The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism. By Michael David Kaulana Ing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. xi, 285 pp. 99.00(cloth);99.00 (cloth); 99.00(cloth);35.00 (paper) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ing, Michael David Kaulana, The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism
Dao, 2013
This book is on one level a close reading of the Liji 禮記 (Record of Ritual), a text of great importance that has received surprisingly little attention in recent years. Its contribution to scholarship is in fact far more profound. By leveraging the intellectual apparatus of religious studies, it shows that Confucianism is a religion and not merely a philosophy or a social ethic. The field of ritual studies proves an excellent tool for showing how the Liji is inescapably religious. As the name indicates, this long neglected text contains numerous discussions of how and why rituals should be performed. The simple answer to this how and why is Confucianism. Other recent scholarship by Prasenjit Duara, Mayfair Yang, and Rebecca Nedostup, among others, argue that our difficulty in appreciating the religious side of Confucianism is more a byproduct of the politics of modernity in the 20 th century than with anything inherent in historic primary sources. While the question of modernity is beyond the scope of Ing's book, his findings add important early support to this revisionist trend.
This study provides an analysis of the discourse on tradition of two of the first texts written in the Republican period which endeavoured to oppose the May Fourth portrayal of Confucianism as an artifact of the past and which enjoyed a significant amount of success at the moment of their publication and thereafter: Liang Shuming’s Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua jiqi zhexue 東西文化及其哲學; 1921) and the classical Chinese edition of Xiong Shili’s New Treatise on the Uniqueness of Consciousness (Xin weishi lun 新唯識論; 1932). Through discourse analysis, this study examines two interrelated aspects of the texts: their discourse on the role tradition plays in individual emancipation or in a modernization process teleologically oriented toward human liberty on the one hand, and the discursive techniques they employ in order to legitimize their discourse through the authority of tradition. My central aim is to see which discursive tools could be employed in texts that are presented as reactivating the Confucian dao (道) within the modern Chinese context, especially as one of their main objectives is to oppose the modern discourse of anti-traditionalism which emerged during the May Fourth Movement. My contention is that both texts are for the most part as anti-traditional as the most iconoclastic of May Fourth discourses, as they both deny that traditions can contribute to individual emancipation and to the modernization process, and both conceptualize emancipation as a breaking free from the hold of traditions. There is an exception to this general rule, however. The Confucian tradition (as they define it), and to some extent the Buddhist one, are singled out as traditions which can point the way to a transcendence and a liberation from tradition. Traditions are therefore valueless unless they represent what I call “traditions of anti-traditionalism”: traditions that show the way to a final liberation from tradition. At work in these claims, I argue, is a dialectic whereby the texts salvage particular traditions yielding trans-historical truths from the dustbin of history before presenting themselves not only as contemporary representatives of those traditions, but also as their highest point: a point at which these traditions of truth are entirely subsumed, clarified, finalized, and monopolized by the contemporary texts. The texts, moreover, not only re-appropriate the modern discourse of anti-traditionalism to their own ends; they also redefine it in a way that relegates the Euro-American conceptualization of modernity (as a tradition of anti-traditionalism) at a lower echelon while celebrating their own vision of Confucian and Buddhist traditions as the highest form of a universal culture capable of emancipating once and for all humanity from the shackles of tradition and history. These texts, in other words, offer alternative visions of a tradition of anti-traditionalism which compete with that of the Euro-American discourse of modernity, but do so in a manner that is for the most part equally hegemonic in its rejection of competing perceptions of truth.
china perspectives This article explores the reference to traditional culture and Confucianism in official discourses at the start of the new century. It shows the complexity and the ambiguity of the phenomenon and attempts to analyze it within the broader framework of society's evolving relation to culture. 51 N o 2 0 0 7 / 3 4. An article dealing with this question will appear in the 2007/4 issue of China Perspectives. See as well Ji Zhe, "Traditional Education in China: Conservative and/or Liberal?," Chinese Cross Currents, n°. 2.3, 2005, p. 32-41. 5. The most spectacular example of this phenomenon is the "Han Dress Movement" (Hanfu yundong 汉服运动) that has inspired tens of thousands of young people to march through China's large cities dressed in traditional clothing. In another register (the qipao), see as well Matthew Chew, "On the Contemporary Re-emergence of the qipao," The China Quarterly, nº. 189, March 2007. 6. We introduce this situation in Le Point (special issue : Les textes fondateurs de la pensée chinoise), March-April 2007, pp. 30-33. 7. A few recent examples suffice to illustrate the extent of the phenomenon: The Liaowang Dongfang Zhoukan, one of the leading national weeklies, mentions guoxue re 国学热 (the fever for national studies) as one of key phrases of 2006, Liaowang Dongfang Zhoukan (Oriental Outlook Weekly), 4 January 2007, pp. 64-65. In another issue, the same magazine dedicates a special feature to the official sacrifices to the great ancestors of Chinese civilisation (issue dated 21/06/2007, pp.10-23). Zhongguo xinwen zhoukan (China Newsweek, nº.42/2006) dedicates a special feature to The Dignity of China (Zunyan Zhongguo) emphasising the role of Confucianism. The issue 40/2006 of the same weekly made its headlines with the question Who are we? (women shi shei 我们是谁) in a special dossier featuring articles on the issues of rites, Han dress, traditional education, Chinese medicine, etc. Another national magazine, Xin Zhoukan (New weekly, nº. 238, dated 01/11/2006) proposed to its readers several articles on the utilisation of history that analyzed, among other topics, the craze for historical TV shows on television. Recent cover pages of national weeklies (see footnote no. 7) china perspectives S p e c i a l f e a t u r e tions. We will conclude by raising a few questions about the nature of contemporary China's relationship to time.
Dao, 2015
ZHU Xi's 朱熹 (1130-1200) interpretations systematized the Five Classics; moreover, he elevated the "Four Books" to such a supra-canonical status that these texts along with his commentaries became the core curriculum for civil service examinations from the early 13th century to the 20th century. Inquiring into what was the essential and unique Song 宋 (960-1279) character of Classical scholarship, we will highlight the canonical Ritual Classics because these texts were crucial for centuries, especially during the Han 漢 (206 BCE-CE 220) through Tang 唐 (618-906) dynasties. We show how Zhu updated ritual practices by focusing on the Yili 儀禮 (Book of Etiquette and Ceremonies) as the crucial Classic for guidelines on etiquette, and also rebalanced the relation between rituals and moral "principles." We will explore how Zhu's systematization of moral principles and ritual did not fully resolve tensions from his major 11thcentury philosophical predecessors regarding principles and ritual, as well as the Four Books and the Five Classics. Even if DAI Zhen's 戴震 (1724-1777) criticism of Zhu was somewhat misplaced or overstated, tensions within Zhu's views provide us a basis for understanding Dai's attacks and ambivalence among Qing 清 (1644-1911) and 20th-century scholars toward ZHU Xi's philosophy.
Characteristics of Confucian Rituals (Li)—A Critique of Fan Ruiping’s Interpretation
Dao, 2014
In this paper I argue that Ruiping Fan's explication of the Confucian notion of li (ritual propriety) is problematic in several ways. First, his division of human activities into "social" and "natural" is less than illuminating as human "natural" activities such as hunting are already inescapably social. Second, I question the appropriateness for him to characterize li in terms of "closed activities" as some rituals are evidently open-ended. Third, he seems to have overemphasized the constitutive function of li and have understated its regulative function. Fourth, contrary to Fan's claim, Confucian li accomplishes "external goals" in human life as well as "internal goals." Finally, Fan's requirement for being a Confucian with respect to the observance of li is unrealistically high and makes it difficult for people to qualify as Confucian. In his strongly positioned and provocative book on Reconstructionist Confucianism, Ruiping Fan reclaims moral resources from classic Confucianism to meet contemporary moral and public policy challenges. Unlike some new-Confucians who either shy away from perceived weaknesses of Confucianism or attempt to dig with magnifying glasses for Confucian ideas that resonate with modern Western liberal values, Fan unapologetically defends a version of Confucian family-oriented philosophy in the face of Western individual-based, universalistic morality, and argues vigorously for a robust Confucian ethic in contemporary society. Fan's book includes a chapter on Confucian rituals (li), one of the most important concepts in Confucian philosophy. Li is, of course, also one of the most difficult concepts to explicate. Here I will offer several critiques of Fan's interpretation of the Confucian li. My first question is on Fan's use of the concepts of "social" and "natural" in explicating the Confucian li. Fan makes a distinction between social practices and natural practices. He identifies Confucian rituals as social practices. Natural practices, he says, are governed by laws