Is There a Method to Wang’s Madness?

I’m currently in the middle of a translation of and paper on the 對作 dui zuo essay from Wang Chong’s 論衡 Lunheng, as I think this essay offers us an innovation on the use of 實 shi in connection with the truth or falstity of linguistic entities (sayings, 言 yan, or teachings).  After having trudged through the Lunheng a number of times, I think I can see a coherent theory of truth emerging, heavily involving the concept of shi as something like “actual properties”.  Wang then appears to think of shi as expressing properties belonging to sayings or teachings (or anything which is truth-apt, which for Wang is more than just linguistic entities, as it is for the classical philosophers).

This much is straightforward, I think, and give arguments for it in the paper I’m working on.  What is less clear to me is the purpose of the large number of essays devoted to application of Wang’s method of appraising teachings (I talk about this method in my paper “A Reappraisal of Wang Chong’s Critical Method Through the Wenkong Chapter”, JCP, Dec. 2007).  He explains in dui zuo:

論衡九 “虛” 三 “增” 所以使俗人務實誠也。“In the Lunheng the nine chapters on “falsehoods” and the three chapters on “exaggerations” have the purpose of causing the common people to apply effort to achieving truth and sincerity.”

Now, I’m generally most interested in the philosophical argument in particular texts, but this strikes me as just strange.  Here in the dui zuo chapter and also in the 問孔 wen kong chapter, Wang outlines a method for appraising the truth or acceptability of sayings and teachings.  These sections are relatively short in comparison to the chapters he mentions in the above passage, and the other parts of the massive Lunheng which consist of criticism after criticism.  Michael Nylan argues that Wang was mainly concerned with offering every criticism he could think of in order to both show how smart he was, and to beat up on the “common view” of things because he had a chip on his shoulder due to being passed over for official promotion.  There may be something to this, and Wang does often write in that scrappy and confrontational class-underdog manner I’m very familiar with in its contemporary American guise.  Still, I can’t believe that’s all there is to the long lists of criticisms of his many chapters, especially because he is so careful and focused in certain places, such as in the dui zuo and wen kong.  This is not simply the work of a guy pissed off that he wasn’t getting sufficient attention.

This leads me to wonder if Wang Chong though there was some link between his listing of criticisms and the leading of the “common people” to apply effort to discover truth(s).  We might think that the method for appraising sayings and teachings alone would be enough, and a proof of the usefulness of this method would be sufficient for Wang’s stated purpose.  However, if we are charitable we might see something different going on here.  Wang may have seen the specific arguments and criticisms he made in the various Lunheng chapters as themselves efficacous in bringing about the desired concern for truth and sincerity (實 shi and 誠 cheng) in the people.  But if this is the case, how did Wang think these lists of criticisms could be effective in this way?  This is the question I’m currently struggling with…

The Usefulness of Commentary?

I keep going back and forth on this issue.  When I started working on the Analects, I was of the view that one should try to read the text independently of the commentarial tradition, so as not to be poisoned by the biases, agendas, etc., of the authors of the various commentaries.  We could, I tended to believe, come closest to “pure” interpretation by simply ignoring the commentaries.  Years later, I came to think differently about the commentaries.  Our readings of the classical texts are inevitably influenced by our teachers, as well as the texts and editions we have read (especially those of us who first encountered Chinese thought in English before understanding Chinese).  Like it or not, I came to believe, we are influenced in our readings by the commentarial tradition, and thus we need to understand the commentaries, in order to discover where our assumptions about the classical texts come from, as well as the strength or weakness of the arguments for them.  Reading the Zhu Xi commentary on the Analects in particular opened my eyes to this necessity.

Now, after even more years, I find my attitude to the commentaries on the Analects taking another turn in a different direction.  My current view is something like this:  the commentaries are often philosophically interesting in their own right, but they are not very useful for helping clear up difficulties in the Analects or in explaining the roots of many of the assumptions we bring to the text.  Looking to Zhu Xi to find the roots of a “psychological” reading of certain concepts in the Analects, for example, is useful in that it helps explain Zhu Xi’s own philosophical agenda, but it is of limited use in discovering whether or not such a reading is justified.  Certainly looking to Zhu Xi’s arguments themselves can tell us whether his reasons for holding his views were good ones, but even if we discover that they were not, we cannot from this show that there are no good reasons for holding his views, or that his view of the Analects in general is not the “right” reading of it, in terms of understanding what views the authors of the Analects actually held and took themselves to be presenting.

In many ways, looking to the vast commentarial literature on the Analects muddies the water, and one can all-too-easily get caught up in the commentaries and differences or arguments between the various philosophers and scholars involved.  Often the commentaries on the Analects and other classical texts were not really about these texts at all, but were primarily tools in debates between the authors and other opposing thinkers of their time.  To look to these commentaries as ways of understanding the Analects and classical texts, then, is like looking to Aquinas to understand Aristotle, or to Plotinus to understand Plato.  Even though there was clearly influence, the concerns were different, and the philosophical views were different.  And, most importantly, the later philosophers were not explicitly engaged in the project of interpreting the earlier philosophers, but rather in advancing their own positions.

“Commentary” then can be misleading in China.  Everyone took themselves to be following the model of Confucius, 述而不作, because this was orthodox–but within the guise of Confucianism the authors of the commentaries were primarily developing their own views.

Thus, I think, interpreters of the classical texts have got to be careful in using the commentaries.  Getting absorbed in the commentaries, we can quickly get away from the original text and swept up into the issues the commentators were concerned with.  Then we find ourselves, as they did, not working on the Analects or other classical texts at all, but engaged in internal debates which used the classical texts as tools for expressing new views.

The Dao of Who?

Been a little while since my last post–unfortunately I was knocked out of the game momentarily by a pretty nasty case of H1N1 “swine” flu.  Caught it just before they released the vaccine in my state.  (Thanks, slow and inefficient federal government!)  Anyway, thankfully now that’s over, and it’s back to the wonderful world of early Chinese philosophy!

Thinking about dao in general this week (although all I was thinking about was sleep and not dying earlier in the week!), and definitely plan to pick up a copy of the new book by founding member of rap group the Wu Tang Clan, the RZA, called “The Tao of Wu”.  I’ve long been interested in the way Wu-Tang understands and uses bits of Chinese religious and philosophical culture.  This influence, in their case, clearly came originally through the influence of 70s kung-fu films (one of the ways I was first introduced to Chinese culture as well), but interestingly took on some elements from other sources in chinese philosophy and religion, mainly (I’ve heard–haven’t read the book yet) through the RZA and his interest in “Eastern philosophy”.  Of course, the elements of Chinese religion and philosophy to be heard in the lyrics of their music and seen in the stylistic elements of their videos, interviews, etc., are mainly stylistic, and there is hardly any substantive discussion of concepts, etc.  I can’t say whether RZA and his group adequately understand the important concepts of Chinese philosophy and religion, because they often just say terms without explaining them, but from what I have heard from interviews, there does seem to be a lot they misunderstand.

This is one of my main problems with “pop culture” use of Chinese philosophical and religious elements in general.  Just as in the case of Wu Tang, one might hear a pop culture source drop the terms ‘yin‘ and ‘yang‘, or ‘dao‘, but then either not explain them (hoping they sound sufficiently “mystical” to get across the main point that their utterer has serious “mysterious and wise eastern sage” credibility), or explains them in ridiculously simplistic and/or simply incorrect ways.  Of course, this is more a gripe about American culture itself, I guess–the tendency toward pure stylistics, pure image, apparently without concern for anything else, is distressing.

Anyway–of course I’m going to read RZA’s book- it ought to be fun.  Plus, I can’t knock it for being shallow without having read it–who knows, maybe RZA proves to be the second coming of Zhuangzi!  (I’ll let you know with a review here on UPJ after I read it.) One thing that occurs to me with all of this pop culture influence in Daoism, though:  everyone wants to be Daoist.  I see lots of use of yin-yang and dao in popular culture, but never see any Confucianism. Where’s the 仁?  The 忠恕?  We can certainly do with a dose or two of these!

I guess we Americans don’t really find things like duty, understanding of others, benevolence, and general uprightness very important.  These things are for boring people and crotchety scholars of Chinese philosophy to worry about, I guess.  Better to concentrate on being cool than being morally good…

Analects 5.12, Proust, and Snobbishness

A couple of recent events have got me thinking, as usual, of the Analects.  First, I’ve been reading Marcel Proust’s gargantuan multi-part novel “In Search of Lost Time”, in which he takes a great deal of time and care discussing the nature of snobbishness, what it is to be a snob, who is a snob, etc.  Then today, in deciding to have some business cards made through the university, I had to decide whether or not to use ‘Ph.D.’ after my name, or ‘Dr.’ before it, or simply just leave my name as ‘Alexus McLeod’, with no indication of the degree I hold.

At first, I was inclined simply to put ‘Alexus McLeod’ on my cards, with no reference to my PhD.  After all, I thought, it would be fairly clear to anyone receiving my card that I hold a PhD, given the title ‘Assistant Professor’ beneath my name.  And at any rate, I thought, I didn’t want to appear presumptuous or taken with titles to those to whom I give my card.  It will mainly be at conferences and to people in my field, and most of us have PhDs anyway, so what good does it do to point out that I have one as well?

Then, reflecting on these reasons, soon Analects 5.12 came to mind, and followed by a passage from Proust.  First, Analects 5.12:

子貢曰：“我不欲人之加諸我也，吾亦欲無加諸人。”子曰：“賜也，非爾所及也。”  Zigong said: “what I do not desire other people to do to me, I also desire not to do this to others.”  Confucius replied: “Ci [Zigong], you don’t measure up to this kind of thing.”

In connection with my dilemma over the cards, I began to think of 5.12 in a new way.  Throw in the Proust, and 5.12 (as well as my situation) was illuminated even further.  The passages I’m thinking of are in the first volume of Proust’s novel, “Swann’s Way” (in the Penguin Lydia Davis translation):

“he [Legrandin] often launched against the aristocracy, against fashionable life, against snobbery, ‘certainly the sin which Saint Paul has in mind when he speaks of the sin for which there is no forgiveness.’”(p.69)

Legrandin, according to the narrator, wore simple clothes and professed his love for simple things–he had this down to an art, cultivating the style of simplicity and “non-snobbishness”.  But the narrator discovers that this itself is due to Legrandin’s inherent snobbishness.  One who was not a snob, as Laozi might suggest, would never feel the need to rail so hard against snobbishness.  Legrandin is “discovered” as a snob later in the story:

“what I did understand was that Legrandin was not being completely truthful when he said he cared only for churches, moonlight, and youth; he cared very much for the people from the chateaux and in their presence was overcome by so great a fear of displeasing them that he did not dare let them see that some of his friends were bourgeois people…” (p. 131)

What Legrandin had been doing, in other words, was affectation.  All of the “simpleness”, the cultivated appearance of being unconcerned with how others see him–it is this itself that reveals his snobbishness.  Only a snob would try so hard to seem disaffected.  People actually devoid of snobbishness would be like the narrator’s grandmother–

“Worldly ambition was a sentiment that my grandmother was so incapable of feeling or even, almost, of understanding, that it seemed to her quite pointless to bring about so much ardor to stigmatizing it.” (p. 69)

Of course, something similar is going on with Zigong in Analects 5.12.  Perhaps with the best of motives, he is trying to make himself into an ideal person by convincing himself that he is someone who doesn’t desire to treat others in ways he wouldn’t want to be treated.  Maybe he even believes that he is this way, just as Proust suggests that Legrandin may actually believe that he is not a snob and really is only concerned with “simple” things.  In one of (to me) the most psychologically insightful passages in the book, Proust writes:

“And this certainly does not mean that M. Legrandin was not sincere when he ranted against snobs.  He could not be aware, at least from his own knowledge, that he was one, since we are familiar only with the passions of others, and what we come to know about our own, we have been able to learn only from them.  Upon ourselves they act only secondarily, by way of our imagination, which substitutes for our primary motives alternative motives that are more seemly.” (p. 132)

Likewise, Zigong’s boast might not have been intentionally devised to boost his ego, to make him look good in front of Confucius.  He probably had other reasons for saying it, or felt that he actually was that way, did “reach up to” the ideal Confucius prized.  Confucius, however, being this other whose observations of Zigong’s actions were purer than anything Zigong could bring on himself, knew better.  We as individuals can, through this “imagination” Proust speaks about, reduce cognitive dissonance between our actions and our beliefs about what is “seemly” by inventing all kinds of creative “motivations”.  So I purchase a new suit because “the old one is falling apart, and wool will keep me warmer in the winter,” etc., etc., rather than because “I look good in that suit and will impress my peers because it’s a very expensive suit.”

Zigong in 5.12 is probably having a similar “reducing cognitive dissonance” moment.  Perhaps Zigong has done a number of virtuous actions, and may have even been praised for doing so.  But why has he acted in these ways?  Zigong’s natural response, as an individual who wants to see himself in the best light, as all individuals do (so reducing cognitive dissonance, or “saving face”), is that it is the lofty principle described in 5.12 that motivates him.  But Confucius, like the narrator in Proust’s novel, knows better.  Based on what he sees in Zigong’s actions, he can tell that it is something like praise or “a name for being virtuous” that truly motivates Zigong.  Thus, even though it would be excellent if Zigong did actually think in the way he claims to, the truth is that he “doesn’t measure up” to that.

So, back to my dilemma with the cards.  I was inclined to do away with any mention of my degree, but what if, I thought, like Zigong and Legrandin, I was simply being snobbish by insisting that I am unconcerned with titles and positions?  Do I really think of the cleaning staff in my building or the construction workers outside as equal to myself and my colleagues?  Do I really think that one’s degree is unimportant to their state of intellectual, so that one who has a Ph.D. is not necessarily any more knowledgeable or intelligent that one with only a bachelor’s degree?  Am I really that egalitarian?

I decided “probably not.”  And one of the messages of Confucius and Proust, when I think of it, may have been that it’s better to be a snob than to be a snob like Legrandin or Zigong, which involves a kind of self-deception and hypocrisy that is shameful in itself, to cover up one’s true snobbishness and thereby become an even more egregious snob.

So what was the way out?  I’ve always found that when confronted with insoluble difficulties, the motto “do as the Pyrrhonian Skeptics do” leads often to the best result (if not the ataraxia, or “peace of mind” they claimed):  follow what is customary.

…So I went with the ‘Ph.D.’ after my name.

Tan Sitong Really Understood Ren 仁

I’ve just begun reading the late Qing scholar Tan Sitong’s Renxue 仁學, and I’m pleased to see that Tan seems to have understood ren in some sense similarly to the way I understand it, and that I argue the authors of the Analects understood it, in at least one key feature.  Tan says:

仁以通為第一義。…   通之義以 “道通為一”  為最渾 括  The first or fundamental meaning of ren is tong (commonality or connection). … The meaning of tong 通 is best expressed by “the Way connecting things as one”.

YES.

Although Tan’s understanding of tong here (as he goes on to explain) is more Buddhistic than representative of the behaviorist communitarianism of the Analects (and I realize that “all things” is what he has in mind here rather than “people in a community”), I think this is still a good way to describe ren, allowing for differences in what falls within the scope of tong. In fact, I think this line from Tan is almost exactly how I’d put it (though I might add a word or two about good or thriving community–but it comes to much the same).

By the way–I learned through Wikipedia that Tan Sitong was portrayed as a character in two Shaw Brothers kung-fu flicks, “Iron Bodyguard” and “The Last Tempest”.  As an enormous, ridiculously rabid kung fu movie fan, I find this totally awesome.

Tan Sitong－my new favorite person.

Basically, It’s All Zhu Xi’s Fault…

I’ve been reading through Daniel Gardner’s Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Analects again, as I’ve been working on a paper on the psychologization of the concept of ren, for which I primarily blame Zhu Xi and the Buddhists.  Here’s an example of Zhu’s thinking on the topic, from his 論語集註 (Lunyu Jizhu):

仁者，人心之全德。而必欲以身體而力行之，可謂重矣。

Ren, for Zhu Xi, as we can see here, is a de (virtue…even though I’m not in love with this translation) of the xin (mind-heart).  It is not particular behavior itself which is ren, but rather something which underlies behavior.  One has to apply one’s strength to practice ren.  Of course, the behavior manifested in this practice is not itself ren, Zhu Xi wants to be insistent about that.  It is, rather, xing ren, which I previously translated as “practice of ren“, but I think now it better illustrates Zhu Xi’s purpose to translate this as “manifestation of ren“.  The ren person shows that he is ren through his practice–he doesn’t become ren through his practice.  When one is able through strength to manifest ren, as considered in Zhu’s quote above, although this may be difficult, it is desirable.

One interesting thing to notice is that if this is what Zhu Xi is on about, it looks like he holds a view of de unlike Aristotle’s view of arete, in that practice is unnecessary.  One can possess de (in this case the de of ren) without doing ren-like acts, and it is the existence of ren in the mind-heart that makes it possible for there to be ren-like activity.  This is the reverse of Aristotle’s view that arete depends on practice first–one practices activities the virtuous person would do and thereby becomes virtuous.  This seems also to show that Zhu Xi cannot be considered in any way a behaviorist, and that we might see ren for him as something like an emotional state.  There’s more than a little bit of Buddhism lurking here…

I’m Back, Baby!

…alive and kickin’.  And ready to do some philosophy.  Took a while to get through that first hurdle of getting meetings and orientations and course construction and article completion and all that other stuff out of the way (although I’m still doing all of these, but not quite at the fever pitch I’ve been doing them for the last couple of months).  But now at last I can return to the blogosphere (and with a new and improved wardrobe, I might add–check the cool bowtie in my new profile pic!).

As I’ve got to run to another meeting now, more substantive philosophical discussion is on its way.  But for now, I thought I’d share some of my experiences teaching Zhuangzi for the past week or so.  It’s a work I’ve stayed away from in my previous teaching for the most part, mainly because I tried it once (the first time I ever taught) and it was a huge disaster.  This time, things went a bit better, but there were still some problems.

I wonder–to what extent is this material difficult for students due to the roundabout and jocular way the Zhuangzi is written?  Zhuangzi is pretty clearly having fun, and trying to be “hard to corner”, but when students who are used to having arguments made explicit (which we generally strive to do but don’t always succeed in doing in contemporary philosophy) this might be frustrating at best, completely unintelligible at worst.  I’m finding that a non-negligible number of students are having this problem.  The Analects is also difficult for them, but for different reasons, I suspect.  Ah well–what to do…

Thinking About the Han, Again

I suppose that one of the reasons I’m fascinated by the Han dynasty in general and Han philosophy in particular is that I see many parallels between the political and philosophical situation in the Han dynasty and that of the contemporary “global civilization.”  The increasing political systematization of the Han dynasty left fewer and fewer ways to “opt out” of the dominant social and political structures, and led to creative ways of constructing new social options.

In the Warring States period, of course, there were a multitude of options, including the “dropout” option offered by certain strains of Daoism/Yangism, and which (I think) are represented in Analects Book 18 through characters such as the 楚狂 (“Madman of Chu”).  We see a limitation of these options in the Han, however, with greater political and philosophical unification and systematization.  When this happens, opposition to the dominant systems have to take new forms.

The situation of contemporary global society is somewhat similar to this.  Increasingly the western capitalist-democratic form of living is expanding (some might say invading) into different areas of the globe, and transforming what were once very different cultures offering their own ways of living into what might seem increasingly like a single, monolithic global culture.  I notice such change happening in India, for example–a country I often visit, and which seems increasingly more like home (the U.S.) every time I go there–not only in the trappings of culture–malls, highways, etc., but also in the attitudes, assumptions, and characters of the people living there.  We in the west are becoming better able to understand people in different parts of the world, not so much because we are becoming more familiar with their cultures, but because their cultures are transforming to mirror our own.  With this “globalization”, of course, comes the systematization and removal of options for abandoning the dominant system that discontents faced in the Han dynasty.  As a single dominant social and political system becomes the norm and leaves no space for opting out, those who cannot (for whatever reason) thrive within such a system are left anchorless.  They cannot thrive within the dominant system, and there is no real, organized alternative to this dominant system.

Eventually, it seems to me, a major test of any civilization is how well it provides for diversity and its discontents.  In ancient India (around the period of the Upanishads and early Buddhism), the “ascetic” tradition became established, in which it became socially acceptable for one either to follow the “worldly” path of either rulership, work, service, householdership, etc., or the ascetic path of leaving this behind and devoting oneself to spiritual practice in attempt to gain moksha, or nibbana (release from the round of rebirths).  The genius of this system is that it offered a way to direct the energies and talents of those who could not thrive within the dominant “householder” (Vedic, perhaps?) system into a creative and socially acceptable direction.  Without such a “second option”, those who cannot fit within the dominant social and political context may only be able to react to the dominant system, and this reaction will of necessity be critical or destructive.

Unlike the situation of ancient India, both the contemporary “capitalist-democratic” globalization trend and the Han dynasty do/did not offer alternative options for the “discontents” of these societies.  It is, of course, in the very nature of these systems not to offer such alternatives, as both represent universalizing systems.  It is an assumption of many members of the capitalist-democratic society, for example, that (unquestionably, even!) the best way for any society to function is to be both capitalist and democratic, and many of the states representing this ideology (the U.S., for example) have often seen it as their task to spread this ideology throughout the world in the name of “progress”.  Likewise, the politically unitary nature of the Han dynasty was such that it required strong political and philosophical unification.  Of course, I don’t want to overstate the philosophical systematization of the “Han synthesis” (Mark Csikszentmihalyi, among others, has argued–well and rightly, I think–that there was less philosophical unification in the Han than is often thought), but there certainly were a reduction of philosophical and political options similar to the situation encountered today with the advance of capitalist-democratic ideology.

We can see reactions to the political and philosophical system(s) of the Han dynasty in a number of philosophers, especially two I focus on, Wang Chong, in his Lunheng (“Balanced Discourses”) and Wang Fu, in his Qianfulun (“Discourses of a Hermit”).  We see two somewhat different responses to the Han in these two thinkers.  Wang Chong, we might say, was the ultimate critic.  He may be taken to represent the critical-destructive response to a dominant unitary system.  Wang Fu, on the other hand, represented more of an internal critic who seemed to be attempting to construct alternatives to the dominant political and philosophical systems.  As in the history of Chinese thought in general, new movements and philosophical options tended to be justified through connection with the past, with the ancient sages, or the 先王, etc.

So, my thoughts of late have been surrounding the project of tracking the response of Han philosophers to the dominant political and philosophical systems.  In what ways did they create and justify reactions and new options?  And in what ways did this inform their ethics?  And an even more interesting question–what can we learn from this, in formulating alternative ways of living in the increasingly “globalized” world today?

Out of Connecticut, and the “Guomindang” 過民黨 (get it?)

Hello again!

First, some update:  my posting has of late been pretty sporadic here at UPJ, but now (finally!) I am finished with my dissertation (titled Moral Personhood in Confucius and Aristotle), and in the midst of making a move from cold northeast Connecticut to somewhat less cold southwest Ohio, where I’ll be starting in the fall as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton.  I may also be in India for a few weeks sometime during the summer–so I’ll be all over the place.  Anyway, during the summer, I have a bit of time to catch up on some projects, and work on a couple of papers developing some topics I touched on in my dissertation–and also to post more stuff here at UPJ…

One of the things I’ve been thinking (or worrying, I’m not sure which) about in connection with one of these projects is the use of the term dang 黨 in the Analects.  In particular, 4.7 makes an interesting use of this term:

子曰：“人之過也，各於其黨。觀過，斯知仁矣.”  The master said: “The mistakes of people are in each case (ge) attributable (yu) to their group (dang). Observe their mistakes, and you will know whether humanity (ren) obtains.

There are a couple of issues with dang in 4.7.  The issue I’m currently occupied with is whether or not dang should be taken as a good or a bad thing in this passage.  I offer some reason in the dissertation (and the paper I’m working on) to think it’s neutral, but the origin of one’s agency.  Early in the passage it seems to be connected with negative qualities specifically, rather than with positive ones.  One’s dang is the source of one’s mistakes (guo).  I take dang  here to be something like “group” or “community” generally, connected to the uses of dang elsewhere in the Analects to talk about the “village”.  The seemingly negative connotation in 4.7 might suggest that dang here means something like “gang” or “clique”, a communal entity through which one could gain certain vices but not (in general) virtues.  But I think this might be based on a misreading of the negative connotations of dang in 4.7.  

The second part of 4.7 seems to suggest that ren can be present in a dang, in just the way that the first part of the passage suggests that guo are present in a dang, rather than in an individual primarily.  The persons we are examining, 4.7 suggests, are in communities, in a particular dang or another.  The guo (mistakes) which individuals in the dang make are attributable to their dang (although 4.7 is not clear about this, I offer some interpretive explanation of this “attributability” elsewhere, though I won’t get into it here), in that the dang is at least partly responsible for the guo.  Is, then, the lack of guo in the community also attributable to the dang one is associated with?  I think this must be the case.  It seems odd at least that the author of Analects 4.7 would have thought that social influence from the groups one is integrated into can cause one to act badly, but cannot cause one to act well.  

Note that the interpretation that individual virtue might counteract the possibly corrosive influence of the dang is a stretch here, as 4.7 instructs us to observe the guo of an individual or group (it is not specific).  Presumably, it is in the absence of particular guo or the mildness of the guo that one can discover ren in the individual or group.  It is only on the first of these readings, that guo is absent in an individual, that the “individual virtue counteracting the influence of the dang” interpretation can be maintained.  But if this is the correct reading of the second part of 4.7, why talk about guo being attributable to one’s dang in the first part of 4.7?  If there are any guo made by the individual, this is because of the dang’s influence, and if we observe that an individual makes no guo, then we can thereby see this individual is ren?  This just invites the response: “what if one is simply not part of a dang?  Then they also do not have the guo associated with a dang (no matter how they act or what kind of character they have), but this cannot mean that they are ren.”  Then, the “individual virtue” proponent has to maintain that 4.7 means to limit the cases to those within a dang–saying that the ren individual is able to counteract the influence of the dang through his individual virtue, such that the guo other members of the dang are making are not made by this individual.  This view basically says, then, that only the ren individual is autonomous, whereas others have no power to resist the negative influence of the dang to which they belong.  

There are a number of problems with this view, however–not the least of which being that it seems to make the instructions given in 4.7 sound awkward.  If the above view is true, wouldn’t it be easier to discover whether an individual is ren by observing the extent to which their actions diverge from those of the dang to which they belong?  

Another One Bites the Dust…

See the story here, of the discontinuation of another philosophy department.  I wonder how many will go in this current economic crisis?  Will philosophy departments become the next investment banks (although without the power and importance to global economy, of course)?  Are we in danger of producing generations of young working citizens who are experts at business, chemistry, etc., but don’t care to or know how to think critically about the world around them?  Of course, some might argue (not saying who!) that this is happening already, and the decline of the humanities is not going to make it any worse….

Interesting times.