To further explore the contemporary meaning and significance of Confucian philosophy, I would like you to meet with some of our students. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us in our little MOOC. Would you perhaps like to introduce yourselves to the class first? Hi, my name is Harisan, and I majored in Philosophy and recently graduated from NTU. Hi, I'm Yuka. I'm a year three Philosophy Major from NTU. Hi, my name is How Wei. I'm a year two Philosophy Major from NTU. Hello. I'm Yiren, I'm a year two Philosophy Major from NTU. Hello, I'm Li Yi and I'm a year four Philosophy Major from NTU. Hi, my name is Zul. I'm a year three Philosophy Major from NTU. Okay. You've all studied Confucian philosophy, so let me first ask you this. In your view, what is the most important concept in Confucian philosophy? Would it be perhaps Ren: humanity, humaneness or benevolence. Or would it be Li: structured, habituated, proper conduct. Or perhaps would it be Xiao: filial piety in the sense of filial care and concern. In various ways, all these concepts are highlighted by Confucius in the Analects, and also by the later interpreters of Confucian philosophy. How would you explain them especially to an audience who may not be familiar with Chinese language and culture? So who would like to start the discussion? The most important concept within Confucian philosophy is the recognition that there are plurality of basic moral goods. Confucius recognises that morality does not reduce to one single concept. Well, there are different things that one can pursue and that one should pursue, in depending on the context that you are in. Ren or Humanity, which means the love for humankind, will actually be the key concept motivating many of the virtues that you've mentioned. So it seems like there's always this idea of the other people that you are interacting with involved in. So for me, the care and concern for humanity or Ren will actually be the basic principle of Confucianism. Yiren, the word Ren, I understand is actually part of your name? Yes. When my mom gave me this name, she interpreted Ren as benevolence. Yes. But personally, I feel that it's not a good interpretation. Yes. Because Ren seems to capture more than just benevolence. It means, Ren seems to mean more than that. It means conducting yourself as a proper human and also includes thinking as a proper human. Means acting the most humanly way. Yes. That they can. Other ethical ideas, they seem to be motivated by Ren, too. Yi, Li, Xiao. The ultimate goal seems to be trying to be the most human as possible. Yes. Ren is definitely one of the most important virtues but I think it's an idealistic concept, right? But how do you put it into practice exactly? That's always the big question. For me, I tend to be a bit more realistic and I think that virtue is like being filial to your parents and your elders is more important and informs the fundamentals of achieving the idealistic condition of Ren. I think, okay. Firstly, for Ren, right? It seems to be an ideal or an idealised condition that we aspire to within the Confucian framework, and that the Confucian framework, the virtues that we have within it, is ultimately to guide us to this state of Ren. We should go back to Ren and think about Ren as, well, the relationship between two people. As we can see in the character, the left character of Ren is Ren, which means humanity or people and the right character means Er, which means two. So, it's more about the interconnectedness between two people and how two people should benefit one another and nourish each other and learn from one another and be empathetic towards one another. For me, personally, I think that the most important virtue concept within Confucian framework is actually Yi. Am I, said it right? Yeah, Yi. Very good. Righteousness. Because from righteousness, we can actually derive the other virtues. It's very practical because righteousness is something that I feel is, it's an innate feeling that we have within us. I see. We always think about what is due to us, what is due to others, what is right or what is wrong. We know that there is this feeling that's within us. As compared to Ren, I really don't know how you want to be humane. How do I be humane? Right. What does it mean to be humane? As to why I feel that Yi can be problematic is because like Yi is a principle. So it means like righteousness or justice, right? Is it always the case that we know what's right? So what if I appeal to the principle of Yi but I failed to think about what is right for others, but I only think about what's right for myself? Then there could be a problem of applying that principle wrongly. Wouldn't Ren be something that you cultivate? So when you begin cultivating, you will be without Ren, right? Or you would have deficient, right? So there must be a starting point before you get to the idealised condition. And it seems that whenever we say it like, Oh, what is Ren? It seems that you can only explain it in very concrete instantiations. So it seems like, for me, it seems the rituals, the practices, those are prior to Ren. You can only explain Ren in terms of the rituals. I think the way that we think about Ren has to be clarified as well because from our discussion, it seems like there is this idea that there is an idealised condition of Ren. But in the Analects, there was actually, this quote that says that, I might be paraphrasing it but the idea is that, "As soon as you want to seek Ren, Ren is already there." Confucians identified difficulty for being Ren as the difficulty of sustaining it. So it's not the case that we cannot achieve Ren but it's the problem of whether we are able to be consistently Ren. Perhaps, if you think of Ren as just a concern for human being and Li can be used to remind us of that. Previously, we first talked about how your choice can be a way of reinforcing Ren. So maybe the act of bowing to your elders, maybe a way of reminding yourself that you have to respect them. So by having Li as a physical reminder of Ren, it actually helps us to sustain it longer. Here's a question, why do we lock our doors at night? Xunzi had a very pessimistic view of human beings. He thought that human nature is bad. Yeah, right. So, yeah he will agree why do we lock our doors at night? Maybe Mengzi should focus more on the capacity for human goodness. Whereas for Xunzi, he took on like-- Well, sometimes, human beings might behave selfishly so we need Li to constrain that side of human behaviours. I think both concepts are equally important and they depend on one another. Yeah. Yes. As in between desire of human being, it seems that in today's world, we see desire having an upper hand more. So, shouldn't Xunzi's philosophy of thought be more applicable rather than Mencius? I mean, I'm not saying Mencius is bad. It's just that he's a little bit too idealistic to pursue that nowadays. This hope within every human, it might be good. Even if they want to build walls and prevent people from entering, this was no good. Yes but the bottom line is, we do need regulations and laws to make sure that society is not in danger, we're not going to start killing each other or stealing from each other. So, yes, we do need all these social constraints. And yes, Xunzi recognised that very well but what about improvement? What concept do we appeal to if, let's say, we want to improve further or build on our innate potential human goodness? So, in that case, we could look to Mencius and see what he says about the four sprouts. If we look to that concept, then we have a more concrete idea of how we should go about cultivating human goodness. How would you describe a Confucian Junzi? I think it would be like the ideal man. The ideal person. Like the Renaissance man or something like that. Like the highest state of humaneness that a person can achieve. Yes. There is the tendency for us to confuse the concept of Junzi and the western version of the gentleman. Right. And that's of two very different idea at all and we shouldn't mix it. Interesting. And I think I would go for the hanyu pinyin Junzi. Okay. Actually I would go for the translation of sage because I feel that from my reading of Confucian text, the Junzi is a state that is a bit impossible to attain. I just think that the translation of gentleman just trivialises it. This man is supposed to be the embodiment of excellence. From what I understand, he's a person that is always contemplative and self-reflective of his actions and how his actions would affect others. So, I think a sage would be much more appropriate. In Chinese, we have the idea of Sheng, Xian. And I'm not sure if we would put Junzi as a Sheng yet, but probably someone who is a Xian, Xianzhe. Someone who is--Oh my God, this is a hard thing to translate. A virtuous person. Virtuous person, yes. Virtuous. Yes. Worthy. Because, I guess, the ideal of the sage can become too much of a perfect idea that people will think it's very hard to achieve. Is Junzi something that you attain eventually, that you have to practice certain virtues before it extend to become a Junzi? Or can you be a practising Junzi? I think the problem is probably whether or not Ren is a virtue. Because if Ren is a virtue, then Junzi would mean that you are the virtuous man, right? But the thing is that Ren doesn't sound like a virtue all the time because sometimes Confucius says that, Well, you could achieve Ren in one day or three months. Sustain it for three months. Or if you want to look for Ren, it's already here. But maybe a Junzi wouldn't have to have all these individual virtues like filial piety and trustworthiness or whatever and all of this constitutes Ren but eventually, the Junzi has to have other characteristics as well. There's a dimension of Junzi that I thought has to do with your mental state. Because when we looked at how the inferior man goes for benefits and then, the Junzi goes for something more lofty. It has to do with your mental state of being optimistic. If you consider learning and education to be so important, and if you consider the Junzi to have a responsibility to make social change, would you elect a person who is every bit morally accomplished and substantial, but without learning? I actually don't see a requirement at all. So imagine yourself as a state leader and you have to lower unemployment rates, you have to tinker around on the economy. So it seems like more important that you have technical knowledge about the economy rather than being a morally upright person. And sure, it would be good to have a leader who is morally upright, who is not corrupt and all of those values but at the end of the day, can he really do the job of running the country? Technical knowledge can be used in both humane and inhumane ways. It seems that you would need something like ethical knowledge or moral virtue to help guide your decision. For example, maybe from the improving of the situation, to quickly achieve that result, does it mean that you exploit the people, or that you bring about oppressive laws? So, it seems like sometimes, you would need the leader to actually be able to strike the balance between improving certain situation in society while also doing it in the humane way. That is a very interesting discussion. Perhaps we shouldn't be looking at just whether it is a Junzi who is leading the government, but rather try to understand the difference between a Junzi way of governance versus a non-Junzi way of governance. This has been a very helpful discussion. Thank you very much. But I do want to shift to another question.
