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to Vietnamese Missionaries in Taiwan Home PageThis chapter aims to show that, if rationality alone cannot be the criterion of human conducts, and if reason itself is much too abstract and aloof to be understood, then it is the right time to return to the concept of reasonableness, the one that Confucius had taken to be the principle of social order, and to be the essence that determines human nature. By "return", we do not mean that the Confucian reason is the best or the most correct principle, nor do we want a nostalgia to the ancient world. In fact, by "return" to the Confucian reasonableness, we simply follow the line of Gadamer who insists on the importance of tradition. To Gadamer, it is meaningless to talk about understanding without an adequate grasp of tradition. Thus, the Confucian reasonableness is presented here not as an alternative to rationality or reason itself, but as an other expressive form of reason, which might shed more light to our understanding of reason.
In order to grasp the meaning and the necessity of the Confucian reasonableness, we will proceed first with a short description of the present crisis of rationality in Chinese society, and then with the need to return back to the Confucian reason which we call reasonableness.
Reasonableness itself is studied under three aspects: 1) its onto-genesis, 2) its nature and functions and 3) its forms. The last section deals with our tentative reconstruction of reasonableness in the light of human interests and human praxis, and presents our effort to give it a proper place in the whole complete manifestative forms of reason.
After having gone through different approaches to the problematics of the question of reason and rationality, with this last part, we intend to show indirectly that reasonableness is by no means against science. It can claim for itself the role of a fundamental way of living and reasoning in human daily life. Far from being outdated, irrational or reactionary, the Confucian reasonableness can still offer its valuable contributions to our present society. We venture to defend our thesis that the different outlooks between rationality and reasonableness lie not in their different objectives, but more profoundly in human different interests, and in their modes of praxis. Therefore, a serious study of rationality and reasonableness may enable us to go beyond the phenomenal differences, and to gain an insight into human nature.
In the first chapter dealing with the crisis of rationality, we have briefly mentioned Husserl's attack on the strong-hold of scientism and on the pessimism of Horkheimer and others. The reason for their distaste of scientism is the dogmatical arrogance of natural science and the monopoly of empiricism which produce the crisis of modern science. The empiricists and positivists are used to thinking of science as the unique instrument (means) of every other alternative. This credo becomes automatically an undisputed and sacred dogma after the victory of Galileo, the triumph of the mercantilists and the self coronation of the so called Enlightenment.
The birth of scientism was celebrated as the holy thing, and science, the new Messiah was greeted with a chorus of hallelujah. Such a scene is not strange to Chinese minds. It is true, too true that what happened to the Western civilization after the unstoppable march of the Enlightenment, also happened to China, a country where the word of natural science is almost unknown until Matteo Ricci, and where its history stresses more the humanistic than scientific. The mighty power of science is no longer a myth. After having been, for her incompetence in dealing with new knowledge, overpowered, China practically surrenders to science. The history of the aggressive invasion of the Western and of the Japanese against China had not taught the Chinese intellectuals a complete lesson. In fact they have looked elsewhere for a scapegoat on which they could have put all the blame. To them, its is the lack of science which can explain the humiliation-collapse of china, and the lack of science was due to the rigid, obsolete useless...Confucianism. We know that, in the eyes of the intelligentsia class, it is not China but its ideology, namely Confucianism which collapses. Confucianism, in so short a time, is dethroned and thrown into the wastebasket. In its place reigns science. However, what is science? This question is never seriously touched. Science today is both a myth and reality (as we will examine later).
But unexpectedly, the collapse of Confucianism and the advance of science are followed by the decrease of traditional values. And suddenly, the social crisis appeared, at first, unnoticedly, but it becomes as clear as the daylight today when the whole population acts and reacts like a huge machine, often thoughtless and disoriented. The symptom of illness is found everywhere and in every social class, from the upper class to the "untouchable class". More tragically, it seems that no principle, no law, no morality can offer help. The modern man lives in a chaotic world and is lost in the infinitude of nothingness, if not in the immensity of the unsatisfied desires of material needs and unrealizable hope. That is not an exaggeration, but dramatically true. Sadly enough what Horkheimer has warned of with regard to rationality in criticizing the abnormal development of Western society, is also found in Chinese society; precisely in the illusion of reason that irrationalism is born. We will briefly resume this bizarre twist, from a hope in rationality to irrationalism as following:
The history of encounter between Confucianism and "scientism" is the history of an unhappy marriage. It was true that when Matteo Ricci introduced science to the Confucianists, they were more than happy to embrace it. At first glance, one may have the impression that they were for science. But the one who does is wrong. They were not for science, but for the products of technology. What they wanted to acquire in not the science as such, but how to use this knowledge (especially mathematics) to upgrade their already existing technique. In a word, they are geared for technology and not science, for the know-how and not knowledge. This phenomenon can be explained from the following aspects: 1) they have not grasped the essence and the proper function of science, especially its dynamic principle, namely reason. 2) they tended to believe that science must be, it there is such a thing, what is practicable, and as such, identified science with technology and, 3) we suspect, they happened to believe. That the social question, and the human values have nothing to do with science. Of course, they were wrong, not because they mistakenly took science for ideology, but because they did not see the connection between science and social progress, and as such science and values. In their mind, science is nothing but a useful tool for the increasing of power. They have not discovered what Horkheimer and Adorno, later in Dialectic of Enlightenment, pointed rightly out the capricious character of science in form of technology:
The fallen nature of modern man cannot be separated from social progress. On the one hand the growth of economic productivity furnished the conditions for a world of greater justice; on the other hand it allows the technical apparatus and the social groups which administer it a disproportionate superiority to the rest of the population. The individual is wholly devalued in reaction to the economic powers, which at the same time press the control of society over nature to hitherto unsuspected heights...
Needless to say, the Chinese intellectuals, especially those of the May-Fourth Movement, have taken science for granted, and have not seen any capricious connection between science and social values. To be fair they did not want to devaluate completely all old Confucian values; Neither did they really want to ignore the past. Liang Chi Chao for example counted as an ardent defender of old values, but he was also eager for modernization. But suddenly, they stood at the crossroads of either-or; either science of Confucianism. The dramatic antagonism between science and Confucianism was built up, and grew to an inevitable consequence; the abolition of Confucianism. Thus, the old myth, the old dogma that only Confucianism can build a "right individual, a happy family, a just state and a peaceful world" collapsed, and with it, its economic, political and cultural structure. But from the ashes of this myth, what do we have? A new myth with a new dogma, i.e. scientism, arises and dominates the sky ever since then.
In the wake of political failure and economic backwardness, the Chinese high-priests of scientism advocated a radical approach: to take scientific method as the unique and most correct way to solve all problems. Hu-shi for example suggested:
The spirit of the new thought tide is a critical attitude. The methods of the new thought tide are the study of problems and the introduction of academic theories... The attitude of the new thought tide toward the old civilization is, on the negative side, to oppose blind obedience and to oppose compromise, and on the positive side, to reorganize our rational heritage, with scientific methods. What is the sole aim of the new thought tide? It is to recreate civilization.
True to his claim, science has taken the place of Confucianism despite the desperate protest of some Confucianists, such as Liang Sou-ming and Liang Chi-Chiao. The Confucianists are dismissed as a "useless creature of the 17th century" (in the case of Liang Sou-ming). Scientism is the new de-facto ideology, and officially incorporated in the so-called new culture, which consists of science, technology, democracy, agnosticism, liberalism, parliamentarianism and individualism. With science, is born a new "reason" in the form of the rationalization described by Weber.
This new reason, or better, rationality, is the best instrument to help the Chinese (1) to be independent and not servile; (2) to be progressive and not conservative; (3) to be aggressive and not conservative; (4) to be cosmopolitan and not isolationist; (5) to be utilitarian and not impractical; (6) to be scientific and not visionary, as advocated by Ch'en Tu-Hsiou. To Ch'en and his fellows, Confucianism must be refused because it cannot offer a new rationality, or principle, to cope with modern China. It must be thrown into the toilet bowl, and Confucius himself must be brought down because (1) Confucianism advocated, making the Chinese people weak and passive, unfit to struggle and compete in the modern world; (2) it recognized the family and not the individual as the basic unit of society; (3) it upheld the inequality of the status of individuals; (4) it stressed fial piety which made men subservient and dependent; and (5) it preached orthodoxy of thought in total disregard of freedom of thinking and expression.
Having shared the same view, Tsai Yuan-pei went a step further and suggested that this kind of rationality must be the spirit of education itself. During his days as chancellor of the National University of Peking, Tsai transformed the university into a locus of research with mottoes like "not to the preservation of national quintessence but to its reevaluation by scientific methods" or absolute academic freedom, free expression of all theories and viewpoints on rational ground.
The impact of Chen, Tsai, and Hu is undeniably immense. It exercises a magic power transforming the whole young generation. The students in Peking, during the tumultuous days of 1919, marched on the streets protesting the unequal treaty with Japan, by blaming Confucianism for such an injustice. The angry students shouted the slogan "Down with Confucianism". They opened their arms and hearts for new ideas of science. They enthusiastically packed the huge auditorium of Peking University to hear the prophet of pragmatism, John Dewey. In a word, the signal is clear: Up with scientism and down with Confucianism.
It is difficult to tell the exact and complete story of the May-Fourth Movement. It lacks an independent storyteller who can inform us on the effects of the aftermath. The bloody war between China and Japan and consequently, between the communists and the nationalists do not permit us to make a final judgment on the new ideology adopted by the May-fourth Movement. There is only a fact, an undeniable fact, that both the critics and defenders of Confucianism have extensively used the might means of technology to inflict wound on their opponents. Practically, Confucianism appears to be no more than a void slogan, or a scapegoat, respectively, to defend their interests. Science is no longer a myth, but plays now the role of total reason which dictates the destiny of the state.
Commenting on the reversed effect of the Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer ironized:
As a linguistically expressed totality, whose claim to truth suppresses the older mythic belief, the national religion or patriarchal solar myth is itself an Enlightenment with which the philosophic form can compare itself on the same level. And now it has its requital. Mythology itself sets off the unending process of enlightenment in which ever and again, with the inevitability of necessity, every specific theoretic view succumbs to the destructive criticism that it is only a belief until even the very notions of spirit, of truth, and indeed, enlightenment itself, have become animistic magic . Just as the myths already realize enlightenment, so enlightenment with every step becomes more deeply engulfed in mythology.
What Horkheimer and Adorno found in the Enlightenment, can be applied to the May-fourth Movement. Yet, it is no longer secret that even their prophets no longer hold fast to their earlier belief in the magic of science. First, they are a little disturbed when Russell, not up to their expectation, has not dismissed Confucianism. In contrast, he extolled the values of the tranquil, humane, tolerant and pacific outlook on life. He was more in favor of the Confucian concept of filial pity than the western patriotism, and it is evident to him that even the West should learn from china as much as the Chinese should do the same from the West. But more strongly, he warned the Chinese intellectuals about the danger of scientism. He said that "In so far as there is a difference of morals between us and the Chinese, we differ for the worse, because we are more energetic, and can therefore commit more crime per diem," and we should learn 'the just conception of the ends of Life" from china, and that the Chinese should "acquire the western knowledge without acquiring the mechanic outlook." As Emmanuel Hsu notes, the Chinese intellectuals responded coolly to Russell's advice because:
They were more anxious to destroy Confucianism and to promote Westernization than to teach the West how to acquire the Chinese humane conception of life. The latter was a yoke upon their efforts to be like the moving, dynamic West, and had to be thrown off in the name of progress. There was no place in the velocity and rhythm of Western-style change for the tranquillity of the Confucian past.
The advice of Russell has not gone with the wind. Some Confucianists strongly objected to scientism, and though their voices were weak, they were still heard. Liang chi-chao for example blamed Western imperialism and blind worship of science as the root of conflict. He even suggested that Chinese spiritualism might redress the imbalance. Another scholar whom Hu-shi's followers have dismissed as a 'useless creature of the 17th century", has argued against science and democracy. This scholar, the respected Liang sou-Ming, in his East and West: Their Civilizations and Philosophies, dared to suggest that the life of a people depends on their basic spirit. To sacrifice China's own spirit in favor of a foreign ethos and institution was to undermine its destiny.
The lonely voice of the two Liangs, though it lost much of its flavor amid the loud cries of Hu-shi's followers, can claim some good critics today. The recent revival of Confucianism, though not quite influenced by them, repeats some of the themes which the two loangs have defended, namely, the richness and humanity of Confucianism. Not surprisingly, the strength of the May-fourth Movement slowly decreased, because they have not produced any alternative for Confucianism, as Hsu comments:
Yet, in historical perspective, for all its bombastic characteristics, the intellectual revolution succeeded primarily in introducing Western thought and destroying Chinese traditionalism, rather than creating new systems of thought and new schools of philosophy.
That is to say, the total reason of the May-fourth Movement, with all their rhetoric and technical apparatus, has not produced a worthwhile single principle worth for life. How poor it is! However, the lesson of the May-Fourth Movement is not thoroughly studied. It is true that we no shout the slogan "Down with Confucianism" and that a new slogan of "Return to Confucianism" appears almost overnight, and everywhere, from Taipei to Singapore, from Hong Kong to Peking. But is this so because of Confucian Humanism? We are afraid it is not. The nostalgia of Confucianism does not fully express the desire for Confucian values. Ironically, like the members of the May-fourth Movement, our modern minded confucianists have regarded Confucianism as a mere tool but this time, a useful, effective tool to defend the social order, or the political status-quo, as in the case of the Singaporian government, or as a simple explanation to the so-called economic miracle of the "four little dragons," or as the justification for authoritarianism. In all cases, Confucianism is used, and sometimes distorted, just to defend the hidden interests of the dominants. In this context, one talks again about Confucianism as the principle, or as the reason of modernization. However what kind of reason is one talking about? Since we have touched this question elsewhere in our objection to the unreflective application of Weber's theory in explaining the process of modernization of China, we will restrain ourselves from making further unnecessary criticism. We will rather concentrate on one point, namely, on their understanding of Confucian reason.
It seems to us that the kind of reason mentioned here is nothing more than what Weber has called rationalization, and what we have described as rationality, i.e. a principle guided by technical interests and with experimental method. It is also evident in the so-called contemporary neo-confucianists who call for a revival of Confucianism; they think of its as the best available means to reach the desired goal of modernization. They hold such a view, just because they still think of reason in terms of scientism. And as such, we do not think that they can fare better than those of the May-fourth Movement.
In contrast to their view, we tend to think of the Confucian reason in terms of reasonableness for the following reasons; 1) the Confucian reason is guided rather by practical interests, 2) it uses hermeneutics and dialectics as its methods, 3) its forms are less rigid, and consequently changeable, and open, 4) its objectives are the solutions of social, human problems and not knowledge as such.
By locating reasonableness in terms of human interests and in terms of the ways adopted by human beings in dealing with them, our task of looking for the forms of reasonableness can proceed by the following steps:
1) to locate and determine the nature of human interests
2) to deal with its problems, namely with interests-conflicts
3) after having made clear these two crucial ways and the principles of
(a) recognizing, (b) giving solutions, (c) testing these solutions, and
(d) universalizing the relevant and effective solutions-models
In a word, we can tentatively find out the expressive forms of reasonableness, by analyzing these three points. The work of analysis and diagnosis reveals also the process of the onto-genetical development of reasonableness.
The literature of Chinese philosophy is plenty stuffed with al sorts of discussions centered around human nature. The heated debate between Mencius and Hsun Tzu is a case in point, showing how important the question is. We will of course not renew the debate here. It is neither of interest, nor of relevancy for our discussion on the nature of reasonableness. Our concern centers rather around another more important question, namely that of why do we spend so much time and energy on an understanding of human nature. What is human nature? This is a question that has been posed by almost all philosophers, form Confucius to Hume, from Laotius to Locke, etc... because they all feel that it points to the real man. That is to say, an understanding of man is equivalent to that of human nature and vice-versa. We will venture a step further to say that an understanding of human nature or of man is only possible if we first understand what constitutes human nature. Though we do not want to renew the debate between Mencius and Hsun-tzu, we have to say something concerning their understanding of human nature. We think that their discussion has not provided what we are looking for. They tended to put aside the question of what constitutes human nature; what they discussed is what human nature is. Let us clarify the difference between these two questions. On the first question of what constitutes human nature, it is clear that there are some things , or some characteristics which help us to understand human nature. These things or characteristics are known, or experienced by human beings. When we state that man is rational, we want to show that through some special things which make man different from animals, we know that man is rational. These special things or characteristics can be human acts, language, creative activity, artistic life, etc... Then we go on to ask why are our human acts much different from those of animals. The answer would be that because our acts are always oriented toward a goal which in turn satisfies our needs, desires, and interests and that our acts are not random in the sense that they are well designed and executed to attain the desired goal. That is to say what constitutes human nature as a rational nature is not the phenomena but the dynamic power guided by interests which are manifested in the manifoldness of human life. On the second question of what human nature is, one often looks for something and identifies it with human nature. In the case of Mencius, it is goodness which is human nature, while his opponent, Hsun-tzu, suggests the opposite, namely evil is human nature. This simplistic identification has concealed another more troublesome aspect: What predetermines good or bad, comes not from the a-priori innate idea of evil or goodness which is implanted in the human brain from birth, but from whether or not some acts, or some result, etc conform, or satisfy our human basic interests. The same act of telling the truth may be good for one party and bad for another. A custom may be considered as sacred in one country, while regarded as evil in another country. The cult of ancestors in Chinese society was for example condemned by the Roman Curia as polytheistic, and as such, 'bad' to the Christians. These interminable examples show that human nature is not so much determined as historically and socially constructed. That means human nature is known by virtue of human activities of solving problems, of enjoying, of hoping, and of contracting nature, other fellows, and himself...
Of course, this view on human nature is not new, but was not well articulated in the past. And as such it is often obscured by the idealists and the empiricists alike. The British philosophers, especially Locke and Hume, have regarded human nature from causal inference, which is known by means of psychological perception, and which is constructed after the model of mathematical logic. Hume, for example, believes on can understand human nature precisely by means of experimental observation (perception). Though he has not discussed in detail the content of the observed object, it is clear that he does not spend much time on human acts, but much more time on the matter of fact which is self understood as thing-in-itself. In Enquiry concerning human Understanding, Hume regards the science of human nature from two different angles: human action and human reasoning. From the first aspect of human action, man concerns himself with exhibiting the beauty of virtue with a view to stimulate men to virtuous conduct. From the second aspect of human reasoning man concerns himself with enlightening man's understanding. The philosophers of this second type hold the view, as Hume articulates:
(They) regard human nature as a subject of speculation, and with a narrow scrutiny examine it, in order to find those principles which regulate our understanding, excite our sentiments and make us approve or blame any particular object, action or behavior.
Hume admits that the generality of mankind prefers the first type. But he insists on the importance of the latter:
But the only method of freeing learning at once from these abtruse questions is to inquire seriously into the nature of human understanding and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacities, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and abtruse questions.
Thus Hume hastily takes the second type of enquiry in dealing with human nature, and at the expense of the first type concerning human action. In a word, he gives more value to logical reasoning. But by doing so, we think, Hume may lapse into the naiveté of simplifying human action, and consequently into the dualism of theory and praxis. Hume regards human action as rather random which cannot help us to construct the scientific foundation of human understanding. And he goes further to insist that the true nature of action must be found elsewhere in human knowledge. We do not need to delve much deeper into Hume's troubles which are well discussed by other critics, though, we must admit that Hume has contributed something towards a better understanding of human nature. In order to give a fair judgment of Hume's contribution, we propose to look at the hidden intention, undiscussed by Hume. In our language of today we may say that Hume has proposed to study human nature from the two aspects of practical interests and epistemological or technical interests. It is true that he insists on the technical interests, and this is his failing. Starting from this kind of understanding of human nature, we propose to study the Confucian understanding of human nature from the perspective of human interests. Of course, what we understand by interests is much broader than what is widely understood in ordinary language. More precisely, by interests we understand human aspirations, desires, needs, strives, for a better life, a more embracing knowledge, a more meaningful world. In a word our understanding of interests is much closer to Habermas in his Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas has tentatively classified human interests in three categories: technical, practical and emancipatory.
Confucianism is often dubbed with humanism. That a theory which is centered on man itself, though, the meaning of human being is not often discussed. Of course, Confucius never refuses to talk about the question of what is man, nor does he deny any knowledge about man. Indeed, his interest is in such a question. However the point he follows in grasping this question is not an analysis of the meaning of human beings, but an phenomenological description of how man is becoming man. That is to say, one can only fully grasp the meaning of human beings once one understands the becoming process of man, and such a man is not a priori determined but is developing. For we have no absolute, a priori, external criteria to determine what man is, and how ought man to be; a knowledge of man, and a judgment of man can be made and supported by a study (in terms of empirical observation, and in terms of conceptual reference) of human activities. However, Confucius' starting point is not purely empirical. He is also aware of human ontological essence. Any human act is teleologically oriented. An act could aim (1) at oneself, (2) at nature, or (3) at others (external). Each act may be intended to (1) grasp or acquire something (understanding, knowledge), (2) to solve some problem, (3) to satisfy oneself. That is to say, there would be no single, self-existent, self made, non-sensical act. That means also that any human act always presupposes a certain relationship with (1) nature, (2) oneself and (3) others. From an external act toward nature, man always looks for something which can satisfy his knowledge, his needs, his problems. From an internal act, namely towards himself, man demands a self-consciousness, a desire of self-being. From an inter-subjective act, man strives for harmonious life, happiness, etc...
Seen in this context, the Confucian humanism is an integral humanism which can be understood from different angles that express different dimensions of human beings, and that make up the total parts of human nature: the ontoteological dimension, the epistemological dimension, the moral dimension and the aesthetical dimension etc. In a reversed order, human nature can be known only if these dimensions are fully grasped. That is precisely what Confucius was doing, when he chose to describe man in terms of human acts, or better said, in terms of human relationships. The whole works of Confucius was aiming to demonstrate these points. Since our aim is only to show the connection between human nature and human interests, and between human interests and human activities, we will discuss human nature as briefly as demanded. To defend the thesis, that human nature can at best be seen from what constitutes it, and this what is none other than human interests which are visible in human activities and relationships, we have to look in the tests of The Analects, and others. In The Analects, there are plenty of passages which indicate the relation between human nature and human interests:
Duke Ting asked how the ruler should employ his ministers and how the ministers should serve their ruler. Confucius said, "A ruler should employ his ministers according to the principle of propriety, and ministers should serve their ruler with loyalty".
or:
Tzu-Kung said: "What I do not want others to do to me, I don not want to do to them. "Confucius said, "Ah Tzu! That is beyond you".
Tzu-Kung said, "If a ruler extensively confers benefit on the people and can bring salvation to all, what do you think of him? Would you call him a man of humanity?" Confucius said, "Why only a man of humanity? He is without doubt a sage. Even You and shun fell short of it. A man of humanity, wishing to establish his own character, also establishes the character of others, and wishing to be prominent himself, also help others wishing to be prominent. To be sable to judge others by what is near to ourselves may be called the method of realizing humanity".
Evidently, these above texts indicate that to understand human nature, one should not rest on social concepts, but must go beyond these ideas, and return to "what" constitutes them. The "return to the human activities" in phenomenological terms, helps us to grasp the essence of human nature. More important, by tackling human activities as the point of departure of any phenomenological analysis, one hints that beneath this noematical structure, there is still the dynamos, or the will-to-power which pushed human activities forth, i.e., human interests.
Like in the ascetical and pietal societies, the Confucian society seems to disregard material interests. Interests are not sacred things. They are often understood by the 'confucianists as kinds of material interests, i.e., the desire to acquire more wealth at the expense of others. That is not false in many cases as Confucius himself has noticed:
The superior man understands righteousness; the inferior man understands profit.
Or:
The superior man thinks of virtue; the inferior man thinks of possessions. "The superior man thinks of sanctions, the inferior man thinks of personal favors.
And he then warned:
If one's acts are motivated by profit, he will have many enemies.
Not wholly agreeing with such an understanding of human interests, we understand them in a much broader sense. We will argue, even Confucius has understood and classified interests in four different kinds: (1) interests in profits, (2) interests in learning, (3) interests in virtues, and (4) interests in the divine world. Though he sometimes treated them with confusion and though he was reluctant to discuss some of them in detail (the cases of 1 and 4), that does not mean that he ruled them out.
The first kind of human interests which is regarded by Confucius as humanly most natural, but not jet cultivated, is material interest. By material interests he understands as interests in wealth, reputation and daily needs such as food. "Wealth and honor are what every man desires."
There is of course nothing wrong with them, because they are the most natural desires of human beings, The point is, they become wild desires when they are morally misguided or uncontrollable; that means when they violate the principle of higher interests, say, of morality:
But if they have been obtained in violation of moral principles, they must not be kept. Poverty and humble station are what every man dislikes. But if they can be avoided only in violation of moral principles, they must not be avoided. If a superior man departs from humanity, how can he fulfill that name? A superior man never abandons humanity even for the lapse of a single meal. In a moment of haste, he acts according to it In times of difficulty or Confucian, he acts according to it.
It is regretful to note that, though Confucius regards material interest as necessary and fundamental, he does not discuss it enough. He easily brushed it aside. He typically avoids touching this question:
Yen Yuan and Chiu-lu were in attendance. Confucius said, "Why don't you each tell me your ambition in life?" Tzu-lu said, "I wish to have a horse, a carriage and a light furcoat and share them with friends, and shall not regret if they are all worn out. "Yen Yuan said, "I wish never to boast of my good qualities and never to brag about the trouble I have taken (for others). "Tzu-lu said, "I wish to hear your ambition. "Confucius said, "It's my ambition to comfort the old, to be faithful to friends, and the cherish the young."
In these and other not cited texts from the works of Confucius, the material interests are rarely explained. Thus, we have only a vague idea of material interests as the interests in material wealth such as food, clothes, horse, carriage, money... which can be considered the fundamental interest of the physical body and not the spirit. Though he has a low regard for them, he even sometimes vaguely suggests a close relation between material interests and moral interests, and has not dismissed its importance:
Tzu-kung said, "If a ruler extensively confers benefit on the people and can bring salvation to all, what do you think of him? Would you call him a man of humanity? He is without doubt a sage. Even You and Shun fell short of it." To be able to judge others by what is near to ourselves may be called the method of realizing humanity.
In contrast to his low estimation of material interest, Confucius puts much more emphasis on the interests in learning, or interests in knowledge. In almost all of his works, he considers the value of learning as one of the most fundamental values of humanity, and by means of which man becomes superior:
The superior man extensively studies literature (wen) and restrains himself with the rules of propriety. Thus he will not violate the way.
I do not enlighten those who are not eager to learn, nor arouse those who are not anxious to give an explanation themselves...
Here, we do not need to quote at length other texts which unmistakably indicate how Confucius shows himself in favor of learning. We will venture a further step to pose a more fundamental question concerning the motive and the objectives of learning, namely: Why should we learn and what can we learn ? Actually, we learn not only for the sake of learning, but for an accumulation of knowledge which, as Confucius believes, can (1) solve human problems, (2) transform a man into a better one, (3) point out the right way. Thus, the objectives of learning are not knowledge as such, but a practical knowledge which is helpful in reaching another hidden interest. That is to say, learning is itself a way to achieve the desired objectives. In this sense, we can divide the interests in learning into three different functions: (1) the instrumental role of learning, (2) the cultural role of learning and (3) learning itself as the aim.
In its first role, it is clear that learning tends to satisfy our technical interests. Technical interest we understand as, along the line of Habermas, the human desire to control nature by means of technique or technical knowledge. According to Habermas, the process of acquiring technical interests consist of (1) isolating the learning process from the life-process and consequently reducing the human operative performance to selective feedback controls, (2) taking precision and reliability as the motto, our action assumes the abstract form of experiment mediating by measurement procedures, and (3) systematizing the progression of knowledge.
In this context, technical interests are by no means purely external. The human desire to acquire the know-how to deal with their life-problems may be the basis of technical knowledge. This knowledge, in its turn, determines the structure of empirical analytic inquiry, or its method which arises from "structures of human life, from imperatives of a species that reproduces itself (in part) through purposive-rational action that is intrinsically tied to cumulative learning processes." McCarthy notes: "The term technical cognitive interests is meant to convey the basic orientation of inquiry, the general cognitive strategy that derives from this fundamental condition of the reproduction of life." Of course, Confucius' technical interest was not as clear as Habermas', but there is no doubt that he has emphasized such interests, i.e. the interests in accumulating knowledge about nature and man. For example he divided knowledge into four kinds:
Those who are born with knowledge are the highest type of people. Those who learn through study are the next. Those who learn through hard work are still the next. Those who work hard and still don not learn are really the lowest type.
But it is the interest in accumulating knowledge (technical and practical alike) that is the decisive factor:
"By nature men are alike. Through practice they have become far apart."
or:
"The hundred artisans work in their works to perfect their craft. The superior man studies to reach the utmost of the Way."
Confucius has not clearly separated all three functions of learning, and in many texts, he seemed to suggest its inseparability. We will not spend more time in dealing with this question. It is sufficient for us that, though Confucius has not clearly described technical interest as a form of human knowledge, he has tacit accepted it as part of human nature.
If someone may doubt our description of the Confucian technical interests, there would be no dispute about practical interest. As we have stated, the Confucian reasonableness is mainly constructed on practical interests. As a matter of fact, all ethical works of Confucius are based on these practical interests. We just quote a few passages to make this point:
The extension of knowledge consists in the investigation of things. When things are investigated knowledge is extended, the will becomes sincere; when the will is sincere, the mind is rectified; when the mind is rectified, the personal life is cultivated; when the personal life is cultivated, the family will be regulated; when the family is regulated, the state will be in order; and when the state is in order, there will be peace throughout the world.
Yet, what Confucius means by practical interest has different nuances which need to be clarified. Before we proceed with a short description of these meanings, we have to say that their basis is however common: it is the relationship between human beings that determines these practical interests: "From the Son of Heaven down to the common people, all must regard cultivation of the personal life as the root or the foundation."
And it is the different forms of human relationship which render practical interests different.
As noted, Habermas in Knowledge and Human Interests, holds a similar view. He describes practical interests as the interests in socio-cultural life, in the survival of societal individuals, in the intersubjective commonality and practice. In a word, practical interests are the knowledge-constitutive interests of the cultural sciences. The following passage makes clear what he means by practical interests:
In its very structure, hermeneutic understanding is designed to guarantee, within cultural traditions, the possible action orienting self-understanding of individuals and groups as well as reciprocal understanding between different individuals and groups. It makes possible the form of unconstrained consensus and the type of open intersubjectivity on which communicative action depends. It ban the danger of communication breakdown in both dimensions: the vertical one of one's own individual life history and the collective tradition to which one belongs, and the horizontal one of mediating between the traditions of different individuals, group and cultures. When these communication flows break off and the intersubjectivity of mutual understanding is either rigidified or falls apart, a condition of survival is disturbed, one that is as elementary as the complementary condition of success of instrumental action: namely the possibility of unconstrained agreement and non-violent recognition. Because this is the presupposition of practice, we call the knowledge-constitutive interests of the cultural sciences "practical".
It is not difficult to find that Habermas constructed practical interests from human relational activities to other men in a society, which are understood as 1) communicative action, 2) social action, 3) historical and cultural action. It is also not difficult to find that almost all oral laws are built by Confucius on such practical interests. The concept of humanity (Jen) which is the quintessence of Confucianism, speaks for itself:
Tzu Chang asked Confucius about humanity. Confucius said, "One who can practice five things wherever he may be is a man of humanity. "Tzu-Chang asked what the five are. Confucius said, "Earnestness, liberality, truthfulness, diligence and generosity. If one is earnest, one will not be treated with disrespect. If one is liberal, one will win the hearts of all. If one is truthful, one will be trusted. If one is diligent, one will be successful. And if one is generous one will be able to enjoy the service of others.
The text unmistakably express human interests in earnest, truthfulness, generosity, etc... which are gained through human acts of mutual recognition (truthfulness), social engagement (liberal, generous) and cultural and historical life. The interest in others is also recognized by Confucius as being as fundamental as the interest in oneself:
Chung-Kung asked about humanity. Confucius said, "when you go abroad, behave to everyone as if you were receiving a great guest. Employ the people as if you were assisting at a great sacrifice. Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you. Then there will be no complaint against you in the state or in the family."
The fourth type of human interest is those of self-liberation, and self-reflection. It is quite right that Confucius talks as little as possible on human self-liberation and salvation in the sense described by Habermas. The point of difference between them comes from their different premises. If Habermas starts from an alienated world in which man is unfree, and against which man struggles, the Confucius, like Hegel, believes in a harmonious world. To use medical language, then Habermas keeps his eyes on the patient, trying to cure his patient from the illness, while Confucius might keep him busy with another task of preventing man from any possible disease. Thus , to Confucius, our task is how to conform to this world, and not to liberate us from it. The alienation comes not from the world itself, but from our abnormal relation to it, that is to say, alienation comes to be, precisely when man tries to disturb the natural relational course of history. Thus the task set for man himself must be first, as Confucius noted: "The way of learning to be great consists in manifesting the clear character, loving the people, and abiding in the highest good."
The self-reflection, self-correction, and learning from... clearly point out our interests in self-emancipation form the misguided ambitions. Though, Confucius might have understood emancipatory interests quite different from Habermas, it is however not contradictory to say that their objectives are not completely different to restore the authentical, unalienated way by first reconstructing human fundamental interests. However, we will not rest on a simple description of emancipatory interests. Our point is, to understand what Confucius means by reasonableness, one needs to understand human nature, and to grasp the essence of human nature, one should dig deeper beneath the phenomena to find out the kern which determines life-world, namely human interests, and of solving the problems of interests-conflict... can be called reasonableness.
It is clear now that all human beings are born in the world, and that they are geared for interests. To be in the world means that man has to learn to deal with others, or more precisely, with others' interests. As we have tried to show that our interests are both a priori and a posteriori constructed, we will argue that, to be a social animal, one must come to terms with both these two different kinds of interests. And the way of dealing with them is called by Aristotle Phronesis or reasonableness in the case of Confucius. To prove that reasonableness has much to do with interests, we need to make a qualification concerning our explanation of the nature of interests. In the previous section, we have tentatively divided human interests into: material, technical, practical and salvation-interests. Here we wish to add a point. /These interests are either apriori or a posteriori constructed. As a priori, or quasi-transcendental, interests belong to our desire for eternity, our hope for a better life, our ultimate concerns. As a posteriori constructed, interests consist of (1) those from which our investigations start, (2) those which appear during the investigation, (3) and also those which surface at the end of our investigation. Since we share the common desire and hope for a better life, the conflicts of interests will not come from our a priori interests. That is to say, the conflict of interests may be better understood not from the very beginning, but during the process and after the process, because conflicts arise only after we have selectively chosen objectives, the methods to achieve them and the desired and determined goal. Other conflicts are only logical consequences instead. To make our point clear, we follow the arguments of Popper on the nature of knowledge, which as we see it, is analogous to the nature of interests.
In a paper entitled The Logic of the Social Sciences , popper presents 27 theses of social science. We are interested more in his explanation of the problems and less in his solutions. His theses can be summed up as follows: knowledge deals precisely with the problems arising from the tension between knowledge and ignorance. The way of solving these problems, namely, of justification and verification or trial and error adopted by Popper, furthers the development of knowledge and thus science?
The sixth thesis:
(a) The method of the social sciences, like that of natural sciences, consists in trying out tentative solutions to certain problems: the problems from which our investigations start and those which turn up during the investigation...
Solutions are proposed and criticized. If a proposed solution is not open to pertinent criticism, then it is excluded as unscientific, although perhaps only temporarily.
(b) If the attempted solution is open to pertinent criticism, then we attempt to refute it; for all criticism consists of attempt at refutation.
(c) If an attempted solution is refuted through our criticism, we make another attempt.
(d) If it withstands criticism we accept it temporarily; and we accept it, above all, as worthy of being further discussed and criticized.
(e)Thus the method of science is one of tentative attempt to solve our problems; by conjectures which are controlled by sever criticism. It is a consciously critical development of the method of "trial and error".
(f) The so-called objectivity of science lies in the objectivity of the critical method. This means, above all, that no theory is beyond attack by criticism; and further, that the main instrument of logical contradiction is objective.
The quoted text contains some very important ideas in understanding the conflict of interests and a way of solving it. First, the conflict is born neither from the interests, nor from the agents themselves. In fact, the problem arises only when the agent tries to capture these interests by his own means and for the sake of himself/ that means, the conflict of interests is (1) born in the tension between the agent who wants to possess and the object which resists, (2) developed during the tension among the agents who use to dictate the interests by means of their own power, capacity etc., (3) and continued when the goal is either unattained by one of the agents, or only partly reached. In this context, we will try to locate the conflicts of interests in following points:
(1) conflicts from the purpose of interests
(2) conflicts from the method of reaching interests
(3) conflicts from the unequal distribution of interests
(4) conflicts from the different values and meanings of interests
We do not need to explain all these four types of conflicts in detail. It is however obvious that to deal with these conflicts we should have first a clear idea of what we are dealing with. Thus, we will try to give a short and clear picture of their nature as it demands.
By stating that the conflicts arise from the purpose of interests, we mean that, the agent who deliberately misleads the original purpose of tension. To be more concrete, we may have the same interests, say , of learning, but with different purposes. It is not the interest in learning, but the agent's purpose of learning which makes the conflict possible. The same reason could be applied to the second type of conflict: we may have the same interest and the same purpose, /but if the agents select different methods, these methods may create a new tension of conflict. In the field of ethics, e.g., this problem is the most evident. Lying can help to attain the desired goal, and to satisfy some interests, but it is certainly incompatible with telling the truth. The third kind of conflict, namely, from the unequal distribution of interests, is the obvious case which is extensively treated by Karl Marx. The qualitative and quantitative deference between the used value and exchanged value adopted by the market is a case in point showing the inevitable conflict between the capitalists and the proletarians. The last sort of conflict, emerging from the different value and meaning of the same interests, is seen in culture and religion, according to which even values and meanings are ordered in a qualitative scale. I is also found in the conflict between the claim of different kinds of science. The domination of natural science in the last century points out unmistakably that it is not natural science but its claim to absolute value which creates the tension between natural science and human science.
To deal with these problems, and to deal effectively with them is what we call reasonableness. Unlike Popper who has limited his process of a solution to a purely theoretical field, we tend to think of a solution in a much broader context, namely in terms of both theory and praxis, and both in terms of techne and phronesis as Aristotle has proposed, and Gadamer insisted on.
We happen to agree with Gadamer that a theory without praxis is just empty, while a praxis without its theoretical content is blind, and that a phronesis without techne is empty while a techne without phronesis is blind. Thus, an effect solution must be sought both in theory and praxis, phronesis and techne.
In book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes phronesis as a form of reasoning and knowledge that involves a distinctive mediation between the universal and the particular. In our language, that is a mediation between common interests and particular interests, which is accomplished by consensus and not by any appeal to technical rules. By consensus, Aristotle and Gadamer mean determination which then indicates what is universal and what is particular. Furthermore, phronesis involves, as Gadamer notes, a "peculiar interlacing of being and knowledge, determination through one's own becoming Hexis, recognition of the situation good and Logos." In other words, phronesis is a form of reasoning appropriate to praxis, which deals with what is variable and always involves a mediation between the universal and the particular that requires deliberation and choice. But this kind of phronesis demands sometimes techne, or technical know-how. According to Gadamer, Aristotle understands the technical know-how in terms of intellectual virtues, like episteme, i.e., a knowledge of the universal, which invariable takes the form of scientific demonstration, and which is much different from phronesis. Gadamer tentatively works out some of its specific characteristics: (1) Phronesis can neither be learned nor forgotten, precisely because we always find ourselves in an "acting-situation", and we are always obliged to use ethical knowledge and apply it according to the exigencies of our concrete situation. (2) the end of phronesis is rather the complete ethical know-how, the means must be weighed anew on each occasion. Gadamer insists that the end itself is concretely specified in deliberating about the means appropriate to a particular situation. (3) Phronesis always requires an understanding of other human beings. He says for example:
It appears in the fact of concern , not about myself, but about the other person... the person with understanding does not know and judge as one who stands apart and unaffected; but rather, as one united by a specific bond with the other, he thinks with the other and undergoes the situation with him.
By picking the Aristotelian phronesis, or ethical know-how as a model to resolve our social problems and interests-conflicts, we wish to make a similar claim, namely, what we understand by reasonableness (promoted by Confucius) has much in common with Aristotle's phronesis. To be more precise, we venture to say that, in order to solve the problems arising from interests-conflict, we need (1) to understand other people's interests, (2) to have a deep knowledge of his or her social circumstance, (3) to possess a right means, (4) to have a consensus, namely a universally shared interest, (5) to be practicable, i.e., applicable to different agents in different situations. Analogously, we may speak of the same characteristics of what we call reasonableness. As we have worked out elsewhere in our criticism of the insufficiency of the empirical method, and in our work on the concept of harmony of Confucius, we do not need to repeat here our location of techne in the realm of rationality which is in contrast to reasonableness. One point to be added, however, is, the solution to the pure-epistemological or scientific problem might be solved by techne, and its principle, namely, rationality. The solution to our social conflicts cannot be found solely in techne, but rather in phronesis and its principle, namely, reasonableness. The following part is intended to present the forms of reasonableness in a more systematic way. These forms are deliberately constructed and constituted on different human tentative solutions to different conflicts of interests and of different objectives.
We have proposed in the second part that human nature is understood from the perspective of what constitutes human beings, and this 'what constitutes' may be best seen from human interests. We have also tentatively classified human interests in four groups: material, technical, practical and salvatory or emancipatory interests. We then ventured to say that, in dealing with different principles: with technical and material interests, one takes primarily a certain kind of instrumental and purposive rationality; with salvation, hope, one returns to the original logos or reason, while with human living-world one seeks for reasonableness or phronesis. In this part, we limit ourselves to the last point, namely, reasonableness.
In a discussion on the nature of reason, Max Weber notes: "Confucian rationalism meant rational adjustment to the world; Puritan rationalism meant rational mastery of the world."
The expression 'adjustment' to the world which is brilliantly used by Weber , excellently pictures what we have described as reasonableness. In order to understand the point raised by Weber when he carefully distinguished Zwecksrationalitat from Wertrationalitat, and when he classifies the Confucian reasonableness in the category of Wertrationalitat, we need to return to the original question of the onto-genesis of reasonableness, namely how Confucius deals with social and human problems. A clarification of the terms adjustment and onto-genesis should be made here, of course, to avoid the ambiguity which may cause unnecessary discussion later. First, adjustment is a form of self-appropriation which is seen in nature, and then in social culture. The change in the weather forces us to choose the most appropriate means to cope with them. Living in an alien culture demands that we appropriate ourselves to its customs, laws, language, etc. To accept consciously this fact, and to choose freely to live with it for the sake of our interests (health, security, progress) is called rational adjustment. Of course, Weber has not clearly explained the term of adjustment. Actually, he sometimes gave a wrong impression that adjustment does not require the autonomous decision of the agent, as in the case of man's relation to nature. For example, we are forced to take any appropriate mean to protect ourselves whenever a catastrophe happens. Despite this lapse, to be fair one should acknowledge that when he means rational adjustment, he unmistakably suggest the active role of the agent. That means any blind obedience or passive acceptance are out of the question in the case of a rational decision. Second, by onto-genesis, we understand in the sense of the genetical process of development of human beings in their life-world. This is fundamental vocabulary used by Heidegger and Habermas. Of course, the genesis of life is not understood in the theological sense, namely, life is directly created by God, and in its most perfect form. In contrast to this onto-theological view, genesis is understood in the sense of development in sociocultural milieu. That means one pays more attention to the process and not only on the question of the very beginning. In this context, the factor of God is not excluded but less emphasized. In Habermas' opinion, by genetical process, one understands the process of how we can empirically and logically verify life by not stopping short on empirical data or on pure reasoning. To be more clear, onto-genesis bear a remarkable analogy to the "archeological" and critical examination of the whole process of development of human beings and modus vivendi.
In this sense, the human act of adjustment to the world does not mean that man passively conforms himself to the world, but that man actively pursues his development by not contradicting the natural and social order, just for the sake of his modus vivendi. As we have argued, to understand reasonableness, one should possess an understanding of how man deals with his interests, and of the whole meaning of human nature etc.; we wish to add here that, such an understanding requires another more fundamental understanding of the genetical process of interests. That is to say, human nature, human conduct can be understood in terms of human interests. Confucius for example suggests:
Life and death are the decree of Heaven (ming); Wealth and honor depend of Heaven. If a superior man is reverential without fail, and is respectful in dealing with others and follows the rule of propriety, then all within the four seas are brothers.
In another passage in The Analects, he tells us about the art of giving:
"Sufficient food, sufficient armament, and sufficient confidence of the people." Tzu-Kang said, "Forced to give up one of these, which would you abandon first? Confucius said, "I would abandon food. There have been deaths from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the people."
Of course, we do not need to quote at length other similar passages in The Analects or The Doctrine of the Mean, which point out similar ideas that human nature is inseparable from interests, and that the way of solving interests-conflicts is inseparable from human understanding. The way of adjustment to others, to nature etc., expresses how human beings understand others, and the world. In such a context, an understanding of the onto-genetical process of development of reasonableness requires beforehand an understanding of human interests, which are known by us when we face nature, when we contact other fellows, and when we reflect on our own destiny: "The way of learning to be great consists in manifesting the clear character, loving the people, and abiding in the highest good."
What Confucius told us is none other than the experiences of his own life. We call them experiences not in the sense described by Hume, but in terms of human praxis in dealing with others. Confucius has described reasonableness in different forms dealing with human praxis: li (propriety, rites) as principally a law of dealing with other fellows, superiors such as father and king etc. Jen (humanity) to deal with all human beings on the basis of salvation-interests etc. Here we particularly take notice of the concept of Jen which is commonly accepted as the quintessence of Confucianism. Jen is self evident in the human act of communication, self-development and furthering humanity. These acts make man not only different, but superior to animals. The manifoldness of Jen means not that it is ambiguous. In contrast, it is so, just because it is born in and from human activities of relationship, communication, self-consciousness and development, which are by no means idle, invariable.... In a word, Jen can be understood only in terms of human nature. In a reversed order, one may say, Jen is the most visible, concrete and effective manifestation of human nature. Thus, it is one of the most universal form of reasonableness, precisely because it can manifest both the means and the ends of humanity. In The Analects, we count more that 105 uses of Jen and 58 passages relating to Jen. In each passage, Jen presents a certain aspect of human nature, a certain way to deal with human problems, a certain motive of human act, etc. It is no wonder that in the Confucian system, Jen is even more discussed, and given a more central place that Tao. Chan Wing-Tsit once observed that "He Confucius did not care to talk about spiritual beings or even about life after death. Instead, believing that man 'can make the way (Tao) great, and not that the way can make man great.' He concentrated on man.'" Chen's remark is not wholly unjustified. As a matter of fact, Jen is considered as the multi-way... determining human nature. These aspects and ways are the most fundamental human activities and characteristics such as love, piety, respect, brotherhood, progress, benevolence etc... We quote here a few passages to fortify our thesis:
- On Jen as the act of loving:
Only the man of humanity knows how to love people and hate people.
- On Jen as a process of learning and seeking progress:
The man of humanity is naturally at ease with humanity. The man of wisdom
cultivates humanity for its advantage.
We have argued that Jen is the multi-aspects of human nature, is the multi-functional ways of dealing with human problems, and that reasonableness is born in and from human nature. In order to understand reasonableness, we have traced back its roots from human fundamental activities, and from its onto-genetical development. Here, we try to work out its forms, and to restructure them according to our interests , and in anthropological, cosmological and theological order.
It is evident in the case of Confucius that the starting point of his discussion is man, an individual who is conscious of his presence, his responsibility and his destiny in the family, the state and the world. Man in his relational and medial dealing with nature, other fellow men, God, etc., is the master of his ways of dealing. That is to say, the forms of reasonableness can be discovered in human interests.
a) First, Confucius clearly sees the difference between man and animals not only in terms of productive labor, but of total human activities as Marx later insists. Actually, human labor is a decisive factor in changing the world, but this does not yet mean that it makes man different from other things. The term "changing the world" means not necessarily progress or development. The primitive man changes the world also but by destroying it. The animals do the same to the world. Thus, it is insufficient to stop short on the labor factor; we need to explore the noetical factors determining human nature. The relationship between labor and human nature must be explored in depth, which we regretfully cannot deal with adequately in this part. Our question is limited to a phenomenological analysis of a certain aspect of labor which may reveal the noematic structure and noetical character of human beings. To attain this goal, we can use a phenomenological analysis which demands a more radical reduction or Einklammerung of diverse types of labor. First, we discover some kind of labor of phenomenal, unnecessary character, or importance for our life. Secondly, we find some kind of labor of partly necessary to human life, and finally, there is some kind of labor which all men possess and without which, we could not live. From another aspect, we can also examine the essential character of labor from its universal and necessary degrees. The more universal and necessary a labor is, the more essential it is. The most universal and necessary undiscovered but acting labor is called poetica, while its revealed-in-concrete-structure is called noematical. Hanna Arendt for instance proposes two different kinds of labor: contemplative and active (vita contemplativa and vita activa). But her classification of labor fare only a little better that that of Lefebre, because all what she describes as labor could not demonstrate the noetical nature of labor. The contemplative act makes man different from animals, but that is only theoretically, because we cannot even verify empirically that animals do not think at all. In fact, we have a contemplative act only through a real act of reflective character, i.e. of developing. The classification of labors of Lefebre sounds good but insufficient, because he cannot explain the order of labors. He even contradicts the Marxist emphasis on manual labor by putting the thinking act as the most human act. Actually Lefebre can only modify at his best the radical interpretation on labor of Marx, but he fails to humanize it. Thus, the classification of labors into two different categories of contemplative and active cannot satisfactorily explain human nature. Confucius comes from another angle: first he sees the human labor which can determine human nature in terms of the human act of relationship, and in terms of the human capacity of adjustment to his environment, and his future (theological). B) Second, Confucius tries to revalue these human acts and classifies it in a more acceptable way, so that they are universally accepted as golden rules. Like Kant and unlike Kant, Confucius acknowledges the universality and necessity of these acts, but he refuses to understand universality and necessity in terms of the absoluteness of mathematics. Actually, to 'Confucius, the degree of universality and necessity must be understood dialectically, in accordance with human nature.
For these reasons, any form of reasonableness should be constituted in accordance with the most universal and necessary human acts, i.e., the most commonly acceptable acts. To be more concrete, one may classify these human forms of reasonableness I anthropological, cosmological and theological order. Of course, one may also arrange them in accordance with different human interests. The most central and fundamental features constituting the kernel of human reasonableness are grounded on man himself: "It is man that can make the way great, and not the way that can make man great."
To be more concrete, one can classify the forms of reasonableness in the following order and understand them in the following dimensions:
(1) Reasonableness is the principle guiding or helping man to live up to human nature. It is also the measure (which is born in and from human consensus) to judge the degree of humanness and to differentiate man from beasts etc... Actually, this kind of reasonableness is formed after human nature itself.
(2) Reasonableness expresses a common form or measure accepted by humankind or at least by the majority of a society. That means, what appears to be unacceptable could not be reasonable (though it may be rational).
(3) Reasonableness means sometimes a dynamic force which can transform man into a better one (superior).
(4) Reasonableness expresses a medium and a means in which and with which man lives harmoniously. Human co-existence, co-living are built on such a medium and with such a means.
(5) Reasonableness sometimes reveals the inner feeling which makes man at ease with himself, which he shares with others.
(6) And finally, a new form of reasonableness born from the spirit of legalism. This reasonableness bears some resemblance to the Kantian rationality. Here, reasonableness means rational act conforming to the required rules.
(1) Reasonableness expresses the human act of conforming to external natural rules.
(2) Reasonableness means a certain principle without which one cannot understand or attain the cosmic Tao.
(3) Reasonableness makes man harmonious with nature.
Actually, Confucius is against any form of domination, especially the kind of domination practiced by the rationalist and capitalist. The act of plundering nature and its resources is never sanctioned by Confucius. It is often misleadingly said that Laotius, in playing against Confucius, is set for nature and the natural way and it comes to a rather bizarre conclusion that Confucius may favor the domination of nature. Those who take Weber's analysis of the relationship between Calvinism and the rise of capitalism and apply it to the Confucian society, seem to head for this thesis. We do not think such an interpretation fits Confucius. In the classics, many texts indicate that Confucius is following the natural path:
The Way of Heaven and Earth may be completely described in one sentence: "They are without any doubleness and so they produce things in an unfathomable way..."The Book of Odes say, "The Mandate of Heaven, how beautiful and unceasing. "[Ode no. 287]. This is to say, this is what makes Heaven to be Heaven. Again it says, 'How shining is it, the purity of King Wen's virtue: [id] This is to say, this is what makes King Wen what he was. Purity likewise is unceasing.'
(1) Reasonableness is seen in the act of respecting, obeying and following the Mandate of Heaven (T'ien Ming).
(2) Reasonableness is seen in the human act of self-learning and correcting to become more noble and holy (Sheng-jen).
As indicated in the introduction, our aim is resting on the practical stage of anthropological dimension, seeking to elucidate reasonableness and its functions. Thus, we will not discuss two other cosmological and theological dimensions, but restrain ourselves in giving some more clarifications on the forms of reasonableness in the anthropological dimension. Our strategy is of a double nature: First, it follows closely the path chosen by Confucius himself. He has avoided touching the theological question as much as he could, though he accepted such a dimension. He also took the cosmological dimension from traditional classics (I-King, e.g.) without much discussion. Second, we avoid confusing reasonableness with rationality and reason as much as we can. Actually, in the cosmological dimension, reasonableness is close, too close indeed, to rationality, while in the theological dimension, reason is often identified with reasonableness.
By describing reasonableness as the different principles and different forms of human activities which help us to cope with external events, to conform or to adjust ourselves to the environment and society, to develop ourselves into a much more ideal stage, to self-correct when needed, to enjoy aesthetically our life, we wish to say, that reasonableness is both modus vivendi and modus cognoscendi of Lebenswelt. Consequently, it is not too difficult to depict its characteristics:
- It is quasi-universal, in the sense that it is not global but more regional. It is necessary but in such and such a world.
- It is applicable or practicable. That is to say, it closely connects with our concrete life.
- It is acceptable. Its acceptability can be tested by the members of a community.
- It is open. Because of its lack of absolute necessity and universality, because of its practicability an acceptability, and because of its inner existence in the human world, reasonableness is up to any possible change and transformation.
- It is dialectically self-developing. Because of its flexibility, and by virtue of human self-reflection and self-correction, reasonableness is a self-changing principle and form.
- It is self-conscious. Reasonableness reflects both individual and social consciousness. Better said it reflects and harmonious way of solving the conflicts of individuals, between individual and individual, between individual and community, and between different communities.
We go a further step to pinpoint the characteristics, degrees and functions of each form of reasonableness in the anthropological dimension.
In the texts prepared by Confucius, he has presented different forms of reasonableness such as Jen, Li, Yih, and others (less universal) such as Hsiao, chung, hsin, he-ping)... These forms are at the same time the principles of life, the rules of our conduct, the key-laws of the political state. Before going directly into these forms, some works on Confucius' description of human nature must be said here. We have tentatively presented the main ideas of human nature in light of human interests and have produced a great deal of texts justifying our interpretation. Here, we return again to some texts, not to repeat what has already been said, but to prove that these forms of reasonableness are constructed on human nature and that its degree of acceptability, practicability, legitimacy is rather seen from its objective characteristics(i.e. its universality and necessity).
In the Analects, no less that 7 passages directly deal with human nature. But to be more precise, almost all passages in the book are discussing different forms and principles which are deduced from human nature and the purpose of which is to maintain, to further and to perfect human nature. They discuss Jen (benevolence), Li (propriety), Yi (righteousness), Hsiao, (filial piety), chung (loyalty), Cheng (sincerity), and even music. In this context, one find the forms of reasonableness have a double feature and function: they are born in and from human nature and they are also the means to perfect this human nature. In other words reasonableness may serve as both the ends and the means. These double features and functions are described by Confucius:
"Man is born with uprightness. If one loses it he will be lucky if he escapes with his life."
The text does not very clearly express the inborn or apriori character of human nature as many followers of Mencius such as Cheng Hao, have insisted. Actually, our point is , the text clearly shows that human nature with all of its attributes is the aim of human life, and as such it has the transcendental character, i.e., the priority of logical order. Only by such an understanding, can we realize why Confucius stresses reasonableness and its forms as the means to attain, to maintain and to further human nature.
"By nature men are alike. Through practice they have become apart."
The praxis of the principles of reasonableness is what Confucius insists on and they are the factors transforming man. Those who practice will attain the desired aims while those who do not follow them, can never attain their goals.
However, even the means are to be learned by hard work, by learning and by reflection. The difference between the intelligent and the stupid consists in how to acquire these means, how to apply them to our life and how to develop them. Confucius explains this point:
Those who learn through study are the next. Those who learn through hard work are still the next. Those who work hard and still do not learn are really the lowest type.
By understanding reasonableness as both the aims and the means of human nature, we arrive at a tentative description of the forms, the functions and the degrees of reasonableness as follows:
The first principle guiding and helping man to live up to the set aim (human nature) is without doubt what Confucius described as Jen. To many sinologists, the concept of Jen belongs to one of the most complex and difficult concepts to be grasped in a single sentence. Judged or viewed from different aspects of life, Jen appears sometimes as 'benevolence', sometimes as humanity, sometimes as a simple human relationship, sometimes indicating humanness, and sometimes as a simple means to an end. Far beyond any doubt, Jen plays both the role of aims and means, both the form and the principle to express human characteristics, to judge whether human acts conform to human nature. The complexity of Jen disappears once we discover that actually Jen is the principle of our life-world. Jen covers all aspects of human life in the human world. The manifoldness of human acts and human relationships demand a manifoldness of human knowledge and consequently, of principles and rules. Let us clarify this point by reflecting on what the Western philosophers often confessed as the sin of dualism. Dualism excludes any alternative or possibility because it understands the world and man only from a single aspect. The most important business of a thinker or explorer is to find out the so-called Archimedian point, or the arche, the most single original which can explain all other things. As a matter of fact, no one raised doubts against such a dogma. Thus, what they have disputed all their lives is the nature and the name of this arche. The early Ionian philosophers for example have designed different names and things assigned to this arche. Thales conceives things as varying forms of one primary and ultimate element called water (udor). The others follow sit by naming primary element (arche) as a substance which is 'eternal and ageless' and which 'encompasses all the worlds; (apeiron, Frag. 1-3) (anaxiamnder), as Air aer) as the Urstoff (AnaximenesJ). The Pythagoreans have not abandoned this way of explaining the arche, but tenaciously cling to it by producing the numbers as the origin of all things. After them, Heraclitus has some reservations against this theory by promoting the dialectic of nature "All things are in motion, nothing steadfastly is.' (III,i) but ironically his theory of hen panta rei (all things are in a state of flux becomes his unique principle which then leads to another thesis repeating the mistake of dualism, namely reality is one. (He is quite famous for his saying: 'It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my World, and to confess that all things are one.' consequently, he identifies this one as God or Zeus: 'The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus' who is the universal Reason (logos). Even being not quite satisfied with Heraclitus' insistence on the dynamic nature of the One, Parmenides does not reject the uniqueness of the One. In his eyes, the One is self-subsistent. The other members of the Eleatic School have little to add to the One: Xenophaness refers to the whole world by saying that the One is God. Anaxagoras identifies it with Mind or Nous; Empedocles and Democritus call it atom, and so on. To show that a great number of philosophers have chosen the dualistic approach to reality, we wish to make a point that this way of understanding reality or of man is incompatible to Confucius' way of treating man. Thus, the concept of Jen does not express the arche nor the Archimedian point. It appears in its manifoldness and simultaneity, in its wholeness and singularity.
Therefore to pinpoint the peculiarity of Jen, one needs to take a look at the texts of the Classics exploring the meaning of Jen described by Confucius himself. We possess a great deal of passages referring to Jen. We just need to cite some quotations:
"...The man of humanity is naturally at ease with humanity. The
man of wisdom cultivates humanity for its advantage."
"Only the man of humanity knows how to love people and hate people."
"...If you set your mind on humanity, you will be free from evil."
Actually, in the Analects, over 27 passages deal directly with Jen as humanity. That shows how Confucius lays great emphasis on this aspect of Jen.
"Tzu-hsia said, 'To study extensively, to be steadfast in one's purpose, to inquire earnestly, and to reflect on what is at hand-humanity consists in these.'"
"...A superior man never abandons humanity even for the lapse of a single meal. In moments of haste, he acts according to it. In times of difficulty or confusion, he acts according to it"
"...The man of humanity first of all considers what is difficult in the task and then thinks of success. Such a man may be called humane."
These quotations clearly verify our argument that Jen is both means and ends, which expresses both the commonality and singularity of the human world.
Added to Jen as the principle of Life, one may note that Confucius sometimes has used other principles such as Yi (righteousness) and Li (proprieteness) to express reasonableness. These principles can be best seen in what we have described in the second principle, namely:
By arguing the Jen as the principle of life, we also want to insist on its commonality and its degree of acceptability. The fact that Jen can enjoy such a privilege is because it reflects human nature in its most authentic and practicable way. Adding to Jen, Confucius has named other principles such as Yi and Li as well. We need to clarify what we mean by commonality and acceptability, and its relationship to the legitimacy of the principles of life. Commonality expresses (1) common sense in understanding, (2) common act in praxis, and (3) common feeling in aesthetics. It indicated also (4) common knowledge in science and (5) common hope in religion and in mysticism. It is not difficult to prove the existence of common sense, common act and common feeling. These commonalities manifest themselves almost in every human life. The act of drinking, eating, the sense of common language in ordinary life, the common feeling about joy, atrocity, etc., are self understood by us. However, concerning the common knowledge and common hope, it is no longer evident and not easy to prove. Precisely here, the concept of acceptability appears to explain the difference between these commonalities. When we talk about commonality, we clearly want to say something (1) understood, (2) shared, (3) acted or more importantly, (4) accepted by the members of a community. Thus, commonality does not appear equally as the same thing. A common act means not yet a common understanding, and a common knowledge means not exactly a common feeling. To determine the species of commonality, there is only the acceptability. With regard to (1) common sense, (2) common act, and (3) common feeling, there is little dispute. They are considered as matters of fact which are accepted without much controversy. Facing catastrophe, we all feel sad. To still hunger, we do have a common act of satisfying our stomach, i.e., the act of eating. To express something, we need a common language or symbol, or sign. Of course, that may sound too simplistic, because one should recount other factors and exceptions. However, one cannot deny that in the normal case, these commonalities are self-evident. Thus, it may cause less headache to argue that these three kinds of commonality can be proved by the act of acceptability of the members of a community. One must accept the language in order to be understood and to understand. One must accept common feeling to be felt and to feel others. One must accept the common act in order to co-habitate or co-live... However, with regard to common knowledge and common hope, than we have little 'commonality to be accepted. We just renew here the unsuccessful enterprise of Kant, when he wants to link common knowledge with commonality in praxis, i.e. acceptability.
When Kant discovers his Copernican revolution, by taking the objectivistic criteria of mathematics and applying them to metaphysics, he thinks that he has solved once and for all the problem of common knowledge long disputed and unsolved by traditional metaphysicians. To him, a common knowledge must be scientific knowledge, that is a knowledge which is valid for all times and in all spaces. In a word, to called scientific knowledge, it must t possess two most fundamental characteristics of mathematics (the queen of science) i.e., universality and necessity. To be sure, he was not wrong because he understood 'common knowledge' in terms of exactness and clarity promoted by Bacon and Descartes. Thus, it seems that he rejected the 'commonly shared knowledge' that he assigned to inexact dimension. He had some reasons for such a distinction. The case of Galileo had fortified his argument. The common knowledge defended by Galileo is no the 'common shared knowledge' embraced by the masses or by the religious leaders.
The lapse of Kant emerges when he goes a step further to reject this common shared knowledge, and when he applies such a common knowledge (mathematical knowledge) to ethics, or to practical knowledge. Kant believes that any morality must, like science and to be called science of ethics, be constructed on this common knowledge, i.e., any morality must consist of two characteristics of scientific knowledge, universality and necessity. He finds what he proudly christened 'categorical imperatives', i.e., the most universal and necessary laws of morals, and he exclaims that he has solved once and for all the mistakes of Aristotle and the Scholasticians. Needless to say, his system of morality collapses at its very first appearance. Its unpracticability is explained by Hegel as its lack of human internal life. Actually, we can make the Hegelian criticism of Kant more explicit by saying that Kant's moral unpracticability is possible because Kant has not paid enough attention to the question of acceptability, and because, on the epistemological level, he has ignored the fact that shared common knowledge is identified with common knowledge in praxis.
To say, common knowledge and common shared knowledge is the same in praxis means this common knowledge is rooted in human life and in its manifested activities thus, the unacceptability and the unpracticability come to be when the demanded laws (categorical imperatives) demand too much, surpassing human capacity of understanding, playing against human basic interests, or violating human fundamental relationship (between parents and children, friends, teachers and students etc.. ) In short, Kant's morality appears to be false not because of its scientific foundation, but because its 'a historical and inhuman demands'. How can a moral law be acceptable which treats the parents and the children equally (in terms of mathematics)?
The shortcoming of the transcendental argument comes directly from its lack of praxis. In praxis, a common knowledge or common hope can be best tested in terms of acceptability (receptivity). Of course, as we have argued earlier, reasonableness does not follow the logic of rigid science but the logic of life. Thus, when we carefully distinguish rationality from reasonableness, we demonstrate two different kinds of knowledge (but not antinomical), pure knowledge and life-world knowledge or shared knowledge. Here we venture to go further by arguing 1) rationality is the measure in science and 2) reasonableness is the measure in human praxis. In the first case, the measure can be tested by the logic of science with its laws of contradiction, excluded-middle, identity ... while in the second case by the degree of receptivity and acceptability. We take the famous formula 'you ought not to tell a lie' of Kant as an example to elucidate our point:
- From the point of view of rationality as measure, the Kantian formula is absolutely exact. You cannot say the truth and tell a lie at the same time without violating the law of contradiction. Truth and lie are two absolutely antinomical facts. They cannot be the same. To take them as the same is committing error against the logic of identity.
- From the point of view of reasonableness as measure, the Kantian formula appears impossible. How can we turn down our parents, friends, and lovers and even the unknown innocents in distress and in need? Do we testify against them just for the sake of not lying? To testify against them may be an irrational act in the eyes of the members of a community. Confucius tells a story to make his point:
The Duke of She told Confucius, "In my country there is an upright man named Kung. When his father stole a sheep, he bore witness against him. "Confucius said, "The upright man in my community are different from this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son and the son conceals the misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this."
In the second case, the measure of judging is not founded on the principle of science but on the receptivity and acceptability of the community. We can formulate it like this: the more an act is accepted by the community, the more it is reasonable. One may however raise a question against such a thesis, namely, what about a common act, accepted by all members, against humanity (crime, murder....)? Such a question demands us to return to human basic questions of human basic interests determining human nature. We may say that not all acts of killing can be called murderous, and that the case of soldiers defending a just cause can point out how great the difference is between the act of killing and murder. However, such an explanation is still insufficient, and cannot do justice to reasonableness because of the following reasons: first, the degree of acceptability must be reexamined and then, its meaning must be clarified. The fact that an act can be accepted does not yet mean the act is reasonable. Let us reason this way: the members of a community may accept such an act because they are ignorant of its reason and its consequence, or because they are forced to accept (in form of manipulation, or violence), or because they just opt for a nearsighted interest... these points demand that we take a careful look at the meaning and the degree of acceptability. When one accepts something, his act of accepting is his own, resulting from his decision. But any decision can be made just because on has fully grasped the reasons as well as the consequence of such a decision. In a word, any decision is a conscious act. In the same way, acceptability reveals its full meaning only if it is a conscious acceptability. On the degree of acceptability, we can argue analogously. When we state that the more an act is acceptable, the more it is reasonable. The term 'the more' must be understood in the sense of 'majority' and of the intensity of freedom. That means, an act, as long as it is accepted by the majority and from their own free decision, can be regarded as reasonable. Thus, the degree of acceptability consists of quantity (majority) and quality (intensity of freedom). In this context, we argue that the act of killing can be judged from 1) the degree of quantity and 2) the degree of quality. To be more concrete, as in the example given by Confucius, the man who testifies against his own parents may be 'rational' because he follows the categorical imperative of you ought not to cheat or to lie, but he will certainly not be considered as the just, noble man. In contrast, the man who conceals the misdeed of his parents is regarded as 'the superior man' even though he offends the law. The reason is simple: his act is sanctioned by the majority, and it comes from his free decision (not coerced by the fear of the punishment of the state).
However, in our view, the acceptability cannot be measured only from the point of view of quality and quantity. We raise a much more essential question, namely, why such an act is praised but another act is condemned by the majority? This question points clearly to the central point of our discussion, namely, human interests and human nature. Such an act is praised by the majority because, as Confucius explains:
"What I do not want others to do to me, I do not want to do to them..."
Seen in this context, the fact of acceptability is of great help to draw the line between rationality and reasonableness. In Confucianism, a great deal of forms of reasonableness are founded and measured on acceptability such as Yi, or righteousness, Hsiao, or filial piety, chung, or fidelity and even Li, or proprieteness. Let us clarify in a short explanation these forms:
- Yi is the main principle, first established by the majority in dealing with one another's interest; it then becomes the self-understood law determining the relationship and finally it transforms itself into a virtue. Yi is fully established on the acceptability of the group or community. It can violate the laws of the state, or even of religion.
- Hsiao is the main principle determining the relationship of the children to their parents, while chung serves as the canon dealing with the relationship between inferiors and superiors...
-Li is much more universal, but more vague. In each group or class, and between classes and groups, there are different forms of Li which 1) identify their status, 2) dictate their behaviors and 3) govern their relationship in an order commonly accepted by all members of community, class, and classes.
Thus, the form of reasonableness is not fixed, unchangeable. In contrast, it forms and self-transforms in accordance with the development of our world and our life. We can state it like this: at each stage of human development, a new form of relationship between men, man and nature, man and God emerges. The new relationship with new human activities (to cope with the new 'world') demand new principles, i.e., new forms of reasonableness. This point can be explained as follows:
- The new discoveries in nature (in terms of scientific development) changes human attitudes and understanding toward nature. Thus, if in the past, man's behavior toward nature was explained in terms of worship, and such a behavior had been rational in their times, then such a behavior certainly appears to be irrational today. The new discoveries in nature demand or force us to have a new behavior toward them. Such a new behavior could be considered reasonable in our days, but it may appear irrational in the future when further new discoveries in nature are at hand.
- The change of the human milieu and environment requires also new forms of reasonableness. The class-difference is seen in the difference of the forms of reasonableness in each class. The divergence of geography can be viewed from different human behavior and customs. When Confucius insists on Li or Yi, he has in mind different forms of Li and Yi. The Li between the prince and his ministers is not the same Li of the peasants, and that of the peasants is not the Li of teachers and students and so on. A Chinese who lives in Western countries has to adopt to Western customs, and such an act is reasonable. If not, he may be ridiculed as to being 'irrational'.
- The intensity of human relationships produce the different qualitative forms of reasonableness. Hsiao or chung are not of the same quality, but depend on the relationship between parents and children, the king and his servants..., etc. Man's duty to humans in general is less than his duty to his parents. His love to a colleague is much less than his love to his best friend, and so on. In the case that he loves all men just like his wife, such an act is theoretically possible, and laudable (to Kant), but unreasonable to hsi wife and all members of his family. Actually, the so-called 'caritas', or love for all equally, has been impossible for human beings, though, it may be the most ideal and divine law.
The above and other not mentioned points solidify our point that reasonableness conforms to natural human development.
In the anthropological dimension and order, we have drawn six main forms of reasonableness. Up till now, we have discussed the first three most important forms. Actually, the following three are logical consequences of the first three. Here, we will mention them as briefly as possible.
- Reasonableness expresses both the medium and the means in and with which human beings co-live. As medium, reasonableness serves not only as the ends toward which man tends, but the expressive form of the common acts of a community. Thus, when we speak of an harmonious and peaceful, ideal society, it is in the medium that we discover the expressive form of reasonableness. As the means, reasonableness takes the functions of an instrument. However, one should keep in mind the difference between technical instrument and human instrument. The technical instrument is fully neutral, unchangeable while human instrument varies. Human instrument appears to solve the problem of hic et nunc and not of eternity.
- Reasonableness expresses human feeling. To be sad with the people in distress, to be joyful with those in happiness... are what Confucius calls sympathy. A man lacking sympathy may react unreasonably: he may feel happy in seeing the others in sorrow. Actually, as a reasonable man, even when we witness the misery of our enemies, we feel somewhat sad. Such a feeling reveals reasonableness. This form of reasonableness is conceived of by Confucius as one of the most important human forms. He has laid a great emphasis on the principle of Cheng, or sincerity. Sincerity is expressed in the forms of trusting, loving, understanding... It is no wonder that he even compares it to the Way of Heaven:
"Sincerity is the way of Heaven. To think how to be sincere is the way of man."
He goes further claiming:
"Sincerity means the completion of the self, and the Way is self directing..."
- Reasonableness is seen in the act of obeying or following the rules or laws. Actually, it sounds like the Kantian rationality. But if we carefully examine the meaning of law and rules, then such a formula loses its Kantian flavor. Since it is not our intention to discuss the concept of law in Confucianism, it is sufficient to say that even the so-called golden rules cannot be compared to the Kantian categorical imperatives. Fundamentally, its divergence lies in its emphasis. To Confucius, golden rules are purposively serving man. They are not beyond or superior to man. With Kant, the categorical imperatives play the role of absolute arbitrium, as he argues:
....If the action is represented as good in itself and therefore as necessary, in virtue of its principle, for a will which of itself accords with reason, then the imperative is categorical.
or
But if I conceive a categorical imperative, I know at once what it contains. For since besides the law this imperative contains only the necessity that our maxim should conform to this law, while the law, as we have seen, contains no condition to limit it, there remains nothing over to which the maxim has to conform except the universality of a law as such; and it is this conformity alone that the imperative properly asserts to be necessary.
To be sure, to Confucius, the most important law is humanity itself. Thus, when we state that reasonableness means acting in accordance with laws, we just mean laws in terms of humanity:
"Only the man of humanity knows how to love people and hate people."
Or:
"If you set your mind on humanity, you will be free from evil."
After having briefly described the main forms of reasonableness, it is clear that rationality differs from reasonableness. But to say that Confucius has understood reason only in terms of reasonableness is to commit the naive mistake of reductionism. We do not and never believe that Confucius has not used rationality I n dealing with external nature. His knowledge of I-king, and his accurate examination of the natural changes are beyond doubt. In fact, we defend the thesis that reasonableness concerns itself mainly with human life-world and its Weltanschauung, and it cannot be excluded from other forms of reason, i.e., rationality and reason as logos.
To conceive Confucian reason in terms of rationalization and not in terms of reasonableness has had positive and negative effects in Chinese modern history, as we have diagnosed in the firs section of this part. In the first phase until the May-Fourth Movement, rationalization, in Max Weber's description, did not take place in the history of China. Actually, it was rather the process of adjustment as Weber rightly remarked. The process of adjustment or appropriation was remarkably successful, so that the Chinese tended to believe that their practical principles were perfect, and as such they fell into dogmatical danger. They have dug their own grave. As historical fact shows, the process of adjustment to nature and to other forces have been paid for. Primitive men not only survived, but they also transformed their world. However, history also reveals that the act of adjustment did not solve all human problems, let alone natural puzzles. More important, the progress of humankind in terms of intellectual, communicative and even material development was slow, too slow, if not stagnant. Actually, the act of adjustment and its principle, reasonableness has been insufficient. Reasonableness can serve to mediate human relationships among humans, or between man and himself. But, beyond this dimension, it appears to be powerless facing the mystery of external nature, and even the mystery of the divine world.
This fact explains, that the act of adjustment is certainly a reasonable act, but only in the anthropological dimension, in the most fundamental human activities. It fails miserably when it claims to be the unique instrument solving all problems of human total life. From another angle, the act of adjustment seems to express human passivity and not creativity. In the same sense, reasonableness with consensus as its aim, may be too passive also. It deals with what is actually happening, but not with possibility or with what will happen. That means, man has no other choice than to pick up the best available means. To be more concrete, one may explain the passivity of reasonableness as follows: whenever man faces a problem or catastrophe, he has a certain number of possible solutions available at his disposal. He may 1) try to avoid the catastrophe of danger by fleeing from it, or 2) when he cannot do so, then he may try to reduce the danger by taking cover, or 3) he may try to bribe his enemies by offering some goods to them, or to those who may help him, 4) when all these possibilities are of no use, then he finally thinks of protecting himself by trying to destroy enemies, by building houses, by fabricating weapons, and so on. If the argument on the passivity of reasonableness is correct, then one may conclude that reasonableness belongs to primitive man, a sort of conclusion drawn earlier by Auguste Comte. On may dismiss reasonableness by calling on the authority of modern science... Actually, the explanation of the passivity of reasonableness is not quite wrong, but its conclusion is more that questionable. Such a naive conclusion comes actually from a naturalistic and fatalistic understanding of man as a natural, external object, and not as a living, creating, self-developing, social man. It is true that reasonableness tends to solve the actual, present problems. But we have no proof indicating that it hinders scientific progress. The Confucian reasonableness consists of openness and self-disposition-to-change characteristics, It is true that reasonableness works for consensus and communication, and not for domination or mastering as in the case of scientific rationality. But to say that, what does not appear compatible to the category of science, has nothing to do with science is to commit tee naiveté of scientism. The debate between Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn in the 1970's tells us a very interesting story of the world of scientists. Even the scientists must adjust themselves to the milieu and the medium of research. A physicist in order to carry out his research, must learn the language, techniques and wisdom of physics. More than n that, he must share the feeling of his community. How can an atomic physicist discover the mysteries of atoms and neutrons, if he has no idea of atoms and neutrons, splitting uranium, heavy water...? Such a fact unmistakably shows how badly the scientist needs reasonableness for communication. The process of training in science is in fact the process of adjustment or appropriation.
Thus, the question concerning adjustment might be of a different nature. It demands a much more urgent question, namely how do we adjust: Do we need any criterion for adjustment. What do we adjust to? These questions point out the nature of reasonableness that we have discussed so far. Before concluding this chapter, we need to return to the question of what, a question which is considered by epistemologists to be the most important. When we ask, what is the nature of reasonableness, we seem to share the idea that once the 'what' can be answered, then there exists no puzzle anymore.
The errors come first from a misunderstanding of the nature of this 'what', which is firmly believed as some unchangeable, totally outside, or absolutely certain and good thing. The interpretation of human nature as inborn goodness or evil is a case in point confirming this error. The second factor which deviates from the rational course of history is the subjectivistic manipulation of the 'what'. When the nature of the thing-itself remains unknown (the case of heaven Mandate)..., the subject will take the course of history in his hands and rationalize it in conformity with his own interests. Such a biased rationalization lacks the minimum requirement of scientific knowledge leading to the second phase of rationalization. The members of the May-fourth Movement, in blaming the ignorance of the Confucianists, have taken scientific rationality as the unique model. They violently rejected Confucian reasonableness. In its place, they installed cognitive-instrumental rationality and made every effort to rationalize Confucianism in this way. First, the efforts of Fung Youlan and Hushi are enthusiastically praised by modern scholars who follow suit by trying to build a systemic logic in the sense of formal logic. But soon, one discovers a sad truth that they have raped Confucianism instead of reviving it. In more explicit expression, they found no scientific foundation in Confucian rationality. As a matter of fact there hardly exists Confucian rationality in the sense of rigorous science, but only Confucian reasonableness which differs from scientific rationality. In Habermas' expression, the members of the May-fourth Movement have confusedly taken the instrumental-purposive rationality (based on instrumental action) with the communicative rationality or reasonableness (based on practical knowledge which is, in its turn, constructed on communicative action).
By showing that Confucian reasonableness cannot be constructed in the model of either subjectivistic or positivistic rationalization, we wish to go a step further by insisting on the third meaning of rationalization not in the sense of Weber's description, but in the sense of the process communalization of particular interests by means of both theoretical (rational discourse) and practical action. The third kind of rationalization reflects and conforms to the multi-dimensional characteristics hidden in Confucian reasonableness, its multi-forms and its dynamic force of adaptation and integration, of adjustment and dialectic. Such a rationalization demands that reasonableness cannot be limited or restricted by the standards of either natural science or atomic logic. It opens to a new understanding of science in the Aristotelian phronesis, the Hegelian Wissenschaft and the later Wittgenstein's science of Lebenswelt.
More important, it suggests both the normal function and revolutionary function of science (in Thomas Kuhn's words). Of course, such a claim sounds more rhetorical and less substantial. We do not object to these hopeful insights, but we demand that reasonableness be proved in a more acceptable and scientific way.
John B. Tran Van Doan, Professor of National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Last Updated May 26,1997 by Steven Proulx
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