not readily generalize. On an exemplarist model, however, more of the specific, particular, and idiosyncratic features of his life can and will matter, for they matter to him and he, not flourishing, is what we seek to understand. Rather than seek an account of flourishing that can enfold both our basic desires and the refinements of Confucius’ well-being, we seek affinity with him as he operates as a protagonist in a complex life the way that we operate as protagonists in our own complex lives. None of us get all we wish, but we all are obliged to frame and order our various desires in the mix and muddle of a human life. Thus where we see our exemplars in the mix, we are better positioned to identify with them.

66 Moral Exemplars in the Analects In addition to rendering the Analects’ depiction of the fi ner details of Confucius’ life available I think we fi nd the text providing other notable narrative elements that can similarly elicit motivating admiration embedded in appreciation of the lives of others. Here we can draw in what I earlier described as partial exemplars, those who point us to less complete models of virtue. In particular, I suspect that Confucius’ students can operate as a vital supplement to what Confucius offers for stimulating motivation. In them, we have moral learners who exhibit, in varying degrees, the struggle to become better. Moreover, we see moral aspiration operating in the context of a variety of temperaments, skill levels, and circumstances. To the extent that the text permits us to know Confucius’ students, we can apprehend something of the complexity of forces at work in incompletely virtuous lives. To the extent that we identify ourselves in them, their more modest successes may inspire efforts at our own and their failures can stand as caution. Perhaps most importantly, Confucius’ students provide models of moral learners who want to be superlatively virtuous, but are not, or are not yet. We thus have in them a natural bridge between ordinary and sagely desires. Where “the real question” of motivation concerns not the superlative exemplar’s own perceived life satisfaction but whether we can adopt his perspective and want what he wants, Confucius’ students provide models of what it is to try. They thus offer an opportunity to consider in the workings of a diverse set of lives how more ordinary desires and the desire to live admirably join and sever, intersect and come apart in the process of self-consciously trying to craft a life. How they achieve their successes and withstand their failures, how they struggle to emulate Confucius and school themselves to direct their own motivations may point to important features of motivation more generally. In short, their incompleteness can serve as a model for others who are similarly incomplete. Where the most robust exemplars’ lives will make sense from an exemplar’s perspective, these more modest models allow us to begin to make sense of wanting that perspective even when it is not immediately on offer. An exemplarist moral theory will steer away from providing an account of flourishing of the sort standard virtue ethical theories do while still fulfilling the desiderata such accounts aim to fulfi ll. We can here still meaningfully address the good life, but will link it to the many exemplary lives of exemplars rather than seek a unified, abstract account developed from human nature. While declining to posit a telos at which virtue aims, exemplarism will look instead to the responses exemplars inspire in others and affi nities between exemplars and others to motivate morality. The process of moral cultivation will consequently focus on forging stronger and more stable links to the exemplar from our inchoate admiration of her and tenuous affi nities with her more refi ned motivations. As is the case with human nature, the Analects’ silence with respect to an explicit and defi nitive account of flourishing need not inhibit its capacity to ground its

The Analects’ Silences

67

moral concepts or provide motivation for morality. Its exemplars can do this work. I wish now to turn from these more obvious silences and consider a more figurative “silence,” the text’s treatment of the signal virtue, ren 仁.

THE REN PROBLEM As I have noted, the Analects is far from literally silent about ren. Nonetheless, of all the moral concepts employed in the Analects, ren is both one of the most important and the most opaque. While Confucius freely uses the term and frequently gives it some abstract formulation, it is nonetheless singularly difficult to defi ne in any satisfying and authoritative way. As an interpretive matter, the text’s presentation of ren has a curious effect: We are told much but can conclude little. Without defi ning ren, we can characterize something of how it appears to operate in the Analects. Ren is a moral achievement term; indeed, it often appears to refer to moral achievement of the highest order. It is at least occasionally suggested, moreover, that achieving ren would entail achieving the full complement of virtues limned in the text. The person who is ren features as one for whom various moral qualities operate in harmonic order, with moral practice enacted comparably effortlessly. We can also readily observe that whatever its precise nature and function, ren is a moral achievement with unambiguously social dimensions. Ren, that is, entails moral expression with and among a community of others. Once we press beyond these very general observations and seek to characterize ren more precisely, however, we quickly encounter difficulty. At least part of the challenge in interpreting ren resides in the Analects’ offering several suggestive remarks that appear incompatible or do not readily indicate a unifying concept. Confucius characterizes ren as both difficult to achieve and difficult to maintain, noting that few can abide in ren for any substantial length of time. 51 However, Confucius also suggests that ren is near to hand, implying that the barriers to becoming ren are readily surmounted where one but properly wants it (7.29). On at least some occasions, Confucius seems to indicate that ren is one of several important virtues (9.29, 14.28); at other times, he seems to indicate that it is the paramount moral achievement (e.g., 4.4). Confucius often declines to identify specific individuals or actions as ren.52 Indeed, one passage may be read to claim that Confucius rarely talked about it (9.1). In short, the text seems not only to deny us an explicit account of ren, it also presents us with a variety of comments that render it difficult to extrapolate a unified account from its many suggestions. There is of course a considerable body of scholarly literature that seeks to interpret the Analects’ treatment of ren. In survey, this literature entertains a series of persistent and difficult questions, such as: Is ren the sum

68

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

of all virtues or moral qualities, such that a thoroughgoing command of these will constitute becoming ren? Is it instead the sum of all virtues with the addition of something, perhaps even an effable something, more? Does ren entail moral mastery of an esoteric sort or does it merely require exceptional proficiency with the prosaic demands of ordinary life? What is the appropriate relation between ren and moral norms, such as those expressed in the li? Is ren readily recognizable in others or does it effectively take a moral sage, another who is ren, to recognize it? These and surely many other questions fi nd no direct and uniform answers in the Analects. Rather than assay the many proposals for interpreting the term—a project worthy of its own book length study—let me but indicate some measure of the interpretive complexities by noting how some scholars have characterized the difficulties of explaining ren and how mixed are efforts to fi nd a satisfying English translation of the term. Chenyang Li succinctly captures the essential difficulty in understanding ren. He observes, “Confucius mentioned ren as many as 105 times, but he never formally defi ned it.”53 One consequence of this is that while scholars readily recognize the importance of the concept, it resists distillation into a serviceable defi nition and retains a “mysterious” quality. Herbert Fingarette, for example, claims that “ren is surrounded with paradox and mystery in the Analects.”54 Scholarly opinion, he observes, presents a mixed picture in which “ren has seemed to be a virtue, the all-inclusive virtue, a spiritual condition, a complex of attitude and feelings, a mystic entity.” Benjamin Schwartz observes, “What it seems to encompass in Confucius is something as broad and even as ultimately mysterious as Socrates’ idea of the good as applied to the moral life of the individual.”55 While ren is clearly of “crucial importance,” Slingerland remarks, “one is nonetheless struck by its rather indeterminate character.”56 This indeterminancy inclines some scholars to see ren’s “mystery” as an ineluctable element of the text’s presentation. Robert Eno suggests, “The essential role of ren in the Analects is to be a mystery.”57 Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont argue that ren may require a certain ambiguity: “There is no formula, no ideal. Like a work of art, it is process of disclosure rather than closure, resisting fi xed defi nition and replication.”58 Others more readily grant ren the status of ideal, but think that qua ideal, ren will nonetheless defy ready conceptual formulation. Mary Bockover explains, “Ren is the real, objective, but nonetheless mysterious quality of moral and spiritual integrity that eludes identification.”59 The elusive quality of the Analects’ usage of ren is evident in efforts to find an adequate English term to use in translation and in the translations in currency we see something of the range of interpretive possibilities. The catalog of English terms used in translation includes: “benevolence,”60 “Goodness” or “Good,”61 “noble,”62 “humanity,”63 “humanheartedness,”64 “authoritative conduct” or “authoritative person,”65 “consummate conduct” or “human excellence,”66 “virtue,”67 or “perfect virtue.”68 While each of

The Analects’ Silences

69

these translations captures something of the term’s meaning in the Analects, none has won any general consensus and common usage. Moreover, in many cases, translators readily concede the inadequacy of their choices, hoping less to provide a genuinely serviceable substitute than a reasonably evocative English term that can suggest, rather than capture, ren’s complexity. Indeed, I suspect that many scholars of the Analects would much prefer to leave the term untranslated, to let it stand in its native complexity and thereby avoid specifying the term more than its usage would readily dictate. Where we turn from the diffi culty of explaining and translating ren to considering why explanation is so diffi cult, I think we fi nd two general trends. One possible explanation for the opacity of ren is that it just is the sort of moral quality that defi es efforts at abstract summary. As the sense of mystery many scholars have observed can suggest, ren may simply belong among the sort of phenomena that are elusive where certain styles of explanation are concerned. Such would place ren in the context of the Analects’ pronounced interest in aesthetic value and in music in particular. Perhaps, like the best musical performances, the best moral masters resist capture by summary catalogs of their qualities. It may be that such moral masters represent an irreducibly particular phenomenon in which features of context and circumstance simply bar generality. Indeed, ren may operate for Confucius in a way many philosophers would, I think, fi nd unsettling: Confucius just knows it when he sees it. That is, it may be the case that it is easier to identify than to explain ren or, more dramatically, that it can only be identifi ed, but not explained. More dramatic still, it may be that only those who are themselves moral experts or connoisseurs can identify it. Wherever we might place ren in this spectrum, in each case, we interpret it to have a nature at some odds with the explanatory power abstract, generalizing reasoning can provide. A second explanation for the difficulty of defi ning ren concerns its apparently varied presentation in the Analects. At least some of the opacity of ren may owe to its having multiple meanings or shadings in the text itself, either because Confucius intends multiple meanings in his usage or because his usage is a developing work-in-progress and is consequently unstable. For example, Kwong-loi Shun argues that there are both broader and narrower uses of the term in evidence, with the former indicating “an all-encompassing ethical ideal” and the latter indicating “one desirable quality among others.”69 In a similar vein, Li fi nds the Analects use of ren on some occasions shading toward a “ren of affection,” evoking love and concern for others, while on others it shades toward a “ren of virtue,” evoking a command of all the virtues.70 Ames and Rosemont explicitly frame Confucius’ use of the term in the context of his developing a novel moral vocabulary that employs existing terminology in unfamiliar and presumably non-standard ways. They write, “The fact that Confucius is asked so often what he means by the expression ren would suggest that he is

70 Moral Exemplars in the Analects reinventing this term for his own purposes, and that those in conversation with him are not comfortable in their understanding of it.”71 I wish, in essence, to propose a third account, an exemplarist account, for the difficulty of explaining ren. Before I do so, however, let me very briefly sketch what I take to be the incentives for seeking such explanations in general. Any reader of the Analects will naturally fi nd it desirable to achieve a satisfying, general account of ren, but this is not what I propose to offer. Instead, I merely want to explain why such an account is difficult to achieve, so let me briefly rehearse why this sort of explanation is also desirable.

EXPLAINING OPACITY Where any philosopher proposes a moral concept for which we cannot readily fi nd a satisfying account, we have, I think, significant incentives to discover why. Where, as is the case with Confucius’ proposal of ren, the moral concept appears fundamental or core to the philosopher’s system of moral concepts, we will worry that opacity here, with the signal concept, may effectively entail opacity everywhere. To the extent that the logic of more “modest” concepts trace to, or are informed by, the “grander” concept, they too will resist a full accounting. How we account for the difficulty of explaining the core concept, then, may have implications for the entire system of moral concepts and will suggest whether we can or should be confident in explanations of moral concepts that appear to come to us more easily. The most worrisome possibility in explaining why a core concept is opaque is of course that the concept is in some way unintelligible: Perhaps the philosopher himself does not understand it; perhaps it resists summary account because it jumbles together incompatible or inconsistent ideas; perhaps there is nothing to which it does or even could refer. While no one has, to my knowledge, raised these possibilities with respect to the Analects’ presentation of ren, we must, I think, acknowledge them, particularly where we wish to bring this text into conversation with contemporary philosophical discourse, a discourse that inclines against charity where mysterious concepts are concerned. While the Analects of course need not be answerable to the importunate demands of contemporary philosophers, neither should we who fi nd the Analects valuable and wish to recommend its value to others rest easy with merely dismissing such concerns. For I think our own interests are in some sympathy with what these concerns represent. Even if ren must fi nally retain some measure of opacity, we do seem to want to know why or at least to try to explain why. At root, the concern with explaining ren and explaining the opacity of the concept reflects, I believe, our need to fi nd the “hook” that connects this piece, this significant piece, of Confucius’ moral reasoning to

The Analects’ Silences

71

the world. As with moral theory more generally, a moral concept will be useful and meaningful to us only where we can identify some territory in the familiar domain of moral experience to which it refers. We come to the Analects or any moral text with an expectation that it will draw us into the unfamiliar or will acquaint us with unfamiliar ways of seeing our experience and practices. However, it cannot go too far in this. It cannot lead us into utter mystery, for such will awaken worries that we are mapping a world we do not know and cannot travel. Where we, in short, cannot fit a proposed concept to something we already know or recognize, it will enjoy no power to direct conduct or foster wider understanding. Finally, as the two general trends for explaining the difficulty of giving an account of ren account indicate, the posture we adopt toward this difficulty will also inform whether and how we seek to interpret the concept itself. If we discern distinct and conceptually variant uses of the term indicative of a process of intellectual development occurring within the text, we will want multiple, rather than singular, accounts of ren. If we instead read the difficulty as owing to a gap between the expressive power of abstract reasoning and the nature of our target, we will engage a host of possible approaches. We may, for example, seek illuminating analogies to other, similarly elusive phenomena. We may look to the text’s epistemological claims for an enriched model of non-discursive understanding that would better suit what ren indicates. We may even want to leave linear reasoning entirely behind and pursue instead a mystical or more esoteric explanation. In short, how we treat the difficulty in explaining ren cannot be separated from how we treat the concept itself. An explanation of the difficulty will not dictate in any programmatic fashion how we explain the concept, but it will significantly shape how and where we look for explanations of the concept. My own effort at accounting for the difficulty in explaining ren concerns just this. With it, I hope to shift how and where we look for our explanation of the concept.

AN EXEMPLARIST ACCOUNT OF REN My hypothesis regarding ren is that it operates as a moral concept developed in explanation of the most compelling and seemingly total exemplars. If, as I suspect, the text has a strong affi nity with exemplarist theory, the text’s rather elusive comments about ren are a predictable feature of its method. The moral concepts of the text are constructed in abstract representation and generalization of what pre-theoretically identified exemplars offer. In the case of ren, we have reason to think that this process would be at its most demanding and difficult. Its difficulty will issue in part from the presumably maximal complexity of the models we seek to explain. Where an exemplar registers as good in a totalizing, unusually complete way, she will present us with much to explain and our efforts at explanation, the concept

72 Moral Exemplars in the Analects we devise, will need to answer to this. The bar of explanatory sophistication and complexity will be at its highest. The difficulty of explanation will additionally be increased by the comparably smaller data set with which we will work. Exemplars of this sort will be, as Confucius consistently suggests, rare. To return to my chemist analogy, where the expert has a robust data set that offers much variety, she will be better able to separate what are incidental features of context from what properly accounts for the object being what it is. The smaller her data set, the more difficult this will be. So too with exemplars and the moral concepts we develop to explain them. Where few are that good, it will be more difficult to explain what it means to be that good. Before elaborating on this account, let me briefly discuss what it can include and anticipate what it will offer. An exemplarist explanation of the opacity of ren will not necessarily supplant other explanations. In some cases, such as Shun’s and Li’s identification of different senses of ren co-existing in the text, it may serve as supplement, a way of explaining Confucius’ varied usage. If Confucius is indeed refi ning the concept of ren, seeing it used in multiple ways or pointing toward multiple features is unsurprising. Such would belong to the process of working out the concept. So too would this model accord with Ames’ and Rosemont’s suggestion that Confucius’ usage is novel and unfamiliar or with readings that would insist on predicating understanding with heightened sensitivity to features that do not readily generalize. Where an exemplarist account will differ is in the comparably thicker story it will tell about how Confucius’ usage is developing and what role the authors of the Analects may play in our understanding of ren. What it offers is a way to understand ren as securely and fi rmly hooked to a familiar territory of moral experience, our experience of the most powerful sorts of exemplars. Let me begin with Confucius’ usage. In the case of Confucius, I hypothesize that that where he speaks of ren, he has in mind some company of exemplars he judges not well captured by any other moral concept in play or even by some combination of many concepts. He has, that is, a data set of individuals who strike him as, in some way, warranting a designation that marks them as a special kind or possessed of a distinctive quality. We cannot of course be certain about the composition of Confucius’ data set, but it would surely include historically notable personages in whom Confucius recognizes uniquely potent powers. In one rather late passage, Confucius explicitly identifies three Shang Dynasty figures as ren (18.1) and Confucius speaks of the Sage Kings and Duke of Zhou throughout the Analects in ways that suggest they too are ren. Where we look for figures more temporally proximate to or contemporaneous with Confucius’ own life, however, the case becomes more complicated. Confucius claims on one occasion that he has “yet to meet” anyone who earnestly “loves ren” (4.6) and when asked if this or that person is ren, he declines to say (5.5, 5.6, 5.8, 5.19, 7.34, 14.1). Given the ambiguities

The Analects’ Silences

73

surrounding the historical figures Confucius cites and his reluctance to identify more proximate others as ren, what can assure us that he does indeed have specific exemplars in mind?72 The clearest indication we have that Confucius may have some data set of people who point us to the concept ren is that while Confucius bemoans the rarity of individuals who are ren, he nowhere suggests there are none. He never, that is, suggests that ren operates as a merely imagined ideal, speculatively constructed but never before realized. Perhaps the most potent evidence we have that Confucius fi nds ren in his experience resides with his responses to his students. Confucius notably does claim that his exceptional student, Yan Hui, could for three months not stray from ren (6.7) and his other, unparalleled laudatory remarks about Yan Hui suggest that here we may have an exemplar who points to ren among Confucius’ own companions. In his student, Zaiwo, Confucius also suggests we may fi nd a negative exemplar, characterizing Zaiwo as not ren (bu ren) for failing to see the warrant in prolonged mourning for parents (17.21). While it would of course be desirable to identify with greater precision and confidence just who would belong in any data set Confucius would have had, to inaugurate an exemplarist reading we need only be confident that ren could plausibly emerge from Confucius’ admiration of, and even aversion to, specific people. That is, if we apply an exemplarist origins myth to the concept ren, we need a sustaining premise that when Confucius speaks of ren, he has someone in mind. If we can understand ren to develop in accordance with this origins myth, I believe we have a potent way to frame the text’s use of the term. In developing his usage of ren, in the varied abstract characterizations of ren he offers, Confucius is, I suggest, picking out features of distinctive exemplars, features that seem promising for an account of their novelty. I thus read the variety of his claims, their diverse emphases and occasionally oblique quality, to be indications of a process of inquiry. Confucius clearly marks out directions for constructing the concept, excluding some possible explanations (e.g., 14.17, 15.33, 17.17) and listing a variety of qualities that appear securely to belong to what he seeks to describe (e.g., 4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 14.28). My contention is simply that these claims assume a logic where we understand them to be targeted efforts to account for the profound effect of distinctive exemplars, where we see them as hooked to a defi nite and specific group of people Confucius is seeking to explain. On an exemplarist reading, then, we grant that ren may initially operate for Confucius as the sort of thing about which he might say, “I know it when I see it.” Rather than indicating any abiding mystery, however, such a claim is here situated as the genesis of an intelligible process of inquiry. Confucius, that is, can refer directly to what he means, but we need not conclude that this is all he, or anyone, can do. His many abstract remarks may be read as just the effort to do more, to begin to distill from people who are ren what general qualities make them so.

74 Moral Exemplars in the Analects My own sense of Confucius’ remarks is that he may not ever have fi nally settled into what we would consider an authoritative account. In other words, if we take the Analects as summarizing Confucius’ work at developing the concept of ren, there may be an open question as to whether this work is fi nished or complete. Whether Confucius ever achieved what he, or we, would count a stable, settled account of ren, however, will matter far less on an exemplarist model of the text. Ren here emerges as an explanation of something recognized in experience, distinctive exemplars. What mystery abides in ren rests not in discovering something we do not know but in explaining something we do. We are thus epistemically positioned relative to ren much the way people were for much of human history epistemically positioned relative to water. They could not explain water with authoritative completeness, but they could identify and make use of it. Thus even if we conclude that Confucius’ explanation of ren is in some fashion incomplete or unfi nished, such need not awaken suspicion of an empty concept. If we trust that he can point to ren as it features in the world, insofar as he can gesture and say “ren is that,” we will fi nd the meaningful hook and can, along with Confucius, trace the sense of his various abstract claims about that. Because Confucius’ data set, those to whom he would directly refer in identifying ren, is ambiguous, the exemplarist account, I hasten to concede, does not yet win us much. However, I think the full force of this account is achieved where we shift to what the authors of the Analects offer. While the Analects’ more abstract comments about ren issue from Confucius himself, the authors of the text also, I believe, reinforce the sense that ren may be a concept developing in an exemplarist method. I suspect that, as Ames and Rosemont suggest, the pattern of students querying Confucius about ren recorded in the Analects indicates a developing novel usage. The uncertainty we see here in Confucius’ interlocutors is, I suspect, in some measure shared by the authors of the text. Nonetheless, while the authors of the text do not forward, and perhaps cannot forward, their own abstract account of ren, they do clearly and unambiguously point to ren. Ren is Confucius himself. It is just that. Such is to say that the authors of the Analects can and do identify ren via direct reference, gesturing throughout the text to Confucius as an exemplar of the sort this term is meant to capture. Thus, on my reading, the images of Confucius proffered in the Analects do not simply heroicize a deeply admired teacher, nor do they simply propose him as another model for emulation. Rather, they indicate that ren will be in some measure sourced in understanding him. Such is to say that while the Analects’ conceptual discussion of ren is thin in its particulars, the text nonetheless speaks volumes in its fi nely drawn portrait of Confucius himself. Where we understand the Analects’ portrayal of Confucius to operate as directly referring to one who is ren, it will have important consequences for how we read the text and how we pursue our own efforts at giving an account of ren. We will understand Confucius as not only our intellectual

The Analects’ Silences

75

guide in understanding ren, but our most potent model of it; he provides claims that in some measure explain ren and his life provides our strongest hook. The more we understand that life, the more we will understand ren. Thus where we register the text’s explicit abstract claims about ren to be labrythine in their variety and complexity, we will have a partial map, a course to pursue, and unlike approaches that assign priority to the text’s conceptual claims, this course will run right through the narrative descriptions of Confucius contained in the Analects. Throughout the text, we have a lively portrait of Confucius’ personal habits and ritual behavior, details about his conduct and comportment, and records of his interactions with others that are, on my reading, richly pregnant with interpretive possibility. With an exemplarist reading the acuity of attention to detail in evidence here reflects an attempt to maximize our capacity to think through the text’s most seductive exemplar. Whether all the details about Confucius we fi nd in the text are relevant for understanding ren remains to be seen. However, they provide a rich and compelling narrative with which to begin. The text may deny us a complete conceptual account of ren, but it avidly and energetically points to it. Where we frame the difficulty of explaining ren with an exemplarist model of the concept, we will not thereby win a clear, abstract account of the concept, but will have a defi nite territory to explore. An exemplarist reading, that is, will simulataneously lend a logic to ren’s apparent opacity and direct us to exemplars who indexically fi x the term’s meaning. Confucius points us to historical notables and while these may not win us much, he also points us to Yan Hui, a figure whose qualities of character the text does allow us to assay. We can consider what about Yan Hui so singularly marks him out among Confucius’ students and companions. The Analects’ authors point us to Confucius and here we have much with which to work. We will, as the authors of the text appear to do, seek to join philosophy and biography, embedding conceptual claims with an appreciation of the persona from whom they issue. The exemplarist account of ren I here offer is perhaps speculative. Unlike its treatment of the Analects’ “silences” regarding human nature and flourishing, the exemplarist model here requires more and thicker inferences about how the text operates and how ren fi nds its genesis in Confucius’ moral reasoning. This origins myth about ren can, I think, only be sustained if we fi nd affi rmative reasons for considering the text exemplarist, if we can root an exemplarist reading not only in what the Analects does not say, but in what it does. It is to this I now turn.

4

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

Exemplarism may operate to close perceived gaps in the structure of the Analects’ moral reasoning, but much of what I have so far addressed reflects metatheoretical interests we cannot assume Confucius or the text’s authors to have shared. They may not have worried in the same manner as we about theoretical foundations, general motivation, or the clarity of concepts. I thus now move toward an exemplarist analysis of what the text affi rmatively offers. Exemplarism invites us to attend carefully to the narrative features of the text, to its depiction of its dramatic personae and the story it tells about them. In this chapter, I wish to draw closer to these figures and sketch the way this story is told, the conceptual features and commitments that I expect are drawn from the experience of exemplars, the moral vocabulary and priorities that I think sourced in exemplars. As before, I proceed in something of a reversal of exemplarist method, beginning with the conceptual features of the text and showing how these may issue from admiration and scrutiny of exemplars. I hope to show that just as we can explain some of the Analects’ “silences” with an exemplarist rendering of the text, so too we can account for some of the text’s most pronounced interests, commitments, and patterns of reasoning. The features I include here are diverse but by no means exhaustive. Some concern quite specific commitments and priorities in evidence in the text— for example, the privileging of tradition in guiding moral reasoning. Some concern how the text appears to go about its business—for example, its free mixing of moral and aesthetic value. However, while I here pick out a select group of the text’s features for close analysis and neglect or only briefly address others, my contention that exemplarism well fits what the Analects appears to offer ultimately rests neither on any one of these features nor on these features taken in sum. What more recommends an exemplarist reading, I believe, is what Françios Jullien describes as an “atmosphere” of the text rather than an idea, or series of ideas.1 I understand this atmosphere to be best captured where, as Robert Eno suggests, we treat early Confucianism “more as a community of men than as a body of doctrine” and, in particular, treat the Analects as a record of Confucianism’s fi rst community.2 The atmosphere of the Analects is permeated by the lived efforts of its

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

77

protagonists to craft and enact a way of life. Indeed, their philosophizing is itself, fi rst and foremost, an element of the way they make. Put another way, the Analects is primarily about doing rather than thinking, and its thinking emerges from the struggles of doing, from efforts to discern the “what,” “why,” and “how” of a way of life. In addressing the various conceptual movements of the text I treat in this chapter, then, I seek less to establish exemplarism than to demonstrate its fit to the “what,” “why,” and “how.” While I do not assign priority to the “doctrine” over the “community of men,” I here seek to show how exemplarism will explain and conceptually frame the more doctrinal products of this community, its intellectual commitments and apparent patterns of reasoning. I begin with one of the Analects’ most pronounced intellectual commitments, its confidence in the authority and efficacy of tradition.

TRADITION AND NOVELTY The way, or dao 道, the Analects proposes is, Confucius frequently suggests, a way well traveled, a path already established in long-standing and reliable traditions. Tradition figures in the Analects’ moral reasoning as a formidable force in ethical development. Indeed, Confucius avers that he does not “innovate,” but “transmits” established tradition (7.1). He even appears to suggest a kind of self regulation in moral learning that will treat traditional ritual as a psychological and behavioral boundary, telling his best student, Yan Hui, not to look at, listen to, or speak about anything that violates traditional ritual (12.1). Despite Confucius’ explicit avowals of fidelity to tradition, however, there is an abiding sense that the cumulative effect of the Analects’ moral instruction recommends the incorporation of some creative impulse into our interactions with the givens of tradition. Jiyuan Yu succinctly captures what many scholars have observed: Confucius professes adherence to tradition, but “to take seriously Confucius’ claim that he does nothing more than hand down the old, however, is as naïve as taking seriously Socrates’ claim that he knows nothing.”3 Adherence to tradition, the text suggests, is not a simple matter of programmatically applying rules. As Philip J. Ivanhoe explains, where we understand tradition, and traditional ritual in particular, to provide forms that function akin to rules, Confucius suggests “that one will run the rules and not be run by the rules.”4 Some “innovation” seems not only permissible, but necessary to what the Analects recommends. Nonetheless, the Analects’ most explicit claims suggest a role for tradition in some measure out of keeping with the impulse toward novelty and creativity so evident in the cumulative effect of the text and in the persona of Confucius. In consequence, any satisfying interpretation must fi nd some way to explain this apparent tension. Where we acknowledge that the Analects endorses both tradition and novelty, the challenge the Analects poses to the interpreter is just how to

78

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

account for an appropriate exchange between the two. While I believe the text does make clear that tradition, properly understood, cannot function in a manner akin to moral rules, neither does it provide a ready to hand way, much less an abstract formula, for distinguishing appropriate and inappropriate innovation. My own view is that the only scale the Analects provides for weighing such matters is to be found in the text’s exemplars, that the appropriate balance is indicated in the lives of specific personae, principally Confucius himself. Such is to say that the dilemma is largely unresolved by the conceptual work of the text. We learn from its abstract claims, for example, that adherence to moral norms requires shu 恕, a leavening measure of human sympathy that will preclude mere rule following, but there remains some ambiguity about when and how to incorporate a flexible and responsive creativity. For there are also occasions during which it is clear that adherence to norms in spite of even potent sympathy is necessary. 5 It may well be that the sort of balance necessary for genuinely moral conduct simply resists conceptual formulation, residing fi rmly in the territory of particular circumstance and thus requiring a practical judgment that cannot be abstractly formalized. Whatever the case, I here want to suggest that an exemplarist account allows us to contextualize the text’s conceptual ambiguity on this score and resolves some of the apparent tension. Where we apply something like the origins myth to the Analects, we understand Confucius’ inquiry to begin in tradition. His efforts to develop an elaborated conceptual account of virtue rest fi rmly on a trust that tradition—here the inchoate ability to point to relevant models for emulation, as well as the moral culture they initiate—is substantially on target. He does not “innovate,” but seeks to give formal structure and sense to what cultural practice of direct reference and the semantic community already provide. While I think the effort to lend sense to existing practice effectively invites novelty, let me fi rst describe how I understand Confucius’ orientation toward tradition and the textual evidence I see for this. Confucius appears to acknowledge that moral practice, and emulation in particular, often does occur in the absence of any exacting understanding. Moreover, he seems to take this both as a given and as a desirable state of affairs. Parents function for children as models long before children can characterize and conceptualize the parent’s qualities of character.6 The “common people” can be drawn to follow a way in the absence of understanding (8.9). The virtuous ruler inspires his subordinates to good conduct as wind moves the grass (12.19). The “whole empire” will defer to one who can achieve ren “for the space of a day” (12.1). Indeed, Confucius suggests that even uncultured “barbarians” will recognize and succumb to the good influence of a worthy person (9.14). These claims make evident that understanding is not a precondition for outcomes that conform to and foster virtue. While these outcomes may not exemplify virtue in its most robust form, where understanding will accompany emulation, they are nonetheless presented as consonant with virtue. Moreover, contrary to

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

79

any suspicion that Confucius here confesses pessimism about the capacities of ordinary people, on my view these remarks may be taken to express a confidence in them. That is, Confucius’ observations that people can operate in this way, led by exemplary others, may be read to endorse trust in the inchoate ability to admire. “Expert” understanding is neither possible nor necessary for all, but rather than functioning as a disappointing truth, this signals the generally reliable success of ordinary understanding. As Confucius might say, the whole world inclines to it or, in Zagzebski’s idiom, we may not know what qualities constitute a good person, but we do know “where to look,” and this important fact about us yields an informal moral practice in which we can have some confidence.7 It is noteworthy that the pattern of movement here is evident in the text’s more targeted consideration of various more specific moral practices. As I have argued elsewhere, the text’s considerations of mourning and fi liality both appear to accept and endorse common practice.8 In Confucius’ remarks about ritual mourning and fi liality, we fi nd him not only recommending preservation or revitalization of established traditional norms, but on occasion defending these against challenge (e.g., 2.7, 17.18). In this, he seems to suggest that there ought be terribly compelling reasons if reconsideration of existing norms is to be warranted and he appears to worry that reasons often given are more likely to reveal a fault in the character of the one giving them. For example, when his student Zaiwo challenges the three year mourning period tradition would dictate for the deaths of parents, Confucius questions Zaiwo’s lack of feeling (17.21). Perhaps more to the point for my purposes, when he criticizes Zaiwo, he also pointedly notes that the ritual mourning period is “observed throughout the empire.” That is, he appears to identify hubris in Zaiwo’s implicit doubt about, and desire to contravene, what is widely and popularly recognized as good practice. While this exchange with Zaiwo is quite explicit, the general view it suggests pervades the Analects. Confucius seems to operate on two joint assumptions: that common moral practices reflect a certain informal wisdom and that even those who do not apprehend the wisdom in them may yet benefit from them.9 In sum, the movement of reasoning in the Analects’ discussion of moral practice often begins with some trust that what people already do well directs our moral attention and reasoning. The philosophical turn consists in enlivening these practices with careful reflection that elaborates, and gives sense to, what is already established as norm. On my reading, it is here, with the search for greater precision and refined understanding, that novelty enters in. Exemplarism invites us to re-frame the question of Confucius’ posture toward tradition and to consider whether the confidence in which he begins remains unshaken and also whether the process of scrutinizing moral practice to lend it clarity and refinement alters it. I want to suggest that Confucius arrives at a qualified confidence but that his expert scrutiny must also be understood to alter tradition and introduce some novelty.

80 Moral Exemplars in the Analects At a most basic level, the careful scrutiny Confucius brings to the phenomena of exemplars and the traditions associated with them does introduce a novel manner of understanding them. A deepened examination of exemplars will expand how informally recognized qualities of character are understood. To recall my previous example, where informal, “nonexpert” attention may yield identification of a “property” such as “fi lial” (孝 xiao) as belonging to the exemplar, under Confucius’ analysis, “fi lial” thickens into a designation evoking a rich body of behavioral, emotional, and dispositional qualities. So too, closer scrutiny may disclose features of exemplars that are altogether less obvious or more difficult to discern. An exemplar who declines to do what adherence to norms would seem to demand yet nonetheless features as an exemplar initiates an enriched understanding of the role of sympathy and, more broadly, practical judgment in the development of virtue.10 In short, the process of querying exemplars will provide new detail to explanations already in currency, as well as reveal previously undiscerned aspects of exemplars. Insofar as Confucius is engaged in such a process, what he offers will indeed register as novel and creative to those who witness it. Whether it is novel and creative, I think, remains to be seen. It is important to acknowledge that exemplarism cannot resolve whether Confucius’ deepened account constitutes genuine novelty on this score, whether the sense of his creativity is merely felt or actual. How we resolve this, I would argue, will largely track how we understand the activities of a chemist. That is, when the chemist announces for the fi rst time that “water is H 2O,” do we understand that she has thereby introduced something new into the world or do we instead understand her merely to have revealed a long-standing truth, a truth that feels new to us only because we had not heretofore apprehended it? We informally refer to such announcements as “discoveries,” as though the scientist is but a lens through which we see more clearly what is, yet even a cursory study of the history of science complicates the case. While it is beyond the scope of my argument to address the intricacies of this discussion, it is enough here to observe that the whether and how scientific activity constitutes a form of creative activity is an open question. So too, on my exemplarist account, is the matter of Confucius’ creativity.11 In both cases, we must minimally acknowledge the introduction of a new idiom and a new way of interacting with familiar phenomena. In these respects at least, exemplarism works against any easy identification of Confucius’ posture with a straightforward conservatism. While the exemplarist process of scrutiny will produce at least a felt novelty, it also can provide what I think is unambiguously a genuine novelty. At a rather basic level, unlike the chemist who ostensibly merely describes her subject, when Confucius describes the features of exemplars, he also prescribes moral aspiration. His work aims at a normative end and, insofar as his new idiom introduces refi nements of understanding, he refi nes understanding of that end. Thus, even if we merely see exemplars more

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

81

clearly, clarity may change moral practice by altering or enriching just what we seek to do in emulating them. A second and more elaborate species of novelty is to be found in how increasing clarity can shift the company of exemplars in new directions. Exemplarism begins with a data set composed of those exemplars we have identified pre-theoretically. Yet while our pre-theoretical admiration guides and constrains theory, it does not do so utterly. While an initial company of exemplars fi x the reference for the “good person,” the membership of this company, the catalog of individuals who belong to it, is itself never fi xed. Instead, the list of exemplars will, as understanding is refi ned and generations pass, undergo revision and expansion. This movement may introduce a genuine novelty in at least two ways, both of which I fi nd featured in the Analects. First, while our pre-theoretical identifications of exemplars carry a significant confidence, they are, as I have already noted, readily granted as defeasible. So too is our provisional specifying of properties we believe indicated by these exemplars. Direct reference allows us to pick out a generally trustworthy set of “good people” and to expand the set to include others, but it does not vouchsafe that all who are in our set will, upon closer scrutiny, belong there. This is evident if we shift to another of Kripke’s natural kind examples, gold.12 The informal capacity to identify a group of objects as gold does not rule out that among those we identify may be some fool’s gold. So too for exemplars: among those we identify may be some “fool’s exemplars.” And like fool’s gold, the fool’s exemplar will likely only be exposed as such where informal examination becomes increasingly refi ned and expert. Such is to say that as the study of exemplars and the provisional properties identified in them develops into an increasingly clarified set of abstract criteria, we achieve the means to revise inchoate experiences of admiration into considered judgments, and those judgments may exclude some of our original set. While it is clear that Confucius does not radically revisit the company of exemplars and the tradition to which they give rise, such is what we would expect. To adopt a thoroughgoing suspicion is out of keeping both with the pre-theoretical confidence we have in identifying exemplars and with the conceptual constraints it imposes. If we are to have a theory about the “good person,” it must address a sizeable number of these people, those who fi x the reference. Nonetheless, some revision is both possible and likely. In Book 14 of the Analects, for example, we fi nd several passages in which Confucius, in conversation with students, is engaged in revisiting common moral evaluations of various rulers and ministerial figures. He assesses both positive and negative exemplars, sometimes confi rming the common judgment about them, sometimes refi ning it. In this process, I suggest, he and his student interlocutors can be seen as querying the common informal readings of these figures and tacitly granting that revised evaluations, new evaluations, may be in order. While less direct, I also suspect that Confucius’ terse remark about the village worthy (鄉原 xiangyuan)

82 Moral Exemplars in the Analects grows from exemplarist soil, his claim that the village worthy is a “thief of de” the result of having seen fool’s exemplars summon from others an admiration that is, upon scrutiny, unearned and unwarranted (17.13). As Confucius seems to imply, the village worthy is so worrisome precisely because he appears convincing to the untutored and inexpert.13 While Confucius never in the Analects identifies any specific individual as a village worthy, he here appears to begin to formulate conceptually a way in which to frame revision of tradition, a way to divide fool’s exemplars from real exemplars, and to begin to assay why the difference is often difficult to discern. In sum, recognizing and excising fool’s exemplars, or village worthies, introduces a novelty into tradition not only by contracting the company of exemplars, but also by inviting creation of mechanisms for a more critical consciousness of exemplars in general. Knowing that fool’s gold may be in my treasury will not provoke a radical reevaluation of gold itself, but it will generate a more sophisticated care in identifying and handling my gold. More prominent in the Analects is the second way in which novelty may be introduced, the expansion of the company of exemplars to include new models. While exemplars fi x the reference for the “good person,” we should expect that the company of those who summon our admiration will rather organically grow and swell. To employ David Keightley’s idiom, each generation will produce its heroes as emulation of past heroes yields new heroes who will, in their own turn, inspire emulation.14 An organic growth such as this will naturally contribute some novelty and while I think the Analects certainly allows for this, its expansion of the company of exemplars strikes me as more ambitious and more aggressively novel. Put simply, I think the Analects more generously expands the set of exemplars than simple organic growth would by itself provide. Before addressing this, however, let me generally characterize the process by which a more radical expansion might occur. There are at least two conceptually distinct but perhaps practically overlapping ways in which we may discover a new exemplar. First, as we refine and clarify our understanding of previously identified exemplars, we may come to recognize that heretofore unrecognized individuals meet our criteria and thus well fit in the set. Second, we may simply find ourselves experiencing what initially features as a puzzling admiration, an admiration not immediately well explained or captured in our existing understanding of admiration’s sources, the concepts we have so far developed to characterize our exemplars. In either case, we have the potential for novelty and revision of understanding. In the first case, our new exemplar may, in addition to wellfitting among his fellows, exhibit qualities they do not, qualities that may expand our conceptual understanding in new directions. In the second case, assuming that we find our novel experience of admiration in some way trustworthy rather than misguided, we will be obliged to find some account for it, an effort that will need to discover affinity between the new and old and that may consequently necessitate a revision in our previous understanding.

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

83

Expansion of the company of exemplars of this more abrupt rather than organic sort is, to emphasize, more likely to occur the more expert one is. The expert will be more conversant with the abstract refi ned criteria to which exemplars give rise and thus will be able to apply them with the facility requisite to identifying new cases that might otherwise escape notice. So too the expert’s capacity for admiration will be more fi nely attuned, more thoroughly shaped into a skill borne of unusually close acquaintance with her subject. Consequently, her admiration in a seemingly puzzling case is more likely to be trustworthy, more likely to be revelatory rather than merely mistaken. In the Analects, I think we see a movement to expand the company of exemplars more aggressively than mere organic growth would provide. While the Analects, and its late passages in particular, can of course be read to recommend a number of Confucius’ students as models for emulation, more generally, we see throughout the text a thrust toward modifying conventional measures of worth and success. As many commentators have observed, the Analects expresses a greater commitment to meritocracy than the norms of its day would seem to endorse. While this may mark a more general cultural thrust toward divorcing hereditary and social status from assumptions of worthiness, an effort for which the Analects is but one modest contribution, I suspect that the Analects arrives at its more meritocratic sensibility in part owing to an exemplarist process. Such is to say that the Analects’ budding interest in promoting individuals of demonstrated worth derives less from any principled meritocratic stance than from a more direct and simple experience: Both Confucius and the authors of the Analects inhabit a shared intellectual community in which they encounter persons of great worth and skill, peers and friends they fi nd exemplary, but these companions are not, in a bluntly status-based hierarchical system, accorded recognition suited to their worth and skill. In short, Confucius and the Analects’ authors admire but their admiration fi nds insufficient answer in the calculus of worth in currency. In consequence, a new calculus is devised, a calculus that can accommodate inclusion of exemplars who in some measure fail to satisfy established expectations. Thus the disadvantaged and comparably low status young man, Yan Hui, is reconceived as heroically ennobled by his perseverance (e.g., 6.3, 6.7, 9.11, 11.19) and Confucius himself, with his serial failures to succeed in conventionally measured ways, becomes an unmatched moral hero. While such narratives of moral success despite long odds or “failure” are not of course utterly new, the Analects devises an explicit scheme for a new measure of success. This scheme is evident in the text’s many injunctions to seek a morally grounded, rather than socially recognized, sense of life satisfaction.15 It is evident in the text’s lauding of the joys of more intimate species of recognition and approbation, such as those found among family and friends (e.g., 1.1, 11.26, 9.12). And it is evident in the moral vocabulary the text develops and employs. Let me now turn to this vocabulary.

84

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

THE MORAL VOCABULARY Closely related to the Analects’ endorsement of tradition and subtle incorporation of novelty is its apparent revision of the existing moral vocabulary of its time. The Analects does not merely suggest a more egalitarian model for estimating moral worth and identifying exemplars, it renders the moral vocabulary it employs responsive to this sensibility, revising existing terms in accord with what the exemplars it proposes suggest. This is most evident in the text’s use of the term “junzi” 君子. The evolution of meaning we see in the Analects’ treatment of “junzi” can, in brief, be seen as corresponding to the way in which the English term “gentleman” has evolved over time. Like “gentleman,” “junzi” referred to those belonging to an aristocratic class, privileged men who would be, by dint of social station and hereditary rank, presumed to operate as natural leaders for others. Such junzi would, it was expected, have command of the relevant aristocratic arts and possess the political acumen to govern, but it was inherited privilege, wealth, and status rather than talent that defi ned them. In the Analects, however, we see a pronounced revision of this term. As Donald Munro observes, status as a junzi here becomes a status one may win: “The original criterion for achieving that status was hereditary position; the subsequent Confucian criterion was moral excellence.”16 The Analects’ use of “junzi,” Ivanhoe similarly observes, shifts such that what “earlier had described a particular role or social station” becomes a way “to describe an ideal way of being,” a way “anyone can achieve.”17 While the Analects may not wholly abandon the class sensibility historically attached to the junzi, it reconceives the junzi as one who can lead and who is a fitting model for emulation because of his moral excellence, an excellence that, notably, can be acquired through learning, training, and self-cultivation.18 Like more contemporary uses of the term “gentleman,” “junzi” becomes a term of approbation keyed to a meritocratic sensibility, assigned to those who behave and comport themselves in ways that recommend them as models for others. The more meritocratic conception of the junzi we see developing in the Analects, I suggest, can be understood as a refinement responsive to growing expertise in considering exemplars. Most basically, such would entail that the criteria associated with being a junzi are altered to accommodate an increasing precision in understanding. A junzi was and remains someone who is fit to rule or, more informally, to lead and serve as an example to others. However, the understanding of “fitness” is adapted in recognition that the capacity to lead and inspire emulation defies ready correspondence with privileged hereditary status. Some traditionally defi ned “junzi” do not, upon scrutiny, have this capacity; some who are not traditionally defi ned “junzi” do. The term consequently shifts to accommodate what closer examination of people reveals, the criteria sharpened to better indicate what Confucius, qua expert, discerns as the qualities most relevant for making an individual capable of leading and inspiring others.

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

85

While the Analects’ treatment of “junzi” may reinforce the sense of a novelty inspired by an expanding company of exemplars, I want to suggest more generally that much of the moral lexicon we fi nd in the Analects can be understood to emerge from an exemplarist sensibility and method. The text’s moral vocabulary often appears to reflect an effort to capture conceptually what exemplars offer and to revise existing usage to better suit what closer, more expert scrutiny of them reveals. In applying an exemplarist understanding to the Analects’ moral vocabulary, I hasten to emphasize, I do not propose any novel variations on how scholars have understood particular concepts. Rather, I suggest that much of what we have long observed about these concepts achieves a force and coherence where we understand them as sourced in close scrutiny of exemplars. We have in exemplarism a development narrative, or origins myth, that can draw together under a common pattern both the sorts of concepts the text emphasizes and the ways in which at least some of these concepts evolve. While it is beyond the scope of this study to assay the Analects’ many individual moral concepts in close detail, I here want to look more generally at the distinctive portrait of the good person the moral concepts of the text serve to sketch. As I note in my discussion of ren, if a moral concept is to be viable in describing both our moral practices and our moral aspirations, it must clearly and recognizably reference some aspect of experience. To reiterate, no matter what theoretical model we adopt, when we survey the moral concepts of the Analects, we want to fi nd their hooks, the parts of experience in which they are anchored and thus rendered viable as apt descriptions of moral life and aspiration. It has become common in scholarship on the Analects to observe that whatever theoretical framework we might think suited to the text, it almost surely does incline away from a morality of principle- or rule-following. The moral vocabulary of the Analects, the concepts it proposes, instead collectively registers as portraiture, depicting a holistic image of the good person that includes not only his actions, but also something of the character, emotions, dispositions, and temperament that belong to him. The exemplarist thesis is that this portrait is drawn rather directly from life. It is not, in other words, an idealized portrait that draws features imaginatively sourced in abstractly formulated values, but instead depicts what those who made it discerned in admired others; it is not drawn from ideas, but from people. Put simply, if the exemplarist thesis holds, we should fi nd that the text’s moral lexicon hooks into exemplars and our experience of them. While I think much of the Analects’ moral vocabulary can plausibly be seen as emerging from scrutiny of exemplars, I shall here focus on two features of this vocabulary that I judge most difficult to understand otherwise, features that would seem implausible if derived from some source other than experience of exemplars. The fi rst of these concerns the power ascribed to the good person and, more specifically, the power he has with others; the second concerns the ease and facility with which the good person

86

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

comports himself. In both cases, I argue, where we understand the moral concepts that reference this power and ease to be sourced in experience of exemplars, the concepts rather naturally and cleanly map experience. Absent this sourcing, however, they risk seeming the stuff of mere ideals, too detached from moral experience to achieve any potency as explanation or aspiration. I begin with the good person’s power. The good person is, in the Analects, described as one who possesses the power to influence and inspire others, as well as to effectively read and respond to others. Global terms for the good person, both “ren” 仁 and “junzi,” are partially defined with reference to this power. The person who is ren influences his wider society and environment with such potency that others are drawn to seek proximity to him.19 The junzi subtly moves others with his influence as the wind bends the grass (12.19). Comparably narrower terms that describe particular features of the good person apparently aim to describe with even greater specificity just how the good person affects others. “Shu” 恕 is the receptive and reflective capacity to achieve sympathy with the particular circumstance of another, to imaginatively identify with her and respond accordingly (4.15, 5.12). Confucius apparently links this capacity to the ren person’s transformative effect on others: One who can discern the affi nities between himself and others will, in seeking his own self-cultivating aims, aid others in the realization of theirs (6.30). 20 Like “shu,” “de” 德 functions as a more targeted concept and, more than any other term in the Analects’ lexicon, pinpoints the sense of a special power. While interpretations of “de” vary, its use as a moral term in the Analects unambiguously suggests the charismatic power of the good person to attract and inspire others, to influence them without coercion to follow the model the good person offers (2.1, 4.25, 12.19). 21 Indeed, as Donald Munro observes, the suggested potency of “de” has led some scholars to conclude, Munro suggests erroneously, that de is a special “inner” force that registers for others as a “magical magnetic attraction.”22 While “de” most directly articulates a distinctive power found in the good person, for my purposes it important to note that references to this power are a commanding thematic constant in the text’s more total portrait. Multiple moral concepts of the text incorporate this power, suggesting that the good person will be compelling to others and the deferential responses of others to him will be almost inevitable or seamless. Multiple claims about how the world works—ranging from the efficacy of the genuinely benevolent monarch to the efficacy of master teachers and moral neighbors—ride on the effect ascribed to this power. In short, the Analects suggests that where we encounter a good person, we encounter this power. Even where we reject what Munro terms the “mana thesis”—the view that Confucius and the Analects’ authors subscribe to a belief in genuinely magical power or charisma—there is, I suspect, much in the Analects’ portrait of the good person’s power that we might count dubious. One need not be cynically minded to recognize real world failures of the power of good

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

87

people to sway others or the indifference to moral influence individuals and indeed whole communities can achieve. Where one is cynically minded, Confucius’ claim that the good will effortlessly influence and orient others will seem hopelessly romantic or dangerously naïve. These doubts will only fi nd increase where we seek to explain such claims with reference to the conceptual apparatus that standard virtue ethical accounts offer. If, for example, we ascribe the text’s claims about the good person’s power to embedded convictions about human nature, we shall court again a trouble with explicating this nature, as well as be burdened to explain, in defiance of much experience, an attraction to the good rooted in such a nature. If, more generally, we judge the text’s depiction of the good person to offer an ideal and thus stop short of committing to any “real world” or factual claim about the good person’s power, it is difficult to understand how this idealized notion of power originates, much less achieves the prominence it enjoys in the text. That is, if we register these claims about power as merely a desired ideal, then the text appears to imaginatively construct a world neither its authors nor we are likely ever to experience. Where we seek to anchor the Analects’ claims about the good person’s power to the world of our experience, we want something more indubitably and reliably part of that world than these explanatory strategies can offer. Where we understand terms such as “ren,” “junzi,” “shu,” and “de” to be rooted in exemplars and in experience of exemplars, we have a way to frame the power these terms reference in a way that more fi rmly anchors them in experience and thus is immediately more plausible. The “power” to which the Analects alludes with these terms, I hypothesize, is the force of admiration that in part accounts for how we directly identify exemplars. Such is to say that descriptions of the good person’s power are post hoc explanations of more brute and immediate experiences. Good people are identified as such, both in the “baptismal” moment and in some measure throughout any human life, because they summon our admiration. We admire and want to be like that, and this commanding inchoate experience of admiring and desiring registers as a power that has, a power to effect such feeling. Put another way, the experience of exemplars rarely transpires in ways that register as an admiration to which we are conceptually persuaded. Instead, we fi rst and more simply do admire, responding to the exemplar as if there is indeed a power that has independently worked upon us. These experiences assure us such “power” exists and, moreover, they have analogues in many species of experience. In many domains in which we might identify a more local or particular sort of value, we are often obliged to incorporate our more immediate responses into any explanation we devise. The value we locate in Shakespeare’s language or in Beethoven’s compositions must reside in part in their power to move us. We may of course characterize the work of such artists with respect to the formal qualities of their work and subject that work to analytical scrutiny that, in effect, takes it apart into its most notable

88

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

constituent elements. Nonetheless, a vital element in our identifying these works as having value in the fi rst instance is our responses to them. Indeed, we only seek to know more and to characterize their qualities more precisely because our initial responses to their apparent power awaken such an interest; absent the power we perceive them to exercise in commanding immediate and inchoate appreciation, we would, I expect, have little incentive to press further and understand them better. Such, I suggest, largely parallels the way in which Confucius and the Analects’ authors speak of the good person’s power. The more immediate or brute experience of exemplars’ power precedes and indeed provokes the impetus to understanding. When we treat the Analects’ moral concepts that reference the power of the good person as anchored in the experience and identification of exemplars, the text’s claims about this power appear far less fanciful and more plausible. On this reading, the text merely observes a phenomenon with secure empirical credentials. Both individuals and whole societies do fi nd inspiration and sometimes succumb to the influence of moral heroes. In Confucius’ idiom, the Sage Kings and the early Zhou rulers swayed their societies through noble example and continue to do so for those who, like Confucius, study their cultural legacies. In the idiom of the Analects’ authors, Confucius manifested this power, influencing his students in ways not well captured by any summary of his explicit teaching but registering instead as a charismatic power to move them. 23 More generally, both early childhood experience with imitation and adult responses to exemplars provide a commonplace experiential touchstone for the power the Analects references. To recall Emerson’s language, there is “no man so poor but his memory is enriched with the names of some persons to whom he looks up as signal examples of virtue.”24 In sum, I suggest that where we trace the origins of the Analects’ discussions of power to the immediate experience of exemplars, we achieve an account of this power that both maps familiar moral territory and is sufficiently thin to be credible. The Analects’ assertions that people will be swayed under the influence of the good person are, in an exemplarist iteration, not claims indicating an inevitable, much less magically potent, relation, but instead observe that, in fact, this has sometimes been so, is sometimes so. Human beings have moral heroes and are inspired by them. As is the case with the works of Shakespeare and Beethoven, receptivity to “power” will vary and, notably, can be cultivated. Indeed, I suspect that rather than treating the influence of the good as a power to which all inevitably respond, the normative thrust of the Analects is toward understanding those instances when such power does work on us in order to expand their force and reach. Most basically, however, where the Analects describes the power of the good person, it refers us not to an abstract or distant ideal, but to a rather basic feature of human experience. The Analects’ depictions of the ease and facility with which the good person comports himself offers, I suspect, a significantly parallel case. As

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

89

Slingerland has argued, the Analects employs a number of terms that evoke what we might globally characterize as “ease” or, following Joel Kupperman, “naturalness.” The good person, Slingerland explains, is marked by “unselfconsciousness” and her efforts convey a “lack of exertion.”25 “Naturalness,” Kupperman explains, “implies a certain ease of behavior, an absence of strain: the agent is reasonably comfortable with her or his behavior, and there is no conflict between the behavior and what the agent is normally like.”26 In short, the Analects’ portrait of the good person emphasizes her being “at home” or “at ease” and this manifests in a variety of ways. We might say that the good person is at home in the world, in her community, in her own skin, and, above all, in what is good. 27 She consistently displays an uncommon facility and confidence in her demeanor, actions, emotions, and attitudes. The global suggestion, as Slingerland succinctly frames it, is that where being good is concerned, “the genuinely cultivated person does not have to try.”28 Slingerland observes that the Analects employs a rich and relatively extensive vocabulary of terms that appear pitched to capture features of the good person’s more global ease. Among the terms Slingerland identifies are “an” 安 (“at ease”), “wang” 忘 (“forgetting”), “buzhi” 不知 (“not knowing”), “wuwei” 無為 (“effortless action”) and “le” 樂 (“joy”). 29 While many of the passages that reference the good person’s power simultaneously suggest that it is exercised easily and effortlessly, what is most striking in the text’s use of these terms evoking ease or naturalness is how frequently they occur in the depiction of Confucius himself. The clear thrust of the Analects is to suggest that the good person will achieve ease, but when we wish to trace and understand this more general claim, the text will point us, again and again, to Confucius. He says of himself, “Confucius is driven by such eagerness to teach and to learn that he forgets (wang) to eat, his joy (le) is such that he forgets (wang) to worry, and does not know (buzhi) the approach of old age” (7.19). 30 Where we see Confucius in effect summarizing that which sustains him, it is his capacity to be at ease in both what life affords him and his own development. He fi nds his joy and satisfaction in the prosaic routines of learning and practice in the company of friends (1.1). He characterizes his achievements as resulting in self-trust and unselfconsciousness such that he can “give [his] heart-and-mind free rein without overstepping the boundaries” (2.4). As is the case with the good person’s power, the apparent ease of the good person and the concepts that refer us to this ease are most intelligible and plausible where they are understood as issuing from experience of exemplars. Indeed, ease of the sort the Analects describes seems tightly tethered to the very particular experience of Confucius. A cumulative and more general sense of what “ease” or “naturalness” entails cannot but incorporate what we see in Confucius. Where we ask what it means to be at ease, the Analects seems to say that it means to be like him, like Confucius. The text’s explicit and many references to Confucius in its descriptions of

90 Moral Exemplars in the Analects ease may alone incline us to an exemplarist understanding of this concept, but even more abstract characterizations of ease will, I believe, return us to consideration of exemplars. That is, the “ease” or “naturalness” of the good person seems to reference a phenomenon not unlike others we readily recognize in other domains of experience. Here again, the suggestion of the Analects can be illuminated in analogy to the arts. Ease in the performance of music, a seeming naturalness in the handling and manipulation of an instrument, is perhaps an essential feature of any performer we would judge a virtuoso. The virtuoso will convey the impression that the instrument is but an extension of her own physical body and even her most casual interaction with the instrument will bespeak this achieved intimacy. While we can seek to characterize abstractly the ease of the performer, however, it is nonetheless the sort of quality that appears to have deeply and perhaps even intractably experiential roots. It is a quality about which we are more likely to say “I know it when I see it” than to think we can well represent it apart from particular examples of it. Where we seek to teach it or learn it, we will look to models rather than abstract formulae, recognizing the impotence of any commands that would urge us to “play naturally” or “play as if you are at ease.” Thus while we can conceptually incorporate ease into our notion of the virtuoso or of the good person and may even recognize ease as a necessary condition for either, it seems to emerge from, and even depend upon experience. Particular persons point us toward “ease” and our abstract characterizations of it indexically reference such people. Here again, I suspect that explaining this quality with reference to human nature or characterizing it as mere ideal will provoke unnecessary and ultimately insoluble explanatory difficulty. Like the good person’s power, the good person’s ease achieves greater sense and plausibility where we understand it as issuing from exemplars and our experience of them. My suspicion is that here too it is the compelling experience of the exemplar that accounts for the Analects’ interest in ease or naturalness as a moral quality. The good people who command our admiration do so in part because we see them do “naturally” what we ourselves may only struggle to do.31 Like a virtuoso, they make what we know to be difficult look easy, as though it belongs to them or to human beings more generally. While we do not “forget to worry” or trust ourselves not to “overstep the mark,” the good person does. The Analects’ conceptual movement with reference to the good person’s ease is, I expect, an effort to capture our experience of such people. In sum, power and ease are elements indispensable to the Analects’ portrait of the good person; any summary account of this portrait must include them. While these are of course but a part of the more total portrait the text offers, they are a formidable part. My contention is that these qualities are incorporated into the text’s account of the good person because they constitute prominent aspects of the experience of exemplars. An exemplarist account is well fitted to the power and ease of the good person, both

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

91

explaining how these concepts originate and, most importantly, securely anchoring them in recognizable domains of experience. My wider suspicion is that just as an exemplarist account of their origins can well accommodate and perhaps even enliven these concepts, so too it can inform our treatment of the Analects’ moral lexicon more generally. Where we understand the Analects’ representations of the good person as moral portraiture and fi nd significant features of it drawn from life, we have cause to suspect that the rest is similarly inspired. While I will allude to additional elements of this portrait in what follows, I turn now to rendering more explicit the significance of the aesthetic for the moral sensibility of the Analects. As my analogies anticipate, consideration of the Analects’ good person invites consideration of aesthetic value and this too, I suggest, is a movement that exemplarism renders more natural, if not seamless.

THE MORAL AND AESTHETIC The Analects clearly assigns high significance to both aesthetic experiences and aesthetic activity. The perceived ease of the good person is but one element of a much wider commitment to what we might call a distinctively ethico-aesthetic sensibility. We find in the text an abundance of references to the arts and in particular, to classical poetry and music. Achieving a command of these arts, interpreting the Odes and performing or appreciating music, features as a prominent element in the instruction Confucius offers his students. Of greatest interest to me, however, is the way in which the refi ned aesthetic sensibility we see in the Analects’ treatment of the arts themselves appears to inform its treatment of morality. Where it is commonplace in virtue theories to emphasize a union between the dispositions and actions of the virtuous person, the Analects appears to propose that in addition to disposition and action, the virtuous person also looks good. That is, it implicitly adds to the familiar elements of disposition and action a third: demeanor, or the manner in which one performs moral actions. What are often thought to be aesthetic features of human conduct, the grace with which we perform our moral obligations and shoulder our responsibilities, here register as an element in how we characterize and evaluate moral conduct. In this, the Analects seems to suggest that one must not only achieve appropriate dispositions and perform appropriate actions, one must also do so with an appropriate style. Grace, decorum, poise, and, as already noted, naturalness are part of virtuous activity at its best, serving to convey to others that in doing what one ought, one also does what one wishes, or what reaches to one’s convictions and dispositions. There are of course important disincentives to asserting a close union between aesthetic and moral value. Most basically, we fi nd that the aesthetic and moral frequently come apart in our experience. What we admire for its aesthetic value may decidedly lack moral content. Worse, what is

92

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

aesthetically pleasing may actively draw us away from the moral, the seductive power of the sensually pleasing serving to render attractive that which is morally abhorrent. Perhaps more generally, we may worry that attention to the aesthetic will simply divert our energies to what are trivial features of human conduct and human beings, with untoward attention to surface suppressing morally necessary attention to the substance beneath. This last concern seems particularly compelling with respect to the Analects. From its earliest period, Confucianism was criticized for privileging the ornamental and comparably trivial, over more urgent human concerns. The Mohists, for example, saw the Confucian interest in promoting a program of moral enrichment through music, the arts, and ornamented ritual as providing a “moral” cover story for what was, at root, an immoral indifference to the poverty and suffering of others. The Confucians, in a Mohist idiom, feature as rather heartless aesthetes.32 Perhaps the most basic explanation of the Analects’ commitment to a close wedding of moral and aesthetic value resides in its commitment to the li 禮, or ritual. The li represent in the Analects the vast body of accumulated tradition and custom that regulates much of human conduct and communication. Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont succinctly describe the body of practices the li include: “The compass is broad: all formal conduct from table manners to patterns of greeting and leave-taking, to graduations, weddings, funerals, from gestures of deference to ancestral sacrifices—all of these, and more, are li. They are the social grammar that provides each member with a defi ned place and status within the family, community, and polity.”33 The li thus operate as an established guide to human conduct and, notably, mark out not only what one ought do in a particular circumstance, but how one ought do it. As Ames and Rosemont suggest, just as a grammar will structure effective communication, the li organize human behavior into a conventional and communally recognized form that renders it intelligible and meaningful to others. 34 In its thinnest form, where we understand “li” to refer to what we might call good manners, the practice of li need not commit us to any particularly strong aesthetic interest.35 That is, where the li are understood most prosaically, they may operate reflexively as the customary forms individuals habitually adopt in order to be effective communicators within the conventions of their communities. This, however, is not how the Analects treats the li. In the Analects, the li constitute a program of deliberate study. Becoming an adept and graceful performer of ritual serves as a self-conscious and even dominating aim of learning. As Eno has observed, in the Analects “the end goal of self-cultivation was the complete ritualization of human conduct.”36 Indeed, Confucians “advocated a totally choreographed lifestyle, where the formalities of ritual guided action from one’s fi rst step outdoors in the morning to the time one lay down at night. The totality of the imperative cannot be underestimated.”37 This imperative, moreover, embraced a thick understanding of the li in which the aesthetic features of well-mannered or

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

93

formally ritualized conduct were an inseparable and indeed defining element of the li. Such is to say that one would not merely, for example, receive a guest by adopting the conventionally appropriate conduct for doing so, but that one would appear to endorse, with every gesture and inflection, the “welcome” one enacts. The status of one’s guest, one’s own status as host, the nature of the occasion and site of the encounter—all this and more is encoded in what one does and how one does it. To the extent that such interactions can be classified as enacting “good manners,” they enact it, as Eno evocatively notes, as dance. Like dance, no movement is accidental and all movement is taken as expressive; there are no “gaps where the dancers revert to the ordinary movements of everyday action.”38 In sum, the early Confucian commitment to the li, a commitment central to the Analects, appears to elevate conformity to established behavioral norms into art. To perform the li in the ways the Analects suggests is to render one’s whole person a canvas upon which the “color” of the li will be applied (3.8). While commitment to the li might go a long way toward explaining the Analects’ interest in the aesthetic, it invites us to question just why Confucius and the Analects’ authors are so deeply committed to the efficacy of li. We know that Confucius couples the power of li to the good person’s de, saying that these jointly can influence people to good in ways that law and punishment never can (2.3). We may read Confucius’ claim here to make a rather prosaic suggestion—that where norms of civility and courtesy prevail in a community, there will be far less need of law and coercion—but this does not readily accommodate the strongly aesthetic dimensions of the Analects’ commitment to the li. That is, if the Ii in some measure account for the Analects’ commitment to the aesthetic, we need an explanation of the li that includes this much less prosaic commitment. Why should we prize a highly aestheticized version of the li? Here too I think exemplarism can offer a compelling explanation. On my reading, the li do not explain the Analects’ commitment to an ethico-aesthetic sensibility, but instead are the principal product of this sensibility. That is, there exists some prior union of the moral and aesthetic that the li aim to capture, and this prior union is reflective of immediate and brute experience of exemplars. While I expect that the experience of exemplars is the thread that implicitly connects the li and the de of the good ruler as it is described in Analects 2.3, I largely leave this connection implicit in what follows and focus exclusively on the ethico-aesthetic sensibility. On an exemplarist reading, the Analects’ tight alliance between the moral and aesthetic is not really an “alliance” at all. It does not, that is, draw together somewhat dissimilar evaluative domains. It is instead reflective of the complex affective responses we have to that which we admire, to what we experience when we suspect that virtue is that. Our experiences of admiration do not naturally parse themselves into discrete domains of value, such that we admire this for its aesthetic qualities and that for its moral qualities. To the extent that we make such distinctions, they are

94 Moral Exemplars in the Analects deployed post hoc, emerging from analysis and reflection. On reflection, for example, we may discern the salutary effect of a timely and graceful physical gesture in eliciting our admiration for the one who makes it, but in the moment this piece of the total experience is unlikely to register as discrete. It instead subtly contributes to an immediate global effect. Where we seek to source our conceptual schemata for virtue in our unmediated experiences of value, we will be wary of untangling these experiences in ways that undermine their initial compelling holism: To separate the moral and aesthetic dimensions of these experiences and privilege the former to the exclusion of the latter would register as a betrayal of their beginning. Moreover, where developing our conceptual paradigms entails retaining the capacity to be seduced, to admire in an immediate and direct manner, whatever conceptual schemata we devise must operate to preserve something of the enchanting complexity we initially experience. Insofar as the grace of the exemplar’s comportment is a constitutive element of her effect on others, our conceptual efforts must answer to it. In short, I suspect that the Analects’ incorporation of aesthetic value in moral evaluation responds to our sense that the style of our exemplars, their demeanor and its capacity to communicate their dispositions, matters to our admiration of them. Moreover, if this is right, we have a ready conceptual frame for the significance of the li. While it is of course reductive to understand the li as operating as mere rules, they do nonetheless function as a kind of choreographic code, sketching with some generality what propriety requires in a variety of common circumstances. We can understand this code as both historically situated, a set of traditions inherited and renewed by generations of practice, and as personally resonant, a body of reliable customs available to individual moral learners. As historically embedded traditions, the li encode and thereby operate to preserve the influence of past exemplars. The li, as the Analects consistently reminds us, enjoy an authority connected to the influence of the past moral rulers who initiate them.39 We may read claims about the origins of the li as indicating that these rulers institute the li as law-givers would, actively authoring and imposing the “code.” More likely is that they initiate the code through their own practice, through example. Confucius does explicitly distinguish li from law (法 fa) partly on the grounds that the latter is externally imposed. Moreover, an exemplarist model seems more consonant with how the text moves from observing the origins of the li to recommending them to others. We are not urged to follow the code of li because moral rulers said we ought, but because they themselves enacted the li. We are meant not to follow their prescriptions, but to emulate their conduct, conduct captured and abstractly formulated in the li.40 Such is to say that what most renders the li traditionally valuable, as well as personally resonant as a discipline for individual moral learning, is that they operate as a kind of shorthand for what it means to be like early China’s most commanding exemplars.

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

95

As I understand the li, then, they function simultaneously to thicken understanding of morality’s most basic demand and to clarify what acceding to that demand entails. Where early Chinese morality, the tradition Confucius inherits, suggests that emulation of exemplars is the core moral practice—that we ought do as exemplars do or, more widely, be the sort of people exemplars are—the li thicken this basic instruction into a robust body of specific practices. In so doing, they serve to clarify just how we can appropriate the models we have. Where we have a company of exemplars, we have a set of quite particular individuals and do not, or not yet, have the serviceable generality that enables us to best make use of their examples. With an exemplarist model, we can understand the li to lift from the complexity of individual exemplary people and lives the practices to which those lives point us. We are enjoined to be like our exemplars, but what do our exemplars do? Where bereaved, exemplars grieve sincerely and long. Where caring for parents, they are solicitous and generous. Where interacting with superiors, they are deferential. The li formalize the appearance of such dispositional postures into a choreographed dance in which the expressive capacities of the voice and body, elements on display in exemplars, are rendered into socio-moral code. While this framing of the li, and the moral and aesthetic union to which they answer, cannot wholly dispel concerns of the sort I outline above, it does render them less forceful. The principal challenge of incorporating aesthetic value into moral sensibility rests in establishing how and why aesthetic features of human conduct are relevant to our moral claims. The greatest worry on this score is that they are not only irrelevant, but that taking them as relevant will morally mislead us. On an exemplarist account, however, morality, qua intelligible schema of moral concepts and guidelines, emerges from experiences in which our aesthetic sense has an important role to play. Exemplars found and ground our moral concepts and our experience of exemplars is often at least initially holistic, embracing the totality of our model rather than this or that discrete feature or quality. When we apply an exemplarist method, seeking to pull apart and isolate the aspects of such experiences in order to represent them abstractly and generally, we will want to assess the relative importance of the aesthetic elements of what we see in them. Any form of exemplarism will likely incline away from discounting aesthetic features of human conduct as wholly trivial, but whether it constitutes a fi nally important condition for being good will be a matter for debate. Suffice it to say that the particular form of exemplarism I find in the Analects assigns the aesthetic high importance and I shall address this in much greater detail in the chapters that follow. Here, however, we can observe simply that while achieving an appropriate manner and demeanor is not a sufficient condition for being a good person, it does appear to be a necessary condition. We need only imagine, I think, how Confucius and the Analects’ authors would regard a person who is clumsy, graceless,

96 Moral Exemplars in the Analects undignified, or simply indifferent to how she appears to others.41 While it is of course possible that such a person could inspire admiration of a more limited sort, in the idiom of the Analects, she would decidedly not be treated as exemplary, as one whom we should generally seek to emulate. Whatever other morally important qualities she might point us toward, she misses too much that the text judges important. The Analects makes the aesthetic a constitutive element in the moral and generally treats moral and aesthetic value holistically, but it also recognizes how they may come apart. The Analects is not insensible to the sorts of objections Mohists raise or the more general worry that an overweening interest in the aesthetic can overwhelm moral considerations. The text clearly grapples with such issues. We see in the Analects a struggle to distinguish morally laudatory appearance from that which is not, an appearance that denotes goodness from that which is mere simulacrum. The village worthy is but one example. Another is the text’s marked and frequent criticism of “glib speech” (佞 ning).42 As Slingerland observes, where “ning” earlier meant “something like ‘attractive or noble in speech,’” it comes in Confucius’ usage to refer instead to a kind of “false, external counterfeit” of the good person’s habits of speech and expression.43 While the conceptual movement we see here again reinforces the sense of a vocabulary adjusting to a refi ned understanding of exemplars, we also see an effort to distinguish a morally important aesthetic aspect of demeanor from a form that will superficially resemble it. We see, in other words, a sensitivity to the perils of an emphasis on appearance and the corresponding need to guard against fool’s exemplars who look good or, in this case, sound good, but are not. While I shall have much more to say about what I take to be the deeper mechanics of the exemplar’s demeanor in the remaining chapters, here it is enough to observe that an exemplarist account can, in broad strokes, provide a credible explanatory model for the Analects’ insistent attention to the aesthetic. The Analects’ interest in the aesthetic features of human conduct will, on an exemplarist reading, confess its origins in the holistic experiences of admiration through which exemplars are identified. Its considered and formal inclusion of the aesthetic in its moral reasoning retains this element of our brute experiences, a strategy that both preserves and perhaps even enhances our capacity for admiration. The li, qua ethico-aesthetic code, abstract and generalize both what exemplars do and the ways in which they do it. They serve explicitly to structure and guide emulation.

SOCIALITY AND ROLES There are of course many more conceptual features and movements in the Analects than I have here addressed. Among the more prominent are a commitment to the sociality of the person and an emphasis on how the roles we fulfill in relations with others describe both our personal possibilities and

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

97

moral obligations. These too, I believe, can be well explained and sustained in an exemplarist interpretation of the text and I shall allude to them in the remaining chapters. Rather than treat them in detail here, then, let me but briefly sketch how I place them on an exemplarist landscape. Most basically, it is evident that a social account of the person and a corresponding emphasis on role fulfi llment constitute elements of the world of moral practice prior to Confucius and the Analects. They are part of the tradition Confucius and the Analects’ authors inherit. Indeed, these commitments appear to be well-established and long-standing features of early Chinese moral practice and thinking well before Confucius arrives on the scene.44 I thus understand the Analects’ engagement with these commitments to pattern along the lines I ascribe to its interactions with tradition more generally. Such is to say that the Analects treats these commitments as generally trustworthy but also defeasible givens. They constitute a part of the existing landscape of moral experience the text seeks to describe and conceptually map. Above and beyond their place in tradition, however, I think exemplarism provides a rather natural fit for these commitments. Let me sketch, in broadstrokes, how I suspect an exemplarist model can accommodate the sociality of the person and role fulfi llment. As a moral theoretical framework exemplarism can, in its simplest iteration, appear to focus on notable, striking, or special individuals and to seek moral insight from the way that an exemplary individual is distinctively and powerfully marked out from others. It can, that is, register as a philosophy of heroes. However, I think it more apt to characterize exemplarism’s focus as relational, particularly in the Analects’ presentation. Exemplarism is about our moral heroes certainly, but is also about our responses to them. The exemplar is identified as such because of her power with others, the admiration she inspires in others. The exemplar is always someone who has an effect on others and understanding the exemplar is in some measure a matter of understanding ourselves, our responses to her. In the early Chinese context, where emulation is well established as a robust moral practice, the exemplar functions as both inspiration for, and expression of, communally shared moral aspiration. Moreover, what an exemplar “means” in these respects is a matter of communal negotiation. The Sage Kings, for example, are marked out as heroic rulers, but sussing out just what makes them so and thus how best to follow their models is a matter for shared deliberation and even contentious disagreement. At base, however, the felt power of exemplars makes us as grass, driven by the wind in a common direction. The exemplar is who she is, an exemplar, in part because of who she is to us. While communally shared admiration for exemplars may mitigate against a strongly individualistic model, exemplars themselves fix our attention on the relational nature of human lives. The Analects’ emphasis on the sociality of the person and on social and familial roles may be understood to operate on the recognition that exemplars are, as I noted earlier, always someone

98

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

somewhere. Indeed, I would venture that in thinking about exemplars we cannot but think of them as they are for others. Because exemplars are real people rather than abstract ideals, they belong in definite and actual relations to others. To know anything about them is to know something about their relations to others. Minimally, every exemplar will be someone’s child. More robustly, exemplars may also be mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, friends, students, teachers, community elders, rulers, and so forth. And our responses to exemplars, even our immediate and inchoate responses, will include such relations as a contributing factor in the admiration we feel. Some of our exemplars will elicit our admiration for their particular power in fulfilling a role they inhabit; some of our exemplars, the more total models, will elicit our admiration for their power in fulfilling all of the roles they inhabit. However, I suspect that no exemplar can inspire admiration wholly independently of the roles she inhabits. Put another way, I think there can be no exemplar, properly understood, utterly free-standing of her relations to others. I judge it implausible if not impossible that we would, for example, admire an individual who is stubbornly estranged from her family, friendless, unable to lead or learn from others, and so forth. We may admire a person who fails or, more modestly, does not thrive in some of her roles, but a moral “exemplar” who has no healthy or thriving bonds with others is simply not an exemplar. When we identify an exemplar, we cannot but identify her as she stands with and among others. She is who she is, an exemplar, in part because of who she is to others.45 The Analects’ development of a decidedly social account of the person and emphasis on role fulfillment can thus be read as elaborating on a tradition steeped in emulation and deriving from the ways in which exemplars are embedded among others.46 While the theoretical structure of exemplarism does not require the strongly social conception of the person we find in the Analects—we can of course imagine an exemplarist ethic with a more individualistic bent47—exemplarism is nonetheless unusually congenial to a relational understanding of the person. This derives in part from its imperative to attend to the narratives in which our experiences and understanding of exemplars are formed, the ways in which their lives and character develop with and among others. It also derives from the practice of emulation, the key mechanism of moral learning that exemplarism identifies. Where we conceive emulation to extend the imitative capacities core to early childhood learning, we have a powerful incentive to attend carefully to moral dimensions of family and community, both as these necessarily feature as the site of early development and as these will likely feature in even the most mature and sophisticated efforts at moral cultivation. There is surely more we might find in aligning the Analects’ social and relational conception of the person with an exemplarist account, but it is here sufficient to note more generally that exemplarism can well accommodate this piece of the text’s wider commitments. Exemplarism attends to moral heroes, but it likewise emphasizes the many and several ways that heroes are people deeply embedded with others.

Exemplarist Elements in the Analects

99

In conclusion, let me draw away from the particular features of the Analects’ moral reasoning and survey the global theoretical logic I ascribe to the text. When we consider the Analects’ silences and its explicit comments and commitments, an exemplarist origins myth provides a unifying narrative frame that stretches to incorporate much of what the Analects affi rmatively offers while minimizing the need to reach beyond it. In assaying both the Analects’ silences and its well adduced commitments, I have sought to show that treating exemplars as the text’s theoretical “one corner” can obviate persistent interpretive difficulties and seam together many of the text’s most pronounced features. Exemplars can explain both what is “missing” from the text and what we fi nd there. Like more standard virtue ethical accounts, exemplarism will understand the Analects to orient moral reasoning around a catalog of virtues and the dispositions that belong to them. It will understand the text to limn a program of cultivation in which the learner is enjoined to develop herself in accord with these virtues and dispositions. Where exemplarism will differ resides in the priority it assigns to moral exemplars. An exemplarist reading will posit something like the origins myth I have proposed, conceiving direct reference to exemplars as the foundation for moral reasoning and scrutiny of exemplars as the principal method by which the virtues and corresponding moral schemata are formulated and described. In this, an exemplarist account of the Analects may appear to demand as much or more than other virtue ethical accounts. It does, after all, propose a comparably thicker story about how Confucius and the Analects’ authors arrive at the moral sensibility they recommend and applies an ethical analogue of an admittedly anachronistic theory of natural kind terms. However, I venture that this story and theory fit the text in ways other theories cannot. While I have in this part emphasized the theoretical intricacies of exemplarism in an effort to show its promise for resolving the text into a pleasing whole with promise for application in contemporary moral theorizing, the elegant simplicity of this model should not be lost. Such is to say that while exemplarism can manage many of the theoretical issues we moderns fi nd so compelling, it simultaneously endorses an appealing theoretical naïveté congenial to the pre-modern circumstance of the Analects and perhaps helpful to ourselves as well. It runs on the uncomplicated premise that Confucius and the Analects’ authors know and can point to whom they admire. Whatever their difficulties, or ours, in theorizing a morality, there is a commendable simplicity in working from this most basic fact. Such is to say that an exemplarist account does not really demand more or, rather, what it demands is that we make more of what the text freely affords. The Analects is, I venture, uninhibited in its extolling of good people, clear in its interest in describing these people, and committed to encouraging others to emulate these people. With the theoretical structure of exemplarism in hand, let me now turn to an examination of some of the Analects’ people.

Part II

Exemplars

Having outlined what I think are some of the most important theoretical structures and considerations in applying an exemplarist model to the Analects, I turn now to the people themselves, the dramatic personae of the text. The theoretical issues I have already addressed are of course of critical philosophical importance if exemplarism is to be a viable model for reading the Analects. Nonetheless, much of the promise of exemplarism, I contend, resides in the way in which it renders the people of the Analects available to us in new ways. As my descriptions of the Analects have already surely suggested, one advantage of exemplarism is its promise to render more intelligible the style of the text, its blending of abstract claims, records of conversations and events, and biographical detail about Confucius and others. Where we locate the source of the Analects’ moral sensibility in its exemplars, the text’s tendency to career between general moral claims and narrative representations of the lives of its protagonists appears eminently sensible. The text appears, that is, far less fractured and piecemeal. While the compositional history of the Analects entails that it will always retain something of a patchwork quality, an exemplarist account will better integrate the philosophy the text limns with the story that it tells. The narrative features of the text will register as pointers to ethical insight.1 They will feature as a necessary element of the text and may, moreover, operate to expand its vision in important ways. I fi nd this particularly important in three respects, each of which I have already intimated and so will only briefly rehearse here. First, whether because the prevailing idiom of contemporary philosophy promotes it or because we simply do not know what to do philosophically with biographical and narrative detail, scholarship on the Analects has often assigned greatest emphasis to the text’s abstract, general claims and inclined toward neglect of the rest. While many scholars are increasingly sensitive to this, there nonetheless appears to have long been, to borrow Edward Slingerland’s term, an “embarrassment” about at least some

102

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

of the text’s narrative aspects, with their curiously close attention to apparently trivial detail.2 The risk of such embarrassment is that we miss or, worse, waste elements of the text. Moreover, while there are of course whole swaths of the philosophical corpus that rightly warrant scholarly embarrassment—I think, for example, of Aristotle’s comments on women’s incapacities or Kant’s egregious but idly racist comments3 —we have in such cases reasoned ourselves into embarrassment about much of it. We have, over generations, developed considered grounds for shrinking from them. Apart perhaps from a few dubious cases, we have no arguments for neglecting the Analects’ “embarrassments.”4 The principle of charity demands that we at least consider these seriously and dismiss them only once we have assured ourselves that they do no philosophical work or, more modestly, do no necessary work. Second, as my earlier comparison of Socrates and Confucius indicates, perhaps the most salient philosophical contribution that the narrative features of the text make to our understanding resides in their depiction of Confucius and here we have, I think indubitably, a case where the philosopher matters to the philosophy. And he matters in ways that considerably enrich the philosophy but are difficult to capture absent the seemingly incidental and subtle detail that emerges in the interstices between his many explicit philosophical claims. As some scholars have observed, the Confucius of the Analects is much livelier than the tradition of Confucianism has typically granted.5 He is a man of potent affections, sorrows, humor, and occasional anger. Yet while he is widely acknowledged as a philosophically heroic figure on the order of Socrates, these more idiosyncratic aspects of his persona rarely claim much attention. Neglect of this persona may compromise or distort our understanding of this signal exemplar and, by extension, of the model of virtue he endorses. In addition to risking a thin portrait of Confucius, neglect of narrative detail may also risk missing important features of his community and companions, both of which significantly shape the articulation of Confucius’ insights. While they do not have the force or fullness of the Analects’ depictions of Confucius, the text’s portrayals of Confucius’ students are, as I have already indicated, significant as well. Here too our conclusions about moral cultivation may suffer loss where we fail to attend to how they look and how the text understands them to look in situ, in the lives of those who pursue them. Finally, there is a similar risk of lost insight where we incorporate the narrative features of the text into understanding only where they confi rm or illuminate the text’s more abstract ethical claims. If we read the narrative elements of the Analects as merely illustrative of the text’s explicit ethical claims, as examples of established convictions, we risk unnecessarily impoverishing them. On my reading, the text’s exemplars and the narrative in which they are captured may well point to insights that are never given full conceptual formulation in the text. If the exemplars merely illustrate, then we are bound to a reading that limns what they offer within

Part II

103

the strict confi nes of the text’s explicit conceptual schemata. However, if, as I suspect, they source the conceptual, they may well offer much that goes beyond these boundaries. When we employ direct reference in identifying exemplars, we do not yet know what features of their behavior, comportment, or character are salient for summoning admiration. We must query our responses to exemplars in order to formulate these. The Analects clearly does perform this work—limning explicitly some of the moral significance of what its people do—but it is not at all evident that it does so exhaustively, that the conceptual work of analyzing the various models to which it directs our attention is fi nished. On an exemplarist reading, then, the text is simultaneously more laconic in its conceptual schemata and more pregnant with indications of where conceptual analysis may take us. There may well be insight here that we can never access where we begin with, and are confi ned to, what the conceptual schemata decisively confi rm. Querying narrative may, in short, show us things we have not seen before. Exemplarism offers simultaneously to explain and expand the text. It provides reasons for the Analects’ interest in observing the lives of its protagonists and the careering quality of the text assumes an organizing logic as we understand the exchange between the general and the particular as indications of a method rather than haphazard. For those among us who fi nd the Analects not simply a philosophical text but also something of an adventure tale, a story of compelling heroes and anti-heroes traversing the landscape of human experience from comedy to tragedy, we have in exemplarism a way to open our philosophies to this story. There are, we should expect, many stories the Analects does not tell, many people who inform its moral sensibility but who never appear in its pages. Nonetheless, while the Analects cannot offer a complete roster of those who may have shaped its conclusions, it does suggest many exemplars we can identify and scrutinize. Indeed, I suspect that the work of identifying and analyzing all of the text’s models would be considerable. This then is not what I propose to offer. Instead I here seek to provide but a selective sample, a limited set of what I think are illustrative cases. My aim is not to produce an exhaustive exemplarist study of the text and its people, but to demonstrate the directions I think such studies might take us. I want only to show what sorts of analysis an exemplarist model can invite and endorse by looking to specific figures in the text and querying them for moral insight. In this, moreover, I freely concede that my readings of the figures I consider are far from defi nitive. This too I count as an asset of exemplarism. Where we adopt the theoretical structure I have outlined in Part I, we still are left, and I think happily left, with much interpretive work. Exemplarism opens up a space for interpretive movement within the narrative elements of the text, but what we will do in that open space is undetermined. We will know to look to that, to the exemplars the text indicates, but still must decide what we make of that. Exemplarism in effect tells us that the people of the text are important, but only in scrutinizing their lives will we begin

104

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

to assay why and how they are important, the moral insight to which any particular exemplar might point us. In the chapters that follow, I offer three such analyses, divided roughly along the rubric I identified in Chapter 2. I look fi rst to Confucius himself, taking him to be the most robust “total exemplar” the text offers. Second, I consider what I judge to be a “partial exemplar,” Confucius’ student, Zilu. Finally, I consider what resources an exemplarist reading of the text offers for understanding moral failure, and look to Confucius’ student Zigong as a partial model for this. While I here divide my treatment of these figures, with each chapter focused on a particular narrative persona, the analysis of any one figure of course builds on others and it is in this way they should be understood. My selection of Confucius, Zilu, and Zigong is informed by a theme I see at work in the Analects’ depictions of all three models. Taken individually, each directs reflections on the way in which manner and demeanor, or what I call “personal style,” inform our moral evalutions. Taken together, these models can, I believe, importantly refi ne and clarify an account of morally appropriate personal style. As I shall argue, while the text clearly promotes a moral sensibility in which manner and demeanor are a target for self-cultivation, scrutiny of these exemplars considerably enlarges the text’s resources for devising a more robust conceptual account of what such cultivation entails.

5

A Total Exemplar Confucius

Confucius, it is clear, is the most complete and compelling exemplar presented in the Analects. Regardless of what theoretical orientation we adopt, the text unambiguously indicates that Confucius is a moral master who warrants emulation. Under an exemplarist reading of the text, Confucius, qua man and qua good person, is, I suspect, the hinge around which the rest of the text pivots. He is at once our “leading expert,” sussing out the direction in which exemplars point; a master learner who seeks to emulate his exemplars, thus marking out a path for others seeking to do the same; and, above all, the paramount exemplar proposed by the text’s authors, the that to which the text most energetically points. Because Confucius is so indubitably central to the Analects and the text’s depiction of him is so detailed, there is much more we can say about him than I can possible say here, so let me briefly outline the direction of my remarks. There are a number of ways in which people may stand in relation to exemplars. The company of exemplars may include, for example, historical heroic figures who enjoy an influence spanning many generations but felt distantly through the narrative records of their deeds and lives. It may also include models who are acutely well-attuned to their time or circumstance, who mark for others a shift in the moral gestalt of a particular place or season. It can include even literary models, protagonists embedded in fictive narratives that nonetheless effectively point us toward models of living virtue. And of course for many, it will decidedly include those close to us, admired individuals whose lives and circumstances we share and whose conduct and character we witness fi rsthand. As an exemplar, Confucius has of course operated in all of these ways: a close companion and mentor to his students, a man of his age, a model for the ages, and a figure who has inspired the stuff of legend. We could, I expect, address his status as an exemplar at any of these levels. Here, however, I will focus exclusively on the Analects’ depiction of Confucius. While Confucius is for us modern readers a figure seen at great distance, he is nonetheless presented by the Analects’ authors as a figure proximate to them, as companion, teacher, and friend. When we regard Confucius in this way, we are obliged to recognize the experiential complexity of our

106

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

most direct and proximate exemplars. Where distant historical figures, for example, will be embedded in narrative that situate their lives in context, the data about them to which we are privy is often limited. We know about them what we are told or can discover. A living, proximate exemplar of the sort we fi nd among our own companions is likely, in contrast, to present us with a far more complex and extensive body of data. We will see and know more of them and what we know may not, or not yet, be sorted into any organized account of their influence upon us. For example, I admire both Martin Luther King, Jr., and my own grandfather. Of the former, my knowledge reaches to what I have gleaned from books, news reports, and so forth; of the latter, my knowledge reaches down into much ostensibly trivial detail. I know in broad strokes what King did; I know of my grandfather all that and also, for example, how he laces his work boots. We entertain Confucius as a model glimpsed from a great distance, but the authorial voices of the Analects appear to relate him more directly and in some measure make us privy to details borne of close acquaintance. Put another way, on my reading, the Analects gives us quite a bit of boot-lacing, observations that register something of his living presence and thereby invite us to entertain this presence. While “Confucius” can mean many things in early Chinese intellectual culture, in the Analects, we see Confucius at his most immediate and human, as he operated with and for those who presumably knew him well and intimately. It is to this “Confucius” I will look. My interest in treating Confucius as an intimate exemplar rests on a number of assumptions, assumptions that I will only briefly rehearse here. First and most basically, as I have suggested, the narrative depictions of Confucius may reveal features less evident or even absent from the text’s conceptual schemata. Second, given the long and vast tradition of Confucianism, with its emphasis on Confucius as a singular moral hero, there is some concern that the legend may suppress the man. By this I mean simply that the impulse to preserve Confucius as a moral hero of the fi rst order can promote neglect of those features of his life and persona that do not obviously confi rm his heroic status. Not all that the Analects tells us about Confucius easily promotes him as a moral giant; not all that it tells us is flattering to Confucius. Indeed, the Confucius of the Analects appears in some measure to defy the later tradition’s “Confucius,” a cleaned up sage scrubbed of those features that do not conform to pristine moral heroism. While the Analects unambiguously does heroicize Confucius, it does so while leaving him something of his humanity. In it, he is not yet an idea and ideal, but still a man. Thus by looking to this Confucius, I hope to see what we can make of this man, particularly where we do not seek to make all about him come right in conformity to a governing idea that he is always good. Third, as is implicit above, I think it important to acknowledge the kind of model Confucius appears to be and, by extension, the kind of model he is not. The Confucius of the Analects is importantly not like Jesus. While

A Total Exemplar

107

he is a total exemplar, there is no suggestion that his goodness is total. He is not perfect. And the moral sensibility to which he points does not, I think, aspire to perfection. Confucius is also importantly not like Socrates. Where Socrates’ status as moral exemplar is inseparably entwined in the dramatically heroic death he suffers, Confucius’ status as exemplar arises, I think, elsewhere. Confucius did in fact, and more than once, bravely face physical danger (9.5, 11.23, 15.2). However, the Analects only passingly observes these perils and, apparently, makes little of them. A simple survey of passages shows us that the text’s authors are, for example, far more interested in Confucius’ good manners than in his physical bravery. I shall follow their lead in this. Whatever it is that inspires the Analects’ authors, it is neither an impossibly purified goodness nor courageous or principled disregard of danger. By attending to the “smaller” details—the parts of Confucius that are neither perfect nor dramatic—we may better assay what is distinctive and distinctively compelling about him. In addressing Confucius, it must be noted, I take much as given. Confucius, it is clear, largely abides by the moral norms and traditional practices of his day. He abstains from activities and behaviors commonly judged immoral or morally dubious; he engages in activities and behaviors that accord with the moral standards of his day. Confucius is a disciplined but avid learner, applying himself rigorously to developing command of his tradition. He is a thoughtful teacher, imparting his learning to others with sensitivity to their capacities and needs. He has high aspirations coupled with high standards, so while he is apparently eager to participate in government service he resists compromising his integrity to do so. He enjoys a deeply refi ned aesthetic sense, a capacity to be moved by music and poetry. He is modest about his own capacities and generous in celebrating those of others. He is circumspect in his judgment, cautious not to reflexively endorse popular opinion but ready to criticize where he judges criticism necessary. He is loyal and devoted to his students. These features are well attested in the text and are thereby among the more interpretively sure. They are, moreover, features that the text largely conceptually works for us. They do not, that is, merely appear in descriptions of Confucius but feature in the text’s abstract claims where they are confi rmed as indicating more general virtues, the narrative observations about Confucius readily coupled with abstract claims that limn their significance. In essence, I want merely to stipulate such more obvious features of Confucius’ persona. While the features I stipulate are of course a formidable element in explaining Confucius as an exemplar, they are also, particularly in the summary form I have given them here, rather bloodless and bland. My sense is that absent these qualities Confucius could not be the exemplar the Analects takes him to be, but there is more to his force and effect than what they readily capture. Some of that force and effect surely resides in details I here neglect, particulars about how Confucius comes to these features, the circumstances and challenges he faced, the personal limitations

108

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

and qualities of temperament he had to overcome, and so on. However, I suspect that the force of Confucius, qua exemplar, that we fi nd in the Analects also depends upon the seemingly “extra” or superfluous details the Analects offers, details that do not immediately commend themselves to summary representation, much less unambiguously point toward any easily abstracted descriptive properties. In what follows, I want largely to treat the more obvious and textually secure aspects of Confucius’ status as exemplar as background and look instead to features of Confucius that do not cleanly or clearly feature in the text’s abstract moral concepts. While there are surely multiple less obvious aspects of Confucius we could consider, I will address only two. The two features I want to consider are Confucius’ physical bearing— quite literally the way he moves and looks—and those occasions when Confucius appears to deviate from the sort of conduct we would expect of a moral model. These features are thematically linked in a number of ways. Most obviously, they are just the sort of data about Confucius likely to emerge from close personal acquaintance and direct observation. They both also invite consideration of the personal style of an exemplar, both his distinctive mode of comporting himself and the ways in which we come to recognize an exemplar as a distinctive personality. Finally, I think consideration of these two aspects of Confucius may open access to features of the moral psychology that underwrites the exemplarism of the Analects, a moral psychology I seek to develop in this and the remaining chapters. Let me begin by addressing Confucius’ physical bearing.

THE FIGURE OF THE SAGE At least one passage, Analects 7.38, appears pitched to capture Confucius’ demeanor in a global, summary fashion: “The Master was always gracious yet serious, commanding yet not severe, deferential yet at ease.” Here we see, I believe, an effort to distill the figure that Confucius cuts in the world. The description is striking in at least three respects. First and most obviously, Confucius is here characterized in a way perhaps deliberately fitted to evoke the passage that immediately precedes it, where we read the more general claim that “the junzi is calm and unperturbed” in contrast to the “small” or “petty” person (xiaoren 小人) who is “always agitated and anxious” (7.37). The abstract claim in Analects 7.37 mirrors the more particular description of Confucius in 7.38 and both rely on contrastive description. Second, the contrastive framing of 7.38 is itself perhaps telling. The description of Confucius implicitly takes care to calibrate Confucius’ features against the species of excess to which each identified attribute might give way: His graciousness does not tip into frivolous pleasantry; his command does not tip into severity; and his deference does not tip into anxious obsequiousness. Confucius, in other words, achieves the appropriate

A Total Exemplar

109

mean. Finally, the terms employed here to depict Confucius combine and correlate what we might call surface and substance. The traits identified as belonging to Confucius—“gracious” (溫 wen), “commanding” (威 wei), and “deferential” (恭 gong)—are dispositional and physical attitudes, suggestive of internal states that feature in appearance or of an appearance taken to convey internal states. While the terms used do not only reference physical bearing, neither can physical bearing be readily separated from the qualities these terms describe. On my reading, then, the passage functions as a summary that tells us both how Confucius is and how he appears. If summaries such as we fi nd in Analects 7.38 were all the text offered about Confucius’ physical demeanor, we might count them little more than color commentary, occasional embellishments that lightly enliven the text’s more substantive depictions of Confucius’ character. We might, moreover, conclude that remarks on Confucius’ physical bearing are but a trope for deeper truths about his character, his “surface” but a way of registering his “substance.” However, the text gives much more detail than this, details that largely, though not exclusively, confi rm the summary account of Analects 7.38, but that seem excessive were this their only purpose. Let me but briefly rehearse some of these details. Many of the passages describing Confucius’ physical bearing are clearly presented as confi rmation of his mastery of ritual norms. Moreover, to recall Robert Eno’s analysis, ritual prowess is here not merely a matter of adept performance but entails holistic transformation of the person.6 This may account in part for the way in which these passages are framed.7 Accounts of Confucius’ physical bearing frequently describe not the occasional gesture, but instead the master’s habitual demeanor in recurrent contexts. In form, these passages typically sketch a setting and then describe what is ostensibly Confucius’ regular manner within that setting. The settings range from unexceptional and ordinary to ceremonial occasions at court; the descriptions of Confucius’ manner include observations of his posture, his walk, his manner when speaking, his facial expressions, his way of holding or grasping objects, and his dress. When in his home village, for example, Confucius “was most deferential, as though at a loss for words;” when “in the ancestral temple and at court, he spoke articulately, though with deliberation” (10.1). He would adjust his facial expressions depending on the context, becoming watchful when assuming his place at court and “relaxing his expression” upon departing (10.4). When serving as envoy, his face would show resolve, as if he were “going off to battle” (10.5) and when he encountered people clothed in mourning dress, he would “invariably take on a solemn appearance” (10.25). He did not sit unless his mat was straight (10.12) and even when ill, he would assume the appropriate dress when meeting his lord (10.19). He was solicitous and deferential in bearing to those who were elderly (10.13). In addition to observations that bespeak Confucius’ ritual mastery, the Analects also observes occasional, more spontaneous physical gestures that

110 Moral Exemplars in the Analects are less readily correlated with any straightforward ritual significance. Indeed, some passages suggest that the Analects’ authors wish to make clear that Confucius’ commitment to ritual is not overweening or showy. Confucius did not sleep in “the posture of a corpse” and when alone in his home, he did “not kneel in a formal posture as though entertaining guests” (10.24). So too, Confucius did not perform the formality of a bow when receiving gifts from friends (10.23). He did not, that is, invariably assume a stiff or artificially dignified posture. Where appropriate, he was easy and informal. Confucius is also shown to exhibit what seem more purely impulsive gestures. When his student Yan Hui dies young, he weeps without restraint (11.10). When his student Boniu lay dying, Confucius not only bewails Boniu’s lot, he clasps the young man’s hand, a gesture more remarkable if the traditional view that Boniu was afflicted with leprosy is correct (6.10). Confucius’ sudden smile is remarked on two occasions. On one occasion, Confucius smiles in apparent rebuke of his student Zilu’s lofty ambitions (11.26); on another, Confucius smiles as he cracks an uncharitable joke about a musical performance (17.4). In a similar vein, Confucius is twice shown adopting a mocking tone and gestures, once when he sings robustly after having claimed, falsely, to be ill (17.20) and once when he chides an elderly man for being useless and raps the man about the shins with his cane (14.43). While I shall have more to say about these incidents below, here I merely want to register the way in which the Analects’ interest in Confucius physical bearing reaches beyond those habits and patterns of demeanor that conform to a ritualized norm. The expressive capacity of Confucius’ gestures is not only a means to demonstrate his fidelity to the li. While the Analects’ observations about Confucius’ physical bearing do, I think, readily sort into the two types I identify, the ritualized and the spontaneous, they jointly bespeak a more general interest. Given the terse style of the Analects, the frequency with which its authors reference Confucius’ bearing suggests that it carries some significance for them, is important to them or to their sense of the man. Put another way, the Analects’ authors presumably have a rich well of experience with Confucius from which to draw as they seek to describe him to others and the fact that they select so much we might count as “boot-lacing” is telling. But what does it say? I hypothesize that how Confucius looks, moves, speaks, and so forth receives the attention it does because it is in some way significant to his being an exemplar. He is admired in part on account of what these observations detail. Indeed, if the number of passages referencing his bearing is indication, it matters a great deal. What I consequently wish to explore here is just why this would be so, just what about Confucius’ physical bearing has moral import or what, in an exemplarist idiom, it points us toward in constructing a conceptual account of the good person. There is at least some indication that in referencing Confucius’ bearing, the Analects’ authors implicitly invoke an established traditional sensibility about the body, a sensibility that Confucian emphasis on li would foster and

A Total Exemplar

111

strengthen.8 The Analects’ narrative representations of Confucius’ physical gestures are offered in a context in which the body is frequently treated as betraying moral character. Some interest in the body’s moral communicative potential is perhaps immediately evident if we simply consider the governing metaphors of early China’s moral philosophers. The pervasive and indeed ubiquitous use of the term dao 道, “way” or “path,” is suggestive of a metaphorical identification of physical movement and moral progress. To morally cultivate oneself is to tread a path and to avoid missteps. Where much of western philosophy might be said to exhibit a sight bias in its metaphorical representations of wisdom, in early China, the bias appears to be toward movement. The western sage sees more clearly but the early Chinese sage moves with an assured but measured step.9 While path and walking metaphors are commonplace in early China, moreover, it is clear that an appropriate gait is often much more than mere metaphor. At least some early Chinese documents attest to a cultural conviction that the body and its gestures communicate moral truths. Traditional ritual required disciplined choreographed movement and the Confucian rendering of ritual as a core moral practice only amplifies the moral importance of physical bearing and command. As Mark Lewis observes, “Performing rituals in early China required considerable bodily control. Texts emphasize specified positions, kneeling, bowing, turning, and so on. Consequently, the establishment of ‘ritual’ as a fundamental category by Confucius and his followers gave the body a central role in their social program.”10 To be regulated by the li is in no small measure to regulate one’s body. In this, the Confucians appear to draw on wider, long-standing convictions about the body’s moral communicative capacities. In early China, Albert Galvany argues, “we fi nd an unambiguous overlap between aesthetic prejudices and social discrimination: aesthetics are neither socially nor ethically trivial.”11 One’s moral character and development could be read in one’s movement and in one’s physical constitution, the body operating as a tell, such that its wholeness and grace served to announce one’s moral health. A damaged body could announce moral pollution.12 Indeed, as Galvany argues, the imperative to protect and preserve the body served as a moral imperative to protect and preserve the body’s moral communicative potential. Galvany illuminates this imperative by considering just how morally punishing corporal punishment could be. The use of foot amputation as punishment for some crimes, Galvany observes, imposed more than physical hardship. To lose a foot and consequently be condemned to an awkward, uncertain gait was to be morally as well as physically hobbled. For having suffered such a fate entailed that one’s moral failures would be displayed in one’s every step and one’s capacity to participate in ritual activity, with its demanding physical requirements, would be forever compromised. The amputee is one who physically cannot do what morality demands and who is thereby condemned to a sort of exile from the moral community. Consequently, “amputation implied a tragedy

112

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

that could sometimes be even more painful than death.”13 It imposed an ongoing life restriction in which moral, as well as physical, performance would be severely inhibited. In less dramatic fashion, an unimpaired facility in ritual performance could bespeak moral health and virtue, the body’s confident grace signaling a morally trustworthy character. In this context, then, the fact that Confucius is seen to exercise a thoroughgoing mastery of his gait, reliably adjusting his step in accord with the ritual demands of his circumstance, may serve to confirm the goodness to which remarks on his character attest. Indeed, remarks about his body may just be remarks about his character. However, while early Chinese attention to the body suggests that there are historically grounded reasons to count Confucius’ physical bearing morally meaningful, I want to consider the matter more broadly. I want to move away from the culturally particular interest in the body in evidence in the Analects and consider whether there is more than this at work. Most basically, I suspect that it may be reductive to count the Analects’ depictions of Confucius’ bearing as merely an historical and cultural artifact. While Confucius and the Analects’ authors frequently endorse traditional norms and practices, they do not do so unreflectively and, as I have argued, the reflective consideration of tradition the text engages often shifts tradition in novel directions. More ambitiously, apart from their historical and cultural particulars, the Analects’ observations about Confucius’ demeanor may belong to a wider family of narratives about exemplars. Put simply, the interest we take in moral exemplars reaches quite far and in often perhaps curious directions. Even where an exemplar commits a particularly heroic act that cannot but catch our attention, we may also find the moral imagination stirred by the more modest act or, in the terms I wish to pursue here, by the smallest gesture.14 While not committing to a thick account such as we find in early Chinese tradition, there are more general and thin accounts we can give of the moral communicative potential of the body. Perhaps more to the point, I think the Analects acknowledges these and indeed I suspect its interest in the thickened meanings provided in the li may in no small measure derive from them.

GESTURE, PERSONAL STYLE, AND COMMUNICATION Perhaps the most straightforward manner in which to frame a moral understanding of physical bearing is to consider the way physical bearing already features in moral experience. We informally and often even unconsciously register the physical bearing and demeanor of others. Moreover, how we interpret our interactions with others and calibrate our responses to them incorporates what we read in their bearing. Where I deliver an apology through gritted teeth, it is unlikely to be accepted as sincere, as reflective of genuine and freely expressed regret. While such is an easy example, the more general point is that physical cues, both subtle and unsubtle, inform

A Total Exemplar

113

the understanding we develop of each other’s motivations, intentions, and emotions. I may be well disposed toward what is good, but if others are to know this about me, it must manifest in my bearing and demeanor. Confucius acknowledges this when he claims that being filial requires managing the face (2.8), for the expressions of the face will effectively notify others whether what one does reaches to one’s dispositions, whether one’s caring behavior is well-motivated. While Confucius does explicitly reference demeanor in his description of filiality, the lesson here is, I think, more potently rendered not by what Confucius says but by how he is. Our inchoate and immediate responses to physical bearing suggest that we take elements such as posture, gesture, and voice to communicate something morally important. However, what do they communicate? More specifically, what does Confucius communicate in his physical bearing? I suspect we could parse many of the discrete features of Confucius’ bearing that the Analects identifies, look to the contexts in which they occur, and identify many correspondingly discrete meanings that attach to them. For example, Confucius’ solemn expression and inclined posture in his carriage when he encounters mourners (10.25) likely signals a sympathetic deference to the suffering of others. Whatever business he may be about, whatever his own mood, he interrupts it to assume a countenance and physical posture responsive to the sorrows affl icting those he encounters.15 While many of the Analects’ observations about Confucius may permit such analysis, I want instead to query what his physical bearing communicates when we consider it more generally or as a totality. A discrete gesture in a particular context—for example, the lowered, solemn gaze when encountering the bereaved—may read as a tell that gives away salient information about the attitude and motivation of the actor in her immediate circumstance. More broadly, however, our sense of another often accumulates many such tells. That is, just as we may read another’s attitude and motivation in a discrete act, so too we may develop a sense of her abiding character through a cumulative catalog of her tells, the habitual and repeated features of her demeanor and bearing. Nancy Sherman terms this an “aesthetics of character,” which she understands to include both “how we appear to others as conveyed through formal manners and decorum” and “manner in the wider sense of personal bearing and interpersonal attitude.”16 In both of the senses Sherman identifies, the body’s expressive capacities make it a medium through which character is, wittingly or unwittingly, revealed. While not discounting the discrete meanings that attach to the Analects’ many observations of Confucius’ various gestures, when we consider them as a totality, we fi nd the Analects engaged in something akin to an “aesthetics of character.” Confucius has what Sherman would term a “look and feel,” or what I shall describe as a personal style. The wider meaning of his physical bearing resides both in what it indicates about how personal style functions in our moral experience and in the distinctive nature of his style.

114 Moral Exemplars in the Analects By “personal style” I here adapt the account of style proposed by Leonard Meyer in his work on artistic style. Style, he offers, should be understood as “a replication of patterning, whether in human behavior or in the artifacts produced by human behavior, that results from a series of choices made within some set of constraints.”17 For my purposes, what is important here is that style is the result of patterns, a reasonably consistent and reliable demeanor that registers as revelatory to witnesses, conveying something of the character and personality. In other words, I here distinguish style as it belongs to particular actions and personal style. If style is defi ned as the manner in which an action is performed, then we must concede that all actions are performed “with style.” That is, all actions are done in some way. They may be done well or poorly, with flair or mechanically, and perhaps even the apparent absence of style may be characterized as a style. This, however, is a rather trivial point. Personal style denotes an individual’s characteristic manner of performing actions, discernible recurring patterns in her bearing and comportment. Personal style need not of course be moral—we might, for example, read another’s style as suggesting shyness or some other generally morally neutral trait of character—but what makes a personal style of ethical interest are our assessments regarding the temperament and personality it appears to betray.18 Equally important to a moral reading of personal style is the recognition of what Meyer terms “constraints.” Meyer’s analysis of the operation of constraints in the achievement of artistic style is extensive, but we can distill a few of the most salient constraints in considering the moral dimensions of personal style.19 First and perhaps most obviously, personal style always operates in the context of some historical and cultural circumstance. The meanings ascribed to a gesture will be socially shared meanings and the employment of a gesture will work, or fail to work, within these meanings. My downcast eyes will be read against the meanings downcast eyes are widely and popularly expected to signal. In the context of the Analects, the li are of course the primary and most formidable constraint of this sort, marking out, in often considerable detail, accepted forms for communicating a myriad of human emotions, commitments, and attitudes. Other constraints are more idiosyncratic and individual. How I can express myself through the medium of my body will depend, for example, upon constraints both physical and psychological. Where I am physically clumsy, a graceful demeanor will be more difficult to achieve and this difficulty may well be an element in what my style communicates to others. Similarly, features of temperament, whether learned or inborn, may render some forms of physical expression more natural to me while others will register as deeply unnatural.20 In sum, while personal style will function as a tell that communicates one’s character to others, the patterns of choice it represents participate in wider patterns of social meaning and personal possibility. Personal style of the sort I suggest here is of course a general human phenomenon and is by no means the special province of the sagely. However,

A Total Exemplar

115

I want to suggest that, as is the case with artistic style, we can here meaningfully distinguish the achieved style of the moral “virtuoso” from style as a more accidental result of basic temperament, mere habituation, and repetitive patterning. Put another way, just as we might say that all actions have a style in that they are performed in some way, so too all people may have a personal style in that their physical bearing and demeanor will inevitably reflect consistencies borne of temperament, established habits, or somewhat reliable patterns of manner. My hypothesis, however, is that an exemplar such as Confucius, who is admired in part on account of his style, is admired for more than this. To the extent that his bearing permits description as habit and patterning, it registers as indicating choices that are more than the common run. Zagzebski observes that “exemplary virtuous persons do the same sort of thing that the nonvirtuous do; the former simply do it more accurately and more directly.”21 In the context of the Analects’ descriptions of Confucius’ physical bearing, Confucius’ personal style functions, I think, to illuminate both the kinship and difference between the exemplar and others. The account of style I fi nd suggested by the Analects bears important affi nities to the theory of artistic style articulated by Kendall Walton. Walton maintains that the style we perceive as belonging to a work of art attaches less to the product—the actual object or performance we experience—than to our apprehension of the process by which we believe the product to be created. We are mistaken, he claims, when we direct “attention too exclusively on the work of art, the ‘object itself,’ and not enough on the activity of making it.”22 We should attend to the way in which a musical performance, for example, stylistically succeeds when the “appreciation of the audience involves some sort of empathy with the act of making the sounds.”23 As physical creatures, even where we have little acquaintance with the making of music, we know what it is to employ the body to generate a variety of sounds and thus can, through imaginative extension, apprehend something of how the skilled musician’s performance comes about. Indeed, the language we use to characterize musical performance often implicitly connects the sounds we hear to the gestures we ascribe to their creation: “we describe melodies or passages of music as tender, nervous, raging, flowing or energetic.”24 While we may well be mistaken in these impressions of the process, what we take as the relevant features of the process informs our response to the product, and these features will be rooted in experience. Our own experiences of the gentle touch or forceful blow register in how we imagine the musician to manipulate her own body and instrument. This empathetic and imaginative connection to the process of the artist grounds our capacity to apprehend and appreciate her skill. Walton emphasizes the perceived empathetic connections we draw between our sense of the work and the work, or process, of producing it, but there is also some possibility that it is not merely our apprehension of an ascribed emotive process that informs our appreciation of works of art.

116

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

In her recent work on dance and proprioception, Barbara Montero argues that a sort of physical identification with the movement of dancers may also be at work. “Proprioception,” she explains, “is the sense by which we acquire information about the positions and movements of our own bodies, via receptors in the joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles, and skin.”25 It is clear, she observes, that dancers themselves operate on an aesthetic sense that is proprioceptive. Dancers do not evaluate and adjust their movements based merely on how their movements appear, but also on how they feel, by how their bodies register aesthetically the movements they make; absent a mirror or other visual cues about how her movement appears, a dancer may nonetheless shift her gestures in accord with estimations of grace or beauty as it proprioceptively features in her bodily sense. 26 While dancers will frequently attest to having such a sense, the novelty of Montero’s analysis rests in her claim that observers likewise appreciate dance owing in part to proprioceptive experience. While proprioception—that is, the neural operations that allow me to draw information from my own “muscular sense”—is in its strictest sense wholly private, Montero argues that appreciation of the movements and gestures of others operates in part on what we might call a physical empathy. Just as a dancer can evaluate her own movement by how it feels, so too an observer may evaluate the dancer’s movement based on a sense, remembered or imagined, of what it feels like to move as the dancer does. 27 Montero speculates that something like “a mirror system” may operate such that “at least some audience members sitting motionlessly in the dark have something going on in their bodies that is similar to what would be going on if they were to actually move in a way similar to what is observed.”28 Thus, for example, the grace an observer ascribes to the dancer’s movement will derive not merely from the visual experience of watching the dancer, but also from a mirrored felt sense of the dancer’s gestures. Indeed, the experienced observer who is herself also a dancer may internally enjoy an “immediate or automatic sensation of movement” that importantly structures her heightened capacity to imitate and replicate the movements of other dancers. 29 Such, Montero notes, would account for why watching others dance is valuable to a dancer’s learning process. While Montero hinges her analysis on neurophysiological research and the testimony of dancers, like Walton, she fi nds in our aesthetic responses a strong component of identification and mirroring. In both cases, it is not merely the performance itself, or product, that informs appreciation but identification with a sense of the artist’s process. “Why is the Mona Lisa’s smile so captivating?” Montero asks. “Certainly, it is visually captivating, but, I suggest, it is also proprioceptively captivating: when we observe the smile we feel what it is like to smile in that way.”30 Empathetic and physical mirroring of the sort Walton and Montero ascribe to appreciation of artistic style can function, I suggest, as an interpretive rubric through which to understand the Analects’ interest in

A Total Exemplar

117

physical bearing generally and Confucius’ physical bearing in particular. Like an artistic virtuoso, I argue, Confucius possesses a personal style that works on us via our empathetic and proprioceptive capacities. Confucius’ physical bearing is of such interest to the Analects’ authors because of what it awakens in the “mirror sense” of those who experience it. His gestures work on observers much the way Mona Lisa’s smile does. Before addressing the particular salience of Confucius’ personal style, however, let me outline in more general fashion how these aesthetic theories can be leveraged to map the moral significance of personal style.

STYLE AS REVELATORY In general, I suspect that the Analects assigns significance to the styling of our conduct because demeanor and manner appear to display how our actions come about, the motivational, intentional, and emotional forces at work in prompting our actions.31 Demeanor can indicate something of our reasons for acting as we do and how we feel about what we do. Such is evident in Confucius’ enjoining the fi lial to attend to the countenance: We convey, or fail to convey, respect and affection in the features of our faces. Our witnesses, as fellow practitioners of the smile, the modulated voice, or the directed gaze, locate our motivations, intentions, and emotions with reference to their own experiences and the meanings attached to them. They interpret the “product,” here the actions we perform, through an empathetic apprehension of the “process,” the dispositions that spur us to act and feature in our faces. While style may not always matter, in the wide domain of ordinary life, it is an indispensable element of our interactions with others.32 Where moral practice is understood broadly, as the Analects seems to understand it, to encompass not simply doing right by others, but in promoting thriving moral community and accord between persons, actions speak louder than words, and the style of our actions may often speak loudest of all. When we consider, however, what style can “say,” it is evident that any effective style must communicate the person producing the act—her motivations, intentions, and emotions certainly, but also her temperament, habits of mind, and quirks of character as these inform and feature in the manner she adopts. To recognize that another is sincerely and well motivated in the actions she performs requires that I apprehend those actions as a made thing, as activities that both betray a maker and elicit my identification with her. Appropriate style thus requires, in broad strokes, that the performer appear to endorse in attitude and emotion the acts she undertakes. Such features fi nd ready representation in conventional form. The expressive power of style, however, issues from the details, the way in which the endorsement appears as a personal endorsement, issuing from an individual with definite and distinctive qualities that are displayed in her subtle variations of

118

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

manner. As Walton observes, we appreciate musical performance based on identification with “familiar mechanical actions such as scraping, banging, blowing, and so forth.”33 I suspect that we appreciate the styling of demeanor in similar fashion, locating in gesture and voice the familiar “banging” and “blowing” of motivation, intention, and emotion as a particular person registers the impact of her experiences. Appreciation and admiration, then, fi nd their source not in fi neness of expression alone, but in the correspondence of the product to a recognizable process that is at once evocative of shared experience and indicative of a distinctive, particular person. While something like this sensibility about style features in the Analects as a general theme, I suspect it emerges from Confucius and exemplars who, like him, achieve a virtuosity in their personal style. Setting aside Confucius’ more spontaneous gestures, his consistent and graceful performance of the li operates to reveal his character and he is admired because of the process others discern in his performances. The li, as I argue in Chapter 4, can be understood to formalize characteristic responses of exemplars into a code of behavior and demeanor keyed to recurrent patterns of circumstance. Confucius’ demeanor largely conforms to this code, but conformity to the li cannot explain his effect any more than striking the correct notes can explain the performance of a piano virtuoso. Qua code, the li operate as instrument and score; it falls to Confucius, or any person, to play it. What makes Confucius’ performance distinctive is his unusual sensitivity to what the “notes” of the li signify and the way he “strikes” them. Let me discuss these fi rst with reference to piano performance. A musical performer operates by enacting a series of gestures selected from among a repertoire of possibilities. These gestures draw most broadly from a full catalog of possible gestures and more narrowly from the particular gestures scored by the composer; the pianist can strike any of the notes that human hands on a piano can produce and will aim to strike those the composer has scored. Fidelity to a score, in its most basic iteration, is a matter of both acceding to the written score and declining to deviate from it. More ambitiously, however, we also recognize that a musical score does not merely chart a series of notes but a mood. A requiem, for example, may be solemn, melancholic, or longing, and it will typically exclude joy, merriment, and playfulness. The virtuoso’s performance will catch and reflect this mood, both what it includes and what it excludes, and this too is a species of fidelity though it is much less obviously a matter of conformity. Here the performer does not, or not merely, match gesture to score. Rather, she enacts or expresses something about it. Such is, I expect, the case with Confucius’ ritual performances. The li codify in physical gestures and bearing something like the moods that music can convey. Where we understand the li as issuing from the models of exemplars, the “code” cues the emotional, intentional, and dispositional features we see and admire in exemplars. Fidelity to the li, then,

A Total Exemplar

119

is a matter not merely of adhering to the formal requirements of the li, but also of catching and reflecting their mood. This is, I expect, what makes genuine fidelity to the li so difficult. One must here, for example, not only participate in the rituals of mourning for a long stretch of months, but also feel the sorrows and longings that the mourning li represent. In most cases, I hazard, it cannot be done and for much the same reason that piano virtuosity is so rare. The hands slip and strike a discordant note, attention flags and the pace is lost, or the heart is just “not in it.” Part of what makes Confucius’ habitual and consistently attentive observation of the li remarkable, then, is his apparent capacity to maintain the “moods” of the li, to feel the moods of the li as his own. Put another way, he appears to suffer far fewer disconnections between what the li recommend and how he is inclined to feel and to be. He is at ease in them. That Confucius enjoys a deep accord between his inclinations and the demands of the li is reinforced throughout the Analects. Both passages detailing his comportment and more general reflections on his character confi rm Confucius’ own summary of himself: He “can give [his] heartand-mind free rein without overstepping the boundaries” (2.4). Perhaps equally telling is the account of Confucius given in Analects 10.11, where we learn that even when dining on simple fare, Confucius solemnly made an offering. While this seems a rather simple observation consonant with Confucius’ more general fidelity to the li, it nonetheless bespeaks a fidelity beyond the common run and stands, I think, as an indication of Confucius’ thorough engrossment in the li more generally. This is evident if we consider both how commonplace Confucius’ action and how unusual his demeanor. Most basically, the Analects’ observation about Confucius’ habit of making an offering serves to confi rm a commitment to the li that is sincere. He does not, that is, make an offering only where the meal is fi ne or the company notable, where there is some special incentive to be or appear in conformity with the li. More significantly, however, because the context of his action is so ordinary and unexceptional, his conduct is all the more remarkable. The offerings he makes for his simple meals are at once but a conventional gesture of the most prosaic sort and reflective of a sensibility quite difficult to achieve. The logic of the ritual is, I expect, rather straightforward. Whatever we make of any spirits to whom we make an offering,34 the offering marks a delay between physical need and its satisfaction. In the space of this pause, we are alerted to our good fortune in having the means to satisfy need and our indebtedness to others, and invited to reflective gratitude for this state of affairs. Despite the important values in play in such a ritual, however, certain of its features—principally its preordained form and repeatability—may conspire against exactly the attention the ritual aims to cultivate. Repetitive recitation of any behavior can easily become drearily programmatic and mechanical, the purposive sense of the gesture dulled by its frequency and sameness. In the case of a ritual offering

120

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

before a meal, such tendencies will be greatest where our meals are plain. The meal of simple fare, unlike a sumptuous feast, rarely commands our attention. By itself, it offers little incitement to reflection and is where the act of dining is most easily reduced to the satisfaction of physical need. Where we are habituated to perform ritual observances prior to meals, it is where our meals are simple that we are most likely to forego such niceties or conduct them in perfunctory or cursory ways. Confucius’ habit of making an offering is notable, I expect, because he does not succumb to such easy inattention. Confucius not only makes an offering before dining on simple fare, he does so with solemnity (齊 qi). In this, he catches and reflects the mood of the li he enacts. Confucius seizes upon a modest event as an occasion that triggers gratitude. He tacitly acknowledges the fragility of even the most basic elements of our well-being and thus locates in their ready availability a summons to express appreciation and pleasure. Where we couple this with the passages that that appear pitched to distinguish Confucius’ comportment from that which is artificially or showily dignified, I think we can assume that Confucius is not here obtrusively mannerly. Here too, he is at ease and natural, and this, I suspect, goes some distance in explaining the admiration Confucius’ bearing awakens, explaining why his demeanor works on us. Admiration, as I have noted, may often occur in response to someone who makes what is difficult appear easy. Such is surely a commanding element of our admiration for heroes who sacrifice their own lives or wellbeing for what they judge good. However, admiration may also be cued where someone makes what is easy appear difficult. It is, to be sure, easy to make an offering before a meal. Any “challenges” such an activity poses are readily overcome through mere habituation; we can simply do it and when we have done it often enough, it can become as reliably routine as reflex. What is far more difficult and what we are far less likely to do is what Confucius does, to render such reflexes meaningful, to give them content in our consciousness. We will enact appreciation without feeling it, the gesture and its purported mood disconnected. The effect of Confucius, then, resides in his capacity to complicate the experience of those witness him. To return to Walton’s and Montero’s analysis of style, we see Confucius do something like what we all do—he hooks into our own experiences of habituated action and into feelings of gratitude and appreciation we fi nd familiar—but he draws them together in ways we do not. He is as a dancer who invests the commonplace raising of an arm with an entirely uncommon grace. In this, he is not like us, but he also and at once invites our kinship with the gesture. We are not as he, but experience in witnessing his gesture something of what it is to be motivated and moved as he. In sum, I suspect that Confucius’ physical bearing, as it features in his performance of the li in particular, works on observers by something like a “mirror sense.” The process evident in the “product”—the emotions

A Total Exemplar

121

and motivations that inform even his most bluntly habituated gestures— conveys an imaginatively felt sense what it is like to appreciate and attend wholeheartedly to one’s experience. While I think robust fidelity to the li is the principal element of Confucius’ physical bearing and demeanor that summons the admiration we fi nd confessed in the Analects, I likewise think it significant that the text records his more spontaneous gestures. The more orthodox of these gestures—for example, Confucius’ informality where circumstances permit and his expressions of compassion and sorrow at the untimely deaths of his students—give breadth to the character evident in his performance of the li. They assure that he is not wholly directed by the li, that while his emotional range is well fitted to the li, it is not exhausted by it. Much of what is evident in the “unscripted” Confucius extends the sense of him evident in his fidelity to the li, his emotions, motivations, and intentions fitted to their circumstance. He is, in this, much as a musician who can perform to a score and, where there is no score, can improvise to remarkable and unusually potent effect. As Confucius himself would have it, his ear is attuned (2.4). Such is not, however, to suggest that Confucius always operates in ways that clearly or cleanly provoke admiration or inspire emulation.

DEVIANT STYLE The passages that convey Confucius’ command of conventionally appropriate gestures and demeanor clearly recommend his personal style as worthy of emulation. So too, many of his spontaneous gestures invite emulation. We would do well to appropriate the sensibility that informs Confucius’ practice of making an offering before even a simple meal or that prompts him to impulsively grasp a dying student’s hand. However, as I have already intimated, not all of what we see of Confucius in the Analects can be readily interpreted in this fashion. His more spontaneous gestures do not all feature as obvious or even prudent targets for emulation. Indeed, where we couple some of Confucius’ apparently spontaneous gestures with passages that more generally depict him behaving in at least superficially inappropriate or odd ways, Confucius, qua exemplar, seems considerably more complicated. I thus want here to extend consideration of Confucius’ personal style to include that which evades easy characterization as exemplary. I want to consider what we can make of Confucius where he appears to comport himself in ways we would not emulate and indeed where it would seem decidedly wrongheaded to emulate him. Where we seek to scrutinize Confucius as an exemplar and, in particular, as an exemplar that the Analects’ authors commend to us, it is, as I have noted, important to assay closely the data we have. An exemplarist reading of Confucius’ narrative persona will want to take account of even that, or perhaps especially that, which falls outside the moral vocabulary

122 Moral Exemplars in the Analects and schemata the text offers. If I am correct that a governing purpose of the Analects is to propose Confucius as a signal exemplar, we want not to dismiss or neglect any aspect of his persona that might point to moral insight. When we attend carefully to Confucius’ persona, however, there is much that not only fails to invite emulation, but also defies ready explanation. A characteristic example of this, to which I have already alluded, is Confucius’ encounter with an elderly fellow named Yuanrang, believed to be an old acquaintance of Confucius. 35 When Confucius sees Yuanrang sitting at ease, in a posture altogether too casual and disrespectful for receiving guests, he raps the man about the shins, and cuttingly notes that Yuanrang is among those who fail to develop their promise when young and then lack even the grace to die when old (14.43). To imagine that one should follow Confucius’ example in this case and adopt a practice of chiding the useless elderly is simply unsupported by anything else in the text. Nonetheless, this too is part of what I am calling Confucius’ personal style, and we should again query what might prompt the Analects’ authors to include such episodes and what part, if any, such episodes play in the admiration Confucius inspires. The passages I here consider display what I wish to call the “deviant” aspect of Confucius’ personal style. Some of these passages also belong to the more total picture we have of his physical bearing; some do not. What they share, however, is a suggestion of dissonance. While it is generally true that Confucius operates within certain recognizable norms of behavior, he is on occasion seen to defy such norms and, significantly, he seems to do so without any aim to establish some new and presumably superior standard of his own devising. He appears, that is, to exhibit behaviors that simply seem unaccountable and fit ill with values he elsewhere attests. While it is not generally the case that he appears to be behaving in ways that rise to the level of being wrong, his behavior and manner are nonetheless puzzling and without clear foundation. In some cases, Confucius appears to deviate from his more typical dignified reserve in order to offer pointed critique or even insult. When told that Ru Bei has sent a messenger to request an audience with him, Confucius declines by claiming illness and, in what can only be counted a deliberate display of rudeness, pointedly begins playing the zither and singing before the messenger takes his leave (17.20). Upon hearing what is apparently a too grand and elaborate musical performance in the provinces, Confucius likens the music to “using an ox cleaver to kill a chicken,” an ungenerous remark that prompts Ziyou, a student of Confucius and the local prefect presumably in charge of the performance, to criticize him (17.4). Though Confucius typically displays patience and affection with his students, he is also not above deploying what Christoph Harbsmeier describes as “grossly insulting epithets.”36 Catching one student, Zaiwo, in bed late in the day, Confucius compares him to both rotted wood and a wall of dung, materials that, he suggests, no artistry or skill can make other than what they,

A Total Exemplar

123

fundamentally and disappointingly, are (5.10). One passage appears to be nothing more than a catalogue of Confucius’ rather cutting evaluations of some of his students: “Zigao is stupid; Zeng is dull-witted; Zizhang is extreme; Zilu is wild.”37 It seems likely, as Harbsmeier has argued, that at least some of these passages flesh out Confucius as an individual possessed of a rich sense of humor, able to entertain and impulsively comment upon human foibles. This interpretation is supported by additional passages I wish to classify as deviant and that Harbsmeier links as sharing a common structure. In these passages Confucius playfully endorses a “mad idea” in a spirit of self-mockery.38 When a villager observes that Confucius is widely reputed to have broad learning but has not distinguished himself in any particular area, Confucius rehearses a brief list of possible skills he might develop and settles on taking up charioteering (9.2). On at least two occasions Confucius expresses frustration with his failure to fi nd a virtuous ruler whom he might serve as a minister and proposes what appear to be wild, unserious desires to simply abandon his homeland. He proposes instead to live among the “barbarians” and implies that his presence would render them less vulgar and crude (9.14). While this passage of course evokes the sense of power ascribed to the good person, it also has about it the taste of a self-deprecatingly bitter humor. In a similar fashion and notably absent any reference to a redemptive power, Confucius proposes simply setting out to sea on a raft and imagines that Zilu, a student known for a boldness rarely mediated by good judgment, would be a suitable companion (5.7). In each of these passages Confucius’ otherwise dignified and stoic acceptance of his failure to achieve meaningful employ and recognition gives way to regret humorously tempered with a touch of self-satirization. It is also important to note that Confucius’ occasional desire to leave behind the struggles of self-cultivation is not always delivered in apparent jest. In at least one passage, Analects 11.26, we see something of the same sentiment absent the comic tone. Confucius asks his students what they would do if they were recognized as worthy and granted power to effect change. After three students present rather orthodox desires to govern with probity and to the benefit of the people, another student, Zengxi, answers: “At the end of spring, with the spring clothes having already been fi nished, I would like, in the company of five or six young men and six or seven children, to cleanse ourselves in the Yi River, to revel in the cool breezes at the Altar for Rain, and then return home singing.” In response, Confucius “heaved a deep sigh, and said, ‘I’m with Zengxi!’” Here too Confucius appears to endorse the “mad idea,” but his tone is wistful, his sigh bespeaking longing and pleasure. The Confucius depicted in these passages appears at least initially to fit ill with the sort of aspiration Confucius associates with the good person and, we would imagine, holds for himself as well. In short, we sometimes fi nd a tension between Confucius’ considered remarks and his more spontaneous

124 Moral Exemplars in the Analects remarks and gestures. For example, when asked to give an account of fi liality, Confucius says, “Do not be rebellious” (2.5). However, as Harbsmeier notes, when his student Yan Hui shows no rebelliousness, Confucius’ fi rst assumption is that he is stupid, as though “the absence of recalcitrance or rebelliousness [is] a prima facie sign of stupidity.”39 Only after carefully observing Yan Hui does Confucius let go this assumption and conclude that the young man is in fact quite gifted. He claims that one ought to be slow to speak (4.24) and that restraint will rarely lead one astray (4.23), yet in his more stinging critical remarks, he appears neither cautious nor restrained in his speech. He likewise claims that a hallmark of the junzi is an indifference to public stature and acknowledgment (e.g., 4.14, 15.19), yet expresses, albeit playfully, his own disappointment on this score. An attitude of perseverance despite hardship and frustration is recommended, but Confucius appears at times to wish to give up. That there are such occasional discontinuities between Confucius’ recommendations and his own behavior is demonstrated by his students’ sometimes puzzled responses to him. When Yan Hui dies, the fact of Confucius’ sorrow may register as commendable, but its extremity is surprising. He weeps without abandon and even goes so far as to blame tian for “destroying him” (11.9). His loss of self-command and abandonment to grief is so extreme that his students challenge him about it even, apparently, while he still weeps (11.10). There are of course many strategies, evident in the literature, for leveraging from these passages a Confucius who maintains his rectitude and, even in these cases, proffers a worthy lesson for others. In some cases, such a reading seems quite plausible. When Confucius justifies his unusual habit of asking questions in the Grand Ancestral Temple by claiming that asking questions is appropriate ritual (3.15), his behavior is not only explicable, it contributes substantial insight into his understanding of ritual. However, in other cases, this approach to reading Confucius’ deviations from the norms he elsewhere endorses strains credulity. For example, Confucius’ apparently rude dismissal of Ru Bei’s messenger is attributed to Ru Bei’s own flawed character or some error in his manner of approaching Confucius. Thus, as Slingerland summarizes, “Commentators generally see the purpose of this insult to be to inspire Ru Bei to reflect deeply on his own behavior and reform himself.”40 While the inference that Ru Bei has, in Confucius’ judgment, caused some offense seems incontestable, to conclude that Confucius’ stinging insult emerges only from a noble and charitable impulse significantly elides the nature of the insult. Confucius here not only engages in deception, he gratuitously flaunts it. Even if we can accommodate the fact of Confucius’ lie in our explanation, he employs a tactic that generally seems unlikely to provoke earnest soul-searching in its target. If this is indeed his aim, it appears to presuppose an exceptional receptivity to instruction on the part of Ru Bei, a superior quality of character that renders the original insult more, rather than less, puzzling: If Ru Bei is possessed of a character that enables him to suffer insult and consequently

A Total Exemplar

125

turn inward to discover its justice, why would Confucius need to insult him in the fi rst place? Such interpretive strategies seem less to address Confucius as the man he is than to strategically justify an impossibly idealized “Confucius.” They likewise render Confucius consistent only at the cost of eliding the richness of his personality and leave him looking like quite the pedant, a figure whose every inflection and gesture, no matter how apparently peculiar or mystifying, contains a little lesson for living. Moreover, Confucius is here an inefficient pedant, for his lessons are deeply hidden and require elaborate interpretive strategies for their retrieval. A more plausible reading is available if we take seriously Confucius’ insistence that he keeps nothing hidden from his students, that the person he is is always on display (7.24). To adopt such a reading is to allow that Confucius behaved at times in ways inconsistent with the image of Confucius often promulgated by the tradition of scholarship that bears his name. Perhaps, as Harbsmeier has argued, “the more un-Confucian and unsagely” depictions of Confucius bring us closer “to the man and his personal history, and the more likely we are to hear the Master’s Voice.”41 In Harbsmeier’s interpretation, Confucius’ apparent deviations flesh out Confucius as a human being, allowing access to the man rather than the historical image. It is also possible that Confucius’ deviations from norms simply demonstrate akrasia, a failure to apply completely and consistently ethical judgments he otherwise recognizes as worthy and valuable. While I would not go so far as to rule this out entirely and insist that this is never the case, a more robust reading is possible if we extend the analogy offered earlier and consider Confucius, qua exemplar, to be akin to an virtuoso pianist. With such an analogy, I expect that we can move beyond simply observing that Confucius is a human being to discovering the moral significance of this so obvious fact as it registers in his more “deviant” aspects.

VIRTUOSITY AND IDIOSYNCRASY The skilled pianist must master a number of clear and easily characterized skills. She must practice regularly; become an able and competent reader of music; develop manual dexterity; regulate the body, breath, and posture; assess and correct her weaknesses; attune her ear such that she can apprehend a note’s correctness or incorrectness; understand the mechanical operations of her instrument and the possibilities for sound it offers; and enforce a self-discipline that will sustain her through the more plodding aspects of learning well her art. The nature of musical performance, however, is such that even if the pianist masters all of these, she may yet not achieve virtuosity. While the best pianists have mastered all of these skills, this is not all that they do. The best pianists are just those who, at some point and in some way, leap into idiosyncrasy. They lend something of themselves to the scores that they play and thus while two virtuosi may

126

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

play the same score, the resulting effects they achieve are distinctive and particular. This feature of virtuosity both complicates emulation and, more significantly, renders it difficult to capture abstractly just what the virtuoso does and why it works. Assessing these issues requires considering not the pianist in the abstract, but particular, exemplary pianists. As Julia Annas has argued, if one wants to play like Alfred Brendel, one must in some important sense give up playing like Alfred Brendel.42 Where the virtuoso succeeds in part on account of some peculiarity that distinctively belongs to him and marks the performance as his own, imitation is more likely to register as derivative or as hollow mimicry than successful emulation. Moreover, in some cases, if one wishes to emulate a virtuoso, one must decidedly avoid playing like him. Perhaps the most notable and obvious example of this is Glenn Gould, a pianist renowned in particular for his interpretations of Bach. While Gould’s idiosyncrasies are many, the most unaccountable of these is that he hums while he plays. While “involuntary vocalization” is an idiosyncrasy shared by other virtuosi, as Harry Eyres observes, “[n]ot all humming pianists hum in the same way.”43 Gould is notable for his entirely unsubtle “otherworldly crooning.”44 He not only hums, he hums bizarrely and in a manner often apparently entirely disconnected from the piece he performs. One critic likened it to hearing an “alien conversation” occurring alongside but utterly apart from Bach’s score.45 What is difficult in analyzing Gould’s virtuosity is his adoption of a habit we would in no way recommend for emulation, yet neither is this habit dispensable to Gould’s art: Part of what it means to hear Gould is to hear that hum. It is not what makes his performances good performances and indeed many count it decidedly unpleasant, but neither can we separate it out from the performances themselves. Were we to edit it out, we would not enhance the music but instead lose something important and valuable about its genesis and thus sacrifice something that elementally belongs to it. Confucius’ deviations, I suspect, are just such a hum. The question I want to consider is what, more exactly, do we lose if we lose the hum? More ambitiously, what, if anything, do we gain by hearing it? Whether our target is Confucius’ deviant style or Glenn Gould’s hum, we can readily imagine their “art” absent its deviations from more obviously sound technique. In the case of Gould, we could attempt to digitally remove the hum from recordings of his work.46 In the case of Confucius, we could discount those features of his behavior and comportment that fail to conform to a high standard of dignity or probity. While the latter may seem less plausible as a possibility, it is arguably what much of the tradition of Confucianism has done, either by neglecting Confucius’ more puzzling idiosyncrasies or, as I note above, by employing apologetic strategies that make them come right. In short, it is possible in either case to render the model more pristine or more cleanly imitable. To play like Gould or to be like Confucius would in this way become a much more straightforward task, with what is unambiguously good about both uninterrupted by

A Total Exemplar

127

oddities that threaten to obscure. However, such a strategy is, I think, selfundermining. The hum does, to be sure, obscure but it nonetheless matters fundamentally to the music. This is in significant measure owing to the distinction Walton offers between product and process. An edited Gould or Confucius would, to be sure, yield an enhanced product, but would deny us something important about process. Where we understand our empathetic responses to the process as key to appreciation and admiration, in losing something of the process, we thereby lose something that belongs to our capacity to appreciate and admire. To further specify the nature of the “something” we lose, it is perhaps useful to look more closely at the significance of Confucius and Gould being human beings. Here again, let me begin by focusing on music. Part of what makes art remarkable is surely its status as a made thing. We appreciate the beauty of the sound issuing from a songbird as serendipitous and pleasing, but the songbird evokes these responses in an entirely undeliberate and accidental fashion. The songbird merely does what it does; it does not make its song. In contrast, the musician, in Wallace Stevens’ felicitous phrase, operates as an “artificer of the world.”47 His activity is deliberate, a purposeful ordering of experience. And, unlike the songbird, he can always do otherwise. The “scraping, banging, and blowing” to which Walton alludes is at once the means by which we identify with the process of the musician and recognize his humanity. He too enjoys the full complement of human possibilities, and out of those possibilities, he chooses this. Put another way, the performance is always contingent, unfi xed by any necessity or inevitability. That the performer makes music is a choice she makes and this choice in turn generates a whole spectrum of further choices. With respect to the choices a musical performer makes, it is important to emphasize that any particular performance will exhibit something like a narrative arc. Indeed a musical performance is judged in no small measure with respect to its arc, the way its discrete elements cohere into an intelligible, more total movement. In Stevens’ idiom, the world it makes will exhibit an order. While both recorded music and live performance will exhibit an arc, I will here focus on live performance, for the conditions in which it occurs most approximate the moral “performances” I wish to assay.48 What is perhaps most notable about the “world” made by a musical performance and important to my purposes here is the way it must be made whatever its arc will be. The pianist performing live must enact the score in urgency. The life of training, habituation, and practice must be distilled in the raw immediacy of the moment. He must, in the tension of swiftly passing time, strike the right note and then follow it immediately with another and another. And each gesture will incorporate choices the performer is making within the performance, each choice introducing a constraint to which all subsequent choices must answer. Thus while the virtuoso is at once highly trained and indeed “natural” in what he does, there

128

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

is an important sense in which he, like all, must work “on the fly.” When he is admired, his performance judged superior, the arc of the performance has succeeded in some way, but it is rarely, and I expect never, the case that it has succeeded because the arc is defi ned by technical perfection. Instead, it succeeds because the choices informing it cohere and its infelicities belong to these choices in some important way. That infelicities reflect the performer’s status as a human being is surely a partial explanation of appreciation, but the novice too is human. What makes the marking of the virtuoso as a human being more significant, I suspect, is that we see confessed in his infelicities what might otherwise be suppressed by his uncommon skill: that no skill can supplant an abiding capacity to get things wrong. We here, in other words, lose a strategy for dis-identificaton with the virtuoso. While there may be some impetus to count the virtuoso a person utterly apart and thereby relieve our novice efforts of unflattering comparisons, his remaining subject to error will frustrate such an impulse. His humanity keeps us on the hook, so to speak, admiring the results of his skill certainly, but admiring them in a way that does not undermine motivation. Put another way, we cannot rightly aspire to sing as the songbird, but we can aspire to play as the virtuoso and it is his fallible humanity that vouchsafes this possibility. Despite our identification with the virtuoso’s humanity, our perception of him as a virtuoso will also effectively promote a disposition to appreciate and admire even where what the virtuoso offers is wanting in some way. As pianist Charles Rosen observes, where we know ourselves to be in the presence of a virtuoso, our perceptions of a performance will be influenced by our expectations. Even where a virtuoso’s performance is wanting or even middling, he asserts, “what makes for success is the intensity of listening, the heightened attention awakened in the public.”49 The audience anticipates the virtuoso’s performance with a prior disposition to admire, a disposition that will readily accommodate infelicity because the audience’s enhanced acuity in listening can “pierce even the fog of an incompetent performance.”50 It is important to emphasize that the phenomenon Rosen cites is not a disposition to forgive error. Instead, we might say it is a disposition to lose errors in the greater abundance of the music’s features. The audience advances its own appreciation because it is listening with greater care and attention, noticing more of the music’s manifold elements. It is available to receive nuances and complexities of the work that it would otherwise, in performers of less high repute, not be alert to hear. Apart from their significance for signaling humanity and the virtuoso’s capacity to override them by the power of his repute, infelicities in performance may more actively work on our appreciation. The infelicities of a musical performance can of course be parsed with greater specificity, but perhaps it is sufficient to note very broadly what it means for an infelicity to work in favor of promoting appreciation. Some infelicities may register as simply excusable in the wider context of a performance. They

A Total Exemplar

129

are in some sense forgettable because the commanding superiority of the performance as a totality simply drowns them out. In such cases, they are in essence suppressed and excluded from a more global evaluation of the work. However, others may actively work to the favor of the performance’s arc, contributing some unsought insight that alerts us to some feature of the piece we have not heard before. The infelicity here registers as a technical flaw, an apparent departure from the “letter” of the score or its traditional interpretation that nonetheless indicates, or perhaps even discovers, a feature of the “spirit” of the piece.51 Still others may just plainly be mistakes. However, these too possess value to the performance. For unlike that of a novice, a virtuoso’s mistake will likely reflect choices that did not pan out rather than mere accident. A mistake is made with some sophistication and will function as a tell about the performer’s process, perhaps an even more informative tell than his unflawed gestures. For we learn from it something about the performer’s management of his choices and his judgment: we see how he hazards novelty, bears its risks, accommodates its disappointments, and rights himself in failure. This too is important. I suspect the analogy I wish to make is clear but let me render it plainly. Technical perfection will have as little purchase in the life and personal style of a moral exemplar as it does in the performance of a virtuoso pianist. Like the pianist, the moral actor must “play live.” Neither can occupy the pristine abstraction of a written score but enact their judgment on the fly. The moral exemplar must practice his values in ways that at once accommodate his immediate circumstance and distill his learning and cultivation into the events and movements of a moment. The moral exemplar, to be sure, “performs” in an entirely different sense; he crafts a life of long duration out of an innumerably larger set of variables. His is a “performance” without end or respite. Nonetheless, I think virtuoso pianist does in miniature, or has an effect in miniature, akin to that of the exemplar. Perhaps most importantly, the exemplar’s life exhibits an arc that in part accounts for our admiration. While all lives certainly exhibit somewhat stable patterns, the exemplar’s has a form and order more fi nely organized than the norm. Such is, as I have noted, a source of admiration found in Confucius’ personal style. However ordered and refi ned, however, the exemplar’s arc will, as a musical performance does, contain infelicities.

CONFUCIUS’ HUM With this performance analogy in hand, it is possible to refi ne interpretation of Confucius’ “hum.” On my reading, we do well to grant, as we might with Gould’s hum or indeed any virtuoso’s puzzling idiosyncrasy, that Confucius’ various deviations from orthodox behavior or comportment may not be imitably appealing. We need not, that is, query them with the supposition that they can or should yield moral instruction and that if

130 Moral Exemplars in the Analects we could but grasp their direction, make the “hum” harmonize with goodness, we could more completely emulate Confucius. Confucius’ departures from his stated values or oddities in behavior are instead infelicities. Taken as such, we can freely grant that he does not always come right in accord with any pristine conception of the “good person.” Indeed, it is to grant that he is as he appears: good, but also sometimes rude, cutting, inappropriately funny, unrestrained, wistful, and so forth. This is not, it should be clear, to deny that Confucius is a good person of a rather total sort, nor is it to deny the relevance of his hum for understanding him. Indeed, it is to unapologetically incorporate the hum into our sense of his goodness. This entails that we approach it as we would a performer’s infelicities. As a fi rst gesture toward treating Confucius’ deviant aspects as infelicities in performance, we can grant the importance of recognizing his humanity. He too can get things wrong, and this fact about him preserves rather than undermines our incentives to emulate him. Eliding his imperfections does not, under my interpretation, merely create an interpretive strain. It also threatens to render him less potent as a model for emulation, for it is through his fallible humanity that a necessary kinship with him is achieved. Such does not, however, purchase kinship at the cost of losing some measure of our admiration for him. While he is human as ourselves, he also and simultaneously operates as a special sort of human being, one likely through his prevailing and indeed dominating goodness to cue a more careful attention from others. His commanding presence and the acuity of attention it elicits will promote recognition of subtleties that will enhance the capacity for admiration in others. Through his example, they are more likely, whatever his errors, to discern features of goodness that otherwise would escape notice. Because he inspires others to look more closely, they will see what they have not seen before. They will, in Walton’s and Montero’s idiom, apprehend more of the process, empathetically or even proprioceptively feel more of what that process suggests. Finally, I expect we can, as we might for a musical performance, seek to parse Confucius’ infelicities in the several ways I have indicated. We can treat them as in some measure discrete and seek to analyze what each may do to enrich our sense of the arc of his life and, in some cases, how his infelicities actively favor admiration of that life. I do not, to be sure, propose that we employ the rubric I suggest as a classification system of any formal sort. Rather, I think it can be employed simply to guide, albeit imprecisely, reflection on Confucius’ various seeming oddities in expression and behavior. While I expect that such an analysis may, as it is for music, be quite a complicated process, let me nonetheless briefly sketch how I would apply this to a sample set of the passages I characterize as deviant. In some cases, I expect, Confucius’ infelicities are effectively drowned out where some more abiding counternote effectively prevails in our attention and renders his deviance a comparably minor matter. We may register it, but do so without any alteration in a more total evaluation. Confucius’ rather

A Total Exemplar

131

cutting summary judgments about the characters of his students seem such a case. Where he catalogs them as “stupid,” “dull-witted,” “extreme,” and “wild” (11.18), the potential of these ungenerous remarks to register as dissonant is largely overwhelmed by the earnest and gentle affection for his students so evident throughout the Analects. For example, Zilu, whom Confucius characterizes as “wild,” also elsewhere elicits praise from Confucius (6.8, 9.27, 11.15) and, as I argue in the next chapter, appears to be Confucius’ friend. Such a reading does not, to be clear, deny that Confucius’ less generous descriptions of his students contain some truth, but it does perhaps temper the uncharitable finality with which they are delivered here. In the case of Zaiwo, whom he compares to dried dung, the truth seems much plainer, for we find confessed in the cutting remark an apparently well-rooted dismay sustained elsewhere in the text (5.10, 17.21). The frustrated impatience, the willingness to frame critique in unforgiving and even vulgar terms, however, must be similarly placed on the longer narrative arc of Confucius’ relations to his students. His infelicity in expression, however apt the content of what he expresses, issues from an abiding frustration. Zaiwo features as less tractable than Confucius’ other students. In this, he is perhaps akin to a mechanically difficult passage in a longer work of music, his obstinance and laziness inviting his teacher’s misstep the way in which a technically challenging passage will invite the striking of a wrong note. In sum, I suspect that the occasional sounding of Confucius’ hum in speaking to and about his students is that species of idiosyncratic infelicity we incline to find excusable. It registers with us, but does not and need not register as blemishing. The greatest share of Confucius’ infelicities belong I suspect, to that more promising sort, the sort that depart from the readily imitable while yielding insight that the merely imitable cannot. As I have argued elsewhere, Confucius’ loss of self-control upon the death of his beloved student Yan Hui, while out of keeping with his more usual emotional restraint, affords such insight.52 In brief, while Confucius is largely regulated by the li in ways we would expect to restrain and order his expression of grief, his uncontained excess of sorrow enlivens the mourning li with a sense we might otherwise fail to discern. The mourning li are, at their best, about our greatest sorrows. They do not summon into existence sorrows we do not feel, but aim to aid us in those that threaten to overwhelm or even, as Confucius remarks in his extremity, “destroy.” In the urgency of Confucius’ response to the death of Yan Hui, he is unguided by their score and here too we can readily grant that he encounters a “passage of music,” a part of life and friendship, most difficult to navigate. His “error,” however, sounds something more widely important about this difficulty than would a “flawless” or more controlled performance. Likewise and certainly significantly, the longer arc in this case is one of infelicity and recovery. Confucius loses himself in grief but he recovers himself as well. By the time that funeral arrangements are planned for Yan Hui, he is once again on score, evincing his more familiar fidelity to both spirit and letter of the li (11.8, 11.11).

132

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

While perhaps more complicated, Confucius’ occasional expressions of the “mad idea” may also belong among his infelicities that promote insight. Throughout the Analects, it is clear that self-cultivation and its attendant aspirations to influence a better ordered society is a serious business. Most of the time, Confucius treats it so. Where Confucius expresses the “mad idea” and appears to confess a desire to abandon the struggle, however, he adopts a lightness in expression. These passages read, as Harbsmeier suggests, as comic self-mockery. Nonetheless, their humor recalls an old German saying, “Unter dem Spass liegt Ernst,” or “Under humor lies seriousness.” I suspect they are funny because of the serious anxieties that underwrite them, much the way that jokes about death achieve their comic force by trading on our sense of death as a power beyond our control. 53 Humor here operates as a strategy for asserting power, specifically the power to disregard and discount one’s impotence where power is sorely lacking. At a most basic level, Confucius’ startling lightness indirectly acknowledges that his success at bringing his cultivation to bear in the world resides outside his reach and depends on social forces and norms he cannot control: No matter how learned and accomplished one may become, there will always be someone who believes one would do better to develop skill with a chariot. In this respect, Confucius’ mad idea is an infelicity, a break from his more usual confidence and optimism, one that communicates a truth about the contingencies that constrain even the most devoted efforts. More deeply, I suspect that these passages also confess something important about Confucius himself, about his own ease in the practice of selfcultivation. This is most evident in Analects 11.26, but I suspect it also informs the rest as well. In 11.26, where Confucius aligns himself with Zengxi’s desire to swim and sing on a fi ne spring day, it is far less evident that Confucius is joking. He instead appears captivated by the sensual and companionable pleasures evoked by Zengxi’s wish. Confucius not only agrees, he sighs deeply in agreement. I suspect that this rather wistful iteration of the mad idea is what saves all the rest from operating merely as efforts to manage bitter disappointment with therapeutic levity. In 11.26, the mad idea is not mad. Rather, it registers longings exquisite in their simplicity. The madness, if there is any, is wishing for anything else. It is notable that the aspirations of the other students who feature in the passage are framed in response to Confucius’ asking what they would do if their worth was recognized, a query the students register as asking, “What would you do if you had the power to do as you wished?” Their answers are rather orthodox, albeit ambitious, reflections of the social and political goods their learning has inclined them to want. Only Zengxi seems to take the question in a different direction, saying in essence that he would wish to have done with all that, to let go the struggle and simply delight in the gentle pleasures life affords. Confucius’ response, I suspect, indicates that while moral cultivation has its rewards, it is a burden of the most heavy sort. 54 Confucius’ ease in shouldering this burden does not make him insensate

A Total Exemplar

133

to its weight, does not negate the wish to lay it down. The infelicity in this and the other mad idea passages function, I think, to afford an insight into Confucius’ more usual ease. What may often be lost in Confucius’ ease is what it and, more generally, his mode of life cost him. To recall my discussion of the good life, we might say that Confucius’ prevailing desire is to live admirably, but he too wants the desirable, the ordinary and gentle pleasures of life. Zengxi’s remark and Confucius’ response alert us to the way in which, even for the exemplar who inclines reliably to the admirable, longing for the desirable still has some purchase. His self-cultivation quiets this longing but it does not yield indifference. Thus while his mad ideas sound as dissonant against his otherwise seemingly natural and effortless devotion to cultivation, they likewise provide insight into the way in which, even in the exemplar, a more ordinary species of desire sounds and reverberates through his motivational process. Here again we see something of the process by which Confucius arrives at the admirable life he crafts and in this process we fi nd a source of identification with the exemplar. He feels the pull of singing and swimming on a fi ne spring day just as we. Confucius is at ease, but it is not easy. Finally, I think Confucius makes what can best be counted as simply mistakes. As with the pianist, however, mistakes can be granted as such, yet mined for the significance of the choices they reflect and for models of how mistakes can be managed. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is Confucius’ initial judgment that Yan Hui is, on account of his being agreeable, stupid. Here Confucius admits his own error and, in his recovery, effectively delivers an interpretation of his judgment qua mistake. He grants that he has been too hasty, that he has in essence failed to follow the injunctions he elsewhere gives to look closely at others’ actions (e.g., 2.10). Confucius corrects his error by attending more closely to Yan Hui’s conduct, even observing Yan Hui while the young man is unaware that he is doing so. Where Confucius doubts the accuracy of his own judgment, he resists any temptation to cling to it stubbornly, to cling to a “choice” that does not work, and instead answers doubt with redoubled effort at understanding. The exemplar features here as one who can entertain his own doubts, pursuing rather than discounting them, and revising his judgment where he must. He is not free of error, but recovers from error. So too, I expect Confucius’ likening of a provincial musical performance to the use of an ox cleaver to kill a chicken is but error (17.4). Where the mad idea passages remark a certain dark appreciation of the folly of self-cultivation in a world grown coarse, these are notably self-satirizing remarks. In Confucius’ criticism of the musical performance, his mockery engages this sense of folly but is directed outward. Worse, the cutting critique is directed at those whose own error might best be characterized as trying too hard. Confucius’ colorfully biting description of the music damns it as enthusiastic overkill, too refi ned and ambitious for its setting. Even if Confucius’ evaluation is perfectly just, it is ungenerously just, the sort or remark one

134

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

makes where one is unable to fi nd softening sympathy with those who, whatever their weaknesses and however misguided, are nonetheless well motivated. In this case, it is Ziyou who apparently recalls Confucius to himself by saying, “In the past I have heard you, Master, say, ‘Exemplary persons (junzi 君子) who study the way (dao 道) love others; petty persons who study the way are easier to employ.’” Confucius’ response is to quickly concur and dismiss his critique as “just in fun.” In Confucius’ critique of the musical performance, I suspect we see a particular hazard of the distinctively aesthetic dimensions of the moral cultivation Confucius pursues. As one’s aesthetic sensibilities become increasingly sophisticated and nuanced, one concomitantly risks losing sympathy with the amateur and learner. The risk of becoming snobbish is high. I suspect that here Confucius is temporarily seduced by the aesthetically obvious—the music is showy and pretentious—and fails to appreciate its value by any more circumspect measure. It is, moreover, unclear to what extent Confucius does recover from this error. He does, to be sure, grant Ziyou’s complaint, but whether his claim to have offered his critique in jest constitutes an adequate recovery is less clear. At the least, as Harbsmeier observes, where one must protest “I was only joking,” the joke has surely failed.55 Moreover, such a protestation is usually small consolation to anyone who serves as the butt of the joke, for it risks merely redoubling the injury through condescension: Ziyou’s judgment in arranging the musical performance has been insulted in the joke and his dismay at the insult is in part dismissed as a second sort of failure, a failure to get the joke. My own sense is that Confucius’ recovery from this infelicity is wanting, that this is not only a “choice” that does not pan out, but an episode in which Confucius largely fails soften the jarring effect of the discordant note by recovering from it graciously. He features here as unsympathetic and indeed rude aesthete. His capacity to be so on this occasion, in spite of the generosity toward learners he elsewhere displays, can function only as cautionary inspiration, a warning that with increased sophistication one will be well guarded against some infelicities but will become greater prey to others. In sum, where we allow that Confucius strikes the occasional discordant note and scrutinize his apparent infelicities, we can develop more discriminating ways to parse the sort of model he presents, as well as refi ne understanding of the complexities emulation entails. Confucius is a good person and from his example we can begin to draw out and abstract what qualities belong to good people. However, Confucius is also a personality and his actions, bearing, and demeanor display the distinctive and particular marks of personality. Thus while he inspires admiration and emulation, here too the desire to be like Confucius will entail, in some measure and in some ways, giving up the desire to be like Confucius. I grant that my analysis here is perhaps somewhat speculative. I do not, to be clear, suggest that the authors of the Analects propose this model for understanding the effect of Confucius’ physical bearing or for accounting

A Total Exemplar

135

for his apparently deviant gestures and behavior. Neither would I claim that they grant Confucius’ idiosyncrasies sometimes amount to infelicities. Instead, I seek to explain what forces may be at work, perhaps even unconsciously work, in their remarking these aspects of Confucius and including them in their presentation of Confucius. My assumption throughout is that while the Analects’ authors may not have reasons they could articulate to explain why they describe these aspects of Confucius, the presence of these aspects in the text’s more total portrait is significant. That these aspects are remarked and included indicates that they have some effect on those who remark them. In my analysis of Confucius’ personal style, I have sought to explain this effect with reference to the way an empathetic identification with Confucius’ process stimulates admiration. We admire Confucius on account of the processes we discern in him. We admire Confucius’ processes, I venture, because the motivations, intentions, and emotions at work in him and visible to others are uncommonly well and reliably fitted to the circumstances in which they occur. Moreover, he is uncommonly transparent in the way he communicates these processes, his “performances” render his motivations, intentions, and emotions available to others with unusual clarity. His personal style, in sum, allows others to borrow a felt sense of his grace and ease in responding to the world as he fi nds it. As I turn from Confucius to consideration of two of the text’s more limited exemplars, I hope to further specify what I take to be the mechanics of these responses.

6

A Partial Exemplar Zilu

In addition to offering rich narrative depictions of Confucius, the Analects also of course describes those who constitute Confucius’ community. Indeed, much of what the text reveals about Confucius is brought to light by way of his interactions with others and, principally, with his students. They do not feature merely as interlocutors who prompt Confucius’ various reflections, but as significant protagonists in their own right and in the wider movement of the story the text tells. What is most of interest to me here is the way in which these men often figure as limited, or partial, exemplars. Before I address these students and the student, Zilu, in particular, let me briefly rehearse in more general fashion what scrutiny of partial exemplars may afford for exemplarist moral reasoning. In general, and to recall my brief treatment in Chapter 2, what I am calling a partial exemplar is, relative to more total exemplars, admired in a narrower, more targeted fashion. Where the total exemplar is a “good person,” the partial exemplar is good in a particular way. Such is to say that our admiration for the partial exemplar confesses its origin in some more limited domain of human activity. In this regard, the partial moral exemplar is much like exemplars we readily recognize in many non-moral spheres of human activity. Just as someone can register as a “master cabinet maker,” I suggest, so too someone can register as a “fi lial daughter.” Both the master cabinet maker and the filial daughter are perceived and appreciated with an admiration keyed to a distinct and limited domain. The domains I think most generally relevant for consideration of partial moral exemplars concern those that entail managing a particular relational position with others or managing particular features of human experience. Some partial exemplars feature as individuals who fulfi ll a role with others in an uncommonly authoritative way and others feature as uncommonly adept and reliable in how they meet circumstances with a common pattern. Put less abstractly, the “fi lial daughter” will inspire an admiration keyed to her relationship to her parents and the “courageous person” will inspire an admiration keyed to her management of perilous circumstances. In the idiom of direct reference, here too we can confidently identify partial exemplars prior to understanding in conceptually secure fashion just what

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

137

qualities yield admiration, what abstract, general account would uniquely defi ne the “filial daughter” or the “courageous person.” Both are, initially, just that and a company of “fi lial daughters” and “courageous people” function to fi x the reference for these designations, allowing a process of sustained inquiry to begin. As a conceptual heuristic, we can readily distinguish the partial exemplar from the total exemplar, focusing narrowly on just that particular moral feature to which the partial exemplar points us. However, in both our experience of exemplars and in our reflection on them, we will often understand one with reference to the other. The total exemplar will be good in the more limited domain in which the partial exemplar excels and the partial exemplar will, in her limited domain, excel just as the total exemplar does. That is, both the good person and the courageous person operate to fi x reference for “courage,” and inquiry into the nature of courage can and will look to both models. While this cooperative effect, in which both total and partial exemplars seed reflection, will be fairly commonplace in efforts to understand particular virtues and roles, the partial exemplar also, I believe, can seed reflection distinct from what the total exemplar offers. Indeed, in an important respect, the partial exemplar can provide helpful supplement to what the total exemplar offers.

THE “LIMITATIONS” OF TOTAL EXEMPLARS While total exemplars stand as models for emulation, as a practical matter, the models they offer may be of limited efficacy for the moral learner. Even apart from the enriching idiosyncrasies and deviations of the total exemplar, such an exemplar may seem, put simply, too different from the learner. The nature of this difference is evident where we consider the difficulties that may ensue with the desire to emulate the exemplar. The total exemplar presents his skill as an accomplished fact. The work of self-cultivation— the work the moral learner must pursue—is done.1 Certainly, the total exemplar must devote himself to preserving his skill, but such is perhaps a significantly different endeavor from acquiring skill. This difference, moreover, may generate more frustration than inspiration for the learner. To the extent that the performance of the total exemplar appears “natural” and “effortless,” it will likely appear opaque. It issues from a mastery that renders being a good person natural to the exemplar, but to the moral learner, for whom being a good person may feel deeply unnatural, the direction the exemplar can offer may appear inaccessible. The learner’s own “natural” promptings are untrustworthy and do not produce the effects of the total exemplar any more than do the untutored notes of the novice pianist echo those of the virtuoso. Moreover, the obstacles facing the learner are not typically in evidence in the figure of the total exemplar. If the exemplar yet struggles with himself, he largely suppresses such struggles and effectively

138

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

hides them from view. The learner who wants to be like that may see in that too much that is too unlike herself, and this may manifest in quite defi nite gaps between what the learner needs and what the exemplar can offer. That is, while there will be felt differences with respect to what comes easy and is natural, there will also be defi nite, actual differences that more actively inhibit the efficacy of emulation. As Bernard Williams has argued, the total exemplar enjoys a freedom that the learner cannot. 2 Put most generally, because of his self-mastery, the exemplar’s circumstances are in important ways not those of the learner. In some cases, the exemplar will simply be free from the challenges the learner faces: The moral learner’s comparably novice judgment will get her into daunting situations that the exemplar will simply have the perspicacity to avoid. In other cases, the exemplar will be free to court circumstances the learner is not: The moral learner will, on account of her incomplete mastery of herself, need to avoid situations of temptation that the exemplar could manage with aplomb. The learner may often be faced with an impossible question. Where she asks, “What would the exemplar do in my circumstance?” the answer may well often be, “The exemplar would never get himself into such a spot.” The exemplar would avoid altogether the circumstance the learner faces or would easily withstand the temptation she feels. Moreover, even where a sufficient affi nity can be established, the exemplar may simply be able to get away with things the learner cannot. He may be able to innovate or improvise a response that does not and cannot function to guide others but that nonetheless works because of who he is, much the way a virtuoso can get away with employing unsound technique. The Analects’ presentation of Confucius effectively relieves some concern that the total exemplar cannot provide effective guidance. The Analects’ attention to Confucius’ “infelicities” works to the favor of emulation in ways the tradition’s later, legendary Confucius cannot. Confucius is here sufficiently human to offer some measure of what a learner will need. He can, for example, model error and recovery from error. However, I suspect that the partial exemplar serves as important supplement. The total exemplar’s story is one of learning drawn to some completion, but the partial exemplar summons admiration while yet incomplete. She is admirable in some way, but her incompleteness can perhaps foster and sustain motivation in ways the total exemplar cannot. Simply put, we may not all be capable of becoming total exemplars. One need not deny the theoretical possibility of any person becoming a good person to recognize the reality that many of us have little reasonable hope of doing so. Confucius acknowledges this much when he observes the rarity of sages in the world.3 To focus exclusively on the total exemplar, then, may risk eliding the more modest, yet still worthy, aspiration: the aspiration to be better. The Analects clearly offers a vision of moral mastery in its depiction of Confucius, but it also offers in its depictions of partial exemplars a vision of moral improvement, or moral progress along a path that one will never

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

139

completely traverse. Indeed, the Analects is rich with narrative personae, students and companions of Confucius, who vividly indicate increments of self-cultivation and stages of moral development. While I do not wish to suggest an unwarranted divide between improvement and mastery— one must, after all, engage in the former to achieve the latter—adopting a deliberate focus on these limited exemplars may hold out promise for those of us who fi nd our characters or circumstances less tractable than we would wish. If I despair of ever becoming like Confucius, if I feel acutely the gap between my own efforts and the effortless skill of the good person, I may fi nd effective help and motivating force in that which shows me how to be better than I am. I suspect that the partial exemplars of the Analects operate in just this way. They provide targets for emulation that are nearer to the learner and can thus serve to sustain the learner’s efforts even where she despairs of ever reaching the far target of the total exemplar. The case for approaching the motivations of the learner in this modest way, it should be emphasized, is not a defeatist posture. Quite the contrary, such an approach honors the optimistic therapeutic impulse that so shapes the Analects. Moreover, as Sherri Irvin argues, expansion of moral inquiry to include moral improvement has significant advantages.4 Moral aspiration, she observes, is framed within the circumstances and demands of a life. The more mature this life, the farther along we are in years and acquired commitments, the less margin we have for dramatic change. The mature learner will fi nd, among her established projects and commitments, much that competes with moral cultivation for her energies and attention. In addition to these, she will have habits of mind and action, patterns of value and personality, that will resist wholesale alteration. Sustained moral change, like change in diet, is thus more likely to succeed where it is incremental and modest, where its aims are brought into accord with the facts of our lives as we have lived them thus far. Such is, I believe, deeply consonant with Confucius’ own approach as it features in the Analects. While Confucius proffers historical moral giants as models, he also notably addresses his interlocutors, the moral learners who are his students, with sensitivity to their circumstances and established characters. 5 He answers them where they are and with an eye toward where they may hope to go. So too, he often praises his students, drawing attention to what they get right even where their flaws abide. In sum, I think that the Analects does propose more modest models, partial exemplars, as targets for emulation. In doing so, the text both bridges the distance between total exemplar and learner, and indicates markers of moral progress. A study of the full theoretical function of partial exemplars in the Analects or an analysis of the text’s many such exemplars would perhaps warrant its own book. In this chapter, I want merely to provide a sample study of but one partial exemplar, Confucius’ student, Zilu. In this, as I have with my analysis of Confucius, I will also focus somewhat narrowly on personal

140

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

style. In addition to building on the account of personal style indicated by the example of Confucius, here again my reasoning is that scrutiny of Zilu can yield insight not given full conceptual development in the text. My hypothesis is that just as Confucius effectively points us to an account of the virtuoso’s personal style, Zilu effectively refi nes and deepens this account by modeling an important constituent of moral style and remarking one measure of progress. Zilu does not, to be clear, achieve virtuosity in his personal style. Indeed, relative to many of Confucius’ students, he is often quite graceless. Nonetheless, there are features evident in Zilu, features that Confucius appears to remark and praise, that I believe point to a quality of goodness that Zilu shares with Confucius and to which I alluded in the last chapter. Both Zilu and Confucius exhibit what I describe as “transparency,” an uncommonly direct manner of communicating one’s motivations, intentions, and emotions to others. In Zilu’s transparent demeanor, I argue, we can discern more of how admiration hooks into our empathetic responses to the moral actor’s process. In what follows, I seek to show how the personal style of Zilu serves to indicate the value of transparency and supply the conceptual elaboration of this value that I believe latent in the Analects. Once we follow the direction indicated by the model of Zilu, I believe, we begin also to see more clearly how transparency operates in other, more total models. However, I concentrate on Zilu in fleshing it out. As I suspect is often the case with partial exemplars, the incomplete nature of the model he offers serves to cast into sharper relief the domain in which he awakens admiration. Because there is here “less goodness” to see, it is perhaps easier to isolate and identify what elements of the partial exemplar provoke admiration and moral insight. In following the model of Zilu, then, we have both a way to remark a species of progress, as well as a course to pursue in scrutinizing total exemplars. Let me begin by sketching, in preliminary fashion, why Zilu is of particular interest and detail what the text tells us about Zilu.

THE FIGURE OF ZILU Where we survey the company of students that comprise Confucius’ community, we fi nd a rich variety of personalities and levels of accomplishment. Perhaps predictably, Confucius’ students run the spectrum from exceptionally gifted to intractably indolent. For example, Yan Hui is a student whose talent Confucius fi nds unmatched even in himself (5.9) and Zaiwo seems rather the hopeless case (5.10, 17.21). While I think those we fi nd at the extremes of this spectrum are worthy of careful scrutiny, I wish to focus instead, here and in the next chapter, on those who appear to fall somewhere in between. My particular reasons for addressing Zilu as a model for reflection on personal style will become clearer in the course of my analysis, but let me fi rst adduce some more general reasons for my interest.

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

141

On an exemplarist account of the Analects, we do well to take note of just those figures in the text to which the authors persistently draw our attention. Unlike many of Confucius’ students, who are remarked in only the briefest fashion, Zilu cuts a memorable figure in the text. We see him often and thus know more about him than we can about others. Because we do know more, or effectively have more data with which to work, he permits close analysis. Moreover, as is the case with the Analects’ attention to Confucius’ physical bearing, where the text does offer greater data, we ought to query its significance. We should, that is, operate on the suspicion that the text’s inclusion of fi ner detail is meaningful. On an exemplarist account, we need not assume that all detail is purposive, that the authors have articulate reasons for their attention to it, but where they take note of something, we should too. For the data they provide may inform judgments in operation in the text. I suspect such is the case with Zilu. The most important reason to attend to Zilu resides in understanding Confucius’ relationship to him. Confucius’ judgments of his students’ characters are often evident in his relations to them and his manner with Zilu appears to bespeak a deep affection and caring that is perhaps somewhat puzzling. Zilu is not only flawed, he is in many respects more spectacularly and obviously flawed than Confucius’ other students. Nonetheless, Confucius appears to approve of Zilu and judge his errors more forgivingly than he does others’. He seems, in short, to see something in Zilu that draws his friendship, affection, and even admiration. Where we consider Confucius as expert, adept at reading and evaluating the characters of others, we want, then, to know what it is about Zilu that summons such responses. Indeed, I suspect that the authors of the Analects include so much detail about Zilu in part on account of Confucius’ responses to him. These responses are to the Analects’ authors, in some way, memorable and telling. What they “tell,” however, is not entirely clear. My analysis offers one possible explanation, though I expect that a complete account would be considerably more complex. Let me begin, however, by sketching what the Analects tells us about Zilu, with the data the text offers. Of the students depicted in the Analects, Zilu is indubitably the most colorful. Where some of Confucius’ students figure in the text as little more than narrative devices for soliciting Confucius’ insights, blandly voicing general questions to which Confucius then responds, Zilu features as a presence in his own right and as a personality. In summary, we can observe that Zilu is erratic in his performance of ritual. He sometimes misjudges what is appropriate and even where he avoids obvious misstep, his actions are likely to display a distinctively brash and incautious temperament. Zilu may be relied upon to exhibit uncommon physical bravery but he lacks discipline and it is consequently never quite clear whether he is in fact courageous or merely temperamentally prone to reckless impulsivity. His frequent haste to act is, moreover, coupled with a haste in thinking. He is quick to draw conclusions and form beliefs, and these too have about them

142

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

an air of incaution. Thus he is more likely than most to form opinions and lay plans that are ill-considered and impetuous. Confucius’ counsel for Zilu is sensitive to his shortcomings and is frequently directed at urging Zilu toward greater caution and circumspection. Zilu’s manner qua student is perhaps particularly worthy of note, for it seems clear that whatever commends Zilu to Confucius’ affection and whatever he may model that is suitable for emulation by others, it is not because he is a good student on any predictable or conventional measure. While Zilu is steady where bold action is required, he appears rather unsteady in his acquisition and application of learning. Learning requires patience and careful, deliberate effort, but Zilu is notably impatient. He is decisive (12.12), but his determination to follow a planned course of action is often untempered by careful consideration that would vouchsafe his pursuits to be worthy of his efforts (5.7). Even a passage sometimes interpreted as reflecting Zilu’s conscientiousness as a student, Analects 5.14, suggests that Zilu’s strengths can cut toward weakness. It reads, “When Zilu had learned something but had not yet been able to act on it, his only fear was that he would learn something more.” While this characterization suggests that Zilu is commendably a “man of action” rather than an idle theorizer, it also suggests a weakness. Zilu is habitually poised to act, but his fear of learning something new in the meantime may suggest an inability to retain or manage abstract insight he cannot immediately render concrete. He may, that is, tilt toward action in almost comedic fashion, unable to abide in reflection or court novel reflection where he cannot yet act on it. Despite his limitations, however, Zilu rarely wavers in his commitments. Indeed, he is generally cheerful in them. From Confucius, Zilu receives both praise and criticism. To the former, Zilu proudly clings (9.27); the latter he greets with apparent aplomb.6 What is remarkable in the interaction between Confucius and Zilu is not the repetition of Confucius’ cautions to his student to temper his impetuosity, but the often gentle humor and affection in which these injunctions are framed. While Zilu is far less tractable and teachable than many of Confucius’ other students, he summons from Confucius some of the most affectionate responses contained in the text. For example, Zilu features in Analects 11.26 where Confucius inquires what his students would do if they had recognition and power. Zilu’s answer is characteristically immediate and comes without pause for reflection. While expressing an orthodox desire to improve the conditions of the common people and the harmony of the state, Zilu’s claim is that he would need but three years to give courage and shared purpose to a state, even if the state is “set among powerful neighbors, harassed with foreign armies, and suffering widespread famine.”7 Zilu here not only promises much, he appears to relish the thought of matching his wits and will against the worst conditions a community might encounter. As Confucius notes later in the passage, Zilu’s response is utterly bereft of the deference and careful regard that ruling appropriately with

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

143

ritual requires. Nonetheless, in Zilu’s presence, Confucius’ only rebuke to Zilu’s ambitious and altogether too eager overconfidence is but a smile. Confucius employs a similarly soft rebuke even where Zilu does not merely idly conceive, but enacts, what can only be counted a harebrained plan. When Confucius is ill, Zilu organizes Confucius’ students to pose as loyal retainers (9.12). Confucius’ status does not afford such trappings, but Zilu wishes to give visitors to his ailing teacher the impression that Confucius enjoys the prominence of a feudal lord, complete with a household of retainers in ritual attendance. When Confucius is sufficiently recovered to become aware of the crude masquerade Zilu has been managing, he is appalled, protesting, “It has been a long time indeed that Zilu has been up to such pretenses. If I have no retainers and yet pretend to have them, who am I going to fool? Am I going to fool tian 天?” Zilu’s ruse, to be clear, breathtakingly violates much of what Confucius has taught. As a general matter, it egregiously flouts ritual propriety. More particularly, it flouts Confucius’ own oft stated objections to status seeking. Worse still, the masquerade is ostensibly performed on Confucius’ behalf and presumably for the “benefit” of his reputation while he is in no position to govern his own household and object. Yet despite how dramatically ill-conceived Zilu’s scheme, Confucius’ critical response quickly segues from condemnation to an affi rmation of affection. After decrying Zilu’s misguided effort, Confucius adds, “Wouldn’t I rather die in the arms of my disciples than in the arms of some retainers? Even though I do not get a grand state funeral, I am hardly dying by the roadside.” In this, Confucius scorns what Zilu has sought to provide him but does so by affi rming what Zilu, and his students more generally, already and without affectation provide him. Despite Zilu’s desire that Confucius should have more, Confucius declares the adequacy and even abundance of their friendship. Zilu’s poor judgment is an abiding theme in Confucius’ responses to him, but the men’s relationship appears close and familiar nonetheless. Indeed, as is sometimes the case between friends, Zilu’s weaknesses and Confucius’ knowledge of them appear to draw them closer. In one of the “mad idea” passages, for example, Confucius claims that if the way (dao 道) does not prevail, he may “take to the high seas on a raft,” and adds that he would expect Zilu to be the sort who would join him (5.7). Zilu, for his part, hears this, does not apparently register the mad idea as mad, and is simply delighted. Confucius remarks Zilu’s enthusiasm by wryly noting that Zilu is braver than himself but “he brings nothing with him from which to build the raft.” Confucius’ expression of the mad idea, as I have noted, emerges from what I think is some despair, a sense that his efforts to influence a better world are coming to nought and a desire to acknowledge this in ways that soften the blow through comic self-deprecation. Zilu here features as an unwitting ally in Confucius’ humor—Confucius aspires to do something so foolish that only Zilu could count it reasonable and join him—but also, I suspect, as a balm for despair. Though foolhardy, Zilu is

144 Moral Exemplars in the Analects also loyal and in Confucius’ imagined escape, Confucius will not be alone. Zilu cannot be relied upon to supply the material to build the raft and perhaps cannot feel the despair that motivates it, but he will be there, lending his enthusiasm and friendship to render what Confucius conceives as flight into a grand adventure. In this, I think we see the perhaps inevitably mixed quality of affection between friends, the curious comfort afforded by knowing another and knowing another to be reliable even in his faults. Zilu is at once Confucius’ student and a companion who, should Confucius abandon it all, can be relied upon to follow still. Zilu does not grasp Confucius’ despair, but nonetheless reassuringly answers it by being cheerfully and insistently himself, a steady presence in a world that does not reliably reward Confucius’ efforts. While Zilu’s eager and easy assent to the mad idea may suggest that he will agreeably follow Confucius come what may, Zilu is not, as a rule, agreeable. In fact, Zilu features in the Analects as one of Confucius’ least agreeable students. Many of the conversational exchanges between Zilu and Confucius bear the marks of agon, with Zilu frequently challenging Confucius’ claims and plans. Zilu is not only quick to form conclusions without due reflection, he is also quick to voice these. Rather than await explanation, where he is puzzled by Confucius’ claims or behavior, he assertively challenges or even criticizes his teacher. Moreover, his critical comments are rarely deferential or nuanced in tone. For example, when Confucius claims he would make rectifying names a priority in governing a state, Zilu’s does not simply ask for clarification or elaboration, he fi rst protests by wondering aloud whether Confucius could really be so wide of the mark (13.3.) On another occasion, he frames an objection to Confucius by deploying Confucius’ own past claims to charge his teacher with hypocrisy (17.7). Though not generally known for his learning and study, Zilu’s recall is surprisingly sharp and eagerly displayed where he thinks Confucius has contradicted himself. Confucius’ responses to Zilu’s various challenges and criticisms often answer them in kind. Confucius swears at Zilu (6.28), derides him as thick-headed (13.3), and accuses him of manipulating Confucius’ claims to serve his own ill-conceived desires (11.25). Thus while Zilu sometimes summons remarkably affectionate responses from Confucius, it is not always so. Nonetheless, it is striking that Zilu’s defiance of Confucius and lack of deference does not ultimately appear to compromise their relation. Even in their agon, Confucius and Zilu achieve what strikes me as a species of understanding and accord. Their more biting exchanges sound against a sostenuto of affection, their freedom to bicker and even insult is enabled by shared affection rather than undermining it. Such is to say that some longstanding relations allow one to be one’s worst because one may trust that the affection on which the relation rests will not be withdrawn. I suspect the friendship between Confucius and Zilu is just this sort. Its agon confesses its origin in the freedom of secure affection and friendship.

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

145

I think this evident in Confucius’ softer responses to Zilu’s poor judgment and it is especially evident in two additional passages I wish to consider more closely. In Analects 11.13, we are presented with a simple scene. Four of his students stand in attendance to Confucius. Each man’s posture is briefly remarked: Min Ziqian “was straightforward yet respectful, Zilu was intent, and Ranyou and Zigong were congenial.” The occasion described is apparently unexceptional, a rather ordinary moment among men well familiar with each other. Yet the suggestion is that each man’s physical posture betrays something of his character, that bearing bespeaks temperament, perhaps particularly because they are unguarded and easy with each other. While we know nothing of Confucius’ estimations of his other students at this moment, Zilu’s physical posture is for him pregnant with meaning and elicits a sense of foreboding. Confucius remarks it by predicting, “This Zilu—he will not meet a natural death.”8 In Confucius’ response to Zilu’s posture, it is evident that he judges Zilu’s manner to be deeply revelatory. Zilu is, we are told elsewhere, “rough and rude” (11.18), we see his aggressive mien in his critical interactions with Confucius, and even a quiet scene between friends displays something of this quality. While there is no suggestion that Zilu’s posture is formally inappropriate, it presumably accords with what is proper in a way that rather markedly announces Zilu’s temperament and character. It effectively communicates much of what inhibits Zilu from enjoying greater success in his efforts at self-cultivation, but this is not Confucius’ worry. His reservations manifest in a more personal and direct concern for Zilu. Whether his predictive remark about Zilu’s likely fate is delivered lightly or seriously, we cannot tell, but I expect that regardless of Confucius’ tone, genuine apprehension informs it. If it is but joke, that is, I suspect it is that species of humor we fi nd Confucius elsewhere employing, humor that trades on our inability to exert control. Zilu is who he is, even as he simply stands among his peers. Despite his misgivings about Zilu’s brash incaution, Confucius has been largely powerless to alter it and can but await with trepidation where it might lead. In sum, while Confucius has an abundance of reasons to feel frustration with Zilu, his expressions of frustration with his student sound against the simpler concerns and desires borne of friendship. A thematically similar exchange, in which anxious concern borne of affection more explicitly prevails, is found in Analects 7.35: The Master was gravely ill, and Zilu asked to pray on his behalf. The Master said, “Is this done?” Zilu replied, “Yes, indeed. There is a eulogy which states: “We pray for you to the Gods of the heavens above and the earth below.” The Master said, “Then I have already been praying for myself for a long time now.”

146

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

In this exchange, both Confucius and Zilu feature in ways somewhat unusual, their interaction contoured to the dreadful moment when Confucius’ death appears near. Zilu appears uncharacteristically still. Absent is his usual sharp and quick tongue. There is no impulsive drive to act in haste. Instead, he appears gentled by the circumstance, his request a matter of simple solicitude. He still wants to act, but his “act” can only be tender eulogy. Confucius’ response is similarly uncharacteristic. He must of course know the ritual recitation Zilu wishes to make, yet he queries Zilu. He thus reverses their more typical interaction, allowing Zilu to speak of what he wishes without imposing a master’s authority. Zilu’s answer is a response in kind. There is no agon, no eagerness to point out what the teacher has missed or forgotten. Instead he simply recites the eulogy. And, at last, Confucius finds once again that Zilu has misunderstood. The entirety of Confucius’ life has been his “prayer” and a belated solicitation for some special dispensation is out of keeping with a life lived rightly and ending well. Nonetheless, while Zilu has failed to see this, Confucius declines Zilu’s wish and corrects his error gently, reassuring him that what he wants is already done. This exchange, like Confucius’ foreboding at Zilu’s posture, exposes, I believe, the deeper nature of the relationship between Confucius and Zilu. They strive and contend, quarrel and bicker, but these interactions transpire against a foundational affection. Zilu’s many errors and Confucius’ disapproval, the stuff of their relation as student and teacher, achieves its curious shape because it rests on the familiarity and accord of friendship. Confucius reassures Zilu that he is content to die in the arms of his companions and needs none of Zilu’s masquerade. In the gentled exchange of Analects 7.35 I think we see why. Despite Zilu’s weaknesses and misjudgments, he and Confucius share a trust in which each cares for the other and before which their differences recede. Little Confucius can say will temper Zilu’s brash incaution, but Confucius’ illness and Zilu’s attendant anxieties for his friend and teacher still him. And it is in the shared affection and concern this stillness represents that Confucius’ life stands as prayer and a good death is possible. Finally, before addressing what conclusions I draw from this depiction of Zilu and of his relationship with Confucius, I want to consider one fi nal passage, one that both displays Zilu in his more characteristic manner and that notably depicts Confucius’ defending Zilu to others. Analects 11.15 opens with Confucius protesting Zilu’s playing of the zither. Traditional interpretation of this encounter suggests that Zilu is likely indulging his taste for the martial, playing music that is rather aggressive and not at all to Confucius’ more refined taste.9 When Confucius wryly remarks on this by wondering what Zilu is doing in his school, some of Confucius’ students receive this critique as a sanction to express disrespect for Zilu. Confucius not only rebukes his students for this, he emphatically praises Zilu, noting that while Zilu is no sage and “has not yet entered the inner chamber,” he has nonetheless “ascended the hall.”

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

147

While there is of course a rather straightforward general lesson in Confucius’ rebuke—that one ought not fi nd in others’ faults permission to treat them poorly—I wish to focus on what the passage offers about Zilu specifically. Confucius here takes Zilu’s measure and, despite displeasure at Zilu’s musical performance and frequent disapproval of Zilu regarding other matters, commends him as one who is significantly on his way. Despite Confucius’ own penchant for occasionally mocking or deriding Zilu, he protests that others doing so is unwarranted and urges them to see Zilu as a person of some achievement. Confucius has little hope that Zilu will become a sage,10 but he judges him to have made estimable and worthy progress. Because Confucius does not elaborate, we cannot ascertain just what strengths of Zilu produce this judgment. Nonetheless, I think the judgment made explicit here is implicit throughout the Analects’ descriptions of the relation between Confucius and Zilu. When we place this passage in the wider context of the text’s depiction of Zilu and his relation to Confucius, a certain sense to Confucius’ commendation emerges. Let me now turn to explaining this sense.

PROCESS AND TRANSPARENCY Any account of Zilu’s character must, as my discussion already indicates, take measure of his relation to Confucius. I take it as significant that Confucius and Zilu appear to be not only teacher and student, but friends. We thus know not only that Confucius commends Zilu as having “ascended the hall,” he judges him worthy of friendship. While the imperfections and infelicities of the good person of course cut against any guarantee that the good person’s friends will be worthy, where, as is the case with Zilu, we have no cause to think Confucius dramatically in error, his judgment warrants some deference and attention. My analysis likewise rides on the contours of the teacher-student relation that obtains between the two men and, most especially, on the ways in which this relation is strikingly different from Confucius’ relations with many of his other students. Zilu exhibits what is surely some of the most wrong-headed behavior on display among Confucius’ students as they feature in the Analects. Yet Confucius is comparably mild in his responses to it. Zilu likewise exhibits a tendency toward harsh and hasty critique of his teacher. Yet Confucius, while sometimes repaying Zilu in kind, never dismisses Zilu or repudiates his character the way that he does others.11 In relying principally on Confucius for my affi rmative estimation of Zilu, I do emphasize that the source of any admiration Zilu inspires is likely to be subtle, more readily available the more expert one is.12 I seek, then, to assay what about Zilu endears him to an especially perceptive and “expert” other such as Confucius. Confucius suggests that Zilu serves as a model for improvement and treats him as friend, but what about Zilu explains this?

148

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

In considering the figure of Zilu, there is one superficially easy explanation of how he may operate as a model for others: his purported courage. However, while Zilu is remarked to be bold and largely without fears for his physical safety, it is far from clear that he points us to a virtue such as courage. While his physical bravery is obvious, to call it “courage” is too easy and neglects the complexity of Zilu’s character. As I have noted, Zilu lacks the good judgment that divides courage from foolhardiness and thus we are obliged to wonder whether his apparent bravery results from an incompletely governed temperament that can, in some contexts, look like courage. In other contexts, however, the same disregard for danger will be mere recklessness. Confucius remarks as much on at least one occasion. Zilu, apparently seeking approbation, asks who Confucius would take along were he charged with command of an army. Confucius’ reply unambiguously indicates that it would not be Zilu: “The person who would wrestle a tiger bare-handed or march across the Yellow River, and who would go to his death without regret—this person I would not take along. It would have to be someone who would approach any situation with trepidation, and who would be fond of planning with an eye to success” (7.11). Zilu is good when one wants company in executing a mad idea, when one takes to the sea on a raft; he is not good if one wants instead to execute carefully a well-laid plan for battle. For the latter, he is too ungoverned, too much directed by impulses that he cannot, or fails to, control. Because of this, we must look elsewhere to understand just how he has “ascended the hall.” I think a better answer resides in his personal style. Zilu clearly has a distinctive personal style, recognizable patterns of demeanor and action that function within a set of constraints and operate to reveal his character to others. What I wish to suggest is that while Zilu is no virtuoso, his style nonetheless functions to commend him to Confucius. The element of his style that I think matters most in this regard is what I will call “transparency.” Indeed, I wish to suggest that Zilu is a partial exemplar who points to the importance of transparency for a more thoroughgoing goodness than he himself manages to achieve. To be transparent in the way that the model of Zilu suggests is just to make oneself known, to provide others with what they would require to identify one’s motivations, intentions, and character. It is to decline dissimulation that would effectively foster misimpression in others with respect these matters. Let me frame the direction of my argument fi rst with reference to the conceptual apparatus for understanding style I proposed in the previous chapter. My analysis of Zilu largely extends and builds upon the insight into personal style afforded by the model of Confucius. To recall, appreciation of the style evident in an aesthetic product is rooted in our appreciation of the process we apprehend to have informed the making of that product. In Walton’s and Montero’s idiom, appreciation is fostered where we empathize with or even proprioceive the attitudes and gestures informing a work’s creation. To leverage this account of aesthetic

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

149

style to understand the function of demeanor and manner in shaping our moral evaluations is just to say that personal style appears to disclose salient information about the way a person’s actions come about. In how one performs an act, we see the operation of emotion, motivation, and intention as they structure and contour the meaning of the act. Our empathetic identification with the stuff of process—our own emotional, motivational, and intentional practices—enable an imaginative identification with the processes of others that can seed admiration. We see the smile of another, empathetically feel what it is to smile just so, and read the meaning of the gesture in its circumstance accordingly. In my discussion of Confucius’ personal style, I hypothesized that the admiration he inspires stems from the way in which the processes we see in him are exceptionally well and even seamlessly fitted to the actions he performs and the circumstances in which they are situated. In the musical analogy I proposed, we could say that his style is reliably in keeping with the score he plays and indeed enlivens the score. Thus while others are not as he, they fi nd in his manner that which simultaneously evokes their own experience and borrows from a felt sense of his exceptional achievement. The account of style I propose serves to explain the effect of virtuosity such as we see in Confucius. However, if style works in the way I suggest, we are obliged to acknowledge that our evaluations regarding the style of others operate by way of our own imaginative ascriptions. We read the gestures and manners of others to be revelatory, but whether they do in fact reveal something salient about the process of the moral actor will depend on whether or not our imaginative ascriptions of process are accurate. We empathize based on how we think an action comes about and our subsequent evaluative responses will be more or less apt based on whether what we think is in fact the case, or close to what is the case.13 The more we can be assured that someone is as she appears, the more our imaginative empathetic ascriptions can reliably identify and track another’s process and consequently well ground evaluative responses. Conversely, uncertainty about another’s process can effectively inhibit the empathetic movement that informs these responses. In sum, a precondition for empathetic identification of another’s process and for any subsequent admiration it may awaken is that we trust our impressions of the other. We need confidence that she deploys the smile we fi nd familiar and evocative of our own out of motivations, intentions, and emotions sufficiently similar to our own. There are of course a number of ways in which such confidence can falter, but let me address generally why the trust on which empathy rides is of particularly acute import for the moral sensibility of the Analects. Where we look to a total exemplar such as Confucius, I suspect that the accuracy of our ascriptions of process is of relatively low interest. The full force and effect of a total exemplar is such that our experience is likely to be as holistic as the model himself. Put another way, our imagination does not here need to reach and extend because the total exemplar appears so

150

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

completely to fuse and harmonize what he does with how and why he does it. Because of the exemplar’s effortless skill, our ascriptions are comparably effortless as well. Like the virtuoso pianist, the total exemplar effectively directs our ascriptions, solicits our empathetic identification, and summons our admiration rather seamlessly. This sort of experience, however, is as rare as total exemplars themselves. More often, where we encounter others we will have to interpret demeanor and manner more actively. And the difficulty of imaginatively ascribing processes to what we see of others is, I think, especially complex given the sorts of moral practices endorsed in the Analects. The moral practices of emulation and ritualized conduct so central to the Analects’ program of self-cultivation effectively elevate the need for trust in our ascriptions of process. Where we are enjoined to be as a moral model is or to enact ritually formal behaviors, we risk incentivizing mere replication or fostering misguided efforts that yield only a simulacrum of the values we wish to endorse and enact. This is particularly true with respect to the li, or ritual, where the potential for a pernicious empty formalism is high. This is a complaint raised with some frequency in discussions of the moral significance of manners.14 Because injunctions to be well-mannered enjoin us to craft our appearance in accord with established convention, they can encourage an untoward emphasis on polite form technically well-executed but bereft of feeling. The li carry the same risks. Mastery of their formal demands can elide their symbolic significance and yield what we might call the “soulless performance.” One can enact the standard form conventionally demanded by one’s circumstance absent the motivations, emotions, and intentions it is meant to represent, and one can even look quite good in doing so. While considerably more complex, emulation may carry some of the same risk. One may replicate the appearance of the moral model and even successfully approximate this appearance but do so absent any of the characterological elements that inform it. Confucius appears throughout the Analects to recognize the perils of mere replication and empty formalism in the performance of the li. We fi nd him emphasizing the difference between that which is superficially appropriate and that which is substantively appropriate, averring, for example, that fi ne-sounding speech should not be mistaken for ren (1.3). The worry here, I expect, is that fi ne sounding speech may effectively seduce the hearer into ascribing sincerity where it does not obtain, the speaker taken for what he is not. Confucius appears, in short, to recognize that our imaginative ascriptions of the processes of others can go awry in ways that will undermine the values we seek to enact. Form can conceal and distort as well as reveal. If, then, we are to fi nd form revealing the character of another, we must fi rst have trust that he is as he appears, that his fi ne speech emerges from fi ne sentiment or, more generally, that the shared symbolic meanings that seem to feature in his demeanor are vouchsafed by the motivations, emotions, and intentions that belong to them. Once we grant that trust in our impressions of others is foundational to empathetically reading their processes and forming our moral evaluations,

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

151

we have an interest in how such trust is achieved. Confucius offers one model of course, but I suspect that Zilu is another. Confucius’ performances achieve their effect through his exceptional mastery, his virtuosity in bringing his processes in accord with the instruments, scores, and moods of the li. This, however, is clearly not the case with Zilu. Indeed, he is as the performer who will seemingly play any score in much the same way as any other. In Zilu’s hand, any music is likely to be brash, incautious, hasty in tempo, the difference between the funeral dirge and the love melody distorted by a process altogether too uniform to do them justice. What I want to suggest, however, is that while this is a failing of a sort, it nonetheless illuminates a constituent of goodness. Zilu is, in short, commendable because he is transparent, even when in error, and in this he illuminates the mechanics of trust. Just as our moral concepts, if they are to be meaningful, require some hook in our experience, so too our capacity to admire requires a hook. We need to recognize our common humanity with the exemplar in order to feel the motivating summons to be like him. Zilu is a potent model of how such hooks are found. Where an aim of our moral practices, such as those formalized in the li, is to promote thriving relations with others, we cannot simply be formally proper, we must be available. We must, that is, expose and communicate to others something of what moves and motivates us. To recall, like art, the gestures and demeanor of personal style are made things. They issue from a maker and solicit our empathetic identification because we too are makers. Our sense of others as makers is found not in the forms and conventions we share, but in the way these are rendered particular and distinctive. It is on this score that Zilu excels. Zilu’s assertive bearing, his impetuosity, and his habitually brash demeanor make him known to others. His style effectively announces what moves him and one need not wonder what he is about. His motivations, intentions, and emotions are abundantly evident in the figure he cuts. While his persistent bravura engenders Confucius’ concern for Zilu’s future, it also renders him curiously reliable. We may not trust Zilu’s judgment, but we may trust him or, more precisely, trust that we know him. For Zilu, form does not conceal, it reveals. Even where he simply stands among his fellows, he shows himself. There is thus little ambiguity or mystery, little cause to wonder whether what we ascribe to Zilu in understanding the processes that inform his behavior and demeanor are what, in fact, are the case. That he is a partial exemplar pointing to the value of transparency is evident if we consider more carefully not just that we know him, but how.

ZILU’S CONTEXT Confucius insists that he keeps nothing hidden from his students, that the person he is is always on display (7.24). I think the same is largely true of Zilu, though in the case of Zilu what matters most is what we see of him as

152

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

a learner who is so decidedly incomplete and, most especially, how he manages that incompleteness. Put another way, it is one thing for Confucius, with his exceptional self-mastery and virtuosity, to hide nothing from others, but it is quite another for a learner such as Zilu to do so. Confucius can have some confidence that what others see of him will redound to his credit, but Zilu cannot. Moreover, Zilu’s transparency is particularly significant given the context in which he operates and the community he inhabits. It bears emphasizing that Zilu inhabits a community with particular features. It is most notably a community of learning led by a charismatic master teacher and populated by many avid and devoted students. Certain features of this community, and of communities of learning more generally, can effectively work against its members being too free in communicating themselves. The community has shared aims and aspirations, perhaps best articulated and inspired by its leader but effectively endorsed and authorized by the community as a whole. While the community works collectively toward its shared aims, each member is in effect charged with drawing himself closer to the standard to which all aspire and indeed with upholding, as best he can, that standard. The interplay between the community’s common purpose and the individual learner’s participation in that purpose creates pressures to improve and excel. Such is of course how the community works, how it effectively fosters and sustains the improvement of its members, but the pressure produced by shared purpose can also promote suppression rather than correction of flaws. While learning requires the careful navigation and correction of weaknesses, the desire to be learned can often transmute into the desire to conceal weaknesses. Status and approbation keyed to excellence can create incentives to fashion an appearance of competency or even mastery while hiding failings and flaws. Put simply, for a learner who inhabits a community that prizes and praises learning, the desire to learn can compete with, and sometimes lose to, the desire not to appear unlearned. The tension between the desire to learn and the desire not to appear unlearned may register in a number of immediate and self-undermining ways in the behavior of the learner—the more she strives to conceal her weaknesses, the less help she will fi nd for remediating them—but what I wish to address here is less such behavioral consequences than the learner’s existential situation. The conflicting desires for learning and not appearing unlearned point, I think, to a deeper dilemma for the learner. The impulse to learning requires some measure of dissatisfaction with oneself—one must want to be better than one is—but the mechanics of learning also require a measure of satisfaction with oneself. Some contentment with where one is, and indeed with who one is, is requisite to exposing one’s needs and deficits, and thereby fi nding the means to address them. This is, I think, all the more important where emulation functions as a prominent element in learning, where, as is the case with Confucius’ students, one is regularly confronted with the virtuosity of a model who inspires, certainly, but who also and

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

153

rather markedly is not prey to one’s own failings. Exposure to such a model can and will promote great dissatisfaction with oneself, his seemingly easy excellence serving to emphasize the learner’s difficulties and failings. Perversely, the exemplar can worsen the learner’s existential situation. The student who has a model such as Confucius has at once a teacher who can perceptively aid him in remedying his failings and a source of pressure that renders satisfaction with himself exceptionally difficult. At a rather immediate level, the learner will want the exemplar’s approval and approbation, and such can operate both as another incentive to hide weakness and as incentive not to take risks. The learner pianist in the presence of a virtuoso, for example, may want to dissimulate about his failure to practice enough or avoid performing a challenging piece that would build his skill but would not show his existing skill to best effect. More deeply, however, while the exemplar serves as a source of inspiration, the divide between exemplar and learner can serve as an existentially destabilizing contrast. The sense of satisfaction the learner needs in order to expose his weakness is rendered more difficult by his seeing in the exemplar how far he has yet to go and thus how unsatisfied he should be with himself. Moreover, the dissatisfaction that drives learning can intensify such that the learner effectively loses himself to it and becomes too driven by the exemplar. The learner wants to be like Confucius, but one must become like Confucius by becoming an exemplary version of oneself. To adapt Julia Annas’ dictum, where one wants to be like Confucius, one must in some measure give up trying to be like him. What I wish to emphasize here is the strength of the temptation to merely be like Confucius and indeed to be Confucius. The existential situation I here want to describe is, I think, well captured by Jorge Luis Borges. In his short comedic story about context and originality, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Borges describes the efforts of Pierre Menard, a 20th-century novelist, to write Don Quixote. Menard is effectively engaged in literary emulation, albeit of a rather bizarre sort. He does not wish to copy the Quixote, but to write it. Moreover, he “did not want to compose another Quixote—which is easy—but the Quixote itself.”15 In the idiom for describing personal style I have employed, Menard has a product he wishes to produce and that product already exists. His immediate dilemma then is how to make it. What I want to consider is the technique he abjures. As Menard considers the various ways in which he might write the Quixote, a sure technique immediately presents itself: “Know Spanish well, recover the Catholic faith, fight against the Moors or the Turk, forget the history of Europe between the years 1602 and 1918, be Miguel de Cervantes.” He could do what had been done before by simply becoming the person who had done it. Instead, Menard quickly dismisses this approach as “too easy,” recognizing that “of all the impossible ways of carrying it out, this was the least interesting.”16 He thus not only declines to copy the text, he declines to copy its author. He wants to be the author of the

154 Moral Exemplars in the Analects Quixote but to do so as himself. The success of his Quixote, although it is word-for-word identical to Cervantes’, resides in its thus being a product that confesses an entirely different process. Menard’s reasons for saying what he does in his Quixote, though he says “only” what Cervantes does, are and can only be different, and this difference makes a difference to how the works of each are understood and evaluated.17 While Borges’ story is of course deliberately fantastic, it suggestively captures something of the dilemmas presented by the interaction of product and process, and of exemplar and learner. As Menard entertains the technique of writing the Quixote by becoming Cervantes, he draws out the way that captivation with a product can distort our orientation toward process, and captivation with an exemplar can distort our orientation toward ourselves. Menard points to the temptation to be someone else, to trade one’s own processes for those perceived to yield an enviably masterful product. Borges’ eccentric story merely casts into an absurdly sharp relief what strikes me as a strategy with some appeal. While it is of course impossible to be someone else, when we are faced with a goal that itself seems impossible, this fact may be easily obscured. There are, as Menard suggests, myriad impossible ways to write the Quixote and, relative to these, to be Cervantes would be easy. Presumably, if one can become Cervantes, writing the Quixote (again) would make for comparably quick and easy work. Nonetheless, as Borges suggests, credit is owed Menard for not trying. Let me now draw what I take from this away from Borges’ eccentric idiom and into the context of Confucius and his students. Confucius operates for his students as a kind of Cervantes, his self-cultivation his Quixote. Insofar as he stands as model and measure of what his students aspire to be and to do, the temptation to a kind of easy impossibility is great. His self-mastery and its resultant products, his thoroughgoing command of the li and his generally seamless grace in them, operate as a goal rendered more distant by the felt wide divide the learner apprehends between himself and Confucius. Where the learner compares himself to the virtuoso, as he must do if he is to improve, it can seem, I hazard, impossible to reach that goal as oneself. Indeed, the aim of learning is, ultimately and legitimately, the transformation of the person, the old self yielding through moral cultivation to a new and better self. In this context, looking to the exemplar can clarify that one must change, but not, or not readily, how. The need for transformation is effectively communicated by the model, but what he cannot answer is the particular nature of the transformation another must undergo. Qua exemplar, he can only model what transformation means and has meant for him. What it means and will mean for the learner is something the learner must work out for himself. The exemplar and learner may share an apparently common product or “Quixote,” but the learner must write it for himself, by himself, and as himself. Because this is of course so difficult to do, trying to be the model may seem comparably easy. Put more precisely and less fantastically, one can try to remedy

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

155

dissatisfaction with oneself and address one’s need to be better by assuming a simulacrum of someone better, being “like” him through derivative mimicry and crude imitation. Such is of course why it is so common in the arts for works to fail precisely because they too closely echo the works of predecessors. The same impulses that drive derivative art can, I expect, drive efforts at moral emulation, the learner too completely suppressing himself and too completely following his model. In sum, I think taking Zilu’s measure requires taking measure of the community he inhabits. Just as treatments of Confucius qua exemplar can incline toward eliding his idiosyncrasies and imperfections, so too, treatments of his community can elide its complexities and challenges. To be sure, Confucius and his students enjoy the pleasures of common purpose and the rich accord borne of common struggle, but we do well not to romanticize this. Like many learning environments, the same pressures that make it work make it difficult to inhabit with ease. Like many virtuosi, the same forces that make Confucius inspiring to his students make their existential challenges more potent. It is in this context that Zilu features as rather remarkable. With so many incentives to hide his many failings, he does not; with so many reasons to develop an existentially corrosive dissatisfaction with himself, he does not.

ZILU’S QUIXOTE In parsing what is remarkable about Zilu and what I think Confucius in particular may see in him, let me begin with what is most obvious. One can readily imagine the many incentives a student such as Zilu will have to be more opaque. Indeed, one cannot but wonder why Zilu, given his rather dramatic and even occasionally ridiculous excesses, does not try harder to hide himself. Unlike the student who tries to appear competent by declining to ask questions about what she does not understand, Zilu uninhibitedly leaps in to challenge Confucius. He does not hide doubt, but freely expresses it. Moreover, we know he is not above a bit of deception or immune to the seductive pull of status—his creative ruse to simulate for Confucius the status of a feudal lord demonstrates this—so one can only wonder why he does not try to simulate for himself a more impressive image. He does, after all, suffer regular rebuke for his failings and even becomes a target of mockery among his peers. There is little doubt that a measure of dissimulation would go a long way toward improving his standing among others. While I have claimed that Zilu is neither a good student nor courageous, there is a sense in which his transparency, his effective refusal to dissimulate, makes him nearer to both. I think we see these aspects of Zilu in a number of particular contexts. In Analects 11.26, where Zilu immodestly declares his eagerness to transform a besieged state, we clearly see Zilu displaying his principal flaw,

156 Moral Exemplars in the Analects a boldness that here may register as a rather overreaching naked ambition. However, where we look more closely at the full exchange between Confucius and his students, I think Zilu offers more than this. Zilu is of course the fi rst to speak in answer to Confucius’ question about what his students would do if given power. His answer earns a rebuking smile from Confucius. Most immediately, then, Zilu here, in expressing what he would want, receives his teacher’s implied assessment and correction. Less directly, I suspect that this exchange informs all that follows. Put simply, Zilu is far from alone among Confucius’ students in having ambitions beyond his reach. They all, by defi nition, have hopes and aspirations, and I venture that as is so often the case with students, some of them hope and aspire beyond what is reasonably within their abilities. In fact, Ranyou, who here gives a comparably modest answer to Confucius’ query, is disowned by Confucius for his service to the immoral Ji family, service Ranyou presumably undertakes in a sacrifice of values to raw ambition (11.17). It is thus all the more striking that it is Zilu alone who voices his keen but injudicious desire. Indeed I suspect Zilu is the reason others do not, the rebuke he receives effectively tempering what Ranyou and Zihua subsequently say. It may be the case that these students take the lesson implicit in Confucius’ response to Zilu and thereby adjust their own expectations. More likely, at least in the case of Ranyou, I suspect he simply dissimulates about the reach of his own ambition. Moreover, if Confucius is the perceptive teacher the Analects suggests, he likely understands the forces at work here. His response to Zilu, the simple smile, may be gauged to, and gentled by, recognition of Zilu’s honesty. In sum, many of Confucius’ students have high ambitions, but Zilu is distinctively transparent about his. With Zilu’s transparency about his ambitions in mind, I think it possible to revisit his most obviously egregious error—his scheme to have Confucius’ students pose as retainers in order to simulate a higher status for Confucius. Most immediately, we fi nd here the same sort of freely owned ambition Zilu expresses in Analects 11.26. Zilu wants, and is uninhibited in wanting, a better lot in life and greater success for Confucius, and presumably for Confucius’ students as well. Moreover, while his scheme is deceptive, it also serves to communicate an understandable disappointment. Confucius does not, in his lifetime, achieve the influence he wants and his students believe him to deserve. Zilu’s ruse confesses the disappointment and perhaps even resentment this engenders. Thus, although Zilu can appear grasping in this passage, what he grasps for registers as a kind of protest against ungenerous fate. Confucius appears to be dying, the opportunities for better success receding, and such will be the end of hope for a better, more just outcome to all his efforts. In all of this—from his craving for recognition for Confucius to his disappointment and resentment—I expect Zilu communicates the emotional toll their way of life takes on many of Confucius’ students. Indeed, while Zilu is no natural or obvious leader among Confucius’ students, he does successfully recruit others to his

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

157

scheme. When Confucius’ concludes his condemnation of Zilu’s ruse with the reassurance that he is content to die among his companions, he is, I suspect, trying to salve the wounded hopes of Zilu and his other students. That is, Confucius’ initially sharp response to the act Zilu has performed softens in response to the processes from which it issues. Confucius offers a softening response to Zilu’s foolish scheme, but his responses are more typically sharp and sometimes biting. I have already suggested that the more agonistic exchanges between Confucius and Zilu seem the stuff of friendship rather than alienated discord, but let me elaborate this suggestion with reference to Zilu’s transparency. I think we see in these exchanges Zilu and Confucius at their most transparent and uninhibited. It is important to reinforce that, as is the case with Zilu’s ambition and disappointment, his challenging and critical comments to Confucius likely reflect what other students think as well. For example, when Zilu expresses great displeasure with Confucius’ visit to Nanzi, a consort of low repute, he almost surely says what others are thinking but loath to say (6.28). What I want to suggest is that Zilu’s habit of freely giving voice to objections, his transparency in disagreement, effectively has a liberating effect on Confucius. Here again it is necessary to consider Zilu’s various objections and challenges to Confucius in their context. The more typical mode of interaction we see between Confucius and his students is marked by deference. His students ask questions, certainly, but these are generally solicitations for Confucius’ views about various matters and are blandly respectful in tone. If I am correct that Zilu is not only more free with his challenges and disagreement with Confucius, but that he often confesses what others will not, Confucius’ affection for Zilu achieves new sense. What is distinctive about Zilu is not the fact that he frequently fails to understand Confucius, but that he freely communicates misunderstandings many have but decline to express. In this, he gives Confucius something quite valuable. Most immediately, he gives Confucius, qua teacher, a more realistic sense of what his students draw from their interactions with him. More ambitiously, he gives Confucius the resistance that can stimulate Confucius’ own efforts. Confucius remarks of his best student, Yan Hui, that he “is of no help to me. There is nothing that I say that he doesn’t like” (11.4). While Confucius revises his judgment of Yan Hui, the sentiment about what constitutes “help” he here expresses touches, I believe, on what Zilu offers. Zilu’s challenges give Confucius opportunity to consider and clarify his own assumptions, judgments, and actions. In defending himself to Zilu, he is obliged to work his own thoughts and actions. Equally important, Zilu’s free manner frees Confucius’ own, Zilu’s transparency eliciting the same from Confucius. For example, in response to Zilu’s objections to his visit to Nanzi, Confucius hotly swears at Zilu that tian can abandon him if he’s done anything wrong, an oath he repeats in emphasis. My suspicion is that Confucius enjoys the freedom to swear such oaths and appreciates Zilu for the opportunity to make them. To

158 Moral Exemplars in the Analects employ a bit of slang, Zilu allows Confucius to “keep it real.” Where others may be constrained by deference, worried about how their objections may expose their weaknesses in understanding, and, frankly, intimidated by their teacher’s superior learning and acumen, Zilu treats him as nothing so much as a man—a fellow human being who is flawed, who may misjudge and err, and who must, like others, sometimes explain himself. Zilu is not overawed, he does not want to be Confucius but is quite himself, and in consequence, I think he lets Confucius more openly be himself. Confucius is, with Zilu, free to confess the frustrations, exasperation, and even disgust that his efforts to teach more generally and sometimes summon. He cannot do this with other students, I expect, for such would be to damage them. To the extent that they are motivated in the ways I suggest, harshness would be far more wounding and would risk exacerbating a reserve borne of insecurity. I suggested earlier that Confucius often repays Zilu in kind and I think that, when we consider their relation in wider context, this is less a matter of paying rudeness with rudeness than of paying comfort with comfort. Zilu is easy with Confucius and Confucius can be easy with him. Zilu uninhibitedly lets Confucius know where he stands and Confucius can reciprocally do the same. In making the case that Zilu is uncommonly transparent, I have so far emphasized the most pronounced features of his personal style, his habitual incaution and bravura. While these features of his persona are what we most often see in Zilu, it is important to recognize that he is not always so. Indeed, I think the sense that he is transparent is buttressed by those moments when his bravura deserts him. Even when Zilu is not brave or bold, he is transparent. Others know where he stands even where his emotions and responses to circumstance are discordant with his reputation as confidently fearless, even where his transparency will alert others that “brave Zilu” is afraid. His gentle interaction with and desire to pray for Confucius are, I believe, one such case. He features here as nothing so much as apprehensive, fearful that Confucius will die and that there is little he can do. Perhaps even more potently, on at least one occasion, we see his bravura rather dramatically desert him. In Analects 15.2, we learn that Confucius and his students are in dire straits. They are without provisions and starving. As they become “so feeble they could not stand up,” Zilu is distressed. He asks Confucius, “Do even exemplary persons (junzi 君子) fi nd themselves in such adversity?” Confucius’ reply is effectively calming, noting that the junzi is one who can withstand trouble while the petty person will be defeated by it. While Zilu’s manner here is not entirely unfamiliar—he does, after all, freely voice his protest—he nonetheless appears to confess anxiety and even fear out of keeping with his more usual intrepid persona. Confucius and his students are suffering the agonies of starvation and Zilu alone gives voice to what it costs him, though here again I expect his feelings are more widely shared. Though proud of his reputation for bravery and despite his interest

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

159

in appearing fearless, Zilu is transparent even when to be so is to expose his own fear and misgivings. He harbors doubt, his commitment to selfcultivation and the shared enterprise in which they are engaged is shaken. In voicing this, he reveals a deep vulnerability and admits the difficulty of what they do and endure. In sum, I take Zilu’s manner, his personal style, to be distinctively revelatory. He shows an uncommon ease both with expressing his motivations, intentions, and emotions and also, I think, with what he expresses. He is not, to be sure, possessed of the same refi nements of a well-ordered process we see in Confucius, but he is a learner who is sufficiently satisfied with himself to reveal himself to others, even when to do so is to let others see him err and to court disapprobation and disrespect. It is in this way that I think he has succeeded in “ascending the hall.” Put another way, he clearly has quite some distance to go, but he has begun his own Quixote. Whatever he makes of himself will reflect processes all his own and the product, however much it may conform to precedent, will bear marks of his process. While Zilu has accomplished a rather difficult element of self-cultivation, it is also important to observe how his abiding errors feature in building trust. Zilu’s lacks proficiency with crafting a formally appropriate demeanor and frequently fails to meet well the conventional standards of propriety. However, where trust is concerned, this is preferable to a technical mastery of form that would enable more apparently pleasing results. As I shall argue more extensively in the next chapter, to the extent that the technically impeccable fails to betray, or appears to conceal, the maker in its mechanically pristine product, it will inhibit the exercise of our empathetic capacities. If style is to foster trust, then insofar as technically “flawed” style reflects a process with which we can achieve empathy, it can function to assure us, to engender trust that we do rightly understand the process we apprehend in the product. Moreover, it can effectively strengthen the empathetic bonds between ourselves and others. Indeed, I venture that Zilu’s transparency in his errors may work to promote the empathetic consideration of others. This is, I expect, why Confucius responds to Zilu’s errors with greater indulgence. Put more generally, Zilu’s capacity to inspire trust rides in part on the visibility of his flaws. In my examination of Confucius, I suggested that, like a virtuoso pianist, he may enjoy more latitude where error is concerned. The expectations that accompany virtuosity incline others to attend more carefully to what he offers. Thus even where he errs, others are more likely to appreciate finer aspects of his performance for they are disposed to attend more closely to it, effectively registering and remarking more because of their heightened attention. While Zilu does not enjoy the same latitude, his transparency may afford a more modest power where error is concerned. As the effective communication of one’s motivations, intentions, and emotions, a transparent manner operates to notify others of one’s process. Because he

160

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

is transparent, where Zilu fails, his failures fi nd ready explanation. One may fi nd him misguided in his motivations and poorly regulated in his emotions, but one will know why he acts as he does. I suspect that, for Confucius at least, Zilu’s failings are more endearing and invite more forgiving responses because the character from which they issue is without dissimulation. Because he is as he seems, even in his errors, Zilu inclines others, particularly perceptive others such as Confucius, to generosity in their interaction with him. Zilu elicits greater sympathy from Confucius, I venture, in no small measure because he declines to hide despite the many incentives to do so. He is, among Confucius’ students, remarkably uninhibited by the desire to appear better than he is, unafraid to get things wrong and to be seen to get things wrong. In this, he risks Confucius’ displeasure and the disapprobation and disrespect of his peers, but in tolerating this risk, he also secures the more forgiving responses that emerge from trust. While Zilu is not perhaps conventionally courageous, he does perhaps possess a refi ned species of courage, the courage to reveal himself even where what he thereby exposes is no credit to him. He is reliably himself and shows himself in all his complexity, and in this, others can fi nd grounds for the trust on which empathy rides. In its focus on his transparency, the portrait I offer of Zilu may perhaps be criticized as too generous. I here highlight the way in which he makes himself known to others and, in his characteristic demeanor, provides a kind of surety that builds trust and promotes generosity. It cannot, however, be denied that Zilu is overdetermined by temperament and lacks facility in responding to circumstances. He will be himself come what may and, in this, he lacks the agility to fit himself and his conduct to the demands of diverse circumstances. Rather than being shaped by the needs of an occasion, his posture is, in significant ways, likely to display a sameness. In this, he does err. Indeed, I think it fair to say that in some measure Zilu features as a bit of a clown, a figure whose dogged singularity in manner may render his univocal performances comedic and thus invite ridicule or disrespect. Nonetheless, while there may be much that bars Zilu’s entrance into “the inner chamber” and into sagehood, he has “ascended the hall.” This is, I expect, because his errors are of a more tolerable type, a type of excess Confucius explicitly judges more forgivingly than others. My interpretation of Zilu’s character enfolds recognition of Zilu’s many excesses in what Confucius claims elsewhere about species of excess. Zilu’s manner, as I read it, corresponds to an observation Confucius makes about grief as it informs and sustains the formal ritualized practices of mourning. Where we understand grief to be the raw, immediate, and spontaneous emotive response to loss, and mourning to be the affected, formal, and public expression of sorrow, Confucius avers that it is better to err on the side of an excess of grief than an excess of mourning (3.4). It is the real human sorrow of grief that motivates mourning and while mourning should regulate our sorrow, it is no substitute, nor should the gestures of mourning

A Partial Exemplar: Zilu

161

supplant the priority of earnest emotion. So too general formal conventions that govern demeanor should organize the expression of temperament and character, they should facilitate knowing, and being known by, others, but they cannot be an end in their own right. Zilu marks an indication of moral progress, then, not because he does not err, but because he errs in the right direction. Whatever we may make of the occasional impropriety of his demeanor, we are unlikely to imagine that we do not know him or to suspect that he is false with us. Like the rawness of grief, Zilu has about him the quality of immediacy and presence that vouchsafe formal expressions, even where they are clumsy or inept, as trustworthy. In granting that Zilu is at once transparent and that his manner represents a species of excess, I suggest that Zilu is akin to the learner pianist whose raw energy and fervor prevents a polished performance, but who, in just this, serves to remind others how central fervor is to music. The demands of self-cultivation are in many ways like those of music. There is much the learner must do to discipline and regulate himself in accord with the technical and formal demands of his “art.” Before becoming an “artificer of the world,” the learner must become an “artificer of himself,” transforming raw energy into disciplined expression. Zilu does not wholly succeed in this, but he points to the importance of communicating even unpolished processes as part of one’s “art.” I think the full effect of what Zilu offers is all the more apparent where we consider a model in many ways his opposite, Zigong, and it is to Zigong as a negative model, an exemplar of opacity, that I now turn.

7

A Partial Exemplar Zigong

Just as the Analects proposes total moral exemplars and partial moral exemplars, so too it proposes negative exemplars. Here again, I expect that such exemplars are originally identified through direct reference and in advance of any articulated, abstract account of moral failing. Such is to say that among our experiences of others, we sometimes see another and effectively conclude that whatever goodness is, it is not that. More dramatically, we may even conclude that whatever badness is, it is that. The exemplar here inspires aversion rather than admiration, and inclines us against wanting to be like him. A conceptual and general account of moral failure or of particular vices, can in turn be derived from scrutiny of such models. We query what they offer in an effort to assay and specify just what sources aversive responses. As is the case with positive moral exemplars, negative moral exemplars can generate a process of inquiry in which our models seed reflection and generate general abstract moral concepts and schemata. While I think the Analects does propose negative exemplars, it is important to observe, in a general fashion, the comparably narrow scope of these models and how they feature in the text. It seems clear that negative models are of far less interest to Confucius and to the text’s authors. It is the virtues and the models that indicate them that enjoy their attention and we fi nd no concerted and organized effort to identify and specify vices. While there are a few clearly “bad actors” in the Analects, they are not described in any great detail, nor do they appear to generate the impulse to understanding we see arising from the text’s positive models. The Three Families, for example, are decried for their violations of traditional ritual, but apart from remarking their breaches of propriety and efforts to usurp power, neither Confucius nor the Analects’ authors seek to specify more exactly an accounting of their failures.1 The Analects’ comparative poverty of negative models is mirrored by a poverty of vocabulary for moral failing. While we can rather effortlessly compile a catalog of virtues specified in the Analects, the text only rarely indicates any corresponding catalog of vices. 2 The most frequently used term of disapprobation, xiaoren 小人—the “small” or “petty person”—generally features as a contrast term, its meaning cashed out against the junzi.3

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

163

The most potent negative models we find in the Analects, those the text seems pitched to try to understand more fully, tend to model rather mild species of moral failing. Just as Confucius is not Jesus, not a model that purports to be perfect, so too the Analects has no Judas, no model that breathtakingly fails and thus points to a badness dramatic in its severity and costs. Instead, what I think we fi nd are models who point to much more nuanced and subtle faults. Indeed, I think in many cases the Analects’ negative models largely serve to indicate moral aspiration gone wrong. They are, that is, individuals who are in some measure and with some energy pursuing the self-cultivation Confucius encourages. Their failures transpire in the context of this pursuit. Put another way, the models here are all partial exemplars, the “badness” to which they direct understanding of fairly limited compass. Like the most potent positive partial exemplars, they come from among Confucius’ students. In my judgment, the most striking of these is Zigong. Zigong is not, to emphasize, dramatic in his moral failing. Indeed, my choice of him as a negative model may seem counterintuitive. Unlike Zaiwo, for example, Zigong does not come in for the harshest of Confucius’ criticism. Unlike Zilu, he does not commit egregious errors that rather predictably earn censure. Given this, let me briefly and in anticipation adduce my reasons for focusing on Zigong. Some of the incentives to consider Zigong mirror those that favor considering Zilu. The Analects tells us more about Zigong than about many of Confucius’ other students and we thus have a comparably robust body of data with which to work. The fullness of the text’s depiction of Zigong likewise generates curiosity about why Zigong warrants the authors’ attention. Most basically, however, I think Zigong, like Zilu, features in the Analects as a somewhat puzzling case. This is clearest when drawn in explicit contrast with Zilu. Where Zilu gets much wrong and yet enjoys Confucius’ affection, friendship, and commendation, Zigong apparently gets comparably little wrong and yet does not appear to enjoy the same accord with his teacher. Where Zilu seems often not to try, or not to try very hard, to address his weaknesses and discipline his excesses, Zigong does seem to try. Finally and at risk of appealing to a subjective sense other readers may not share, the effect of the Analects’ presentation of these two students strikes me as peculiar. I venture that readers of the Analects may, as Confucius seems to do, fi nd Zilu’s persona arousing good humored sympathy. Despite his many errors and excesses, Zilu is easy to like. In contrast, of the students portrayed in the Analects, I would venture that Zigong is one of the more difficult for the reader to like. Despite his apparent learning and his generally reliable avoidance of obvious missteps, he awakens little sympathy. There are, moreover, at least some indications that Confucius too has this response to Zigong. To emphasize, Zigong does not appear to enjoy friendship and affectionate accord with his teacher, and once again I take Confucius’ responses as particularly significant.

164 Moral Exemplars in the Analects As I have with Confucius and Zilu, I will here look most closely at those aspects of Zigong that concern his personal style, the distinctive patterns of manner and demeanor he exhibits. I think both that the model of Zigong can importantly enrich the account of style I have developed and that his failings are, in some measure, attached to his style. My hypothesis is that just as Zilu can point to the value of transparency, Zigong can point to the disvalue of opacity. In this, Zigong, qua partial exemplar of moral failing, can lend depth to a more robust conceptual account of the role of transparency in the good person. In marking a way in which moral aspiration can go wrong, he likewise offers a kind of cautionary tale for moral improvement. Let me fi rst outline what the Analects tells us about Zigong.

THE FIGURE OF ZIGONG Despite the frequency with which Zigong appears in the Analects, his character proves difficult to sketch.4 What is clear is that, among Confucius’ students, Zigong is one of the most avid in pursuing refinement. Zigong is an eager learner of the ritual traditions and literature that Confucius judges foundational in self-cultivation. On one occasion, Zigong responds to Confucius’ teaching by reciting a passage from the Odes that richly amplifies Confucius’ claim, a response that leads Confucius to remark with pleasure that Zigong is just the sort of person with whom he can discuss the Odes (1.15). When asked by a skeptical interlocutor to defend the need for refi nement, Zigong likens the unrefi ned person to a tiger or leopard shorn of its distinctive and beautiful pelt (12.8), a vivid and compelling response that appears consonant with what Confucius himself avers about the rites providing “color” that adorns the basic dispositions (3.8). Indeed, Zigong appears to be a keen student of Confucius’ manner, explaining Confucius’ behavior to others (1.10) and loyally defending Confucius to those skeptical of the master’s authority (9.6, 19.24). As Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont observe, “much of the flattering profi le of Confucius collected in the Analects is cast in the words of the eloquent Zigong.”5 This is particularly true of the late passages of Book 19, where we fi nd Zigong lauding Confucius’ unmatched achievements and influence (19.22. 19.23, 19.24, 19.25). Here and elsewhere, Zigong features as one who perceptively apprehends Confucius’ potency as a model and ably communicates it to others, his remarks on Confucius both highlighting and displaying the cultured dignity Confucius recommends. Confucius clearly judges Zigong to be capable of undertaking an official position, noting that Zigong is attentive and would have little trouble undertaking official duties (6.8). Yet despite Confucius’ confidence on this score, it is also apparent that he is troubled by Zigong’s failings. While Zigong cultivates a learned and refi ned mien, there is some worry that he is too facile with surface appearances and inattentive to the substantive qualities

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

165

of character that ought underlie them. Confucius pronounces Zigong “eloquent” (ning 佞), a distinction Zigong shares with Zaiwo (11.3), a student Confucius credits with making him distrust what people say (5.10).6 While Confucius nowhere makes such a pointed remark about Zigong’s eloquence, the concern he expresses about Zaiwo—that Zaiwo does not match his conduct to his fi ne speech, that appearance outpaces reality— must in some measure attach to Zigong as well. Ning, or “eloquence,” as I noted briefly in Chapter 4, is a term we see shifting in the Analects. Where once it evoked the refi ned speech of the learned and noble, in Confucius’ usage it is a term of disapproval evoking a too facile agility with words. To be ning, as Confucius generally presents it, is to speak seductively and deceptively well while failing to match one’s conduct to one’s fi ne words.7 Zigong, we must thus understand, sounds good, but Confucius does not trust that he is good, his facility in speech not well matched to an answering facility with his conduct. Zigong’s eloquence is but part of what seems to be a more general preoccupation with appearance, both his own appearance and that of others. For example, Confucius urges Zigong to look beyond obvious appearances and reputation when evaluating others (5.15). Moreover, while Confucius avers that one ought observe others in order to learn from their strengths and weaknesses (4.17), Zigong appears preoccupied with evaluating others. On at least one occasion, Zigong considers another and responds with admirable humility. When asked by Confucius how he estimates his own skill relative to Yan Hui’s, Zigong quickly disavows the legitimacy of any such comparison by noting that Yan Hui far outpaces his own skill and understanding (5.9). Despite this exchange, Confucius appears more generally dismayed with the energy Zigong devotes to evaluating others. Zigong is too free with criticism of others and Confucius cuttingly remarks this habit by making a comparison of his own, between Zigong and himself: “It is because Zigong is of such superior character himself that he has time for this. I myself have none” (14.29). Zigong, Confucius suggests, thinks too well of himself and thus his scrutiny of others appears less an effort to learn than evidence of an unseemly competitive spirit. Indeed, I expect Confucius asks Zigong to compare himself with Yan Hui just because Confucius knows the comparison will oblige Zigong to rank himself against one who is indubitably a better, effectively turning Zigong’s bad habit against him. In sum, Zigong is quite adept at styling his words and demeanor, at looking well, but in this he appears to risk an arrogance about his fi ne appearance and complacency about what lies beneath. Where we seek to understand the ways in which Zigong goes wrong in his pursuit of self-cultivation, we need not look far, for Confucius himself seems to diagnose the essential difficulty. Zigong’s principal failure appears to be that he lacks shu 恕, often translated as “sympathy” or “reciprocity.” More particularly, Zigong’s fault resides in his inability to apprehend the connection between efficacious ritual action and shu. It is shu that enables

166 Moral Exemplars in the Analects us to measure our responses to others in imaginative acts of analogical extension wherein the formal abstract demands of a circumstance are tempered by, and adjusted to, the particular features of those to whom we would respond. We imagine ourselves in the place of the other and thereby discover how to fit our behavior and demeanor to best address her particular needs. This capacity to fit ourselves to the particular features of others and the circumstances in which we act is what vouchsafes ritual as an effective mechanism for achieving accord with others. In the li we have a guide, but it is shu that saves the li from empty formalism, from operating as rigid, insensate rules. Zigong, Confucius suggests, is so enamored of the fi ne appearance, of the formal and ornamented enhancements of refi ned conduct, that he fails to achieve genuine consideration of others. Confucius’ interactions with Zigong are striking in their repeated emphasis on the need to cultivate shu. When Zigong asks Confucius if there is “one expression” that could serve as a reliable guide throughout a life, Confucius answers, “There is shu: do not impose on others what you yourself do not want” (15.24). Perhaps most pointedly, when Zigong inquires about ren by proposing what Confucius judges an impossibly ambitious account of it, Confucius appears to seize on the question as a chance to check Zigong’s overstatement by again emphasizing shu (6.30). He says, “Those who are ren establish others in seeking to establish themselves and 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 ren.”8 Confucius thus offers an account of ren that is quite barbed in its comparative modesty: All one needs to do to be ren, he appears to say, is exactly that which Zigong does not do. Zigong, with his penchant for evaluating and criticizing others, with his tendency to fail in sympathy, inhibits his own development, for just these qualities bar him from being the help to others that ren would require. A similar sentiment recurs when Confucius asks Zigong if Zigong considers him learned (15.3). When Zigong answers, predictably, in the affi rmative, Confucius denies that it is his wide learning that explains his self-cultivation. He succeeds instead because he “just pulls it together on one continuous strand.” The “strand” to which Confucius here refers is again shu and, in particular, the coupling of sympathetic understanding with fidelity to ritual.9 Finally, even when Zigong proffers what appears to be an insight into shu, an echo of Confucius’ own claim about reciprocity in Analects 15.24, Confucius is bluntly skeptical, observing that the insight seems “quite beyond” Zigong (5.12). In sum, there is a decisive pattern in Confucius’ interactions with Zigong, the teacher regularly directing their talk, whatever its ostensible topic, to the subject of shu. Confucius has taken his student’s measure, found his deficit, and persistently seeks to draw him to greater fullness. It is apparent, both from Confucius’ repetition of his counsel about shu to Zigong and his other critical remarks, that despite Zigong’s apparent devotion to learning, he has much trouble with the less mechanical features

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

167

of learning and self-cultivation. He is an adept in performing to the formal requirements of the li and in mastering the literatures of learning. However, Zigong’s want of shu, coupled with his studied attention to ritual and appearances, renders him capable of superficially impeccable performances that cannot ascend to the magical quality of genuine accord between persons. Consequently, when Zigong asks Confucius to evaluate his character, Confucius deems Zigong a “vessel,” a term employed to denote objects or persons rather narrowly suited to limited and particular purposes (5.4).10 Zigong wishes to know more and asks, “What kind of vessel?” Confucius replies that he thinks Zigong a hu or lian vessel. Tellingly, the vessels Confucius names are what Slingerland describes as “archaic curiosities,” ritual vessels employed in past ages and even then only rarely.11 Zigong, Confucius implies, is akin to an object presumably fi nely designed and even aesthetically rich, but these same qualities render both the vessel and Zigong too narrow for general use. Both notably yet superficially look good, yet this cannot conceal their impoverished utility. I opened this section by noting that Zigong’s character is difficult to sketch. This claim, I expect, seems belied by Confucius’ rather clear assessment of Zigong’s weakness. Nonetheless, I do think Zigong is a puzzle and indeed is a puzzle to Confucius himself. While Confucius’ judgment that Zigong lacks shu is surely apt, what remains unclear throughout the Analects’ depiction of Zigong is why this is so and indeed how it is so. In short, the puzzle presented by Zigong is the matter of his motivations, intentions, and emotions. Unlike Zilu, Zigong is opaque and it is consequently difficult to assay just what sort of error his inability to cultivate shu represents. There are, I think, at least two plausible readings of Zigong’s character.

ZIGONG AS VILLAGE WORTHY A cynical reading of Zigong, and one notably not excluded by the Analects, would suggest that he is not genuinely motivated by a desire to be a good person. He is, rather, seduced by a desire for personal success and power. His learning is, in this iteration of his character, but a way to deceptively seduce others. Such a view appears to receive some support from Confucius’ observation that the chief impediment to Zigong’s development is his inability to relinquish a desire for material success (11.19). Here again Confucius contrasts Zigong with Yan Hui. While Yan Hui cultivates himself with an admirable indifference to the material hardships he endures, Zigong cannot be “content with his lot” and consequently engages in “hoarding and speculating.” Confucius wryly notes that, in this at least, Zigong does enjoy success, but it is a dubious success that functions to inhibit his moral development. Where we couple Confucius’ observation about Zigong’s fi nancial interests with his other critical remarks, we have some cause to be skeptical about even those features of Zigong that seem to work to his credit.

168

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

Zigong’s ambitions may in fact be quite crass. His devotion to tradition and practice of the rites, on this view, consists in a manipulation of the recognizable signs of learning, his proficiency with external indicators of refi nement a play to gain purchase in the elaborately ceremonial court settings of his time. Zigong seeks to master the superficial appearance of learning and nobility because these have an instrumental value in winning status and wealth. They can serve his all too worldly ambitions. The substance of these practices has little purchase in his attention because they do not, or not readily, serve his ends. On the cynical reading, then, Zigong’s inability to shape his actions with sympathy and consideration of others appears the product of a predictable, if disappointing, lack of interest. This and his other faults fi nd ready explanation. His fi ne speech is keyed to appearing seductively learned and thereby garnering approval. His appetite for taking the measure of others is perhaps but a way of weighing the competition, his penchant for critique of others but a way of increasing his own status by depreciating that of others. Such would also of course account for why Zigong, who is such a quick study with the Odes, is such an apparently slow study where Confucius repeatedly highlights his weaknesses. He does not change because he does not really care to, the aims Confucius articulates are not his and so the means Confucius suggests are irrelevant. On this reading, Zigong functions as a negative exemplar who rather richly points to the moral failing Confucius appears to capture with the concept of the “village worthy” (鄉 原 xiangyuan). The Analects’ single use of the term “village worthy” is rather oblique but richly suggestive. Confucius remarks, “The ‘village worthy’ is a thief of de 德” (17.13). The village worthy is a thief of the charismatic power and influence enjoyed by the good person. Mencius’ well known elaboration of this claim, ascribed to Confucius, explains: I dislike what is specious. I dislike weeds for fear they might be confused with the rice plant; I dislike flattery for fear it might be confused with what is right; I dislike glibness for fear it might be confused with the truthful; I dislike the music of Cheng for fear it might be confused with proper music; I dislike purple for fear it might be confused with vermilion; I dislike the village worthy for fear he might be confused with the virtuous.12 The village worthy is, in short, adept at managing his appearance, able to seduce others to his influence because he seems to get the “look and feel” of goodness right. Where we understand Zigong to be motivated by desires for status and wealth, his efforts to craft an image as learned and well-spoken read as, at root, an effort to accrue to himself and under false pretenses the power and influence enjoyed by moral exemplars. He wants to seem to have de.

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

169

If Zigong is indeed a village worthy, his moral failing is nothing so much as a failure in motivation. He fails because his motivations are organized exclusively around the desirable elements of life and exclude the motivation to be admirable. We might say that he wants the sort of goods in life all want—material comfort, fi nancial security, meaningful employment, respect, and status—but he wants them too much, perhaps in too great a measure, and too much to the exclusion of the fi ner rewards that derive from living admirably. In this iteration, repairing Zigong’s weaknesses would entail the difficult work of addressing what motivates morality, what can draw someone who enjoys no prior inclination to be admirable to acquire such an inclination. I take it, however, as notable that Confucius does not pursue this route. We do not, that is, see Confucius aiming to answer Zigong’s weaknesses by persuading him in any global way to re-orient the structure of his motivations. Such might suggest that the cynical reading of Zigong is too cynical, but I think it instead owes to a rather fundamental ambiguity attached to Zigong. Put simply, the cynical view may be correct, but there is a more generous view of Zigong that cannot be ruled out. This more generous view is at least equally plausible given what the Analects offers about Zigong and results, I think, in leaving the reader torn. Perhaps more to the point, I suspect the reader’s ambivalence reflects Confucius’ own. I think Confucius himself is unsure what to make of Zigong. He may be a village worthy, but this is not certain. Let me turn now to the alternative, more generous reading of Zigong’s character.

ZIGONG AS FEARFUL A more generous reading of Zigong’s character would hold that Zigong is generally well-meaning, but clumsy. More specifically, despite his devotion to mastering the rich refi nements of formal learning and the li, Zigong is, rather perversely, exceedingly inept in his personal style. His error consists in an especially regrettable misunderstanding concerning how the li operate and what a genuine virtuosity with the li requires. On this reading, Zigong sincerely wishes to cultivate himself morally but in his efforts, he mistakes his charge to be strict and elegant adherence to form and the extirpation of individual variation. Let me flesh out this more forgiving reading with reference to the conceptual apparatus for understanding personal style I have already employed. My more charitable reading of Zigong essentially ascribes to him a fairly common error. Let me describe this error fi rst by appealing again to artistic style. To recall, where we consider artistic forms such as piano performance, we can readily recognize a whole host of technical skills that belong to both improvement and mastery. These skills are just the sort that lend themselves to abstract cataloging and range from the rather simple, such as following the written musical score, to the more subtle, such as achieving a

170 Moral Exemplars in the Analects maximally effective physical posture. They are also readily, if not always reliably, evident in virtuosi who, whatever their additional idiosyncrasies, will act as living demonstrations of generally sound technique. The learner who aspires to play well will do well to acquire the full complement of technical skills. The lion’s share of learning surely consists in just this. The learner who aspires, however, to be masterful or even perhaps, more modestly, genuinely proficient cannot do just and only this. Like the virtuoso, he must also learn to lend something of himself to his performances. He cannot merely be mechanical, for what he seeks to do is not merely a mechanical task. As Walton and Montero both suggest, the product must confess the process, and this requirement is not well met by technical proficiency. Nonetheless, technical mastery can operate as a seductive goal. It is quite difficult to craft a masterful product that well expresses one’s process. Indeed, even recognizing that this is one’s aim can easily get lost among the many more, and much more obvious, technical demands of the art. Worse still, there may be apparently compelling incentives to conceal one’s process, and this will be especially so for the learner. In many cases, a virtuoso will have confidence that what is disclosed in his process will be a credit to him and to the music he plays. For the learner, this may not be so. Consequently, the appeal of developing technical mastery may sometimes ride on its efficacy for managing insecurities to which the learner will be prey. Technical mastery may serve as a way to hide one’s process or to simulate a process more apparently attractive than one’s own. Let me render this in less abstract terms by appealing to an example that points to the incentives to conceal the artist’s process in a technically masterful product. In 1965, the renowned pianist Vladimir Horowitz returned to the stage to give a performance at Carnegie Hall after a twelve-year break from playing publicly. The event was widely anticipated. Crowds waited overnight in rain and chill for a chance to purchase tickets that, once available, sold out in two hours. On the night of the performance the hall was packed, the audience composed of lifelong fans of Horowitz, aficionados, music critics, and of course other musicians. Though a virtuoso, Horowitz was understandably also in a state of high anticipation. As Harold Schonberg describes it, as the performance began, “Horowitz hit a particularly exposed wrong note shortly after the opening, and there was an audible gasp.”13 Nonetheless, Horowitz was unshaken, recovered, and the audience responded with a “shout of approval at the end” of his fi rst piece. In addition to this early error, and more memorably, Horowitz had greater trouble in his second piece, Schumann’s Fantasy in C major, Op. 17. Schonberg explains that as Horowitz played, “during the coda there was a moment where he teetered on the edge of disaster. Schumann was cruel here; the writing calls for wide, fast jumps in both hands, and few pianists get through it unscathed. Suddenly Horowitz lost control. It was only for a fraction of a second, but everybody who knew the piece knew that Horowitz was going to break

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

171

down. He didn’t.” Instead, Horowitz recovered and played the rest of the piece “simply and beautifully.” The audience response to the performance was unreservedly enthusiastic. Critical reviews were similarly glowing and proclaimed that Horowitz had demonstrated just how well he warranted “his place among the supreme musicians of all time.”14 Horowitz’s return to Carnegie Hall and the ensuing critical response serve to illustrate some of what I described in Chapter 5 as the virtuoso’s effect. However, what is of interest to me here is what came later. The event at Carnegie Hall was recorded and given the critical acclaim that followed the performance itself, the recording was quickly released to much fanfare. Astute listeners who had been present at Carnegie Hall quickly recognized that, no matter how the recording was billed, it was not in fact the live performance they had heard. While the early false note remained, the near “disaster” at the coda in Schumann was gone. To one critic who thought the Schumann “clearer than he remembered” and questioned Horowitz, Horowitz simply lied and said “that’s the way it was.”15 Another critic, Schonberg of the New York Times, pressed Horowitz about the obvious editing in an interview, insisting that the record company “is advertising it as the return of Vladimir Horowitz to Carnegie Hall, and it isn’t.” Horowitz in turn defended the authenticity of the recording, this time not by denying the edits, but by ascribing his error in the Schumann to an “act of God:” He was nervous, perspiring, and perspiration dripped into eyes, blinding him to the keyboard at the critical moment. He defended the edits, saying, “I did not want to be represented by something that was not my fault. It was an act of God, the heat and the perspiration. So I corrected the passage after the concert.” While Horowitz presented his edit as mere “correction,” his impulse was to render the product more pristine. His reasons, I expect, are complex. His repute as a pianist included high praise for his exceptional control in his performances, his tight management of the instrument and his own method. The edited Schumann of course better demonstrates this control. Horowitz was also, it bears emphasizing, returning to public performance after a long absence in which he had worked exclusively in recording studios. He had, that is, become unaccustomed to the urgency of live performance. His nerves were unusually high and the swell of public expectation and excitement could not but foster greater anxiety. In short, while Horowitz was already a master, both his errors and his desire to correct them issue from understandable features of the circumstance. The technical perfection of the edited recording conceals, however, the process confessed in the original performance and judged so memorable by those who heard it. Gone is evidence of Horowitz’s nervous sweating, but gone too is his recovery from an error many thought would be fatal to the rest of the piece. In sum, the Horowitz of the recording is a more perfect and controlled pianist but, as the ensuing protests indicated, it lost something. Indeed, it lost something those who heard him live prized, not for its perfection but for its immediacy

172 Moral Exemplars in the Analects and its communication of Horowitz himself. While Horowitz is of course no learner, that even a virtuoso can feel the draw to simulate a “better self” through the concealing effect of technical mastery is telling. In his “correction,” Horowitz sacrificed the arc of the live performance, the arc of a masterful performance, to make it less mechanically flawed. I surmise that learners, who enjoy much less warrant for confidence in their own unretouched arcs, will feel the temptation to similarly simulate a “better selves” all the more acutely. With this example in mind, let me return to Zigong. On the more generous reading of Zigong, we can press beyond his obvious interest in developing a tight command of the stuff of learning and refi nement to ascribe to him a process marked by understandable fears and anxieties. Such is to say that he focuses so doggedly on his appearance because it serves as a strategy to conceal processes about which he is insecure. He tries to look good and sound good because he fears that he is not good or not good enough. He thus tries to simulate a better version of himself, manipulating the technical skills he can command to create an image he hopes will better secure the approval and appreciation of others. Thus we see Zigong opining on the virtue shu but doing so in a way that rather unsettlingly rings hollow and seems, as Confucius remarks, beyond his reach (5.12). In this, he may, like Horowitz, seek to “correct” his error, effectively editing the product others will see by verbally fi lling a gap he cannot otherwise close, eloquently announcing a truth he cannot enact. He seeks to exercise a control over the responses of others by controlling what they see of him. In this iteration of Zigong’s character, he does desire to be admirable, to be good, but he pursues his desire in ways that are self-undermining. This is clearest where we consider his failure to develop shu. Where we ascribe to Zigong insecurities that motivate his focus on technical mastery, we can, I think, better understand why and how he lacks shu. At a most obvious level, his overweening attention to form simply leaves little room for the attention to others that is a precondition of developing sympathy. Zigong is too busy managing his own image and “products,” his attention to this crowding out the attention to others shu requires. More subtly, however, I expect that his own focus on his actions qua performances inclines him to focus on just this in his experiences with others. Because Zigong’s attention to his own development is so tightly confined to the product and the technical mastery evident therein, he effectively habituates himself to a more general way of thinking about human beings in terms of the products they produce. He thus dims his vision for seeing process in others, for understanding the motivations, emotions, and intentions on which they operate. He lacks sympathetic understanding of others because he lacks facility in discerning just those features of others on which it would ride. So too, his preoccupation with evaluating others may derive from the way his own anxieties have distorted his perceptions. He is, in this iteration, less simply competitive than prey to that species of competition arising from personal

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

173

vulnerability, the desire to reassure oneself by way of flattering comparison that reduces the achievement of others. There is at least some indication that Confucius may read Zigong’s character in this way. When Confucius invites Zigong to compare himself to Yan Hui, Zigong appears to confess freely Yan Hui’s superiority (5.9). What is most notable, however, is how Confucius receives this confession. He confi rms Zigong’s estimation of Yan Hui, but suggestively says more: “You are not his match; neither you nor I are a match for him.” It is possible that Confucius’ response here deliberately softens in recognition of Zigong’s admission of inferiority. He has invited Zigong to make a comparison that cannot but be unflattering to Zigong, perhaps precisely to check Zigong’s tendency to evaluate and criticize others. That is, Confucius’ initial question can be read as a rather aggressive challenge: “You want to make comparisons? So, how do you rank against Yan Hui?” When Zigong responds with such humility, however, Confucius pulls the punch and compassionately aligns himself with Zigong. To the extent that Zigong’s confession displays a humility pregnant with personal disappointment with his own achievement, Confucius here reassures him that in this they are alike. A similar dynamic is evident when Confucius deems Zigong a vessel (5.4). Here too we see Confucius leading with a cutting implied criticism that appears to soften. When Confucius modifies his description of Zigong as a vessel and calls him a hu or lian vessel, that is, he may appeal to these ritual vessels not for their limited utility but for their fi neness. Zigong is a vessel, but a particularly “precious” and valued sort of vessel.16 If this reading of Zigong is correct, he is effectively the counterpart to Zilu. He is the student who obstructs his own learning because he is too fearful of exposing his weaknesses to view. He presumably wants to learn, but this competes with, and often loses to, the desire not to appear unlearned. Unlike Zilu, he is tightly governed and disciplined in his selfpresentation, and he is wanting in the courage to more freely communicate his motivations, intentions, and emotions to others. He retreats into the formal and most ornamental aspects of the li and learning out of fear and insecurity. He is a fi ne performer where we look to the technical and mechanical demands of the li and learning, but he is, relative to Zilu, more deeply flawed. Zilu may register as a bit of a clown, but the clown bests the technician.

ZIGONG AND OPACITY My two accounts of Zigong’s character converge by effectively granting what is most obvious and clear about Zigong: that he largely operates as a technician, one who rather mechanically follows the guidelines for learning, conduct, and demeanor articulated in the li. They sharply divide in how they explain his motivations for this and it would of course be desirable to

174

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

know which account is closer the mark. I think, however, it is difficult to decide, and this is so not only for the reader, but perhaps for Confucius as well. That Confucius retains Zigong as a student naturally works against the cynical reading, as does Zigong’s apparent consistency in adherence to the standards of the li.17 However, it may also be the case that Confucius’ own uncertainty informs his retention of Zigong among his students and we cannot be certain that Zigong’s reliability in the li obtains outside the presence of Confucius and the community of his students. So too, Confucius’ repeated attempts to instruct Zigong may bespeak some confidence that his student is teachable. They may, however, equally allow that Zigong is a hopeless case, with Confucius persisting in his advice in order to discourage others from following Zigong’s example. In sum, the ambiguity in the Analects’ presentation of Zigong is not easily resolved. I expect that neither of my interpretations is exactly correct and Zigong’s character may well be best captured as some blending of the impulses I have artificially divided into discrete and dramatically different accounts. However, my analysis of Zigong effectively grants that we cannot know whether Zigong is motivated by crass desire, by insecurity, or by some combination of both. Instead, what I wish to emphasize is the fact of this confusion. Zigong’s obvious failing, I argue, is his opacity, his failure to effectively notify others of his motivations, intentions, and emotions. In what follows, then, I want to outline the moral failure to which he unambiguously points as principally a failure in personal style. The consequences of this failure are of course more acute and poignant the more generously we view Zigong—if he is a village worthy, after all, opacity is but the principal tool of his chosen trade—so I shall largely opt for the most charitable reading in what follows. Zigong’s personal style can be generally captured with reference to his orientation toward the conventional norms of the li. He is in essence rule-bound, apparently shaping himself and measuring others in accord with the perceived formal demands of ritual propriety. His manner and demeanor dutifully conform to convention and it is this which most renders him opaque to others. While he is generally and reliably appropriate in mien, his manner is too fi nely conformed to convention. He may be gracious where grace is expected and wanted, deferential where deference is expected and wanted, and so forth, but it is just his too proficient fulfi llment of expectation that strikes a wrong note. As Walton observes, in the arts, “many of us have a distaste for what seems too perfect, too much under the control of the artist.”18 Similarly, where demeanor is too fluent and smooth in its correspondence to shared conventional norms, we suspect a control out of keeping with the spontaneity of the genuinely responsive gesture, the gesture that genuinely addresses itself to particular others and to particular circumstances. Gratitude “faultlessly” expressed, for example, gives no measure of the recipient’s response to a gift on a personal index of pleasure. Consequently, the giver is offered little that

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

175

indicates any particular effect. We doubt the sincerity of gratitude too elegantly expressed for its fluidity and ease appear not to reflect a process motivated by the gift, but a gesture scripted and duly performed. Put simply, technical perfection can generate distrust. Zigong will do what is formally appropriate and do so within the broad contours of the manner and demeanor generally expected of such performances, but the “perfection” he thereby achieves will appear mechanical, devoid of the subtle variations that assure others of our sincerity. Zigong is opaque because his mastery of conventional form and expression effectively frustrate the ability of others to discern the process in the product. They see his performance but cannot well apprehend what it means or, more precisely, what forces of motivation, intention, and emotion inform it. Its fluency promotes suspicion of mere artifice. It superficially appears of course to say just what convention would dictate one ought to say, but in just this it fails to offer the signs of a “maker” requisite to empathetic and imaginative identification. We do not empathize with form, but with other people, and our efforts at imaginatively ascribing a process to the performance we witness need some “banging” and “blowing” to assure trust that they well hook to what we see. Because Zigong effectively declines to bang and blow in ways readily grasped by others, his mechanical proficiency yields instead distrust. Let me assess this failure on two fronts. While I think the more interesting and indeed pernicious effects of this register for Zigong himself, I begin with what his failure entails for others. At an obvious level, Zigong’s excessive formalism suggests that he will often fail to offer others tailored responses that acknowledge their particular identities and circumstances. Others will simply not get from him the sorts of responses they may deserve or justly want. This is most evident in the example of gratitude to which I have already alluded. Where we take gifts as symbolic expressions of well-wishing, as gestures that purport to communicate favor and consideration rather than merely delivering goods from one person to another, they feature as extensions of one person to another. The giver exposes and extends herself to the recipient in a host of ways, such as her selection of the gift itself and the manner in which she offers it. If we assume a giver acting in good faith and from commendable processes, we are likely to feel she is owed some gratitude. Moreover, our sense that she is owed will likely further specify in accord with just our sense of her processes and circumstances. Where, for example, she has given a rare fi rst edition to an avid book collector despite her own deep lack of interest in such objects, we will expect the book collector to experience and express an increase of appreciation keyed to these special features. In contrast, should the book collector respond with only the most blandly conventional and formal expression of gratitude—an expression that could suit any gift from any person—we are likely to fi nd his response wanting. He will, as a formal matter, have done nothing wrong, but this is unlikely to count for much in the elaborate subtleties of human relationships. If the

176 Moral Exemplars in the Analects giver in consequence feels alienated and unappreciated, we will likely see some justice in her reaction. While the immediate effects are, as a moral matter, generally modest, I think there are more significant wider issues in play, issues to which Confucius seems particularly sensitive. Where the giver of a gift perceives the recipient’s response as mechanically formal and thus alienating, such may reduce her incentives to be giving, whether in the form of gifts or in other, less tangible ways.19 To the extent that gift giving is a practice we engage in part in order to foster closer relations with others, its failure will make us feel farther from those relations. And this may be so in the limited case of the recipient of our gift or it may extend more widely, the disappointment and distrust engendered by one spreading to color other relations in which we participate. Notably, Confucius remarks something like this when he notes Zaiwo’s eloquence (5.10). He claims that it is from Zaiwo, whose fi ne words are unsustained by his conduct, that he learned to distrust more generally what people say. It is in just this potential to sow wider distrust that Zigong’s style more dramatically fails. The opacity of his process may undermine confidence in the moral practices he appears to prize and it may undermine the subtle mechanisms of trust they serve to facilitate. Zigong’s proficiency with the formal demands of the li and learning, his functional emphasis on the mechanics of good performance, may serve to reinforce suspicions about the nature of these practices. That is, where we are distrustful of the too proficient performer, we may come to distrust more generally the medium he employs. As I suggested in the previous chapter, a persistent worry with the choreographed and standard norms of good manners is that they may promote insincerity. As Miss Manners wryly summarizes the objection, manners, and here I include much of the li, are prey to a series of concerns: “It’s artificial! It’s arbitrary! It’s stuffy! It’s prudish! It represses people from expressing their true feelings! It inhibits little children! It’s hypocritical! It’s dishonest! And—it uses forks!”20 Etiquette evokes such worries in part, I expect, because of performers such as Zigong. Regardless of what does in fact motivate Zigong, his technical proficiency with the mannerly and refi ned aspects of conventional conduct can register as an imposition on more natural or easy species of human interaction—call it the fork-as-weapon feel of manners. Where we encounter one who, as Zigong appears to do, exercises an overweening attention to appearance and form, both his own and that of others, we may more readily see the way in which being “mannerly” can distance human beings from each other, impose pernicious hierarchies of class and privilege, and elevate insincerity to high art. Put simply, the li can seem to be about seeming, about adopting poses and postures that not only fail to reflect the processes that ostensibly belong to them, but more actively reflect processes of self-assertion, self-aggrandizement, and status-seeking. Such worries are of course amplified where we fi nd attention to product suppressing process. That the li or manners are not, in

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

177

their purest form, like this or meant to be like this counts for little where their most apparently adept practitioners, those who do indeed master the intricacies of the forms, appear to privilege the technically impeccable over responsiveness to others and to circumstance. In addition to undermining the li, the privileging of technical impeccability can more directly undermine trust between persons. As William James observes, there is a “certain class of questions of fact, questions concerning personal relations, states of mind between one man and another” that fi nd answer in broadly negotiable realities. 21 The answers to such questions reside in “truths dependent on personal action”22 and, I would add, personal style. As James explains, if I operate as though you like me, adopting behavior and demeanor that assume your favorable disposition toward me, I may prompt that “liking” into existence. James’ focus here is on the power of “precursive faith” to bring felicitous realities into being. 23 What I wish to suggest is that our capacity to reveal our motivational, intentional, and emotional processes through the style of our actions is an indispensable element of this phenomenon. Where I wish to secure the goodwill of others, I must not only assume it, I must convey that assumption in my manner, for it is in the subtleties of manner that our assurances to others reside. I do not announce that you like me; I smile and meet your eye when we pass on the street. Moreover, in enacting such a gesture, I must appear to feel something in the particular case of what they conventionally signal: My smile must reach my eyes and my eyes must appear to take you in. My command of such modest and delicate signals importantly shapes the world I inhabit. When I lead others to like me, I will fi nd it easier to like them, easier to comport myself with “liking” that in turn further stimulates the “liking” response from others. In James’ idiom, the gestures of “precursive faith” can generate a swelling dynamic of shared and reciprocal good faith. Zigong’s apparent inability to reveal his own processes and to exercise shu, to offer what will incline others to feel recognized and acknowledged in his execution of the formally appropriate gesture, inhibits the development of this dynamic. He withholds himself and may consequently incline others to do the same. Put more generally, even if my intentions are good, where I appear stiffly formal or programmatic in manner, I risk creating a world less friendly and accommodating than it need be. With this in mind, we can better discern how Zigong’s style may fail him as well as others. He risks being an artificer of an unfriendly world. If we assume the more charitable reading that Zigong aims, albeit clumsily, to foster fruitful relations with others, his efforts are inept in a particularly pernicious way. In his exercise of technical skill, he conceals himself. In consequence, he erects a barrier that impedes the ability of others to achieve sympathy with him. Most basically, in Zigong, others may well feel that they have encountered a form, not a man. In his opacity, he may register as simply void of the stuff to which empathy could attach, his conduct

178 Moral Exemplars in the Analects offering nothing to which others may empathetically hook. More severely, I expect that Zigong’s failure to disclose the processes that inform his performances serves more actively to undermine his relations with others, for the species of concealment attached to Zigong’s technical skill is one easily mistaken as revelatory. A heightened facility with adopting formally appropriate style is easily prey to the suspicion of mere artifice, the individual possessed of this facility insincere. In his mastery of form, Zigong thus risks inviting the more cynical interpretation of his character. Because he is effectively hidden behind form, others cannot know him. They may, however, believe that they do, seeing his devotion to form as belonging to a particularly unsympathetic type. If we assume the generous reading of Zigong’s character, he is, in an inversion of Mencius’ formula, a cultivated plant easily taken for a weed, a person on the path of self-cultivation easily taken as a village worthy. He can appear as someone who actively betrays human trust and sympathy. This dynamic is evident in the example of Horowitz. What Horowitz missed in his desire to technically improve his performance was that he already enjoyed the deep empathetic appreciation of his audience and that his errors played a role in this. The audience for the live performance was with him, their attention drawn taut in a shared experience. Indeed, Schonberg remarked that because there were so many fellow musicians in the crowd, “it was possible to look in any direction and see moving fi ngers, pianists playing along with the soloist.”24 As Walton’s and Montero’s analyses suggests, they were reveling in empathetic appreciation and even proprioception of the process, the gasps at Horowitz’s errors not disapproval or disappointment but an involuntary response cued by how thoroughly they had joined Horowitz in his ride through his score. Critical ire at Horowitz’s “correction” of the performance, I expect, derived less from the false advertising of claiming the recording was authentic than from the way Horowitz appeared to betray the value of the shared experience of the Carnegie Hall event. Horowitz’s failure revealed what we might call a precursive distrust of his audience. He could not control what the audience for the live performance heard, but he could and did seek to control what the audience for the recording would hear. In this, he disclosed a lack of faith in his audience’s empathetic capacities of course, but he also thus appeared to wish to manipulate or engineer their responses. In denying them his processes, he denied them ownership of their own. Similarly, in his close adherence to convention, Zigong perhaps avoids obvious flaws in performance only to achieve a higher order flaw. Zigong is ineffective at conveying his dispositions and the nature of his failure is such that it encourages others to incline away from generosity in their reception of him. He too can appear governed by distrust and an answering desire to engineer and control the responses of others. He thus can be more easily read as disingenuous, insincere, manipulative, status seeking, and so forth. If Zigong is indeed just inept, his mastery of form issuing from

A Partial Exemplar: Zigong

179

some insecurity regarding his command of his own motivations, intentions, and emotions, we would do better to see evidence of this insecurity. Like Horowitz’s audience, we would do better to have the opportunity to gasp at some error than to see none at all. To draw out the contrast with Zilu implicit in my analysis of Zigong, I hazard that we feel more free to like Zilu and indeed even to admire him just because his transparency allows our gasps. His insecurities and weaknesses are available to us and we can thus empathetically join ourselves to his processes even where the product is less technically pleasing. Like Zilu, Zigong is a learner who errs, but he errs in the wrong direction, his excess an attention to appearance and form that disables the capacity of others to achieve empathy. In this, to recall Confucius’ comparison, he is akin to the mourner whose grief we cannot see, his excess the sort that decouples moral practice from the all-toohuman experiences it is meant to answer. Zigong is, I suggest, a negative partial exemplar whose manner points toward the hazards of opacity. While the exact causes of his failure to communicate his motivations, intentions, and emotions is unclear, the model he offers and the responses from others he summons serve to reinforce and refi ne understanding of how process and transparency in communicating process inform trust and empathy. Whether we read his model cynically or generously is in significant measure a choice we must make, for his manner fails to adequately direct others. He may indeed be prey to insecurities and the existential anxieties provoked by learning, unsure of whom he must become and inhibited in displaying who he is, but his opacity leaves this uncertain. What is more certain is that regulation of the self by li and learning—a clear imperative in the Analects—must be distinguished from suppression of the self and the processes that make it known to others.

8

Conclusion

I began this study with the moral theory I believe implicit in the sensibility and structure of the Analects. While exemplarism works from particular exemplary people to increasingly refined and abstract concepts and schemata, my argument has proceeded in reverse order, moving from theory to people. However, with an analysis of three of the Analects’ people in hand, let me now work from these people to a return to theory. An exemplarist method consists in drawing the general from a host of particulars. We should, that is, expect that we can treat our exemplars a bit the way a chemist would treat water, looking at a variety of instances of that liquid we call “water” and limning just what conditions make it so and indeed how they make it so. My scrutiny of Confucius, Zilu, and Zigong has focused rather narrowly on their personal styles and what I think is an emergent concept of transparency we fi nd in what they offer. What I want to suggest with respect to this company of exemplars is that they point us toward the conclusion that, in the moral idiom of the Analects, transparency effectively operates as a condition for being a good person. Put simply, I hypothesize that to be like the positive models of Confucius and Zilu and unlike the negative model of Zigong will entail, among a host of other conditions, being transparent. If this is correct, however, we should expect to see transparency well fitted in to other aspects of the text, reaching beyond these three models into both its additional exemplars and the moral concepts and schema the text does give elaboration. Let me then consider this hypothesis in the wider frame of the text.

TRANSPARENCY IN THE ANALECTS As a fi rst gesture toward considering transparency in the broader context of the text, I think it important to consider whether, when we look to the text’s other moral exemplars, we find transparency registering as a condition they appear to meet. That is, if one needs to be transparent in order to be good, then anywhere we fi nd good people, we should expect to see transparency featuring in what they offer.1 Of the more temporally proximate figures the text depicts in some detail, Confucius’ student Yan Hui surely comes closest to Confucius in enjoying the text’s unreserved commendation. Because

Conclusion

181

Yan Hui dies young, there is perhaps some ambiguity about whether he could, in the idiom of the Analects, be counted a total exemplar, but for my purposes this matters little. 2 I want simply to assess him and consider whether the clearly affi rmative model he offers sustains transparency as an unstated value. Yan Hui is of course the most promising of Confucius’ students and is indubitably proposed as a target for emulation in the Analects. A brief rehearsal of his personal qualities would include his devotion to learning, his agile grasp of even Confucius’ most oblique remarks and instructions, his exceptional tolerance of hardship, and his abiding contentment in pursuing self-cultivation. While stipulating that all of this is the case, what I wish to address here is Confucius’ initial impression that Yan Hui is stupid. I suspect that what alters Confucius’ early low estimation of Yan Hui is the recognition that Yan Hui is transparent. As I noted in Chapter 5, Confucius’ judgment that Yan Hui is stupid appears too hastily formed and is based on Yan Hui’s habit of agreeing with Confucius. To recall the relevant passages, Yan Hui’s tendency to agree with Confucius is remarked twice in the Analects, and in both cases this tendency appears to suggest a weakness or failing in Yan Hui. In Analects 11.4, Confucius remarks, “Yan Hui is of no help to me. There is nothing that I say that he doesn’t like.”3 In Analects 2.9, we fi nd a similar sentiment, as well as Confucius’ account of why he revises his judgment. It reads, “The Master said, ‘I can speak with Yan Hui for an entire day without his raising an objection, as though he were stupid. But when he has withdrawn and I examine what he says and does on his own, illustrates perfectly what I have been saying. Indeed, there is nothing stupid about Yan Hui!”4 Confucius here concludes that Yan Hui’s agreement is not in fact a weakness, but what is most striking is how he reaches this conclusion. Confucius’ initial judgment appears to ride on the suspicion that Yan Hui’s bland agreeability is deceptive. Yan Hui, he intimates, should surely have some objection to Confucius’ teaching. That he voices none is not taken to indicate that he does in fact understand and assent to what Confucius offers. Instead, it is taken to conceal a dullness of mind. In other words, Confucius fi nds Yan Hui difficult to read and does not trust what he sees of Yan Hui, a suspicion perhaps buttressed in Confucius by recognition of the incentives his students have to appear both quick in understanding and agreeable. Notably, Yan Hui is so difficult to read that Confucius apparently feels compelled to watch him covertly in an effort to see what Yan Hui does when he is unaware of his teacher’s scrutiny. What Confucius thus fi nds, however, is that Yan Hui is exactly as he seems. He is transparent. He raises no objections and voices only assent because he genuinely has no objections and earnestly assents to what Confucius offers. His private behavior, enacted unaware of any audience, embodies what Confucius teaches. While there is of course more we might say about Yan Hui and what we see of his exceptional receptivity to Confucius’ counsel here and

182

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

elsewhere, we fi nd in him and Confucius’ assessment another indication that transparency is a quality to be prized.5 It grounds both Confucius’ revision of his hasty judgment and, I expect, sustains the unmatched commendation he bestows on Yan Hui. Like Zilu, Yan Hui reassures others that they can know where he stands. His demeanor and manner bear out and enact his commitments. His apparent opacity, I suspect, owes entirely to Confucius’ own error in judgment, an error that issues jointly from Yan Hui’s exceptional and exceptionally unusual acumen and Confucius’ pessimism. Confucius does not immediately trust Yan Hui because he is, put simply, unaccustomed to being so readily understood and heeded. Where we include Yan Hui among the models that point toward transparency, Confucius and Yan Hui, taken together, feature as exemplars that appear rather fl awlessly to convey their processes—their cultivated motivations, intentions, and emotions—in their personal styles. Zilu presents us with a learner who succeeds in communicating himself to others while not yet enjoying mastery of his processes. His motivations, intentions, and emotions are often in a state of chaos informed by his ungoverned temperament and incomplete learning. Finally, Zigong is a learner who fails to communicate himself and indeed leaves us unsure of his character. We cannot fi nally be certain what to make of him or trust we know what moves him. These four, then, provide an apparent spectrum of ability and development commonly linked to transparency and from them we can begin to assay what the text more widely offers. Let me begin drawing out more generalized conclusions by returning to the theme of moral improvement. In the Analects’ depictions of Zilu, Zigong, and Yan Hui and its depictions of Confucius’ responses to these students, we can locate a set of priorities for self-cultivation and moral improvement. Where the text’s explicit more general claims about the li suggest that one ought to be regulated by them, the text’s exemplars significantly enrich our sense of just what such means. Confucius’ concern with crafting demeanor includes a corresponding worry. In the Analects, surface and substance appear fused in the good person, but where one is unsteady in comprehension and skill, one may seek recourse in the obvious, in the way that elegance of form can command attention and response. Where one is unsure of oneself, one may seek refuge and concealment in the relative clarity of conventional manners. The learner clearly lacks the full refi nement of character that informs the good person’s performances. She cannot wholly trust herself, but she is clearly enjoined to seek the trust of others through her manner and demeanor. The clearly limited models of Zilu and Zigong suggest that we do better to retain something of ourselves, and even of our clumsiness, as we aim at improving our style. We are clearly enjoined to craft appearance, to aim at looking good, but there is such a thing as looking too “good.” Put another way, where we privilege trust over superficial appearance, the learner must be sometimes satisfied, as Zilu is, with looking bad. The enriching capacity

Conclusion

183

of infelicities to stimulate empathy is not the exclusive province of the virtuoso, but belongs to the learner as well. Where we allow that transparency is important for the learner, we then have a natural interest in knowing just how it features for the total exemplar and for any subsequent abstract conception of the good person. That is, using an exemplarist method, we will seek to conceptually parse the elements of the good person to understand more formally and abstractly how the elements we discern in him structure our admiration. If transparency belongs to the good person and is a condition that in part explains our admiration for him, what sort of condition is it? My sense is that the Analects effectively points through its exemplars to our counting transparency a necessary condition for being a good person. Being transparent is insufficient for being good—as the model of Zilu clearly indicates—but one cannot be good without it—as the models of Confucius, Yan Hui, and Zigong seem to indicate, if not decisively confi rm. The conviction that transparency is required for being a good person gains force where we move from people to concepts and query how transparency might attach to moral concepts that are formally expressed in the Analects’ wider moral schema. We can, I think, thematically link the quality of transparency to a number of explicit claims and stated values in the Analects. I have already addressed one of these in my treatment of Zilu. In paralleling Zilu’s excessive openness of demeanor and manner to the raw emotions of grief, we can in effect draw out the parallel to consider what it suggests regarding transparency more generally. Where we consider mourning akin to a product, a performance the actor offers in accord with formal expectations and norms, and consider grief akin to process, representative of the motivations, intentions, and emotions the actor communicates, Confucius’ claim that an excess of grief is to be preferred to an excess of mourning is telling (3.4). He appears to privilege the “scraping” and “banging” of sorrow over formally proficient technique: It is better that one’s sorrows, even in their excess, be seen than that one fulfill all too well the formal demands of mourning. While Confucius’ target here is species of excess, implicit in the priorities he assigns to types of error is a more general indication that transparency of process has high import. In the good person, as in appropriate mourning, we will expect less of the raw and uncontrolled in what we see of the process, but the process will be evident.6 While I think Confucius’ discussions of grief and mourning provide a ready conceptual pattern that maps well the priorities my analysis of exemplars suggests, there are also more directly salient patterns found in the Analects’ treatment of a body of related issues, its suggestions regarding the appropriate connections between speech and action. We fi nd in the Analects a pronounced concern with living up to one’s word (xin 信). Xin is counted a virtue and the person who is xin, the text indicates, is just someone whose words can be trusted for we fi nd a reliable correlation of what she says with who she is and what she does. We

184

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

might say that xin evokes transparency specifically as it concerns speech, the injunction to live up to one’s words an imperative to match the product, here one’s speech, to one’s processes. This is clearly suggested by Confucius’ claim that a person who is not xin is as a cart missing the linchpin for its yoke (2.22). As Ames and Rosemont observe, xin here features as “the link between saying and doing.”7 It is, however, where we couple Confucius’ injunctions regarding xin with his emphasis on being sparing in speech and on not being rigidly trustworthy that I think a more telling pattern emerges. Confucius suggests on several occasions that the good person will be sparing in his speech and this is clearly an element of being xin. One should “be cautious in what you say and then make good on your word (xin)” (1.6). He points specifically to the ancients as exemplars who “were loath to speak because they would be ashamed if they personally did not live up to what they said” (4.22). In conversation with Zigong, he avers that junzi “fi rst accomplish what they are going to say and only then say it” (2.13). We also fi nd that one who is ren is “slow to speak” (12.3) and that shame is the appropriate response where one’s words are fi ner than one’s conduct (14.20, 14.27). To be a junzi or to be ren, Confucius consistently suggests, requires care in the choice of words if one is to avoid promising more than one can deliver and avoid verbally assuming a moral posture one’s behavior cannot sustain. It is better not to speak or be sparing in speech than to let one’s words outrun one’s conduct. Confucius’ injunctions to be modest and reticent in speech can appear superficially to suggest that one ought avoid revealing too much, that one ought not be too transparent. However, the concern I identify here is more naturally presented as an injunction to be sparing in one’s words so that one need not be sparing with oneself. Where we count speech a performance or product we offer others, the inclination to render one’s speech fi ner than one’s conduct can sustain is again a way that product and process come apart. One can, for example lay verbal claim to intentions that are not one’s own or are beyond one’s power to fulfill. Whatever the incentives to do so, however, such verbal claims come at some cost. Most immediately, exposure of the disconnection between one’s words and deeds will lose the good opinion and trust of others. Less directly, indiscretion in speech will create incentives to opacity. Once one has made a “product” unreflective of one’s process, the incentives to hide one’s process increase. Having laid verbal claim to actions one cannot perform or qualities one does not possess, one will be all the more tempted to “maintain” one’s words through further dissimulation about one’s motivations, intentions, and emotions. On my reading, reticence in speech is not only a method for being transparent, it is also a method for preserving the incentive to be transparent. While living up to one’s word and the corollary of keeping one’s words modest are suggestive of a more general commitment to being trustworthy, it is important to note that Confucius also suggests that one can go too far

Conclusion

185

in being trustworthy, in speech and more generally. There is, Confucius intimates, a species of trustworthiness that amounts to “petty fidelity.”8 Thus when Zigong asks about types of people suited to be scholar-apprentices, Confucius ranks those who are xin in a “stubbornly petty” way comparably low (13.20). In discussing xin more generally, Confucius notes that it “gets one close to being appropriate” (1.13), but it is notably not sufficient for being appropriate. In this, he appears to suggest that rigidly adhering to one’s word constitutes an excess out of keeping with the flexibility necessary to respond to circumstances. The problem with rigidity is, moreover, not confined to speech but extends into the Analects’ discussion of the junzi, who is, Confucius makes clear, flexible and able to adapt himself to circumstance rather than bluntly applying unbending rules. Thus he characterizes junzi as “proper, but not fastidious” (15.37) and “neither bent on nor against anything; rather they go with what is appropriate” (4.10). The sensibility suggested here also features in Confucius’ evaluations of people. When Zigong protests that a minister renowned as ren failed to sacrifice himself in loyalty when his prince was killed, Confucius is scornful of how Zigong’s rigid understanding of the conduct befitting a good minister ignores the higher value the minister offered the people (14.17). Confucius derisively asks, “Should we expect that he would have the earnestness of some country yokel, managing to strangle himself in an irrigation ditch with no one the wiser?” In sum, we find in the Analects a number of claims that thematically link to the importance of avoiding inflexibility. Even where the rule one would act on or the quality one would seek to manifest are generally sound, one cannot programmatically assume they fit any context. The Analects’ emphasis on flexibility is, most obviously, reflective of a worry that the complexities of human experience and circumstances are not well answered by the blunt application of rules. The good person is possessed of a situational adaptability, a sensitivity to the ways in which circumstances require practical judgment. While I think this more obvious reading correct, here too I think a concern with transparency may inform the text’s treatment and that its claims about flexibility may issue quite directly from experiences of transparent exemplars. Where we initiate moral reasoning with exemplars, we fi nd that they defy our “petty fidelities” and act in ways that resist our rules. Our exemplars will rarely if ever conform seamlessly to expectations rooted in any abstract accounting of our moral practices or of the processes that ostensibly belong to them. As my discussion of Confucius in particular highlights, we will sometimes fi nd them departing, perhaps even dramatically departing, from norms. While such is part and parcel of Confucius’ responsiveness to his circumstances, it is also a function of his transparency, his communication of motivations, intentions, and emotions that resist any simple conformity with norms and expectations. Confucius is not entirely predictable, nor indeed is he completely reliable. Grief, disappointment, temper, snobbishness, and so forth sometimes

186

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

run away with him. I take the Analects’ cautions against rigidity in conduct and rigidity in the judgments we make of others as in part an effort to make its more general and abstract injunctions answerable to the exemplars from which they issue. We admire exemplars such as Confucius for their practical judgment, certainly, but if I am correct about Confucius’ infelicities, we also admire them in part based on processes that constitute a form of non-trivial self-expression. Put simply, it matters more to our admiration of Confucius that we grant him his infelicities than that we reductively distill his conduct to conformity with reliable technique or rules. Put more formally, the Analects’ warnings against rigidity suggest that we do well not to collapse the distinction between the inappropriate and the atypical. What may generalize, then, is not what is expressed but that it is expressed. We should be flexible because such will foster transparent communication of our own processes, processes that will not always conform to norms but that will foster trust and empathy, and because we need to preserve our capacity to recognize just this in others. My analyses of Confucius, Zilu, and Zigong and the value of transparency I see indicated in them can only serve as a beginning at assaying what these and the Analects’ other exemplars may offer. However, I also think they illuminate a productive and useful tension an exemplarist reading of the Analects can generate. The identification of transparency as a necessary condition for being a good person seems simultaneously modest and ambitious. With respect to Confucius in particular, I expect that the observation of his transparency is nothing terribly new. That is, to deem Confucius “transparent” is perhaps but to assign a name to a sense that pervades the Analects’ portrait of him, the sense that Confucius, in his own phrasing, “keeps nothing hidden” (7.24). Nonetheless, in proposing that the Analects’ exemplars effectively commit the sensibility of the text to recommending a virtue not explicitly expressed in it is of course an ambitious claim, requiring that the reader more laboriously work the stories and personae of the text than previous approaches have perhaps endorsed. It requires working the text with the suspicion that its exemplars point us in directions the text may never explicitly go, that they are but the corner of a shape as yet uncertain. Let me draw out this play between the modest and ambitious with reference to what the theory of exemplarism more generally entails.

EXEMPLARISM IN THE ANALECTS Much of what an exemplarist theoretical reading of the Analects requires is comparably modest. It begins with an origins myth that is elegant in its simplicity. Confucius and the Analects’ authors, this myth would hold, already and prior to their philosophizing know whom they consider good people. They, and the wider community they inhabit, have a rich company of exemplars who inspire admiration and serve as shared targets for

Conclusion

187

emulation. To be a good person is in large measure a matter of being like these exemplars. The impulse toward more elaborate moral reasoning we see in the Analects issues from a sense that the abstract explanations of these exemplars in play are in some way inadequate, a sense that while exemplars themselves are readily recognized, they are not well captured by the moral vocabulary and schemata so far developed. This myth, then, draws jointly on the confidence with which we see the Analects considering early China’s exemplars and the dissatisfaction Confucius so clearly harbors about the state of moral understanding in his time. The implications of this origins myth for discerning a theoretical structure in the Analects likewise largely eschew any ambitious reformulation of what the text offers. Where we understand the text’s exemplars to be identified through a process of direct reference, they can operate to fulfill many of the structural requirements of theory, both grounding theory and motivating morality. This too, then, may represent a rather elegantly simple solution to long-standing interpretive challenges. On an exemplarist reading, we can abandon the struggle to fill Confucius’ and the Analects’ silences about human nature and human flourishing. We can, that is, accept with greater equanimity that what is not readily evident in the text is in fact not there and, most importantly, need not be there if the text is to yield a viable moral theory. Theory will instead rest on what is indubitably there: the text’s many exemplars. We thus take our theoretical lead much more directly from what the text offers. So too, I expect that many of the conclusions an exemplarist reading will yield may not differ dramatically from what generations of scholarship have discovered. While an exemplarist reading will understand the origins of the Analects’ many moral concepts to originate in scrutiny of exemplars, it will not entail radically revisiting those moral concepts given fullest abstract expression in the text. We may, for example and as I have already argued, develop a novel account of why Confucius’ usage of the term “junzi” acquires a more meritocratic tenor, but such need not, and likely will not, require any thoroughgoing revision of our understanding of the term. We may also discover in the text’s exemplars ways to refi ne understanding of less tractable concepts, such as ren, but again I expect that what we fi nd will often serve as supplement to, rather than radical revision of, present interpretations. In some respects, even the gains of an exemplarist reading can be considered comparatively modest. I suspect, that is, that much of what exemplarism wins us is a formal and organized way to express what may have heretofore registered more vaguely as “senses” of the text. Like its exemplars, the text too has what we might call a “look and feel,” but it is not clear that our theoretical interpretations have yet well captured this. Its look and feel includes, for example, a sense that Confucius, not merely as teacher or philosopher but qua man, is enormously important to what it offers. It includes not merely what Confucius and his students say philosophically,

188

Moral Exemplars in the Analects

but the richly complex interactions between them qua men. And it includes a sense of philosophical activity happening on the fly, an intellectual account of morality developing within a narrative about a community of people who are most decidedly themselves traversing the mix and muddle of morally complicated lives. I suspect that many readers of the Analects discern these senses of the text and indeed enjoy and profit from them, but they are just the sort of atmospheric qualities most difficult to capture in the necessarily abstract and general movements required by theory. What exemplarism can offer by grounding theory in exemplars and the lives they lead, then, is a way to register and render philosophically fertile a look and feel that, I suspect, already informs our interest and perhaps even captivation with the text. Despite these many ways in which an exemplarist model of the Analects may be counted a modest proposal, it is also and undeniably ambitious in what it requires. This is most immediately evident where we consider the core question exemplarism raises. While exemplarism inaugurates theory by observing the rather basic fact of our pre-theoretical admiration for exemplars, it then seeks to assay just why we admire exemplars. Any satisfying answer to this question will need to entertain jointly just what distinguishes the exemplar from others and what distinguishes responses to exemplars from responses to others. The Analects’ moral lexicon suggests that it does entertain just these issues—it seeks to explain both the qualities evident in “good people” and the effects of such people on others. Even so, its treatment of these issues will of course generate yet further questions, and many more questions than I have sought to answer here. Some questions invited by an exemplarist account may substantially echo those already well established in scholarship on the text. For example, how might we abstractly characterize the relationship between the person who is ren and the practice of the li? An exemplarist reading of the text will more aggressively bring close analysis of the text’s exemplars to bear on this question—it will, that is, direct us to a distinctive method for addressing apparent ambiguities in the text’s conceptual moral schemata—but it does not, in itself, provide an obvious solution. In other words, just as exemplarism will likely leave intact much of what prior analyses of the text have shown, so too it will likely leave intact some perennial challenges in interpretation. Other questions exemplarism will invite issue more particularly from the adoption of an exemplarist idiom. For example, what resources, if any, does the Analects offer for navigating disputes in the identification or explanation of exemplars? What resources, if any, does it offer for parsing more exactly what conditions are necessary for being a good person and what are sufficient? Or for discerning what features of a particular exemplar are merely idiosyncratic or circumstantial? While the Analects’ exchange between depictions of particular exemplars and abstract conceptual claims may yield insight into such matters, here too solutions are unlikely to be

Conclusion

189

obvious or direct. In sum, the given that initiates exemplarist inquiry is rather simple, but for any developed exemplarist ethic, explanations of the given are likely to be quite complicated and will almost surely resist a ready accounting of any comprehensive and fi nal sort. This is, I expect, emphatically true in the case of the Analects, with its often laconic and unsystematic style, its multiple authors, and lingering doubts about whether any exemplarist project it undertakes comes to decisive completion. While sussing out the degree to which the Analects can answer the sort of structural and schematic theoretical questions an exemplarist reading entails is one sort of challenge, a second resides in the method exemplarism recommends. I have suggested that a key asset of exemplarism resides in its promise to render more philosophically fertile the narrative aspects of the text, but here too we will, I expect, fi nd an exemplarist reading quite demanding. Exemplarism entails the premise that narrative depictions of exemplars matter but we will of course have much work to do in assaying just how, in any particular case, they matter. The reader must, for example, look closely where detail is offered in depiction of any exemplar, consider each exemplar against the company of others in order to locate potential points of affi nity and contrast across a variety of personalities, analyze the relations between exemplars and the significance of the circumstances in which they are situated, and so forth. The conceptual apparatus provided by Confucius and the authors of the Analects will of course direct such a process of scrutiny and inquiry, but will not do so completely. Thus to read the text’s exemplars as the that on which theory rides requires that the reader too become a sort of chemist, actively working its narrative personae in order to assay both their role in prompting the text’s explicit conclusions and what they may indicate about conclusions the text appears to tacitly endorse if not explicitly state. In this, an exemplarist approach can, and will almost certainly, multiply the complexities in reading an already complex text, generating somewhat speculative explanatory hypotheses about any submerged logic of admiration confessed in the text’s narrative elements and testing those hypotheses for fit with the text’s articulated commitments. Finally, an exemplarist model of the Analects naturally evokes questions regarding where this text stands relative to other Confucian works. I have throughout this book largely treated the Analects as a singular text in an effort to see what it may distinctively offer. In this, I have deliberately abjured drawing any conclusions about whether and how other Confucian works effectively extend the project of the Analects with a consistency and similarity that would render them fitting supplements to what it offers. While I do judge it important to avoid conflating the many Confucian texts under any assumption of a common purpose or method, I likewise recognize that any proposed reinterpretation of one may entail reconsideration of others. At a most basic level, where we read the Analects as exemplarist, we may encounter narrative accounts of Confucius and his students given

190 Moral Exemplars in the Analects in other texts with a new interest. Even where we cannot and should not assume that additional stories about Confucius and his community serve the same ends as those in the Analects, to the extent that they offer more data about the Analects’ dramatic personae that might inform the Analects’ presentation, they may prove fruitful.9 More ambitiously, an exemplarist reading of the Analects naturally raises questions about its relation to other Confucian moral philosophies, particularly those most temporally proximate works of Mencius and Xunzi with their pronounced interest in addressing human nature and their competing claims to be offering theories that elaborate rather than alter Confucius’ original vision. It may be that the Analects is simply up to something different than Mencius and Xunzi, that their interest in human nature effectively changes the structure of moral reasoning we see in the Analects, shifting Confucianism away from an exemplarist ethic and toward a model perhaps much closer kin to standard virtue ethical approaches. More speculatively, Mencius and Xunzi too may be up to something more exemplarist than we have recognized. While both Mencius and Xunzi clearly do commit to accounts of human nature, less clear is just what structural role their accounts were meant to serve in their resulting theories.10 It may thus be worth asking whether an exemplarist reading of the Analects could alter our sense of Mencius’ and Xunzi’s claims about human nature, as well as entail a reconsideration of their own presentations of exemplary figures. I cannot assay here what such might entail, but expect any reconsideration would, for example, query whether “human nature” operates for Mencius or Xunzi as a way to explain inchoate admiration for exemplars and consequently evaluate whether the pronounced differences in their accounts of human nature reflect a dispute about the reliability of our untutored responses to exemplars. It may be, that is, that Mencius’ claims about the basic goodness of human nature reflect greater confidence in our pre-theoretical admiration of exemplars while Xunzi’s more apparently pessimistic account and emphasis on the role of acquired sensibilities reflects doubts regarding our brute ability to admire reliably absent some prior moral cultivation. These suggestions are of course quite speculative and whether such an analysis might bear new interpretive fruit, I cannot predict. I here simply acknowledge that insofar as an exemplarist model of the Analects significantly alters our expectations regarding its use of human nature to justify and explain moral practices, we will want minimally to consider what, if anything, this could imply elsewhere in the tradition the Analects largely inaugurates.11 In sum, my own estimation of what an exemplarist rendering of the Analects does to transform understanding of this text and its tradition recognizes an inherent and, I think, inevitable tension. The Analects is here at once more simple and direct in its reasoning, more abundant in what it offers for theoretical consideration, but also engaged in a species of analysis pregnant with the same complexities we see in the actual human lives

Conclusion

191

on which it is based and pregnant with many of the same complications encountered by any moral theory. The tension between the particular, the exemplars to which it points us, and the general and abstract claims it offers is, however, what I judge a productive tension that usefully mirrors the tension of lived moral experience. I venture that we often fi nd ourselves seduced by moral exemplars in ways much like those described by Emerson. Exemplars are “more plain and persuasive than any book can be,” fi ring the moral imagination in ways difficult to assay with the precision and generality moral theory seems to require.12 In Confucius’ idiom, they can infuse even our dreams. Our efforts to render their effect available to theory, to the wakeful consciousness of our books, is simultaneously difficult and enriching. In this, the theoretical process we engage looks a lot like life. We admire that, we want to be like that, and acting on such admiration and desire entails an arduous process of discernment in which we must seek to distill from that guidance for our own circumstances and lives. The exemplarist project invites this creative lived process, with all its stirring complexities and challenges, into theory.

Notes

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. Analects 7.8. Except where otherwise noted, passages from the Analects are given from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., trans., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997). 2. For discussion of the various authorial voices and strata of the Analects, see, e.g., D. C. Lau, trans., Analects (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 220– 233; E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); and Bryan Van Norden’s introduction to Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 13–18. 3. For a brief discussion of this distinction, see Linda Zagzebski, “Exemplarist Virtue Theory,” Metaphilosophy 41.1–2 (2010), pp. 42–45. 4. The most direct example of Confucius’ teaching in this manner is found in Analects 11.22 where Confucius offers notably different advice to students who are markedly different in temperament. 5. To be clear, I do not suggest that such a distinction is in currency in early Chinese philosophical discourse. To the extent that we fi nd both moral manuals and moral theories in play in early Chinese philosophy, they are notably blended. 6. Zagzebski, “Exemplarist Virtue Theory,” p. 42. 7. Michel de Montaigne, “Of the Education of Children,” in The Complete Works of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957), I, 26, 111 A. 8. It is worth noting that much of what I emphasize here has in recent decades found greater place in philosophy more generally through the efforts of many feminist moral philosophers. While my account here does not explicitly reference recent feminist scholarship, it is nonetheless informed by the efforts of feminist ethicists to enlarge the compass of moral reasoning to better accommodate ordinary moral experience among intimates and family. 9. Zagzebski, “Exemplarist Virtue Theory,” p. 43. 10. There are of course a number of recent efforts to illuminate both the gender biases of early Confucianism and the potential of Confucianism for feminist ethics. See, e.g., Chenyang Li, ed., The Sage and the Second Sex (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2000) and Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006).

194

Notes

11. Donald Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 96. 12. Sor-hoon Tan, “Imagining Confucius: Paradigmatic Characters and Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32.3: 409–426. 13. Tan, pp. 418–419.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sermon CXXXVI. In Wesley T. Mott, ed., The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1992), pp. 25–26. 2. Linda Zagzebski, “Exemplarist Virtue Theory.” Metaphilosophy 41.1–2 (2010), p. 51. 3. For Zagzebski’s discussion of other desiderata of moral theory, see her “Exemplarist Virtue Theory,” pp. 42–49. 4. Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 41. 5. The representations of Socrates I am particularly referring to are those of Plato’s earliest work, specifically, Euthyphro, The Apology, and Crito. 6. See, e.g., Analects 8.11, 8.18–8.21, 18.10. 7. See, e.g., Analects 5.9, 6.3, 6.7, 6.11, 9.20. 8. Although I employ here Confucius’ account of his dreams, I hasten to observe that the less formally expressed sentiment found here fi nds formal expression elsewhere. As I argue later, many of Confucius’ observations concerning more abstractly defi ned virtues appear to evidence efforts to capture more abstractly the seductive power of exemplars. 9. David N. Keightley, “Early Civilization in China: Reflections on How It Became Chinese.” In Paul S. Ropp, ed., Heritage of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 20. 10. David N. Keightley, “Clean Hands and Shining Helmets: Heroic Action in Early Chinese and Greek Culture.” In Tobin Siebers, ed., Religion and the Authority of the Past (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. 39. 11. Keightley, “Clean Hands,” p. 43. 12. I develop this point more completely in Chapter 4. 13. Here and throughout the book, I employ the terms “good” and “good person” in a deliberately informal sense to indicate a loose, inchoate, and necessarily imprecise valuation. I do not employ the terms in correspondence to any term or phrase in the Analects but, as will become clear, use them instead to denote the directly identified and as yet incompletely understood exemplar. 14. I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for the Journal of Chinese Philosophy for raising this point. 15. I am indebted to Philip J. Ivanhoe for this point and also for the distinctive “bottom up” language in which I frame it. 16. To be clear and as the ladder image suggests, I do not claim that exemplars become wholly irrelevant for any theories formed on this model. Clearly, exemplars can continue to provide a way to exchange between the general and the particular, to move from theory to practice. My point is simply that the structure of the theory, its conceptual foundation and fi nal structure, need not include them. 17. Saul A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 136. 18. In some respects, this initial instance of dubbing or naming must also be understood as an origins myth. That is, while Kripke, for example, uses the

Notes

19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

31. 32.

195

literal naming and baptism of infants as an analogue, in the case of natural kinds this process is understood more figuratively. Kripke, p. 135. Kripke, p. 135. Putnam of course has an elaborate thought experiment that aims to demonstrate this possibility, but that is unnecessary to rehearse here. See his “Twin Earth” thought experiment in Hilary Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning.’” In Putnam, Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 223–227. Putnam, p. 227–229. Putnam, p. 229. Here, I largely track some of the consequences of a direct reference account that Kripke identifies. See Kripke, p. 1–140. It is important here to note a significant disanalogy between natural kinds and exemplars. As Zagzebski observes, unlike natural kinds, for which “a single paradigm ordinarily suffices to fix the reference,” exemplars will not display the sameness requisite to reliance on a single paradigm. Exemplars will vary from one another and their variety will matter in ways not seen in natural kinds. Consequently, we will need multiple models to fix the reference in this case. For Zagzebski’s treatment of this, see Divine Motivation Theory, p. 47, as well as her more extensive discussion of moral disagreement in the same work, p. 347–388. As Zagebski acknowledges, one challenge to any contemporary moral theory is accommodating the diversity of human values as they manifest cross-culturally. In an exemplarist idiom, this manifests in there being perhaps more diversity among “good people” than a single account of their properties can easily accommodate. However, because Confucius and the Analects’ authors assume a common catalog of exemplars, I do not here assay the ways in which they might address the strains introduced where the diversity of exemplars includes apparently incompatible models. While such is, to be sure, a promising direction for further study, it is outside the scope of my argument. Putnam, p. 228. I am indebted to Linda Zagzebski for a fruitful conversation about these examples and the analytical framework they suggest. Here I translate junzi as “noble” in an effort to capture the sense the term seems to have had prior to Confucius. In this earlier usage, the term appears to suggest a person who is “noble” or “gentlemanly” in the traditional sense of these English terms. This is of course a problematic translation where the aim is to capture Confucius’ own usage, usage I discuss in Chapter 4. The image of Confucius I reference here is of course the work of the Analects’ authors and while I do distinguish what they philosophically offer from what the Confucius they present seems to offer, this distinction is of course complicated. Nonetheless, I want to divide, as a heuristic, the work of Confucius as it can be discerned in the Analects from that of the text’s authors. I hasten to note that it matters little for my account whether the Sage Kings were real rulers or merely legendary or whether, if they are real, they had the qualities popularly ascribed to them. Fictional or mythic exemplars can operate for us much as real ones do. What matters most is that fictive exemplars are embedded in narratives that in some measure successfully evoke identification with them and the ostensible conditions of their lives. More extensive discussion of counterfeits is given in Chapters 4 and 7. There is of course a strong sense in the Analects that Confucius would not only fi nd the views of fi liality in currency in his day defi cient, he would also see in them indications of cultural and moral decline. That is, he

196

33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44.

45.

46.

Notes might well provide a thicker account of why salient features of exemplars are neglected. As many scholars have noted, it is clear that various strata of the Analects reflect the interests and legacies of particular followers of Confucius. Moreover, there is at least some evidence that there may be important divergences or at least differences in emphasis that are introduced through the influences of these followers. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 46. Christoph Harbsmeier provides an extensive analysis of Confucius’ use of informal, colloquial, and even vulgar language in his essay, “Confucius Ridens: Humor in the Analects,” Harvard Journal of Asian Studies 50 (1990), p. 141–161. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, pp. 52–53. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 52. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 53. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 53. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 49. It is important to note that Zagzebski’s account also denies the need for perfection in exemplars. Her discussion of this, particularly as it bears on her theistic version of exemplarism, is found in Divine Motivation Theory, Chapter 9. I here allow that it is certainly possible that we can speak of exemplars as being “fi nished” or “fi nal” in virtue as a postmortem designation, though I would nonetheless insist that the Analects declines to identify any as “perfect.” Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 56. As I do with the terms “good” and “goodness,” I here employ “bad” and “badness” in a deliberately informal and imprecise way. I do not, that is, trace these terms to any term in the Analects, but instead use it to capture the generality and necessary vagueness of pre-theoretical usage. It would, for example, be interesting to consider whether the purchase a figure such as Adolf Hitler holds over the popular moral imagination derives from a sense that he is that rare model who inspires a dramatically totalizing aversion. That is, invocations of Hitler in popular moral discourse strike me as being of a special type, their aversive force largely reliant on a sense that Hitler is distinctive in the depth of his evil. At any rate, it is perhaps significant that the invocation of Hitler in popular moral discourse enjoys the rhetorical force it does in part because few figures are perceived to be his equal in irredeemable and complete badness. Edward Slingerland, “Virtue Ethics, the Analects, and the Problem of Commensurability,” Journal of Religious Ethics 29.1 (2001), p. 103.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1. E.g., I take it as perfectly consistent to argue both that the Analects fails to discern the need for an account of human nature as foundation for its moral theory and that we ought render its moral theory more viable by selfconsciously supplementing the text with an account of human nature we fi nd generally consistent with what the Analects does offer. 2. Bryan Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 127. 3. Translation mine.

Notes

197

4. May Sim, Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 141. 5. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, p. 127. 6. There is of course much debate about how exactly Xunzi’s claim “xing e” ought be read. Van Norden adopts a more nuanced view than the standard translation—“human nature is bad”—would suggest. Van Norden’s emphasis in his comparison with the Analects is upon the difficulty of cultivation where the material of one’s nature resists moral training. See Van Norden, Virtue Ethics, pp. 126–128. 7. Jiyuan Yu, The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle:Mirrors of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 54. I here use the translation of the relevant passage given in Yu, a translation he in turn draws from D. C. Lau. Yu’s more complete account of the evidence for his claim is found in Yu, pp. 54–56. 8. Yu, p. 56. 9. May Sim, Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 138. 10. Sim, p. 164. It is important to stress here that Sim’s argument interweaves discussion of human nature and Confucius’ conception of the self with discussion of the telos of morality. That is, her suggestions regarding both Mencius and Aristotle arise from a consideration of both human nature and the telos, or account of flourishing. Her endorsement of considering Mencius more useful than Xunzi, it should also be noted, has less to do with any direct correspondence between the Analects and the Mencian view than with the ways in which Mencius provides some of what a successful moral theory will need. That is, the choice for Sim appears to be between using Mencius or Aristotle, and she opts for Aristotle. For her discussion, see pp. 163–165. 11. Edward Slingerland, “Virtue Ethics, the Analects, and the Problem of Commensurability,” Journal of Religious Ethics 29.1 (2001), p. 117. 12. Slingerland, “Virtue Ethics, the Analects, and the Problem of Commensurability,” p. 118. 13. Graham’s discussion of the shift may be found in A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1989), pp. 107–111. See also Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, p. 126. 14. Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 46. 15. Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” in Values and Virtues, ed. Timothy Chappell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 10. 16. Zagzebski, “Exemplarist Virtue Theory,” Metaphilosophy 41.1–2(2010), p. 48. 17. Zagzebski, “Exemplarist Virtue Theory,” p. 49. 18. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 46. 19. Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” p. 55. 20. It is important to emphasize that I do not assume that we have in the Analects a complete version of the data set from which Confucius and the text’s authors would have worked. That is, I assume that there are some, perhaps many, exemplars who play a role in informing the text’s moral constructs but who never appear in the text. Because of this, we should not expect to fi nd a complete correspondence between the exemplars the text does depict and its moral concepts.

198

Notes

21. It should be acknowledged here that there is some debate about just what significance we should assign to the absence of a singular term or concept in classical Chinese where we seek to “match” Chinese texts to the philosophical terminology of other languages. For example, Bryan Van Norden argues that we should not conclude that the lack of a term in classical Chinese that corresponds neatly to an Anglo-European philosophical term signals the absence of a corresponding general concept. See Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, p. 22–23. In contrast, Henry Rosemont argues that the absence of a satisfying classical Chinese term for an Anglo-European concept should indeed warn us away from “fi nding” those concepts in the classical Chinese sources. See Rosemont, “Against Relativism,” in Interpreting across Boundaries, eds. Gerald James Larson and Eliot Deutsch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 41 n.11, as well as, more recently, Rosemont, “Reflections on 知 zhi (‘knowing’) in the Analects,” unpublished manuscript, available on request at [email protected]. 22. Yu, p. 25. 23. Yu, p. 32. 24. Slingerland, “Virtue Ethics, the Analects, and the Problem of Commensurability,” p. 112. 25. It is perhaps important to note that while Yu and Slingerland differ in the terminology from the Analects they each emphasize, in broad structure, their views share much. For example, while Yu emphasizes de, he also acknowledges ren in accounting for human moral development. 26. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, p. 101. 27. It is somewhat ambiguous just how tightly Van Norden would align the Analects’ account of flourishing with human nature. In his general discussion of the role of flourishing in virtue ethics, he suggests that there is a close connection between flourishing and nature, employing the sort of biological continuum I later describe in this chapter. See Van Norden, pp. 37–39. However, Van Norden does not explicitly give his reading of the Analects’ account of flourishing in these terms. I thus here understand him to fi nd any connection between the Analects’ account of flourishing and its account of human nature perhaps too thin or too thinly indicated to assert a particular theoretical relationship, much less one on the order of the biological accounts so common in virtue ethics. 28. Sim, p. 35. 29. Sim, p. 35. 30. Sim, p. 150. 31. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy, p. 37. 32. For example, we fi nd in the Analects, some emphasis on the value of forbearance and equanimity in the face of hardship (see, e.g., 4.2 and 7.37). While such claims could presumably be enfolded in an account of flourishing inferred from the text, it seems to me that a more natural and economical explanation is that they reflect significant and persistent experiential struggles for Confucius and his students. That is, Confucius’ and his students’ serial experiences of disappointments and hardships rather naturally and predictably incline their reflections toward the sorts of attitudinal and dispositional adjustments that can aid individuals in withstanding, or even graciously accepting, such experiences. 33. See 3.4, 9.5, 17.19. While Slingerland and Yu cite these passages in support for a telos derived from tian (Heaven), it is notable that these passages, along

Notes

34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

199

with 7.23 and 14.35, display Confucius appealing to tian as his support as he defies the status quo and, in some cases, encounters the unpleasant consequences of this defiance. I suggest that this pattern—as well as Confucius having, on one occasion, cursed or blamed tian for misfortune (11.9)—may indicate impassioned speech rather than any articulate philosophical commitment. This particular worry can be fleshed out where we consider the possibility that defiance achieves more potent rhetorical force where one can claim, seriously or not, to have a “transcendent” or “divine” force on one’s side. Such claims need not, and often do not, indicate a sincere doxastic commitment to belief in such a divine force, much less indicate metaphysical commitments that would direct a human telos. For a critique of accounts that combine both iterations of flourishing, see Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life.” Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 16. Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 172. It may be objected that early China has its own version of “continuity in modeling” in the form of a correlative cosmology that links macrocosmic natural order and the microcosmic order of human beings and other creatures, as well as linking microcosm to microcosm in a common pattern of order. However, two problems attach to any effort to link correlative cosmology to a virtue ethical account of teleology in the Analects. First, it is unclear just when this cosmological thinking developed and whether it has any purchase in the Analects. A. C. Graham, for example, sees cosmology only really taking hold for philosophers in the Han Dynasty and explicitly rejects its inclusion in the Analects, in part on the basis of Analects 7.21, which avers that Confucius “did not speak of wonders, feats of strength, disturbances, the daimonic” (Graham trans.). See Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 325–330. Second and most importantly, even if it could be shown that correlative cosmology influenced the thinking of the Analects, it is far from clear that such could do the work that biological models do in virtue ethics. That is, if the Analects does employ assumptions about patterns that are continuous across the myriad things of the world, it is unlikely that they would be the purportedly nonevaluative sort virtue ethicists desire, if not require. There is, in short, no reason to think that any correlative thinking would be of an ostensibly value-neutral, biological sort. Hursthouse, p. 172. Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” p. 50. Swanton offers three compelling counter-examples that show how complicated it is to connect virtue with flourishing where virtuous activity seems predictably to result in suffering and hardship. See her Virtue Ethics—A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 80–84. Many eudaimonists would treat the felt satisfaction of the virtuous as being a core element of how we evaluate “flourishing.” Foot, e.g., argues that where the virtuous suffer as a result of their virtuous actions, we should attend carefully to their testimony that their course is worth it; that they do not, despite tragic circumstances, regret their actions. See Foot, pp. 94–96. Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” p. 50. Zagzebski, “the Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” p. 61. See, e.g., 2.21, 9.2, 9.6, 18.5, 18.6, 18.7, 19.24. In addition to defending Confucius against critique and showing the subtle and fi ne rewards he enjoys, the Analects regularly and emphatically counsels the cultivation of independence from the vagaries of popular opinion. See, e.g., 1.16, 4.14, 15.19, 15.21.

200 Notes 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” p. 58. Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” p. 56. Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life, p. 61. For Zagzebski’s elaboration on this point, see “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” esp. pp. 58–61. Confucius notably also expresses a version of this, observing the way in which his, and any virtuous person’s, desires are ordered to privilege living admirably over fulfi lling other, more commonplace desires. See 1.14, 4.19, 7.12, 8.12, and, especially, 4.5. Zagzebski, “The Admirable Life and the Desirable Life,” p. 61. See, e.g., 8.7 and 4.6. See, e.g., 5.5, 5.8, 5.19, 7.34, and 14.1. Chengyang Li, “Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care,” in Chenyang Li, ed., The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender (Chicago: Open Court. 2000), p. 24. Herbert Fingarette, Confucius—The Secular as Sacred (New York: Waveland Press, 1998), pp. 37–38. Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 75. Slingerland, “Virtue Ethics, the Analects, and the Problem of Commensurability,” p. 114. Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 66. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., trans., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), p. 50. Mary I. Bockover, “The Ren Dao of Confucius: A Spiritual Account of Humanity,” in David Jones, ed., Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects (Chicago: Open Court, 2008), p. 197. D. C. Lau, trans., The Analects (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), pp. 14–17. Here and in subsequent texts, I identify both the source of the translation and, where possible, identify where the translator discusses his translation or understanding of ren. Edward Slingerland, trans., Analects: With Selections from the Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003), p. 238. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao, p. 19. Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000), p. 11 n.25. Donald Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 28–29. Ames and Rosemont, Analects, pp. 48–51. Roger T. Ames, “Paronomasia: A Confucian Way of Making Meaning,” in David Jones, ed., Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects (Chicago: Open Court, 2008), p. 40 and p. 37, respectively. Lee H. Yearley, “An Existentialist Reading of Book 4 of the Analects,” in Bryan W. Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 245. James Legge, Confucian Analects, in Legge, ed. and trans., The Chinese Classics, vol. I (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960). Kwong-loi Shun, “Ren仁 and Li禮 in the Analects,” in Van Norden, Confucius and the Analects, p. 53. Li, pp. 24–25. Ames and Rosemont, p. 50. It is not at all clear just what Confucius could or would have known about the historical figures he cites and they are of course subject to much that we would count as legend rather than clear historical representation. Indeed, we

Notes

201

cannot be certain that the Sage Kings existed. They are, however, frequently put to rhetorical use as authoritative precedent in early Chinese philosophy and this must give us pause here as it does in other philosophical theories that appeal to them.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. Françios Jullien, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece, trans. Sophie Hawkes (New York: Zone Books, 2000), p. 207. 2. Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 7. 3. Jiyuan Yu, The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 42. 4. Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Reweaving the ‘one thread’ of the Analects,” Philosophy East and West 40 (1990): 27. 5. A striking example of this is found in Confucius’ exchange with Yan Hui’s father over the provisions for Yan Hui’s burial (11.8) Yan Hui’s father requests funds from Confucius to provide a coffi n more elaborate than Yan Hui’s social status would have warranted where ritual norms were followed. Confucius declines this request, insisting on the need to observe ritual proprieties, but notably also expresses fellow feeling, citing his own son’s death and the great talent of Yan Hui. 6. While the Analects never explicitly makes this claim, it is implicit throughout the text’s discussions of family and fi liality. 7. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 52. 8. See Olberding, “‘I Know Not “Seems”’: Grief for Parents in the Analects,” in Amy Olberding and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds., Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought (New York: State University of New York Press, 2011). 9. I develop this latter point as it specifically relates to mourning practice in my essay, “Slowing Death Down: Mourning in the Analects,” in David Jones, ed., Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 2008). 10. For example, in Analects 6.28, Confucius invites criticism when he has an audience with Nanzi, a royal consort who is a woman of low repute. While Confucius defends his actions as appropriate, his student, Zilu, is appalled. See also 14.17 where Confucius defends Guanzhong against the charge that he should have died in loyalty rather than serve a new regime. Confucius insists Guanzhong should not be expected to act as common person would. 11. It is perhaps important to note that, on my account, Confucius’ own testimony about his activity is largely beside the point, much the way a scientist’s might be. That is, even if we imagine Confucius to position himself fi rmly in conservatism and describe his insights as but a lens through which tradition is seen more clearly, we could nonetheless suspect that he would simply be wrong about that, that he underestimates the creative nature of his own activity. 12. For discussion of fool’s gold with respect to direct reference, see Saul A. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 118–119. 13. I discuss the issue of the village worthy, as well as Mencius’ interpretation of Confucius’ remark about it, in more detail in Chapter 7. 14. David N. Keightley, “Clean Hands and Shining Helmets: Heroic Action in Early Chinese and Greek Culture.” In Tobin Siebers, ed., Religion and the Authority of the Past (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), p. 43.

202

Notes

15. A self-conscious de-valuing of public recognition is a pervasive theme of the Analects. Confucius seems particularly eager to de-couple his students’ progress at self-cultivation from expectations of conventional success and approbation. See, e.g., 1.16, 4.14, 12.20, 14.30, 15.19, 15.23. 16. Donald Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), p. 114. 17. Philip J. Ivanhoe, “The Shade of Confucius: Social Roles, Ethical Theory, and the Self,” in Marthe Chandler and Ronnie Littlejohn, eds., Polishing the Chinese Mirror: Essays in Honor of Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 2008), p. 38. 18. Erica Brindley argues that there is a peril in ignoring the abiding class and gender consciousness in how the junzi is framed in the Analects. See Brindley, “’Why Use an Ox-Cleaver to Carve a Chicken?’ The Sociology of the Junzi Ideal in the Lunyu,” Philosophy East and West 59.1 (2009): 47–70. Brindley notes, for example, that “there is not a single story in the Analects that lauds or accepts cases in which social mobility occurs between commoners and the shi class” (p. 66 n.31). 19. 4.1. It should perhaps be noted that the claim that ren effectively creates “neighborhoods” in which others would wish to “dwell” can be taken literally or figuratively. For a brief discussion of the different readings, see Slingerland, Analects, p. 63. 20. It is important to note that “shu” does not appear in 6.30. In reading 6.30 as indirectly referencing “shu,” I follow an established and fairly commonplace interpretive tradition. For but a few examples, see A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Dao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1989), pp. 18–22; David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking Through Confucius (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), pp. 283–290; Philip J. Ivanhoe, “The ‘Golden Rule’ in the Analects,” in David Jones, ed., Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 2008), p. 95; Bryan Van Norden, “Unweaving the ‘One Thread’ of Analects 4.15,” in Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 224; and Slingerland, Analects, p. 29. 21. I do not here rule out the possibility that “de” is in effect a term meant to capture the power referenced in these other moral terms. That is, it may well be the case that the junzi and the person who is ren are said to enjoy profound influence over others precisely because the junzi and the ren person will possess the more limited scope “virtue” of de. This is, however, not entirely clear from the Analects and it may also be the case that the term “de” is still unfi xed or unstable in meaning and will only later assume such a role. For example, Analects 6.30 (discussed in n.20 just above), references the good person’s power in connection with ren and apparently refers to shu, without alluding to de at all. 22. Munro, pp. 102–110. 23. In a more contemporary idiom, we might cite figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. as an exemplar who exercises a compelling, though not universally felt, “power” that is not reducible to the content of his moral claims. 24. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sermon CXXXVI. In Wesley T. Mott, ed., The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1992), p. 26. 25. Edward Slingerland, Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 43.

Notes

203

26. Joel Kupperman, “Naturalness Revisited: Why Western Philosophers Should Study Confucius,” in Bryan W. Van Norded, ed., Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 44. 27. Here again, to emphasize, I use the term “good” in a deliberately informal way. I mean here only to emphasize the apparent absence of inner confl ict or discord in the good person’s process in doing what she does. 28. Slingerland, Effortless Action, p. 60. 29. Slingerland, Effortless Action, p. 43. 30. Translation modified. 31. As Kupperman points out, “naturally” here is the result not of any given nature, but of a transformation of the person. Like the pianist who performs “naturally” as a result of her having acquired extensive training, the presumption here is that the good person too is one who achieves his capacity to act “naturally.” It is also important to note that ease or naturalness do not preclude, for example, trepidation or hesitation. The good person may when circumstances demand, display an appropriately “ill-at-ease” mien. See Kupperman, pp. 42–46. 32. See, e.g., the Mohist critique of the style of musical performance prized by the Confucians. Ian Johnston, trans. The Mozi: A Complete Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), Chapter 32. 33. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), p. 51. 34. For a more detailed treatment of how the li may be analogous to grammar, see Chenyang Li, “Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation between Li and Ren in the Analects,” Philosophy East and West 57.3 (2007): 311–329. 35. It is perhaps necessary to emphasize here that some interest in the aesthetic qualities of human conduct seems an ineluctable element in etiquette. Unlike morality simpliciter, which often can permit complete indifference to demeanor, expression, and so forth, etiquette requires attention to these elements of behavior. Put another way, to be polite or well-mannered has expressive requirements that morality does not, or at least not always or obviously, have. 36. Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 31. 37. Eno, p. 31. 38. Eno, p. 34. 39. To be clear, Confucius never articulates any clear or explicit account of how the influence of past rulers links to the influence of the li. He does not, that is, provide an “origins story” on the order of Xunzi’s insistence that the li are the creation of the Sage Kings. My point here is simply that there is in the Analects a consistent suggestion that in enacting the li, one enacts traditions in some way vouchsafed by past virtuous rulers. Put another way, following the li and following the ways of authoritative past rulers are not discrete imperatives, but conceptually converge. 40. To emphasize, there is some uncertainty about how to understand claims about past rulers. We cannot of course know that there is anything other than legend that recommends past kings as the initiators of the li. Moreover, we cannot be certain that the ascription of the li to the activities of these kings is a literal minded claim. It may well be a strategic myth even in Confucius’ own lifetime. I here take it that whether the Analects’ claims reflect earnest doxastic commitments or not, the coupling of emulation with these claims suggests an exemplarist model.

204

Notes

41. Julia Driver makes a compelling argument regarding the legitimacy of concern about the appearance of impropriety that I think would generally, if not seamlessly, suit what we fi nd in the Analects. For Driver’s argument, see her essay, “Caesar’s Wife: On the Moral Significance of Appearing Good,” Journal of Philosophy 89 (1992): 331–343. I briefly address its application to the Analects in Olberding, “‘Ascending the Hall’: Demeanor and Moral Improvement in the Analects.” Philosophy East and West 59.4 (2009): 503–522. 42. See, e.g., 5.5, 11.25, 15.11, 16.4. 43. Slingerland, Analects: With Selections from the Traditional Commentaries, p. 238. 44. E.g., David Keightley traces versions of these features in his study of preWarring States China. See his essays, “Clean Hands and Shining Helmets: Heroic Action in Early Chinese and Greek Culture,” in Tobin Anthony Siebers, ed., Religion and the Authority of the Past (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994) and “Early Civilization in China: Reflections on how it became Chinese,” in Paul S. Ropp, ed., Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 45. To be clear, I here of course speak only of moral exemplars. There may be domains of human activity in which relations would not feature in our evaluations. E.g., we can well imagine an exemplary musician or cabinet-maker who is exemplary in her skill domain despite a thoroughgoing alienation from others. I also grant that in some exceptional cases, we may fi nd an exemplar who performs some superlatively heroic deed despite alienation from others. Charles Dickens’ figure, Sydney Carton, in A Tale of Two Cities seems, for example, to model this (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities [New York: Knopf, 1993]). However, my sense is that in such cases what we admire is a sort of “conversion” the exemplar performs. Carton is alienated from others, but his heroic self-sacrifice represents the moment he ceases to be the alienated figure and extends himself to others. I.e., we admire his heroic death as an outcome of his belatedly and dramatically achieving sympathy with others. 46. Henry Rosemont, Jr. and Roger T. Ames have recently proposed that early Confucianism may offer a role ethics in which “we are not individuals in the discrete sense, but rather interrelated persons living—not ‘playing’—a multiplicity of roles that constitute who we are, and allow us to pursue a unique distinctiveness and virtuosity in our conduct” [“Family Reverence (xiao 孝) as the Source of Consummatory Conduct (ren 仁),” Dao 7 (2008): 15]. The role ethic they suggest, however, is meant to function less as a moral theory than a “vision of human flourishing” that largely abjures elaborate theoretical commitments. It is beyond the scope of this book to assay the affi nities and differences between exemplarism and a role ethic. However, my sense is that there is much upon which they could agree and that exemplarism could operate as a congenial theoretical superstructure for a role ethic. Such would entail, for example, understanding the priority assigned to roles as issuing from the examples set by particular and defi nite exemplars. It would, however, apply a much more elaborate theoretical construct than I think Rosemont and Ames wish to endorse. For more on their role ethics reading of early Confucianism, see Rosemont and Ames, The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009). 47. Zagzebski briefly argues, for example, that Aristotle’s virtue ethic may have exemplarist elements. If this is so and to the extent that we fi nd Aristotle committed to a more individualized if not autonomous explanation of the

Notes

205

exemplar, we can see here an alternative to the Analects’ social account. For Zagzebski’s discussion of Aristotle, see Divine Motivation Theory, pp. 44–45.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1. There is also perhaps some argument to be made here that the text’s inclusion of what are clearly later strata is far less problematic on an exemplarist reading. Additions to the text may here be read as constituting expansions of the data from which to work in formulating conceptual accounts. Such is not to say that the text thereby achieves a more uniform quality, but only to observe that later additions need not register as intrusive. 2. Edward Slingerland, “Virtue Ethics, the Analects, and the Problem of Commensurability.” Journal of Religious Ethics 29.1 (2001), p. 103. 3. See, e.g., Aristotle, Politics, in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1259a37– 1260b23; Immanuel Kant, Of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. John T. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), Section 4. 4. Hegel’s notorious summary and dismissal of the Analects is perhaps a paradigm: “We have conversations between Confucius and his followers in which there is nothing defi nite further than a commonplace moral put in the form of good, sound doctrine, which may be found as well expressed and better, in every place and amongst every people [ . . . ] He is hence only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom—one with whom there is no speculative philosophy. We may conclude from his original works that for their reputation it would have been better had they never been translated.” G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E. S. Haldane (New York: Humanities Press, 1963), pp. 120–121. 5. Herlee Creel’s study of Confucius remains one of the more compelling and complex presentations of Confucius. See his Confucius: The Man and the Myth (New York: John Day Company, 1949), especially Chapter 5. See also, e.g., Michael Nylan and Thomas Wilson, Lives of Confucius: Civilization’s Greatest Sage through the Ages (New York: Doubleday, 2010), especially Chapter 1; Christoph Harbsmeier, “Confucius Ridens: Humor in the “Analects,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50 (1990): 131–161; and Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp.74–75. Creel, Nylan, and Wilson, in particular, provide studies that also assay both the purportedly historical Confucius and the development of multiple images of Confucius across the span of Chinese history. 6. See Robert Eno, The Confucian Creation of Heaven (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 58–60. 7. Much of the Analects’ representation of Confucius’ ritual behavior and demeanor is contained in Book 10. While I here follow the interpretive tradition of seeing Book 10 as a (more or less) apt depiction of Confucius, it is worth noting that even if this section of the text is a compilation adapted from ritual documents, such is consistent with an exemplarist reading. Fictive accounts of real exemplars and fictive exemplars, such as are found in novels, can motivate the pre-theoretical responses on which exemplarism runs. Indeed it perhaps bears emphasizing that my treatment of Confucius, while observing the lively and vivid presence he cuts in the text, requires no assumption of factual accuracy. My own suspicion is that the text’s portrait, and especially the deviant aspects I address later in this chapter, are drawn rather directly from

206 Notes

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

experience of Confucius himself. However, we need only fi nd a consistent narrative persona in order to generate an exemplarist analysis. This traditional sensibility is of course much more complex than I represent it here. A full treatment of it would entail, for example, addressing the many historical exemplars who were reputed to be physically deformed, the links between bodily preservation and familial duty, indebtedness to ancestors and the fi lial responsibility to “return” the body to them whole and intact. It would likewise require considering the more explicit treatments of the subject, such as those ascribed to the Yangists, with their imperative to keep one’s life whole, and the later Confucian Xunzi’s explicit critique of physiognomy. For detailed treatment of these many issues, see Mark Edward Lewis, The Construction of Space in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), Chapter 1, and Albert Galvany, “Debates on Mutilation, Bodily Preservation, and Ideology in Early China,” Asiatische Studien 63.1 (2009): 67–91. Galvany’s study, cited just above, provides a particularly compelling and detailed analysis of the symbolic significance of walking and gait. Lewis, p. 14. Galvany, p. 76. It is of course important to note that, in some cases, bodily damage and deformities were marks of the exceptionally good and physical “perfection” marked the morally suspicious. For example, the Sage King Yu was said to be a hunchback and to have an unusual and compromised gait, but he is, if anything, considered more exceptional on account of these unusual physical features. Xunzi catalogs many of these exceptional and flawless figures in his argument against physiognomy as morally telling. See John Knoblock, trans., Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, vol. I (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 5.1–5.2. Galvany, pp. 75–76. I think we fi nd two striking examples of this in Jesus and Socrates. Both enjoy an admiration rooted in part on their dramatic ends, but both likewise present us with comparably small, morally pregnant gestures that invite our identification with them and stir the moral imagination. We care, I would argue, that Jesus wept in sympathetic sorrow at the death of Lazarus and that he physically and violently heaved over the money changers’ tables in the temple in outrage [The Bible, King James trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), John 11:33–35 and Matthew 21:12, respectively.] Similarly, Socrates’ extended argument about the body operating as a prison from which the soul is liberated upon death is briefly punctuated by his affectionately stroking Phaedo’s hair, a richly sensuous physical gesture that significantly complicates Socrates’ claims about the “prison” of the body. [Plato, Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in John N. Cooper, ed., Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 89b-89c.] While Aristotle’s claims about the magnanimous man’s gait and voice are generally thought fanciful, it is worth noting that he tries to characterize abstractly a correlation between bearing and character. He claims, for example, that “a slow step is thought proper to the proud man, a deep voice, and a level utterance; for the man who takes few things seriously is not likely to be hurried, nor the man who thinks nothing great to be excited, while a shrill voice and a rapid gait are the results of hurry and excitement.” [Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1125a14–16.] It is perhaps worth pointing out that gestures of this sort are commonplace. I take Confucius here to engage in a well-mannered behavior not unlike

Notes

16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

207

our own habit of pulling our cars aside or men removing their caps when a funeral procession passes. Nancy Sherman, “The Look and Feel of Virtue,” in Christopher Gill, ed., Virtue, Norms, and Objectivity:Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 60. Leonard B. Meyer, “Toward a Theory of Style,” in Berel Lang, ed., The Concept of Style (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 21. Joel Kupperman provides a brief but illuminating discussion of the role of style in offering testimony about attitudes and dispositions. See Kupperman, “Naturalness Revisited,” in Bryan W. Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 47–49. For Meyer’s full discussion of constraints in the context of artistic style, see Meyer, p. 28ff. With the issue of constraints arise a host of questions concerning the role of moral luck in the development of style. Many of the constraints an individual will encounter concern features of her situation or of herself that resist or perhaps even defy control. We thus will encounter here the same sorts of questions about responsibility for one’s personal style that we see featuring in more general discussion of morality. While these warrant interest and attention, they are beyond the scope of this present study. For Thomas Nagel’s seminal discussion of moral luck, see “Moral Luck,” Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volume (1976), pp. 137–152. Zagzebski, Divine Motivation Theory, p. 50. Kendall Walton, “Style and the Products and Processes of Art,” in Berel Lang, ed., The Concept of Style, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 75. Walton, p. 78. Walton, p. 84. Barbara Montero, “Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64.2 (2006): 231. Montero, pp. 231–232. It is perhaps important to note that the more experienced the observer, the greater purchase a proprioceptive sense of another’s movement will have. E.g., dancers will, by dint of their more extensive and comparable physical experience, enjoy a greater capacity to proprioceptively mirror the movement of another dancer. Montero, p. 237–238. As Montero notes, the empirical studies of this phenomenon are still in their infancy. Montero, p. 237. Montero, p. 236. It is important to note that Zagzebski’s contemporary version of exemplarism provides an account of the exemplar with reference to her emotions and the structure of her motivations. While I think her account promising, I here present a more theoretically thin account and target my remarks to the comparably narrow issue of style. The work of developing a full theoretical account of exemplars in the Analects is an undertaking beyond the scope of this book and would, given the laconic nature of the text, render making a theoretically thick account difficult. Thus while I draw on Zagzebski’s attention to motivation and emotion, I deliberately leave these concepts thin in a way that I think the Analects can hermeneutically bear. As Kupperman observes, our interest in style markedly and reasonably recedes in certain dramatic or urgent contexts. Where I rush to save a drowning child, the role of my demeanor in evaluating the moral quality of my action is negligible, if not utterly irrelevant. See Kupperman, pp. 49–50.

208

Notes

33. Walton, p. 84. 34. Confucius’ own posture with respect to the existence of spirits is ambiguous. He appears on occasion to express an agnosticism (see, e.g., 3.12 and 11.12). My own sense is that it matters little to Confucius and to his ritual practices whether spirits exist, as the practices themselves have a value for the practitioner in their promotion of ethically valuable attitudes such as, e.g., gratitude or remembrance. 35. The inference that Yuanrang is an old acquaintance of Confucius is based on a story contained in the Liji. The story relates that Confucius assisted with the funeral of Yuanrang’s mother. When Yuanrang, in a marked display of impropriety, climbs onto the coffi n and begins to sing, Confucius pretends not to hear and departs. Asked later to explain his apparent reluctance to stop Yuanrang, Confucius cites their long friendship. See James Legge, trans., Li Chi (New York: University Books, 1967), pp. 198–199. 36. Christoph Harbsmeier, “Confucius Ridens: Humor in the Analects,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50 (1990): 146. 37. 11.18. Translation Harbsmeier. 38. Harbsmeier, pp. 135–137. 39. Harbsmeier, p. 147. 40. Slingerland, Analects, p. 209. 41. Harbsmeier, p. 147. 42. Julia Annas, “Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing,” American Philosophical Association Proceedings and Addresses 78.2 (2004): 73. 43. Harry Eyres, “Just Put your Lips Together,” The Guardian, Friday, May 30, 2003, accessed March 14, 2010 at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2003/ may/30/classicalmusicandopera.artsfeatures 44. Eyres, “Just Put Your Lips Together.” 45. Rob Cowan, qtd. in Eyres, “Just Put Your Lips Together.” Cowan here speaks specifically of Gould’s 1981 recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” a recording in which Gould’s idiosyncratic humming is particularly pronounced and eccentric. 46. While I do not address this here, I think it perhaps important to note that Gould strongly preferred recording his music in studio rather than performing live and was, moreover, unusually captured by the aesthetic possibilities that editing allowed. That he did not, given this, seek to hide his hum either through better suppression of it in the repetitive performances recording allows or by editing is, I expect, an important feature of the resulting recordings. I also suspect that my analogy between Gould and Confucius could pursue this in Confucius’ own case and invite consideration of whether Confucius would, if he could, similarly suppress his “hum.” However, this subject is considerably richer than what I can assay in this more general treatment and so I leave it here aside. 47. Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West,” in Stevens, The Collected Poetry of Wallace Stevens (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p. 129. 48. It is worth noting that one abiding objection to recorded music, and digitally enhanced music in particular, resides in just the way such editing compromises what I here call the narrative arc. I expand upon the way such reservations can be applied to moral thinking in Chapter 7. 49. Charles Rosen, Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (New York: Free Press, 2002), p. 140. 50. Rosen, p. 139. 51. Here too we may grant that a virtuoso performance may register as discovering or even creating a new spirit of the piece. A striking popular music example of this is Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s interpretation of “Somewhere

Notes

52. 53.

54.

55.

209

over the Rainbow,” an interpretation that transforms what seemed a rather treacly melody and lyrics into a startling work of gentle melancholy and longing pitched against despair. While not in “error,” Kamakawiwo’ole’s rendering is decidedly non-standard and yet arguably creates a new and significantly richer standard for understanding the piece. [Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Alone in Iz World, Big Boy compact disc, 2001.] See Amy Olberding, “The Consummation of Sorrow: An Analysis of Confucius’ Grief for Yan Hui,” Philosophy East and West 54 (2004): 279–301. For a philosophical treatment addressing the power of jokes and humor to mitigate powerless and assert power, see Ted Cohen’s discussion in his short essay “Humor,” in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (New York: Routledge, 2001) and his more extensive treatment of how jokes work (or fail to work) in his Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). This sentiment is explicitly expressed in Analects 8.7, in the words of Zengzi: “Scholar-apprentices cannot but be strong and resolved, for they bear a heavy charge and their way is long. Where they take ren as their charge, is it not a heavy one? And where their way ends only in death, is it not indeed long?” Translation modified. Harbsmeier, p. 135.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1. There is of course some doubt that self-cultivation is ever truly fi nished. What I mean by “done” here is simply what Confucius indicates in his autobiographical description. Confucius attains a state in which he “can give [his] heart-and-mind free rein without overstepping the boundaries” (2.4). He has, that is, a self-trust radically more thorough than any learner and this can function, from the learner’s vantage, as an inhibiting and daunting difference. 2. See Bernard Williams, “Replies,” in J. E. J. Altham and Russ Harrison, eds., Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 189–191. For a discussion of this issue with respect to early Chinese philosophical debates, see Eric L. Hutton, “Han Feizi’s Criticism of Confucianism and its Implications for Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 5.3 (2008): 423–453. 3. See, e.g., Analects 4.6, 5.19, 6.7, 6.29, 7.26. 4. Sherri Irvin, “Aesthetics as a Guide to Ethics,” in Robert Stecker and Theodore Gracyk, eds., Aesthetics Today: A Reader (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 370–377. 5. See, e.g., Analects 11.22, where Confucius answers the same question in different ways in sensitivity to the needs of his interlocutors. 6. This seems evident from the general persistence Zilu shows. Despite Confucius’ injunctions that Zilu ought to temper himself, Zilu continues, apparently cheerfully, to exhibit his characteristic impetuosity. 7. Translation has been modified. 8. This prediction apparently did prove true. The Zuozhuan reports that Zilu died a heroic death while in service in the state of Wei. Notably, as he is struck down, Zilu performs a fi nal act of bravado, retying his cap so that it will not fall to the ground and he may die properly attired. See James Legge, trans., The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), p. 843.

210 Notes 9. Slingerland provides a helpful summary of this commentarial tradition, Slingerland, Analects, pp. 116–117. 10. I infer this from Confucius’ suspicion that Zilu will die early. Presumably, if Confucius felt it were reasonable to expect Zilu to moderate his incautious tendencies, he would not make so dire a prediction. 11. Zaiwo is the rather obvious contrast here. While Zaiwo, insofar as the Analects describes him, does not commit errors as obviously egregious as Zilu’s, Confucius’ critical responses to Zaiwo are far more dismissive and sharp. 12. There is, I think, some ambiguity about the extent to which Zilu inspires admiration in his peers. Indeed, I think Confucius’ clear affection for Zilu all the more remarkable because it seems to be quite particular to Confucius. 13. I hasten to note here that errors in ascriptions of process in the appreciation of art are significantly different from those attached to personal style. At an obvious level, the product and its maker are, in the arts, more cleanly divisible, particularly in the non-performing arts such as sculpture or painting. For discussion of the complexities attached to ascription of process in the arts, see Walton, p. 88–90. 14. Several recent works on manners engage this objection in one way or another. See Felicia Ackerman, “A Man by Nothing Is So Well Betrayed as by His Manners? Politeness as a Virtue,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1988): 250–258; Sarah Buss, “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Significance of Manners,” Ethics 109.4 (1999): 795–826; Cheshire Calhoun, “The Virtue of Civility,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 29.3 (2000): 251–275; Nancy Sherman, “The Look and Feel of Virtue,” in Christopher Gill, ed., Virtue, Norms, and Objectivity: Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), pp. 59–82; and Karen Stohr, “Manners, Morals, and Practical Wisdom,” in Timothy Chappell, ed., Values and Virtues: Aristotelianism in Contemporary Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp.189–211. 15. Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote,” in Borges, Labyrinths, eds. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, trans. James E. Irby (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1962), p. 39. 16. Borges, p. 40. 17. For Walton’s application of his theory of aesthetic style to Pierre Menard, see Walton, p. 101.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1. The Three Families—Ji, Meng, and Shu—are largely treated by the Analects as infamous for their usurpations of the rituals of the king. The families were of ministerial rank but during Confucius’ lifetime the Ji family was functionally ruling Confucius’ home state of Lu. While the Zhou king was still nominally ruler, the Ji family not only assumed the king’s authority, they enacted rituals only a king should, in gross violation of traditional norms. See, e.g., 3.1, 3.2, 3.6, and 16.1. Much of the commentary on appropriate ritual form found in Book 3 can also be read as indirect critique of the behavior of the Three Families and the decay of ritual norms they represent. 2. Both 8.2 and 17.8 give lists of faults that arise where ritual and learning are not used to regulate conduct. In each it is suggested that ritual and learning guard against species of excess that may be construed as vices. 3. See, e.g., 4.11, 4.16, 12.16, 13.26, 14.6, 15.2, 15.21, 15.34, 16.8. 4. While Zigong features prominently in Book 19, this section of the Analects is widely believed to be a later interpolation. While I generally treat

Notes

5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

211

the text as a unifi ed whole, I employ passages from this section sparingly and only where they are sustained by the depiction of Zigong found elsewhere in the text. Ames and Rosemont, p.231, n.12. Here and throughout, I translate ning as “eloquence.” I grant that “glibness” or “glib speech” (the choice of many translators) may better capture the pejorative sense the terms accumulates in the Analects’ usage. However, I here seek to preserve the connection with the term’s older usage, evoking noble or refi ned and learned speech. The temptation to ning, for Zigong and perhaps others, is more understandable where we keep in mind that ning once, and may still for some, correlate with desirable status and image. See, e.g., 1.3 where Confucius avers that eloquence (ning) and an “insinuating appearance” rarely align with being ren. Translation modified. Confucius’ comment in 15.3 regarding the “one continuous strand” almost certainly alludes to a more fulsome remark found in 4.15. There also Confucius claims “one thread” binding his way together and Zengzi explains the thread as comprised of shu and zhong. There are of course many interpretations of just how to understand this passage and, in particular, its linking of shu and zhong. See, e.g., Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Reweaving the ‘one thread’ of the Analects,” Philosophy East and West 40 (1990): 17–30; Sin Yee Chan, “Can Shu be the One Word that Serves as the Guiding Principle of Caring Actions?” Philosophy East and West 50.4 (2000): 507–524; Bryan Van Norden, “Unweaving the ‘One Thread’ of Analects 4.15,” in Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects: New Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). This passage is typically understood in light of the observation that Confucius makes in Analects 2.12, where he avers that “the exemplary person (junzi) is not a vessel.” Slingerland, Analects, p. 40. D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius (New York: Penguin Books, 1970), 7B37. Translation slightly modified. Harold C. Schonberg, Horowitz: His Life and Music (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 216. Alan Rich, qtd. in Schonberg, p. 218. Schonberg, p. 218–219. This is the reading Ames and Rosemont adopt. In their translation, they omit the names of the vessels in favor of what they take the vessels to suggest. Thus Confucius’ reply becomes “You are a most precious and sacred kind of vessel.” See Ames and Rosemont, 5.4 and p. 237 n.73. As Karen Stohr observes, where someone is cynically employing good manners in an effort to serve her own rather crass or even corrupt self-interest, it will rarely be the case that her manners will be consistently good. That is, good manners or good form will not always serve the ends of the selfinterested actor and, with serving self-interest as her aim, she will accordingly depart from them on such occasions. Thus the fact that Zigong appears generally reliable in his practice of the li may point away from his being selfinterested. See Stohr, “Manners, Morals, and Practical Wisdom,” in Timothy Chappell, ed., Values and Virtues: Aristotelianism in Contemporary Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 197. Walton, p. 92. To be clear, the effects I describe here obtain, I think, regardless of whether the “poor performer” of gratitude genuinely feels grateful or not. What is at issue is an appearance of insufficient or insufficiently personal gratitude.

212 Notes 20. Judith Martin, Miss Manners Rescues Civilization From Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing, and Other Lapses in Civility (New York: Crown Publishers, 1996), p. 3. 21. William James, The Will to Believe (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 23. 22. James, p. 25. 23. James, p. 24. 24. Schonberg, p. 216.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 8 1. I here set aside the historical notables that Confucius proposes as models. While these are clearly offered as rather total exemplars, the text’s allusions to these assumes much about its readers’ knowledge of them and is consequently quite sparing with detail. They thus resist the sort of close scrutiny I think desirable. 2. There is perhaps some ambiguity in the Analects about whether one who dies young and is thus denied a reasonably full opportunity for self-cultivation across the stages of a human life can achieve the most complete self-cultivation. Confucius notes of Yan Hui, for example, “Such a pity! I only saw his progress; I never saw where he got to” (9.21). He also, notably, frames his own autobiographical statement about his self-cultivation with reference to his age, suggesting that it is only at 70, after many stages of development, that he achieved a complete self-trust and self-mastery (2.4). These remarks of course suggest that, in some measure, the fullest self-cultivation is prey to luck—one must live a reasonably full span if one is to have both the time and opportunity to achieve a most thoroughgoing moral mastery. Nonetheless, Confucius’ unambiguous commendation of Yan Hui complicates the case. At the very least, I think it clear that in Confucius’ estimation Yan Hui achieves as much as one could given the time and opportunity he had. A full assessment of whether and how luck is required to achieve a reasonably “complete” self-cultivation is beyond the scope of what I can here provide. 3. It should perhaps be noted that Confucius’ remark here, unlike what we fi nd in 2.9, permits multiple readings for tone. It may be a straightforward remark rooted in the same initial negative judgment of Yan Hui we find in 2.9. I suspect, however, that here Confucius’ remark is comedic in tone. That is, he may be wryly noting his earlier misjudgment and engaging in a little joke about the help he gets from less adept students who, because they lack Yan Hui’s quick grasp, will oblige him to more arduous efforts at teaching. 4. Translation modified. 5. Francois Jullien provides a helpful treatment of the interaction between Yan Hui and Confucius that highlights in particular the way their shared accord effectively suppresses the need for laborious or even explicit teaching. See Jullien, Detour and Access, p. 201ff. 6. This conclusion is of course also buttressed by Confucius’ own conduct in grief for Yan Hui. Confucius here is himself apparently “excessive” in grief and, moreover, appears to defend his excess when challenged about it (11.10). 7. Ames and Rosemont, p. 234n.40. 8. I borrow this phrasing from Slingerland. Slingerland, Analects, p. 242. 9. There are of course quite complicated issues in bringing biographical elements about the Analects’ personae found in other texts to bear on what we fi nd in the Analects. E.g., we must evaluate, to the extent that such is possible,

Notes

213

the likelihood that the Analects’ authors or Confucius himself would have been privy to the sorts of details we fi nd in depictions of exemplars in other works. We must likewise consider the possibility that some stories may serve agenda different from what we fi nd in the Analects, representing efforts to promote this or that figure in ways not sanctioned in the Analects. And of course while any simple standard of historical accuracy is unlikely to fit the style of early Chinese literature more generally, we must consider the extent to which any story may be strategic legend building rather than a recounting of events or personalities as they would have been known to Confucius and the Analects’ authors. 10. For a helpful distilled summary of the diversity of scholarly views about this, see Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation (Indianpolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000), especially p. 31–32. 11. Here too it is worth emphasizing a premise implicit throughout my account of the Analects. However we may understand Mencius’ and Xunzi’s claims regarding human nature, we should be quite wary of importing their interest in human nature into the Analects. While some of the scholars I have addressed seek to supplement the Analects with either Mencius or Xunzi, I think such strategies risk significant elision of what are likely to be philosophically important differences. Even where we self-consciously employ Mencius or Xunzi as supplement, we should explicitly count any ensuing interpretation of the Analects to be a hybrid. 12. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sermon CXXXVI. In Wesley T. Mott (ed.), The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1992), p. 26.

Bibliography

Ackerman, Felicia. “A Man by Nothing Is So Well Betrayed as by His Manners? Politeness as a Virtue.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1988): 250–258. Ames, Roger T. “Paronomasia: A Confucian Way of Making Meaning.” In David Jones, ed. Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects. Chicago: Open Court, 2008. Ames, Roger T. and Rosemont, Henry, trans. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. W. D. Ross, trans. In Jonathan Barnes, ed. The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. . Politics. B. Jowett, trans. In Jonathan Barnes, ed. The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Annas, Julia. “Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing.” American Philosophical Association Proceedings and Addresses 78.2 (2004): 61–76. The Bible. King James trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Bockover, Mary I. “The Ren Dao of Confucius: A Spiritual Account of Humanity.” In David Jones, ed. Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects. Chicago: Open Court, 2008. Borges, Jorge Luis. “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” In Borges, Labyrinths. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, eds. James E. Irby, trans. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1962. Brindley, Erica. “’Why Use an Ox-Cleaver to Kill a Chicken?’ The Sociology of the Junzi Ideal in the Lunyu.” In Philosophy East and West 59.1 (January 2009): 47–70. Brooks, E. Bruce and Brooks, A. Taeko. The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Buss, Sarah. “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Significance of Manners.” Ethics 109.4 (1999): 795–826. Calhoun, Cheshire. “The Virtue of Civility,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 29.3 (2000): 251–275. Chan, Sin Yee. “Can Shu be the One Word that Serves as the Guiding Principle of Caring Actions?” Philosophy East and West 50.4 (2000): 507–524. Cohen, Ted. “Humor.” In The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. eds. Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes. New York: Routledge, 2001. . Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Creel, Herlee. Confucius, the Man and the Myth. New York: John Day, 1949. Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Knopf, 1993. Driver, Julia. “Caesar’s Wife: On the Moral Significance of Appearing Good.” Journal of Philosophy 89 (1992): 331–343.

216 Bibliography Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Sermon CXXXVI. In Wesley Mott, ed., The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1992. Eno, Robert. The Confucian Creation of Heaven. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. Eyres, Harry. “Just Put You Lips Together.” The Guardian, Friday, May 30, 2003. Accessed March 14, 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2003/may/30/ classicalmusicandopera.artsfeatures Fingarette, Herbert. Confucius—The Secular as Sacred. New York: Waveland Press, 1998. Foot, Philippa. Natural Goodness. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. Galvany, Albert. “Debates on Mutilation, Bodily Preservation, and Ideology in Early China.” Asiatische Studien 63.1 (2009): 67–91. Graham, A. C. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1989. Hall, David L. and Ames, Roger T. Thinking Through Confucius. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. Harbsmeier, Christoph. “Confucius Ridens: Humor in the “Analects.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50 (1990): 131–161. Harbsmeier, Christoph. “Humor in Ancient Chinese Philosophy.” Philosophy East and West 39.3 (1989): 289–310. Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the History of Philosophy. E. S. Haldane, trans. New York: Humanities Press, 1963. Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hutton, Eric L. “Han Feizi’s Criticism of Confucianism and its Implications for Virtue Ethics.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 5.3 (2008): 423–453. Irvin, Sherri. “Aesthetics as a Guide to Ethics.” In Robert Stecker and Theodore Gracyk, eds. Aesthetics Today: A Reader. Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Ivanhoe, Philip J. “Character Consequentialism: An Early Confucian Contribution to Contemporary Ethical Theory.” Journal of Religious Ethics 19.1 (1991): 55–70. . Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003. . “The ‘Golden Rule’ in the Analects.” In David Jones, ed., Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 2008. . “Reweaving the One Thread of the Analects.” Philosophy East and West 40: 17–30. . “The Shade of Confucius: Social Roles, Ethical Theory, and the Self.” In Marthe Chandler and Ronnie Littlejohn, eds., Polishing the Chinese Mirror: Essays in Honor of Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 2008), pp. 34–49. James, William. The Will to Believe. New York: Dover Publications, 1956. Johnston, Ian, trans. The Mozi: A Complete Translation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Jones, David, ed. Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with Confucius. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 2008. Jullien, François. Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece. Trans. Sophie Hawkes. New York: Zone Books, 2000. . In Praise of Blandness. Trans. Paula M. Varsano. New York: Zone Books, 2004. Kamakawiwo’ole, Israel. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Alone in Iz World. Big Boy CD. 2001.

Bibliography 217 Kant, Immanuel. Of the Beautiful and the Sublime. John T. Goldthwait, trans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960. Keightley, David. “Clean Hands and Shining Helmets: Heroic Action in Early Chinese and Greek Culture.” In Tobin Anthony Siebers, ed., Religion and the Authority of the Past. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. . “Early Civilization in China: Reflections on How it Became Chinese.” In Paul S. Ropp, ed. Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Knoblock, John, trans. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988. Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Kupperman, Joel. “Naturalness Revisited: Why Western Philosophers Should Study Confucius.” In Bryan W. Van Norden, ed. Confucius and the Analects: New Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Lau, D. C., trans. The Analects. New York: Penguin Books, 1979. . Mencius. New York: Penguin Books, 1970. Legge, James, trans. Confucian Analects. In Legge, ed. and trans., The Chinese Classics, vol. I. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960. . The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960. . Li Chi. New York: University Books, 1967. Lewis, Mark Edward. The Construction of Space in Early China. Albany: State University of New York, 2006. Li, Chenyang, “Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care.” In Chenyang Li, ed., The Sage and the Second Sex: Confucianism, Ethics, and Gender. Chicago: Open Court, 2000. . “Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation between Li and Ren in the Analects.” Philosophy East and West 57.3 (2007): 311–329. Li, Chenyang, ed. The Sage and the Second Sex. Chicago: Open Court Press, 2000. MacIntyre, Alidair, “Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation between Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues.” In Eliot Deutsch, ed., Culture and Modernity. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1991. Martin, Judith. Miss Manners Rescues Civilization From Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing, and Other Lapses in Civility. New York: Crown Publishers, 1996. Meyer, Leonard B. “Toward a Theory of Style.” In Berel Lang, ed. The Concept of Style. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. Montaigne, Michel de. “Of the Education of Children.” In Donald Frame, trans., The Complete Works of Montaigne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957. Montero, Barbara. “Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense.” In The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64.2 (2006): 231–242. Munro, Donald J. The Concept of Man in Early China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969. Nagel, Thomas. “Moral Luck.” Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volume (1976), 137–152. Nivison, David. The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in Chinese Philosophy. Ed. Bryan Van Norden. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1990. Nylan, Michael and Wilson, Thomas. Lives of Confucius: Civilization’s Greatest Sage through the Ages. New York: Doubleday, 2010. Olberding, Amy. “’Ascending the Hall’: Demeanor and Moral Improvement in the Analects.” Philosophy East and West 59.4(2009): 503–522.

218 Bibliography . “The Consummation of Sorrow: An Analysis of Confucius’ Grief for Yan Hui.” Philosophy East and West 54 (2004): 279–301. . “Dreaming of the Duke of Zhou: Exemplarism and the Analects.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35:4 (2008): 625–639. . “The Educative Function of Personal Style in the Analects.” Philosophy East and West 57.3 (2007): 357–374. . “’I Know Not “Seems”’: Grief for Parents in the Analects.” In Amy Olberding and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Mortality in Traditional Chinese Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011. . “Slowing Death Down: Mourning in the Analects,” in David Jones ed. Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 2008, 137–149. Plato. Phaedo. G. M. A. Grube, trans. In John M. Cooper, ed. Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. Putnam, Hilary. Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Rosemont, Henry, Jr. “Against Relativism.” In Gerald James Larson and Eliot Deutsch, eds. Interpreting across Boundaries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. . “Reflections on 知 zhi (‘knowing’) in the Analects.” Unpublished manuscript, available upon request at [email protected]