刘清平、王希：An Analysis of the Confucian Political Position on “Ruler-Orientation”

An Analysis of the Confucian Political Position on “Ruler-Orientation”

Liu Qingping, Wang Xi

(In Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences

Volume 7, Number 1, March 2014)

 

Abstract While Confucianism is indeed quite concerned about the people’s welfare, its dominant political position is not “people-oriented” (min benwei) but rather “ruler-oriented” (wang benwei), which is described by the New-Confucian thinker Xiong Shili as “taking the great righteousness of being respectful to the ruler as the foremost”. In virtue of this very righteousness, Confucianism does not only subordinate “people-orientation” to “ruler-orientation”, but also denies the value of the former for the sake of the latter in cases of conflict.

 

Key words Confucianism·ruler-orientation·people-orientation· being respectful to the ruler·being affectionate to the people

 

 

As is well known, most ancient Confucian masters displayed a clear tendency to “be affectionate to the people” (qinmin). Kongzi (Confucius) held that the ruler should be “generous in caring for ordinary people” (Lunyu 5:16)[1]. Mengzi (Mencius) even declared in a quite radical way: “The people are the most important in a nation; the spirit of the land and grain are the next; the ruler is of slight importance.” (Mengzi 7B:14) Attracted by these undoubted statements, many modern scholars also believe that the dominant position of the mainstream Confucianism in the political field is “people-oriented”, paying attention first and foremost to the welfare for the common people. Through a detailed analysis of some classic Confucian texts especially in the pre-Qin period, however, this article tries to argue that the dominant political position of the mainstream Confucianism is “ruler-oriented” rather than “people-oriented”, because it definitely gives priority to the former rather than to the latter.

 

1. The Way of Ancient Sovereigns

The “ruler-oriented” position of Confucianism manifests directly and most clearly in its self-definition of its essential feature and sacred mission. From ancient times to the present, most Confucians have called Confucianism the “Way of ancient sovereigns (xianwang zhidao)” or “teachings of sage-kings (shengwang zhijiao)”, and still often feel proud of this orientation even nowadays. In order to prove this orientation from a historical perspective, moreover, Confucianism specifically counts a group of “sage-kings” from remote antiquities as its progenitors, placing them before anyone else, including Kongzi, in its so-called “orthodox course (daotong)”. For example, Kongzi not only spoke with the laudatory reference to such famous “emperors” of remote antiquities as Yao, Shun, and Yu, but also regarded himself as a loyal follower of King Wen and the Duke of Zhou in the Western Zhou dynasty. As Benjamin Schwartz remarks, “Confucius’ great model is, of course, the Duke of Chou [Zhou] who, while himself a member of the royal family, served in a ministerial capacity to the young King Cheng and was in effect his teacher.” (Schwartz 1985:114) By adding King Tang in the Shang dynasty and Kongzi to this list, Mengzi for the first time depicted the clear succession of Confucian orthodox course (see Mengzi 7B:38), which has been highly valued by most Confucian thinkers since Han Yu in the Tang dynasty. Except Kongzi, as a matter of fact, all these “sage-kings” appearing on the list were not thinkers in the proper sense and did not even have any decent theoretical discourses. They have been regarded as the founders of Confucianism simply and purely because they were once on the “imperial throne” or of high political rank, whereas Kongzi, who is the real founder of Confucianism as a school of thought, is ironically placed on a merely subordinate status in the orthodox course.

In terms of Confucian annotation, to be sure, these “ancient sovereigns” were not ordinary rulers, but the “sage-kings” who were always “affectionate to ordinary people”. If we take off their sparkling aureoles given by Confucianism and get back to the real historical situation, yet, the naked truth may be quite different. Except for Yao and Shun who were elected to be the head of the union of tribes through the primitive democratic convention, according to the description of the chapter Liyun of Liji, Yu, King Tang, King Wen, and the Duke of Zhou were actually all the so-called “parochialistic (xiaokang)” rulers. Under their dominion, the “universal Way” of “great harmony (datong)”, by which “people place the public interests above all, elect the persons of virtue and ability as officials, …love not only their own kin, and raise not only their own children”, had vanished away. Following the example of these rulers themselves, instead, people “place their own family above all, love only their own kin, and raise only their own children. The goods and labor are all private properties, and the hereditary system of the throne and officials of high rank becomes the formal propriety…. As a result, schemes and intrigues arise and the war starts”.

It is true that the Duke of Zhou, one of the most admired idols of Kongzi, often required officials to “deal with the common people as if protecting the infants” (Shangshu Kanggao) and “cherish and protect the inferior people” (Shangshu Wuyi). Nevertheless, his ultimate purpose of such “putting in practice humane government (xing renzheng)” was not to maintain the welfare for the people, but firstly for the very sake of a long and peaceful reign of his own family over the country and of passing it down from generation to generation. That is why the Duke of Zhou frequently declared: “I have prayed to the three late kings for a long future of our dynasty” (Shangshu Jinteng), and “Only if the king’s descendants always be the governors of the people, may the dynasty continue for myriads of years” (Shangshu Zicai). These statements clearly show the “ruler-oriented” position of the Duke of Zhou himself, a royal official of the highest rank who had only one person (the king) above him and millions of people under him in the Western Zhou dynasty.

Surprisingly, Xiong Shili, who is considered as the most important founder of New-Confucianism in the twentieth century and even “one of the most profound and original thinkers in contemporary China” (Tu 1993:156), has already realized the “parochialistic” feature of these Confucian “sage-kings” soberly. He points it out in his “final conclusion drawn at the old age”:

 

Having overthrown the Yin dynasty, King Wen, King Wu, King Cheng and the Duke of Zhou took the whole country as the property of their own family, appointed their relatives to vassals in order to control the whole country, and then called it by a good name of “the Zhou’s Way of being affectionate to the relatives”. Although the baneful influence of their selfishness was more serious than any earlier tyrants, many vulgar Confucians in the period of Spring and Autumn were still willing to extol them sincerely. Especially, King Wu and the Duke of Zhou put in force the centralization of power rigorously, and the autocracy was increasingly severe. (Xiong 2008:68)

 

From this point of view, then, the undeniable fact that the mainstream Confucianism regards itself as the “Way of ancient sovereigns” or “teachings of sage-kings”, takes King Wen, King Wu and the Duke of Zhou as the most important founders of its core values, and still prettifies their fictional images of “being affectionate to the people”, is not sufficient to prove its “people-oriented” position, but just demonstrates the long history of its “ruler-oriented” position.

    Having known the naked truth of these so-called “sage-kings” of the Western Zhou dynasty, perhaps we might understand why even Tu Wei-ming as a Confucian scholar also frankly admits, “the Confucian ideal of ‘inner sageliness and outer kingliness’ was impractical and the demand that only sages are qualified to be kings was unrealistic. Actually, no emperor in the Han dynasty, or for that matter throughout Chinese history, was sagely.”(Tu 1993:26) Strictly speaking, yet, the key reason that eventually makes the Confucian ideal of “sage-king”, who should take “being affectionate to the common people” as the foremost, impractical and unrealistic is not the Confucian demand that only sages are qualified to be kings, but the simple fact that those ancient “sage-kings” extolled by the mainstream Confucianism were actually “parochialistic” rulers, who themselves always took “ruler-orientation”, not “people-orientation”, as the foremost.

 

2. The Great Righteousness of Being Respectful to the Ruler

Viewed from a theoretical perspective, the dominant position of “ruler-orientation” within the Confucian framework expresses itself intensively in the “great righteousness of being respectful to the ruler (zunjun dayi)” of the “parochialistic propriety (xiaokang lijiao)”, which has been advocated strongly by a lot of important Confucian thinkers in the history. Xiong Shili makes it clear:

 

The righteousness between the ruler and his ministers is the core value of the parochialistic propriety. Kongzi taught this to his disciples in the early part of his life… The theory of “rule by filial piety (xiaozhi)” is just a kind of parochialistic propriety, which definitely takes the righteousness of being respectful to the ruler as the foremost… The views of both Mengzi and Xunzi belong to the parochialistic propriety. (Xiong 1996:417-422)

 

According to the text of the Lunyu, to be sure, Kongzi sincerely put forward such “people-oriented” viewpoints as “justly ordering the people” (5:16) and “making more beneficial to the people the things from which they naturally derive benefit” (20:2). According to the text of the Lunyu, nonetheless, Kongzi also sincerely put forward such “ruler-oriented” viewpoints as “when the good government prevails in the empire, propriety, music, and punitive military expeditions proceed only from the emperor himself” (16:2) and “Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject” (12:11). Compared with those “people-oriented” statements, moreover, these “ruler-oriented” statements are eventually more fundamental and penetrative in the whole discourses of the Lunyu, because Kongzi did regard not “being affectionate to the people”, but “being respectful to the ruler” alone, as the bottom line that can not be broken through in any cases. For instance, Kongzi’s minimum requirement for the so-called “ordinary ministers (juchen)” is not “being affectionate to the people” or “no harm to any person”, but precisely “do not follow any order of parricide or regicide” (Lunyu 11:24). It is also for the same reason that, in his view, the most insufferable thing is not that ordinary people were oppressed by brutal rulers or lost their homes during the war, but is that some ambitious ministers used eight rows of eight dancers each to perform in their courtyard without being authorized (see Lunyu 3:1), which is considered by him as a most serious offence to the prerogative of the emperor. In other words, Kongzi always places “ruler-orientation” above “people-orientation”.

Similarly, while Mengzi indeed demanded that the ruler should “make pleasure a thing common to ordinary people and himself” (Mengzi 1B:1) and thereby presented a most striking tendency to “be affectionate to the people” among all ancient Confucian masters, he still emphasized in a strong “ruler-oriented” tone: “To deny the special relationship with the father and the ruler is to be in the state of a beast.” (Mengzi 3B:9) For him, thus, the “righteousness of being respectful to the ruler” is so great and indispensible that it constitutes one of the essential elements of being a human, and anyone lack of it will lose the moral qualification of being a human.

Although Xunzi indeed believed that “The heaven does not create the people for the sake of the ruler, but sets up the ruler for the sake of the people” (Xunzi 27:72), furthermore, he also asserted repeatedly by virtue of the “great righteousness of being respectful to the ruler” that “the ruler and teachers are the root of governing a state” (Xunzi 19:4) and “none is more important than the sage-king in the differentiation according to propriety” (Xunzi 5:10). It is noteworthy that, by these statements, Xunzi not only stressed the basic value of the ruler for the governance, but also highlighted the supreme status of the ruler even above the father in the parochialistic propriety, which makes some subtle and yet profound differences between his position on the one hand and Kongzi’s and Mengzi’s position on the other hand (see Liu 2009: 173-188). As Wing-tsit Chan says, Xunzi “contributed to the authoritarianism that resulted in the dictatorship of the Ch’in [Qin]. As a matter of fact, two of the ministers of the Ch’in, Han Fei and Li Ssu [Li Si], were his pupils.” (Chan 1963:115)

Exactly by carrying out such undeniable “ruler-oriented” spirit advocated by these three pre-Qin Confucian masters, most famous Confucian thinkers since the Han dynasty have firmly insisted on the so-called “three cardinal guides of the King’s Way (wangdao sangang)”, in which “the ruler guiding the subjects” is decisively placed on the top of the three guides, even over “the father guiding the son”. Being aware of this “great righteousness of being respectful to the ruler” within the framework of traditional Confucianism, Xiong Shili reveals the “kernel of the parochialistic propriety” in such a sharp way: “The ruler is the most noble, whereas ministers are humble, and the common people are the most humble. Such distinctions between the superiors and inferiors, the noble and the humble are always stable and could never be changed.” (Xiong 2008:62) Levenson also points it out: “the people’s will, when it was worked at all by Confucian thinkers into political theory, was purely symbolic, not effective, in establishing legitimacy.” (Levenson 1968:12) In view of this, it is hard for us to say that the dominant political position of Confucianism is not “ruler-oriented”, but “people-oriented”.

 

3. Propriety Serving the Ruler and Officials

Viewed from a practical perspective, the “great righteousness of being respectful to the ruler” of the “parochialistic propriety” is mainly fulfilled on the system of “propriety and music (liyue)”, which has been strongly defended by the mainstream Confucian thinkers. In the final analysis, the fundamental function of this system is to protect the ruling authority and luxurious life of the ruler as well as officials of all ranks in various “ruler-oriented” and “official-oriented (guan benwei)” ways.

Originally, the chief motive by which the Duke of Zhou created the system of propriety and music is to consolidate the emperor’s supreme authority, so that “every spot under the whole heaven is his ground, and every individual to the borders of the land is his subject” (Shijing Beishan). On the one hand, this system eventually strengthens the rigid hierarchy between the superiors and the inferiors according to the principle of “being affectionate to one’s parents and respectful to one’s ruler (qinqin zunzun)”, demanding that the people should serve their superiors and the inferiors should cherish no ambitious designs. On the other hand, this system also strictly regulates the prerogative enjoyments of the ruler as well as officials of all ranks in material life according to the rigid hierarchy between them. Therefore, Xiong Shili strongly criticizes this “ruler-oriented” function of the “parochialistic propriety”: “The emperor owned the goods and labor of the entire country exclusively, which were enjoyed by himself and his descendants, and that is called ‘selfishness’.” (Xiong 2008:11) By contrast, the people are not at all the intended aim of the Duke of Zhou in creating the system of propriety and music, for the typical characteristic of this hierarchical system is such an “official-oriented” position: the “propriety (li)” that lays particular stress on the prerogative enjoyments is used merely to serve the ruler and officials of high rank and yet not suitable for the common people, whereas the “punishment (xing)” that lays particular stress on rigorous penalty is used merely to handle the common people and yet not points to the superior noblemen (see Liji Quli).

All of the three great pre-Qin Confucian thinkers faithfully carried on these core values established by the Duke of Zhou. When Kongzi held that the “good government is prevailing in the empire” if and only if “propriety, music, and punitive military expeditions proceed from the emperor himself”, he confirmed on the one hand the sole and absolute authority of the emperor over ordinary people, and formulated on the other hand the humble and loyal obligations of ordinary people to the emperor. Thus he declared that “the common people may be made to follow the Way, but may not be made to understand it” (Lunyu 8:9), taking them “as passive and not able to govern themselves” (Murthy 2000:33). Meanwhile, he not only endeavored to defend various monopolistic prerogatives of the emperor such as enjoying eight rows of eight dancers each, but also strictly observed the privileged proprieties related to his own position as an official of middle rank. That is the real reason why “he does not eat meat that has not been properly cut up, nor does he eat unless the proper sauce is available” (Lunyu 10:8), and why he refused to “walk on foot” when he took his place after the officials of higher rank (Lunyu 11:8). As Schwartz puts it, “Confucius, like the larger part of the shih [shi] stratum of ‘wandering intellectuals’ of the following period for whom he became almost a prototype, remains committed to the ‘class vocation’ of government service and even to the notion of privileges that rightly belong to government service” (Schwartz 1985:58-59).

Similarly, when Xunzi emphasized that “none is more important than the sage-king in the differentiation according to propriety” (Xunzi 5:10), he not only highlighted the supreme authority of the ruler in political life, but also confirmed the luxurious enjoyments of the ruler in material life. In his view,

 

It is the natural desire common to everyone to want to wear whatever colors he values, taste foods with whatever flavor he prefers, and regulate whatever commodities and goods he attaches importance to, to join the world together and have dominion over it, to want food and drink that are rich and plentiful, music and dance performance that are very grand…. It is only the propriety of the emperor that can regulate in this fashion. (Xunzi 11:16).

 

In sharp contrast, Xunzi required the common people to offer their material possessions created by themselves to the ruler and officials gladly and wholeheartedly in order to meet the luxurious needs of the latter according to such propriety, just as “the son makes sacrifices for his father, and the younger brother makes sacrifices for his older brother” (Xunzi 23:6). From this point of view, the fundamental function of the “propriety-righteousness (liyi)”, which is defined by Xunzi as “to nurture the desires of humans and to supply the means for their satisfaction” (Xunzi 19:1), does not intend to serve the common people at all, but merely to serve the ruler as well as officials.

Even Mengzi, who is usually regarded as the most positive one to be affectionate to ordinary people among all the ancient Confucian masters, does not deny the fundamental function of the system of propriety and music to supply abundant provisions to the ruler and officials, which could be fulfilled only by letting the common people give up their products of labor. For this reason, he not only remarked that “without countrymen, there would be none to support the ruler and officials” (Mengzi 3A:3), but also encouraged the ruler and officials to satisfy their relatives’ desires by taking the advantages of the material possessions created by the common people under their dominion. According to his descriptions, thus, even Shun living in the primitive times also eventually became a “parochialistic” ruler precisely like King Wu and the Duke of Zhou. Firstly, Shun as the emperor raised his younger brother Xiang, who was of all persons the most destitute of humaneness, be the prince of a small country in order to enrich and ennoble him (see Mengzi 5A:3). Secondly, Shun himself set an example of such a perfect filial son to all rulers and officials in a Confucian way:

 

Of all which a filial son can attain to, there is nothing greater than his honoring his parents. And what can be attainted to in the honoring one’s parents, there is nothing greater than the nourishing them with the whole empire. Gusou was the father of Shun as the emperor—this was the height of honor. Shun nourished him with the whole empire—this was the height of nourishing. (Mengzi 5A:4)

 

In both the two cases, then, what Shun did inevitably sacrificed the public interests of ordinary people for the private interests of his own relatives and therefore resulted in serious corruption (see Liu 2007:1-19). Moreover, such “rule by filial piety” highly praised by Confucianism may also serve as a typical expression of the so-called “Confucianism and Monarchism narrowed and interwoven” (Levenson 1968:10). That is the main reason why Xiong Shili strongly censures Mengzi for being more “narrow-minded” even than Xunzi: “Mengzi and Xunzi both defended the barriers of the parochialistic propriety, which is not compatible with the ‘universal Way’ of ‘great harmony’ at all. Mengzi was especially stubborn in insisting on his narrow-minded thought of the patriarchal propriety.” (Xiong 2008:45)

 

4. Punishment against the Common People

What makes the dominant position of “ruler-orientation” within the framework of the mainstream Confucianism most manifest is that, once conflict happens between “being respectful to the ruler” and “being affectionate to the people”, pre-Qin Confucian masters always advocate to sacrifice the subordinative value of the common people to protect the dominative value of the ruler.

Originally, the parochialistic principle of “the proprieties should not be applied to common people, and the punishments should not be applied to the officials of high rank” already displays that the ideas of “being affectionate to the people” and “protecting the people” of the ruling group of the Zhou Dynasty do not treat ordinary people as the respectable purpose value at all, but as the mere instrumental means to consolidate their own regime. Therefore, once the common people are not obedient to the ruler or officials, they must suffer cruel punishments according to severe laws. Hence, when the Duke of Zhou called for “dealing with the people as if protecting the infants”, he also demanded to “inflict punishment or even death without pardoning” (Shangshu Kanggao）for the sake of suppressing the “rebellions” of the common people against the autocratic system of the Zhou dynasty.

Not surprisingly, pre-Qin Confucian masters inherited the idea of the Duke of Zhou again, though in different ways. When Mengzi declared that “Kongzi completed the Spring and Autumn, and rebellious subjects and disobedient sons in the world were struck with terror” (Mengzi 3B:9), he just demonstrated Kongzi’s as well as his own negative attitude towards those common people who attempted to revolt the bullying and oppression of the ruler and officials: forcing them not dare to “rebel” against the ruler and officials. Xunzi claimed from another perspective:

 

The ancient sages considered human nature evil, thus to be inclined to prejudice and wickedness, and not toward uprightness, to be perverse and rebellious, and not to be orderly. Therefore, they established the authority of the ruler and officials to control ordinary people, elucidated propriety- righteousness to transform them, set up laws and standards to bring them to order, and piled on penal laws and punishments to restrain them. (Xunzi 23:9)

 

It is these statements of Confucian masters that make Xiong Shili evaluate the “righteousness of being respectful to the ruler” of the “parochialistic propriety” in an extremely negative way: “The ethical commandment for maintaining the ruler’s governance is to put all the rebellious subjects and disobedient sons to death.” (Xiong 1996:438)

When justifying the rulers’ strict control of ordinary people, as a matter of fact, pre-Qin Confucian thinkers often resorted to such a fundamental ethical reason: “the common people were very limited” not only “in their intellectual capacity”, but also in their “moral capacity” by comparison with the ruler and officials (see Lau 2000:36). It is this moral superiority that gives the ruler and officials unrestricted power not only to ride roughshod over the common people, but also to put all the so-called “rebellious subjects and disobedient sons” to death. For instance, Kongzi asserted in sharp contrast: “The virtue of superiors is like wind, and the virtue of inferiors is like grass. Let the wind blow over the grass and it is sure to bend” (Lunyu 12:19), regarding ordinary people almost as the “no bodies” who ought to grovel at the feet of their ruler in moral life. When highly praising that “Constant Mean (zhongyong) is a perfect virtue”, he also intentionally added that “its practice has been rare among the common people for a long time” (Lunyu 6:29). On the one hand, Mengzi emphasized in terms of his doctrine of the “goodness of human nature”: “Humaneness and righteousness are natural to Yao and Shun. King Tang and King Wu make them their own by practice” (Mengzi 7A:30), describing these sage-kings in the Confucian orthodox course as some moral models who were full of human kindness and noble character. On the other hand, Xunzi complained in terms of his doctrine of the “evilness of human nature” that the common people did “the evil” by “indulging human nature and going with emotion”, even though he extolled at the same time that only the sage-kings were able to establish the “good” propriety-righteousness (see Xunzi 23:1-3).

Viewed from this perspective, even though “Confucius characteristically and sharply contrasts the ruler who uses li [propriety] with the ruler who seeks to attain his ends by means of commands, threads, regulations, punishments and force” (Fingarette 1972:8), he himself as well as his followers still valued the “parochialistic propriety” as an indispensible ethical instrument for the ruler and officials to attain their own ends. Historically speaking, moreover, the above-mentioned Confucian discourses have been frequently used by ancient rulers and officials when they tried to find some moral excuses for their suppressions of the common people. In the final analysis, the fundamental reason why Confucianism was able to replace Legalism (fajia) and became the orthodox ideology of almost all imperial governments since the Han dynasty is that it does not rely merely on those outer “legal commandments” to enforce, compel or punish the common people, but also resorts mainly to some inner “ethical commandments” to induce, train and regulate them, making rebellious subjects and disobedient sons seized with terror thereby. It is in this sense we may argue that Confucianism has been even more effective than Legalism in performing their similar functions of maintaining the autocratic monarchy by insisting on their similar “ruler-oriented” positions in political life.

 

5. The Confucian criticism to Moism

It is well known that Confucians have always fiercely criticized Moism (mojia) starting from Mengzi, which can also clearly indicates that their dominant position in political life is not “people-oriented”, but “ruler-oriented”.

Properly speaking, Moism can be seen as a kind of political thought which really insists on the “people-oriented” position in ancient China. It is true that its famous idea of “universal love” (jianai) also contains the element that “rulers and ministers, fathers and sons should love each other” (Mozi 14:3). Unlike the idea of “loyalty and filial piety (zhongxiao)” advocated by “parochialistic” Confucianism, which is exclusively targeted at parents and rulers alone, however, this idea not only highlights a kind of comprehensive love for every human being, but also stresses the special importance of the common people. Indeed, Mozi made it very clear: “Everyone in the world should love each other, the strong should not suppress the weak, the many should not plunder the few, the rich should not despise the poor, the noble should not insult the lowly, and the cunning should not deceive the foolish” (Mozi 15:3). In other words, the Moist idea of “universal love” pays first and foremost attention precisely to ordinary people who are often harmed substantially by the strong, the rich, and the noble such as the ruler and officials in social life.

Totally different from Kongzi who gave the supreme significance only to the ruler and the father and thus emphasized the particularistic bottom line of “do not follow any order of parricide or regicide”, as a result, Mozi gave the supreme significance to the common people, and thus emphasized the universalistic bottom line of “do not harm any person”. He declared that “Heaven will certainly bring misfortune to and inflict punishment on those who hate and harm people”, because “everyone, whether young or old, whether noble or base, are all Heaven’s subjects” (Mozi 4:4). Such an obvious “people-oriented” position for the sake of protecting the welfare of the common people is surely in striking contrast with the Confucian “ruler-oriented” position for the sake of protecting the interests of the ruler and officials. Even having shown a clear tendency of pro-Confucianism, Wing-tsit Chan also observes that Confucian followers “represented and aimed at producing an elite”, whereas Mozi’s followers “may have represented the working class”; thus “the opposition between Confucianism and Moism is a foregone conclusion.” (Chan 1963:212)

More significantly, Mozi also firmly believed that “Officials are not assured of permanent nobility and ordinary people are not always lowly for their whole lives”, and “Even a farmer, a craftsman, or a merchant, if he has ability, can be promoted as an official” (Mozi 8:5). It is in this sense that Feng Youlan (Fung Yu-lan) regards Mozi’s philosophy “being based on a democratic point of view” (Fung 1952:80). In comparison with David Hall and Roger Ames’ remark that “traditional Confucianism contains elements that might well be translated into a communitarian form of democratic society” (Hall & Ames 1999:13), Feng’s remark seems more persuasive and tenable in terms of textual and factual evidences.

Notwithstanding, Mengzi still sharply attacked Mozi’s idea exactly for this reason. According to the bottom line drawn by Kongzi, he claimed in a very famous statement: “Mozi advocates universal love, which is a denial of the special relationship with the father. To deny the special relationship with the father and the ruler is to be in the state of a beast.” (Mengzi 3B:9) When discussing this debate between Mengzi and Moism, Hall and Ames notice that “Mencius is not interested here in debating the opposition; he wants to eradicate it.” (Hall & Ames 1995:202) Xunzi also criticized Mozi in a similar way, censuring him for “only noticing the equality but ignoring the distinctions” (Xunzi 17:15), as he took the common people, not the supreme ruler, as the root of human society.

These parochialistic statements of Mengzi and Xunzi clearly reflect the differentiation of Confucianism from Moism in political attitude. In the view of Confucianism, universal love for the common people is not enough to make a person morally human at all, for not the common people, but only the ruler as well as the father can constitute the root of human life. Therefore, if one treats ordinary people as the root according to the Moist principle of “universal love” and tries to protect them from being bullied and oppressed by the noble and the rich, one would deny the fundamental status of the ruler and the father in human life and thus become the moral “beast”. By contrast, if and only if one treats the ruler as well as the father as the root according to the Confucian principle of “loyalty and filial piety” and tries to protect them from being disobeyed and rebelled by the lowly and the poor, one could become a moral “gentleman”. Certainly, such an unambiguous choice will put forward an unavoidable question: if the dominant political position of Confucianism is really “people-oriented”, why did Mengzi and Xunzi still criticize in such a sharp tone the Moist idea of “universal love”, which is obviously aimed at protecting the welfare of the common people?

 

In sum, although we should frankly admit in terms of many undeniable texts that there is indeed a “people-oriented” intention of maintaining the welfare for the common people in the political thought of the mainstream Confucianism, we have to notice at the same time in terms of many other undeniable texts that its dominant position is “ruler-oriented”, defending the interests of the ruler and officials according to the “great righteousness of being respectful to the ruler”. As Tu Wei-ming states,

 

Yet we must also recognise that Confucian moral values have often been politicised to serve an oppressive authoritarian regime. At the same time that the Confucian moralisation of politics has become a distinctive feature of Chinese political culture, the politicisation of Confucian symbols in the form of an authoritarian ideology of control has been a dominant tradition in Chinese political history. (Tu 1993:10)

 

Therefore, when we examine the great influences that the Confucian political thought has exerted on the historical development as well as current situation of China and even East Asia, we should take into consideration its dominant position of “ruler-orientation” seriously and critically.

 

 

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