A Confucian Reply
Zhuangzi undeniably has an unparalleled influence on Chinese culture and philosophy. However, me, and my Analects, are still very much a part of both the Chinese and worldwide culture of this modern era. While on the other hand, Zhuangzi and his philosophy/religion became much less revered as many as 6 centuries ago, as Daoism became less respected because of one major inconsistency with a world wide phenomena; that being the rise of the market revolution and other civilizing aspects going on throughout the world. Zhuangzi’s philosophy that people should rid themselves of all the bureaucracy and conventional government in the world just was not in accordance with East Asian growth in the 12th century. My philosophies took on the changing world and accounted for the growth of
East Asia
while offering a way of life that was concurrent with it.
Zhuangzi once said that:
“By cultivating one’s nature, one will return to virtue. When virtue is perfect, one will be one with the beginning, one become vacuous, one become great.”
Interpreting that, Zhuangzi is advocating the dominance of nature in people’s lives by claiming that the development of one’s own nature will result in becoming virtuous. Daoism preaches that being one with nature and allowing life and everything in it to just move along naturally is the way to go about life. The end result of allowing everything to follow its own natural course is “The Way.” It is that philosophy that is behind Zhuangzi and the Daoist’ quest to rid of government and the bureaucracy of civilization. This, however, is not the way to go about leading the perfect life. There are several reasons for which allowing life to go about indifferently goes against my teachings for leading a good and humane life. One, humane and good people are to be both orderly and arranged. Secondly, good people embrace the populace and nurture the masses. And thirdly, humane people can handle living in society without acting unobtrusively when submersed in it.
My philosophy was based on my effort to use the revitalization and growth of civilization going on in the East to bring about a rise in the cultivation of human sentiment, honor and well-being. As
Eastern Asia
began to develop more and more, civilizations became larger and more compressed. In order to maintain a state that is humane, those larger and more compact societies had to become orderly and systematic; which is why the need for government is necessary. For there should be rules that everyone encompasses within them, and they should be used as a guideline for making decisions that are attempts at being the most humane. I truly contest that it is the government’s job to educate the populace on such rules, for a nation of people can only embrace such guidelines with the efforts of those who already possess cultivated intellects and emotions. It is the government’s job to make sure such cultivated people use their beneficial placement in the world to profess acts of humanness and good judgment.
And for Zhuangzi to claim that government should be disbanded and people should return to the Golden Age of simple agricultural life is more than preposterous, but it is inhumane. Such the life of a person of that time and era was without order, arrangement, knowledge or education. A person was left to do whatever he or she wished with no bounds or consequences for behaving out of character. A ruler once asked me about government and I replied, “Have leaders be leaders, have administrators be administrators, have fathers be fathers, have sons be sons” (Essential Confucius, pg. 19). And I replied with that to say that people must always behave as they were intended, or else, who is to say that I will be kind when I should be kind? That I will kill when I should not kill? “If there were grain, how could I eatâÂ?¦it?” Order is vital to the world and to people, or else our safety, our goodness, and most importantly, our humanness, are all cause for misinterpretation. Zhuangzi’s desire for there to be no conventional government, that is, for there to be no meddling, interruption, worsening, or even bettering, of anyone’s lives from an assumed higher power, or anyone for that matter, leaves exactly what one should do when left in solidarity up for misinterpretation.
Basically, Zhuangzi only calls for a return to pre-civilization. He only says that people should leave the populace and find their ch’i, but there is very little to no description of what actions can lead to the uncovering of the ch’i. He has even had his vague text interpreted to denote a call for people to “retire from public life and to seek harmony with the world of nature,” (Sources of Chinese Tradition, pg. 79). But how does the world continue in harmony if people continually retreat to their own well-being? Society can only be bettered if good people embrace the populace and nurture the masses. In a situation where one of my disciples asked, “Shall I go home? The youth of my neighborhood are free-spiritedâÂ?¦I don’t know how their fine tuning will be accomplished,” (Analects, 5:22), one can only figure that this wise questioner should profess his knowledge on to the free-spirited youth and benefit the masses. For if he is not the one to embrace their free-sprit, cultivate it, and nurture it into something humane and good, then who will?
In Daoism, being a sage is the utmost worldly position. Under my philosophy, to be a sage, one must not just follow Zhuangzi’s example and become one with himself and nature, but one must also be humane. In order to be humane, one must take on life with great regard and respect to each and every individual situation, have no enmity in your ongoings and procedures, and be generous to the people and help the masses. For being a sage consist of more than just solidarity and natural courses, but it is being able to spread one’s knowledge and to give other people the chance to become a sage, so that society can grow with love and goodness. Civilization is “an ongoing process and an inheritance from the past,” (Sources of Chinese Tradition, pg. 113) and with the continual nurturing of it by good people and sages alike, it will also be “the cumulative achievement” of those who have long been a part of it.
And while it is perfectly plausible that this “cumulative achievement” can exist without anguish, my counterpart, Zhuangzi, might argue that society creates a haven for bad behavior and illegal acts. However, “âÂ?¦if leaders are courteous, their people will not dare to be disrespectfulâÂ?¦if leaders are just, people will not dare to be intractableâÂ?¦” (Confucius, Analects, 13:4). Leaders with such qualities can alleviate a society from wrongdoing, and use order and regulation to supervise the general public. You get leaders to become this way by having them learn from leaders of the past, who instead of retiring to their own development away from public life, chose to augment civilization with their wisdom and knowledge, and adhere to their responsibility of the masses.
Addressing Zhuangzi’s aforementioned statement that “by cultivating one’s nature, one will return to virtue. When virtue is perfectâÂ?¦one becomes vacuous, one becomes great,” I must reply by saying that people who do nothing and only submit to the consequences of nature are not fulfilling their destiny as people who should become whole and vital members of society. The concept of Li challenges Zhuangzi’s idea of retiring from the public, as it is a belief that preaches good manners, politeness, worship and filial piety. Li clearly is not a concept that advocates one’s removal from society, in fact; it contradicts that and promotes social integration. For removing oneself from society does not offer the same benefits as being kind to others, giving unto others, honoring those who have accomplished what you too want to accomplish for yourself. Li embodies what it is to be humane, and in going along with its contradiction to removing oneself from society, one cannot achieve humanness while in isolation. For humanness means demonstrating your good comportment, implementing your graciousness, and bestowing your gratitude. To leave society gives you know chance to perform such actions. So, if asked is it better to leave society upon attaining Li and humanness, or to stay in society and implement it into civilization, I reply with that it is more of an accomplishment for one person to feed an entire population of people, than it is for a population to feed one person.
“Good people deal with the masses, acting unobtrusively while in fact illumined,” (Book of
Change,
36). I once said of my prominent disciple that:
“He is wise indeed! He subsist on bare essentials and lives in a poor neighborhood; for other people this would mean intolerable anxiety, but he is consistently happy. Wise indeed is he!” (Analects, 6:11).
I said that because he lived with the masses, the poor people, the ones who are of the common background that most are born into, and yet he remains content with his livelihood. This makes him wise because he is able to keep going while in the presence of modest means. He remains modest, and acts self-effacingly, because he knows that by acting so, he is achieving humanness and Li. And by removing himself from the elites, but not from society as a whole, he shows that he is not “worrying about the recognition of othersâÂ?¦” (Analects, 14:32) but he is only “worrying about [his] own lack of ability,” and is trying to cultivate it among the masses. It is also a demonstration of the fact that he is not “worrying that other people don’t know [him, but] that [he doesn’t] know other people,” (Analects, 1:16). That is how one should carry themselves when living among the masses, for that is truly the trait of a good and human person.
It can be said that removing oneself from society does has it benefits. As my counterpart Zhuangzi might say, it allows one to become one with the self, and to achieve his or her ch’i. However, what one should truly be in search of is the attainment of humanness and goodness, and that cannot be attained in the mist of solidarity, but only through interaction with civilization. A movement back to the Golden Age would be a movement of regression. “Good people use life the full and achieve their aim,” (Book of Change, Ch. 47), and no one is capable of achieving their utmost goals in seclusion where becoming a sage is not a possibility. Thus, one should aim to cultivate him or herself in society, with the masses, learning, teaching, giving, all in an effort to convey humanness.
