Ren as a Communal Property in the Analects Alexus McLeod Philosophy East and West, Volume 62, Number 4, October 2012, pp. 505-528 (Article) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: 10.1353/pew.2012.0055 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pew/summary/v062/62.4.mcleod.html Access provided by National Taiwan University (17 Jul 2013 03:26 GMT)
REN AS A COMMUNAL PROPERTY IN THE ANALECTS Alexus McLeod Department of Philosophy, University of Dayton Introduction In this essay I present an interpretation of ren 仁 in the Analects that takes it to be a moral property primarily of communities, one that individuals can possess derivatively. Other interpretations of the Analects on ren, li 禮, and moral agency fail to account for the centrality of community in an adequate way. These interpretations take community as peripheral to the main theory and thus struggle to make sense of the claims of its centrality in sections of the Analects such as Analects 4.1, 4.7, and 4.25, in which Confucius discusses the connection of ren to the particular community in which one lives, the groups one is a member of, and one s neighbors, respectively. 1 A standard view of ren in the Analects has been to see it as something like a state of mind, thought of as belonging to individuals primarily, as the result of moral self-cultivation. This is in part due to the influence of Mencian readings of the Analects. 2 Ren is often called a virtue, perhaps the central virtue, of the Analects. 3 Insofar as it is thought of as a virtue, it is linked with the individual capacity for action, i ncluding ability, and individual states of mind, including emotion. D. C. Lau, for example, in his translation of the Analects, translates ren as benevolence, which suggests a view of ren as a mental state or individual disposition of character. 4 Wing-tsit Chan reads ren as having two senses, 5 (1) a particular virtue, generally emotional, such as benevolence or some other concern, and (2) a general virtue encompassing all the other virtues something like Aristotle s p hronesis (practical wisdom). 6 Both of these senses, like virtues in general, must be thought of as dispositional features of individual persons. Tu Wei-ming describes ren as a complex of attitude and disposition in which [zhi 知 and li 禮 ] are integral parts of contributing factors. 7 Attitude and disposition here are clearly properties of individuals primarily, where attitude seems to be a mental state, and disposition is clearly the behavioral disposition(s) of an i ndividual moral agent. At the same time, Tu recognizes that ren is not completely individualistic that is, ren cannot be cultivated in isolation from a community. However, the understanding of the connection of ren and the community is one of contribution. Tu, like a number of other philosophers, sees community as instrumental in the creation of the dispositional property of ren in individuals. He says: The task of [ren], far from being an internal, subjectivistic search for one s own individuality, depends as much on meaningful communal inquiry as on self-scrutiny. 8 Of course, the very notion that ren could be internal and subjectivistic would be nearly Philosophy East & West Volume 62, Number 4 October 2012 505 528 505 2012 by University of Hawai i Press
incoherent if one did not have a picture of ren as primarily a feature of an individual, a state of mind, virtue, or some other dispositional virtue-like feature of individual moral agents. Kwong-loi Shun describes ren as a cluster of emotional dispositions and attitudes, 9 while Karyn Lai describes it as an attitude which guides decisions and b ehavior. 10 In both of these views ren is taken as the motivational, emotional, or otherwise internal aspect of right action, while li is the behavioral, external aspect. Kim-Chong Chong sees that it is problematic to read ren in the Analects in the way Zhu Xi does, as an original source of goodness residing in the heart-mind. 11 However, Chong still sees ren as a feature primarily belonging to individuals, glossing it as an ethical orientation and a practice. 12 Chong objects (with good reason) to the view of ren in the Analects as a property of individuals, which he sees as a misreading due to the influence of the Mencius and Zhu Xi, but he still sees ren as a feature of an individual person, who, although necessarily in a good community, cultivates ren and possesses ren alone as an individual characteristic. It is not completely correct to call ren a characteristic of the individual in Chong s interpretation. Rather, Chong sees ren as a certain attitude or orientation toward action of the individual, a cluster of dispositions and attitudes of an individual, formed through the performance of li in the spirit appropriate to li. Chong says: the attitude of ren is an ethical orientation or perspective from which the person speaks or acts.... [I]t does not consist of particular qualities that one might enumerate and claim to possess. 13 Thus, although Chong attempts to move away from the misreading of ren as a property of individuals (specifically xin 心, heart /mind ), he falls back into this reading due to the assumption that ren is connected primarily with the individual engaged in self-cultivation. The individual focus of ren is what I take issue with in this essay. Many commentators admit that ren is socially focused, 14 but generally hold that being in community is necessary for the individual to attain ren as a property belonging to them as individuals much like Aristotle s view that living in a thriving polis and having an adequate early education is necessary for gaining eudaimonia, but that eudaimonia itself is something that belongs to individuals rather than communities. Below I argue against these views of ren insofar as they see ren as primarily (or, on some views, wholly) a property of individuals that is created, like virtue, through self-cultivation, a dispositional or emotional feature of an individual, or a state of mind. There are a number of reasons why such views of ren came to the forefront in interpretations of the Analects. The main reason is the influence of Zhu Xi s reading of the Analects, which adopted and augmented the psychologization of Mencius, whose particular psychologistic bent, although not as pronounced as that of the later Neo-Confucians, was likely due to his engagement with Yangism rather than to any incipient psychologization in the earlier Confucian tradition. 15 In what follows b elow, I argue that ren is most plausibly seen as a primarily communal property (thought of in terms of communal disposition) rather than an individual property such as a state of mind. By communal property, I mean any property x (whether state, quality, etc.) belonging to a group that constitutes a community by virtue of their performance of 506 Philosophy East & West
what Michael Bratman calls shared cooperative activity (SCA), in which there are personal social connections between members of the group, such as shared goals, citizenship, familial ties, et cetera. Communal properties depend on the activity of the individual members of the community, but do not belong to individual members of the community other than derivatively (which I will explain in the section on communal dao and ren below). A paradigm example of such a property is harmoniousness as a property of, say, a harmonious jazz quartet. The property of harmoniousness belongs to the group, as being proficient in performing in ways that harmonize the individual performances with one another. Although each member of the quartet needs the ability to h armonize (the harmoniousness of the group depends on this), they do not individually possess the property of harmoniousness. I will interpret ren in the Analects in a similar way. Just as harmoniousness can be a property (better, a disposition, as I will explain in the final section below) of a particular jazz quartet, ren can be a property of a particular community, whether family, village, state, or kingdom. A shared cooperative activity (SCA), according to Bratman, has three features: (i) Mutual responsiveness: In SCA each participating agent attempts to be responsive to the intentions and actions of the other, knowing that the other is attempting to be similarly responsive. Each seeks to guide his behavior with an eye to the behavior of the other, knowing that the other seeks to do likewise. (ii) Commitment to the joint activity : In SCA the participants each have an appropriate commitment (though perhaps for different reasons) to the joint activity, and their mutual responsiveness is in the pursuit of this commitment. (iii) Commitment to mutual support : In SCA each agent is committed to supporting the efforts of the other to play her role in the joint activity. If I believe that you need my help to find your note (or your paint brush) I am prepared to provide such help; and you are similarly prepared to support me in my role. These commitments to support each other put us in a position to perform the joint activity successfully even if we each need help in certain ways. 16 Bratman s conception of SCA is very useful in explaining the Confucian conception of communal properties. The society-making project itself, fixed by adherence to the li (rituals) given by the Zhou sages, is thought of by the early Confucians as something like an SCA. All three features of SCA are necessary in the performance of r itual by the members of a community. It is necessary also, however, to be specific about just what a community is and in what sense a community can be said to have certain properties through the performance of SCA, especially moral properties such as ren, as it might have the properties of harmoniousness, order, justice, goodness, et cetera. We can understand what a community is independently of SCA. While communities can perform SCAs, and the performance of SCAs is one way to create a community, communities can exist without performing SCAs that is, the performance of SCA is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for community. For the Confucian, we might think that biological, familial connection would be sufficient for the creation of community, at one end. One s parents, siblings, cousins, et cetera, are all, then, members of one s community, whether or not one has ever Alexus McLeod 507
even seen or spoken to them. A brother who is separated at birth and living in a different state would be, for the Confucian, a member of one s community. Thus, we can see for the Confucian that there will be at least two bases of community: (1) blood ties and (2) social interaction and dependency. The second basis of community does not entail that the community perform any SCAs, as there might be a web of social interaction and dependency in which each member of the community interacts with a number of others without performing any SCA with those other members of the community. To have a ren community, however, as I will show below, the community in question must perform certain SCAs and have the disposition that comes with regular and skilled performance of these SCAs. As I explain below, ren is a communal disposition, that is, the disposition of a certain community to perform SCAs that exemplify ren, just as kindness is the disposition of an individual to perform kind acts. Individuals, in this picture, can have the property of ren, but only in a derivative sense, insofar as they are members of a ren community who have fully integrated themselves into the communal dao 道 (way) through the method of jin 近 (making oneself close), which I explain in the section below on ren as a communal property. A ren community is one in which the joint performance of li (ritual 17 ), as an SCA, 18 is recognized, respected, and engaged in by the members of the community, 19 and in which social patterns of action created communally, or the communal character, are ethically good (shan 善 ). 20 Community as Necessary Condition for Ren Book 4 of the Analects contains the basis for understanding ren as a communal property, showing states of community as necessary conditions for ren. Book 4 begins with a strong statement supportive of the role of community in the creation of ren. It is perhaps not a coincidence that this passage opens book 4, which is very c oncerned with community and its connection to virtue(s) in general. 21 Passage 4.1 reads: 子曰 : 里仁為美 擇不處仁, 焉得知? The master said, Living in the midst of ren is beautiful. If one does not reside in ren, how can one therein obtain knowledge? 22 Being in the midst of ren is necessary for knowledge, in that it is in some capacity a requirement for obtaining knowledge. 23 It is not the individual possession of ren that is a requirement for the individual s obtaining of knowledge. The one used in the translation above is gleaned from context, but the spatial connotation makes one in the residence of ren; it doesn t attribute ren to one as a property. It is important to notice here that 4.1 does not speak in terms of the ren zhe 仁者 or the ren ren 仁人 rather, it uses specifically spatial terms, twice in the passage, to talk about the association with ren that one ought to have. Li 里 is such a spatial term. Li ren is best translated as in the area of ren or in the midst of ren. It has also been translated (by Arthur Waley) as in the neighborhood of ren. In addition, the classical commentators are almost in universal agreement with the view of Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127 200 c.e.), as recorded in the He Yan 何晏 (190 229) Lunyu jijie collection, 24 that li 508 Philosophy East & West
has the same sense as ju 居, to live in or dwell in, which would make it the same as the term chu 處, used later in the passage. 25 The term chu is best translated as something like to remain within (the confines of ). It can have nonspatial senses in the Analects, such as to attend to, similar to the verbal use of shi 事, but the connection between this and the other spatial term in the passage, li 里, seems to suggest that both should be read spatially. The use of the two of them together, supporting each other as they do in 4.1, however ( in the area of ren remaining in this area ) seems to privilege a spatial reading, as the likely nonspatial reading of chu connects living within ren and attending to ren, in a way that could be more clearly handled without using parallel spatial terminology by using shi 事. 26 There are two possible objections to this reading that are important to take care of here. (1) Perhaps the discussion in spatial terms is simply stylistic flair on the part of the author of 4.1 and is meant to suggest something like the nearness of xin 心 (heart /mind), and (2) perhaps this shows only that an individual needs to be in the midst of ren in order to cultivate the virtue, but once the virtue has been cultivated, the ren person can be such even in a place and community in which no one is ren because the community does not have the property of ren such action is not exemplified in the communal character (the dispositions to act that are typical of members of the community in question qua members of the community). Both objections can be answered. First, the existence of other passages that seem to make a similar point, albeit in different ways, shows that the spatial talk may not be merely stylistic, and that the continuous presence of community is necessary for (secondary) possession of ren. The fact that most of these passages are in book 4 along with 4.1 further supports the case for this reading. I consider some of these passages below. The later passages of book 4, especially 4.7 and 4.25, seem continuous with each other (and with 4.1, if my reading is correct) in having a social focus. In addition, the psychological reading this would seem to require, with nearness thought of as expressing nearness of heart /mind, would put a strain on the text, given that xin is not a concept we find developed in the Analects as it is in the Mencius, for example, where issues of psychology and internal life come to the fore. Second, the necessity of community to moral personhood and full agency, a view that, I argue, is expressed in the Analects, offers an answer to objection (2) b eyond the support of the passages in book 4. Below, I will argue for this necessity and how it is seen in the Analects. One obtains knowledge by being around ren. Exactly what is meant by this is suggested but not completely clear from 4.1 alone. It could be that being around other individuals who are ren is what is called for (which would cut against my communal-property interpretation of ren), in the sense of being in an area in which there are ren zhe 仁者. 27 What is clear from 4.1 is that community is in some sense instrumental in the obtaining of knowledge. It also seems to suggest that community is instrumental in obtaining ren, but this is not explicit in the passage, and we require more support to establish that this is the view advocated here, and also that community is not merely a tool for cultivating ren but that ren cannot obtain outside p articular Alexus McLeod 509
communities. If community is instrumental in obtaining ren, this does not yet show that ren is primarily a property of communities rather than individuals. This reading, however, does link 4.1 to other passages in book 4 and elsewhere, and helps make better sense of the passages collectively, which suggest a robust connection between communal and personal virtue. For example, 4.25 links de and the community in much the same way that I suggest ren and the community (as well as zhi 知 and the community) are linked in 4.1. Passage 4.25 reads: 子曰 : 德不孤, 必有鄰 The master said, virtue (de 德 ) is not alone, it of necessity (bi 必 ) has neighbors. It seems plausible to read lin 鄰 (neighbors) as causative (or a necessary condition) of de 德, in the same way that being in the midst of ren (li ren 里仁 ) is causative of (or necessary for) obtaining knowledge (de zhi 得知 ). Note that the bi (necessity) in this passage is not simply an emphasis. It flags a serious dependence, in the sense that anything without neighbors would not be de 德. It seems either (1) to mark having neighbors as a necessary condition of virtue, or (2) to signal that the power of virtue is such that others will necessarily (bi) follow it. In this second reading, 4.25 tells us that the power of virtue (de) to shape the behavior and attitudes of others is almost irresistible (depending on how strongly we read the necessity expressed by bi ). Both these readings seem consistent with other passages in book 4 and elsewhere in the Analects. De can be both dependent on the right kind of community as well as attractive to others where it exists. There is evidence that 4.25 has this dual-meaning combining (1) and (2) above. This kind of occurrence, for one thing, is fairly typical for passages of the Analects. Also, to take reading (2) of this passage while rejecting reading (1) separates 4.25 from 4.1 and 4.7 in a way that the dual-meaning reading does not. Passage 4.7, which I think is often misread, 28 offers further support for a necessary condition reading of 4.1 and 4.25: 子曰 : 人之過也, 各於其黨 觀過, 斯知仁矣 The master said, the mistakes of people (ren 人 ) are in each case ( ge 各 ) attributable (yu 於 ) to their group (dang 黨 ). Observe their mistakes, and you will know whether humanity (ren 仁 ) obtains. This passage associates ren (humanity) with the community with the dang 黨 in this case, which can be read as group, village, or both, depending on the context. Passage 4.7 makes the claim that one s mistakes are the result of being within certain communities, however, not that one s actions or attitudes in general (including any good actions or attitudes) result from being within these communities. Thus, against my reading, one might suggest that the view presented here and in the Analects in general is that one s failures are due to communal features, however defined, while one s successes are due to features of one s individual character (assuming that this can be detached from the community). This would be a mistake, however. First, consider some textual support that might be offered for such a view. The term dang is 510 Philosophy East & West
sometimes viewed negatively in the Analects. 29 Especially in 7.31, where it is meant as something approximating partisans, Confucius tells his students that the exemplary person (junzi 君子 ) does not clique up, if you will, into dang. 30 We might see 4.7 as presenting a similarly negative view of dang, linking it to mistakes (guo 過 ). 31 The source of one s mistakes is inevitably, according to this view, the corrosive influence of the dang, which (following Analects 7.31) serves to advance narrow-minded and shallow self-interest and foster neglect of virtue (with the implicit suggestion b eing that dang is a community not molded by ritual [li]). Dang is not always used in this negative sense, however, which problematizes the negative reading of 4.7. In some places in the Analects, it is best rendered as village. In various passages there is mention of dang ren 黨人 (villagers) or dang ( village). In one famous Analects passage, 13.18, 32 Confucius mentions the v illage in contrasting the (good) standards of action in his own village (covering up for one s parent or child who has committed a crime) as opposed to the standards he deems faulty in the village of his interlocutor (turning in one s criminal parent). This suggests that he sees the village as a possible thriving community that is the source and locus of the proper values which manifest themselves in particular actions of individuals, just as covering for family members is fostered by Confucius village. Even if dang in 4.7 is meant in the negative sense of 7.31, however, it still offers support for the view that the properties of the community are causative of individual behavior in essential ways, and that an individual s character would either be u nformed or missing key features without communal integration. Note that 4.7 reads that a person s mistakes are in each case (ge 各 ) attributable to dang. The suggestion here is that observation of any mistake will tell us what kind of dang a person belongs to. If in every case mistakes are attributable to dang, this suggests that without dang, there are no mistakes. But is this because without dang all actions of the individual are proper and adhere to li (ritual), or instead because outside the dang the actions of the individual cannot be morally appraised as good or as faulty? To be outside the ritual context of community is to be outside the realm of morality itself. I believe that the passages in book 4 give us some reason to accept the latter view, while the former view seems obviously wrong. Observing features of one s dang, according to 4.7, will allow us to see whether or not a person is humane (ren). Why would this be, unless ren is somehow dependent on one s community? Based on 4.7 alone, it could be that it is the absence of a bad community that is necessary for ren rather than the obtaining of a thriving community, but this interpretation clashes with 4.1 and 4.25, both of which link the v irtuous individual with a larger positive community. The possession of ren cannot come about through avoiding the influence of one s community (if this is even possible), but only through engagement with it. Thus, we might see 4.7 as the key to drawing out the implicit claims made in 4.1 and 4.25 that communal integration is necessary for ren. Passages 4.1 and 4.25 show us that ren is linked to good community, and 4.7 shows us that the good community both is necessary for ren and plays a causal role in the creation of ren. Alexus McLeod 511
In the next section below, I offer some argument that the reason community is a necessary condition for the obtaining of ren is because ren is primarily a property of communities rather than of individuals. Ren as a Communal Property Integration into a thriving and good community, for all that has been said so far, could be a necessary condition for obtaining ren in that it facilitates or plays a causal role in the gaining of the virtue of ren for the individual, and not, as I have suggested, in that that ren is a property primarily of communities. For this to be the case, however, it would have to be possible to have ren as an individual outside the communal context. If ren can belong to one as an individual and remain a property of theirs on leaving a community or entering a different communal context, this would show that ren cannot be primarily a property of communities. However, even if ren is dependent on being within a certain communal context and is destroyed outside this context or given certain subsidiary features of one s community, this is still not enough to show that ren is not primarily an individual property that simply depends on a number of communal elements to obtain, similar to Aristotle s phronesis, or even virtues like charity or benevolence whose cultivation requires community, but can exist in individuals independently of their membership in a particular community, and can even obtain if one leaves community altogether. The considerations in this section are meant to show that a number of other passages show us that the most plausible reading of ren is as a moral property that is fixed to particular communities, such that it is not realized outside a particular communal context. It is, in other words, a communal property primarily, which i ndividuals can possess insofar as they are members of ren communities, but not outside ren communities, similar to the way a person s performance in a jazz quartet can be part of a good performance, and one can have certain properties as a member of a quartet that is performing well, while one s individual performance does not have certain properties taken alone. The property of ren, then, can be seen as a property belonging to a community due to collective actions (SCAs), specifically a dispositional property. In the section below on the communal dao and ren as a derivative or secondary property, I will explain how communities can have dispositions, and how this can translate to secondary individual possession of the properties of communities. When we consider the passages discussed so far in the light of some others from the Analects, however, the reading of community as a moral agent to which ren b elongs as a property becomes more plausible. Passage 4.20, which is nearly i dentical to 1.11, 33 reads: 子曰 : 父在, 觀其志 ; 父沒, 觀其行 ; 三年無改於父之道, 可謂孝矣 The master said, When your father lives, observe his intentions. When he s gone, observe his conduct. For three years refusing to change the way of his father such a person can be called filial. 512 Philosophy East & West
It is interesting and telling that this passage is repeated in both 4.20 and 1.11, especially if book 4 is the earlier of the two books. Passage 1.11 is surrounded by a group of passages that seem to emphasize the role of integration of the communal and t raditional standards into oneself as of the highest importance for the task of selfcultivation. Refusing to change the way (dao 道 ) of one s father for three years is to integrate one s father s ways of acting and attitudes into oneself. Passages 4.20 and 1.11 are unclear on whether this ought to be voluntary or otherwise. Does it count as an example of filiality if one does not change his father s way because the person has integrated his father s ways of acting, attitudes, and customs into himself in such a way that his own dao mirrors that of his father, and thus that he follows his father s dao spontaneously simply by being himself? Some passages in the Analects seem to suggest that full integration of the right way into oneself so that one s own desires match what is right is the pinnacle of self-cultivation. 34 This suggests that the way for an individual to become ren is by realizing and adhering to the dao of the ren community. Just as one s duty is to adhere to one s father s dao for at least three years after his death and perhaps the best and most complete way of doing this is through internalizing his dao so that it becomes one s own a similar view can be taken with respect to the dao of a certain community. One can follow the dao of a bad community and be made into a vicious person, a xiao ren 小人 (petty person), or one can follow the dao of a superior community. If this community is one that possesses ren, then the individual can thereby derivatively become ren. The way in which a person takes on the dao of a community, or a father, or anything else, is explained most clearly by Analects 6.30 and 12.1. Passage 6.30 reads: 夫仁者, 己欲立而立人, 己欲達而達人 能近取譬, 可謂仁之方已 As for the ren person, desiring to establish himself he establishes others, desiring to achieve he helps others achieve. To be able to make oneself close (jin 近 ) to others and to identify with them can be called in the area of ren. The term jin 近 merits discussion here. This term, which I translate as making oneself close, indicates the method by which one integrates the dao of the community or another individual into oneself. By mirroring the behavior and actions of others, and in the communal case conforming to the accepted standards of behavior, one acts consistently with the dao of the community or individual. But there can be at least two levels of such adoption of a dao. One can act a certain way out of a feeling of obligation even while this manner of action is against one s own desires, or one can act in this way consistent with one s own desires, and with the immediate reasons for action being because the person enjoys acting in this manner and has become a ccustomed to so acting such that one does it habitually. 35 Employing the method of jin takes one from one s own attitudes and actions (presumably not representative of the communal dao) to the point of habitually thinking and acting consistently with the dao of a community. The process of jin is closely connected to li (ritual). Ritual, in terms of contextualized standards of conduct, is the way in which an individual integrates the dao of a Alexus McLeod 513
community into his own action. By adhering to li, one transforms oneself from one who acts with an eye to his or her own benefit to one who acts with an eye to the communal dao. Thus, adhering to li facilitates this movement toward the communal dao. It is in this sense that we can understand the beginning section of 12.1, which has caused great difficulty for commentators. It reads: 顏淵問仁 子曰 : 克己復禮為仁 一日克己復禮, 天下歸仁焉 為仁由己, 而由人乎哉? Yan Yuan asked about ren. The master said, Turn away from yourself (ji 己 ) and return to ritual (fu li 復禮 ) this is ren. If for only one day one could turn away from oneself and return to ritual, the entire world would return ( gui 歸 ) to ren. Becoming ren is caused by oneself (ji) how can it be caused by others? If we think about this in the context of the attempt to integrate the communal dao into oneself, the line turn away from yourself and return to ritual can readily be understood. Turning away from the ji (self, or selfish desires) is a key feature of the first part of the method of following the communal dao. One must in the beginning ignore one s own selfish desires (presumably not the desire to integrate into the community, of course, but rather those desires which cut against the interests and characteristic actions of the community). In doing this, one must fu li (return to li ), which facilitates the internalization of the communal dao in the way I explain above. A dhering to li allows one a map independent of one s own initial selfish desires, 36 giving one certain responsibilities and dictating (based on the communal dao) certain ways of behavior that are fixed by one s place in the community in question (thus contextualized standards of action as a good translation of this sense of li ). It is through rejecting the selfish desires one has outside the communal dao and those elements of one s own character that do not overlap with the communal dao, and through patterning one s character using li on the character consistent with the communal dao that an individual can become ren. One key part of this sentence that has not been given sufficient attention is wei ren 為仁. 37 Some interpreters 38 have taken the wei here to be a definitional s tatement, marking identity. This reading, I think, is incorrect. Wei, if read in the way most plausible to this passage, given its context, marks not identity but causation. Wei ren can be read as creates ren. To turn away from the self (selfish desires) and return to contextualized standards of action creates ren. Doing what 12.1 suggests is not itself ren, but facilitates the creation of ren. This is easily explained in the view of ren as a communal property. Ren, as a property of the communal dao, or a communal disposition, is available to one only insofar as one is a member of a community insofar as their behavior expresses that communal dao which is ren. Thus, in order for the individual to gain the derivative property of ren (which belongs primarily to the community), one must follow the instructions given in 12.1, ke ji fu li 克己復禮 (turn away from the ji and return to ritual). This method is identical to the jin (making oneself close) discussed in Analects 6.30. 514 Philosophy East & West
Turning away from the self and returning to ritual, or contextual standards of conduct, is to make oneself close to and to identify with (qu pi 取譬 ) others. One integrates the dao of the community into oneself, making one s own attitude and behavior mirror the characteristic attitudes and behaviors of the community, as well as engage with the community in the performance of the relevant SCAs, and thus gain ren, given that the community involved is a virtuous one. It is the necessity of making oneself close to a virtuous community that explains Analects 1.8, where Confucius suggests that one should not have friends less good than oneself. Zhong 忠 and shu 恕, as discussed in Analects 4.15, connect to this process as well. Shu is the same as the qu pi (identifying with others) of 6.30, which entails more than just likening to oneself as something like empathy. Through shu one can make oneself close (jin) to others such that the patterns of thought and action of others become models for one s own, and the activities, interests, and moral states of other persons become as important to the individual as his or her own. Indeed, the states of other persons become thought of as the individual s own. In this way, zhong can be seen as the effort necessary for this integration into the communal dao, just as ritual (li) is the way one makes oneself close (jin) to others. Zhong, however, even if read differently from the way I read it here, can still be consistent with my interpretation of shu and its connection to the process of communalization. I do not put much weight here on the concept of zhong, as it appears to me subsidiary and mainly supportive to the concept of shu as communalizing. Zhong should be read as instrumental in this communalizing, but this still allows for a diversity of interpretations. My own view is that zhong represents effort, 39 but other interpretations of zhong, including Slingerland s reading of it as dutifulness, or P. J. Ivanhoe s reading of it as loyalty, would also be consistent with my general interpretation in the passage, as long as it could be read as contributing to the individual s integration into the communal dao. My own interpretation follows that of D. C. Lau and that of Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont, who read zhong as doing one s best or doing one s utmost. Shu 恕 and jin 近, then, are two different ways of expressing the same concept. 40 As in 6.30, the person who has made oneself close (jin) to others sees their success as his or her own success, and it is for this reason that desiring to establish himself he establishes others, desiring to achieve he helps others achieve. When this happens, the failures of one s closest community and family constitute one s own failures, and the actions of these people are included within the realm of one s own responsibility. One becomes morally responsible for the attitudes and actions of o thers, as part of the community, which itself has moral agency and which can, as such, have moral properties such as ren. We can see that making oneself close i nvolves the kind of mutual responsiveness that Bratman recognizes as a feature of any SCA and which is captured in his first listed feature of SCA. One who has made oneself close (jin) to others is responsive to their actions and intentions, and acts in part based on the way others act, in addition to perceiving oneself and one s own identity as grounded in that of the group itself. The picture of the thriving community s possession of ren is made clearer by Analects 1.12: Alexus McLeod 515
有子曰 : 禮之用, 和為貴 先王之道斯為美, 小大由之 有所不行, 知和而和, 不以禮節之, 亦不可行也 Master You said, Of the functions of ritual, social harmony is what is valuable. This is what made the way of the Former Kings good. Both small and great desire to create social harmony. When things go astray, and one knows harmony and creates it but does not r estrain it through ritual, one still cannot put things back on track. This is a difficult passage for a number of reasons. First, it is a Youzi passage, 41 which opens up the question of how closely it matches the thought of the rest of the Analects is this continuous in theme with what is said about li 禮 elsewhere in the Analects? Since this passage seems to be consistent with a theme running through a number of diverse passages of the Analects, some of which I mention in this essay, I believe that we should see 1.12 as in agreement with the view developed elsewhere in the Analects and for which I argue here, regardless of whether or not Youzi s teachings postdate or are distinct from those of Confucius. He clearly agreed with Confucius on this. 42 The language of 1.12 would suggest that something a bit different is going on here. None of the other discussions of li in the Analects speaks about the yong 用 (function) of li as distinct from li itself. 43 There is talk of using li (yi li 以禮 ) but not of the function of li (li zhi yong 禮之用 ). The functioning of li tends to be spoken of, like ren 仁, in the active voice, using the verb yi 以, rather than as an object, associated with the noun use of yong 用. The reason Youzi would use yong here is to make a particular point about he. Ritual, in the Analects, has many different uses, but Youzi is concerned with isolating the use of the creation of social harmony as particularly important. Just speaking about the use of ritual alone, saying something like 以禮得之 ( use ritual to obtain it ), where zhi refers to social harmony, would fail to isolate social harmony as one among other functions of ritual, which Youzi intends to do in order to make the point that establishing social harmony is most important among the functions of ritual. Second, it is unclear what is meant in the passage by he wei gui 和為貴. Should this be read as saying that social harmony is what is valuable (in ritual), or that some different conception of harmony is valuable? Edward Slingerland, for example, reads the he here as harmonious ease, so that the passage should be understood as saying that what is valuable in performing ritual is ease, or, as Slingerland explains, a wu-wei manner. I find this an implausible reading of 1.12. It reads yong as practice, so li zhi yong is explained as using li. This would be very different from the way he is used in the other passages in the Analects where it appears (not a long list 7.32, 13.23, 16.1, and 19.25), where it clearly refers to something social, and is better rendered social harmony. So we would need compelling reason to think that it is supposed to refer to a wu-wei manner of action here, and this reason is a bsent. If we understand the connection between ritual and social harmony as c onstructive that is, that li is used to create harmony, we get a claim tying li d irectly to the creation of a thriving community, and only indirectly to self-cultivation and virtue. 44 Li is good, that is, in that it leads to a thriving community via social harmony. 516 Philosophy East & West
If li is causally connected to ren, then it looks as though the social harmony that is the gui (value) of li is closely related to ren. The best way to understand this, given what I have shown above, is to see ren as a communal property that results from members of the community adhering to li (turning away from the ji 己 [self ], as in 12.1), and is expressed by harmony. The harmonious community is a ren community, and an individual who belongs to this community such that his or her character manifests the communal dao is derivatively a ren individual. Given that other passages of the Analects tie li closely to moral self-cultivation (such as 12.1), the best way to make sense of this would be to link what Youzi claims is the function of li, the creation of harmony (in society), with self-cultivation. Creation of the harmonious community is continuous with moral self-cultivation, because creation of such a community is part of self-cultivation, with the method of jin (making oneself close to the community) comprising another part of self-cultivation, although one that cannot be considered separately, in isolation from the creation of a thriving community. Jin and the creation of a thriving community are mutually supportive. One works to mold oneself into an ideal person (a derivatively ren person) by molding the community into an ideal one and integrating oneself into it, and the tool one must use for this is ritual (li). 45 Thus, the difficulty of obtaining ren is due to the necessity of being a member of a thriving community, which is itself ren. It is due to this dependence of ren on the community that Confucius is so hesitant to pronounce on whether otherwise morally adequate or exemplary people can be considered ren. 46 The Communal Dao and Ren as a Derivative or Secondary Property How do we understand, then, what the communal dao is, and what it is about this that is ren, which can make an individual derivatively ren through integrating into the communal dao, via the method of jin ( making oneself close ) and the adoption of communally acceptable and typical kinds of behavior and dispositions to behave in certain ways? In order to understand how ren can be a primarily communal property and a secondarily individual one, we have to understand what it means for ren to be a collective disposition. In this section, I will offer a way to help us think about collective disposition in a way connecting it to collective action, and explain how ren can be seen as a property associated with collective disposition, and one that depends on collective actions in a certain community. Consider a good performance in acting this is not a property belonging to the individual actors alone, but to the SCA of the actors collectively as having performed a play well. We can talk about good individual performances, which are distinct from good group performances. When we say of a play, that was a good performance, we are saying something about how the actors meshed in their performances and how a special quality obtained for the collective performance itself for the play i tself. But this is different from saying that was a good play, which entails further features, like an interesting story, good production values, et cetera. A good collective performance Alexus McLeod 517
is possible when a group performs the SCA of performing play P in an exemplary way, which of course depends on each member of the group performing their own role in the SCA in an exemplary manner. But there are different value properties that attach to the individual performance and the collective performance. The virtues of the good individual performance are different from those of the collective performance. To say that the collective performance was a good one is, in e ssence, to say that the SCA was performed well by the group who performed it, and there is more to the good performance of an SCA than the individual s contribution to the SCA. A good performance of the SCA entails that each member of the group that performed it acted in an exemplary manner, had the certain necessary virtues, were each mutually responsive, et cetera, and as a result of this the performance of the play as a whole was good. Now that we have a picture of collective action and the possibility of properties attached to collective actions distinct from those of individuals involved in collective actions, 47 we can consider collective dispositions. Dispositional traits, for an individual, will be something like the typical ways that a person will act, which are generally stable across a variety of different situations. 48 A group might be understood in this same way to have certain dispositional traits, connected with SCAs. If there are certain moral properties that attach to collective action, then, there might be certain properties that attach to collective disposition. Collective dispositions can be understood as the ways a particular group is likely to act in given situations the typical type of SCAs a group will perform stably across a variety of different situations. So, for example, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company may have the collective disposition of being virtuosic, because they reliably and typically perform plays well, due to the success of the SCAs made up of the commitment and the virtues of the various actors and their mutual responsiveness to each other, so that each plays his or her own role well in the SCA of performing a particular play in any given situation (that is, across a variety of different types of plays comedies, tragedies, etc.). Any particular individual in the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company can be said to partake in this collective disposition to some extent, in that he is a member of a community that performs plays well and, more importantly, that he contributes to the virtuosity of the performances of the company, which is in part due to his own talents. This property is not retained by the individual when he leaves the company and joins a new one. Although he may be a first-rate actor, he is not contributing to the virtuosic SCA that represented the collective disposition of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company to perform plays well. The individual has this property only within the context of membership and performance in the community in question. He may move to Washington D.C. and join the Washington Shakespeare Company, and again become part of a community with the collective disposition to perform plays well (in part due to his individual performance in the relevant SCAs), and would again have the derivative property based on this, but outside the context of a community that had a collective disposition to perform SCAs of the kind in question, the actor would 518 Philosophy East & West
not have the derivative property in question. The key feature of the derivative properties an individual can have that are based on collective dispositions, then, is that one only has these properties, regardless of one s individual virtues and talents, insofar as and as long as they are members of the communities that have the collective dispositions on which the derivative properties are based. 49 In the case of ren, it is collective disposition rather than collective action that is central. Ren, like virtues such as kindness (in a sufficiently Aristotelian virtue ethics), does not obtain in an agent or group 50 without the disposition to act in ren ways that is, a group might perform ren SCAs without being ren, because these actions are not typical and stable across a variety of situations. Ren-ness (if you will) is a communal disposition to perform SCAs of a certain kind, a ren kind. Thus we can speak of ren communal actions and ren communities. 51 Now we are prepared to understand how one can integrate into a communal dao, and how such integration can give an individual communal properties like ren derivatively. The communal dao then can be thought of as the communal disposition in terms of typical ways the community acts, as well as the typical attitudes and a ctions of individuals that result from the individual s adoption of communal ideals (ritual), attitudes, and ways of acting. So there are two parts to the adoption of a communal dao: (1) individually adopting certain ways of thinking and acting that are accepted by a community (usually specified in li, such as the Zhou li ), which tells us what actions we should perform and the ways we should think, given different roles (e.g., it may specify that a judge should bow respectfully before the jury, wear certain robes, talk to certain people only, etc.), and (2) jointly and reliably performing with the community the SCAs that fix the communal disposition, giving the community certain moral properties, such as being a just community, an orderly or harmonious community, a ren community. The communal dao of a given community, of course, might be a bad one, and in this case the individual who has integrated into the communal dao will have certain negative moral properties derivatively as a result of his own part in the SCAs (or lack of SCAs) that fix the communal disposition as having these negative properties. What the Analects promotes as the ideal community is one that has adopted and acts in accordance with the Zhou li, 52 and it is just this kind of community that is a ren c ommunity, in that the communal dao (the dispositions of the community in terms of properties of SCAs and the individual attitudes and actions of the members of the community gained through acting in accordance with communally accepted ways of acting and thinking, or ritual [li]) is ren. We can see, then, how ren is not possible outside particular communities, because it is dependent on the features both of individuals and of the specific communities to which these individuals belong. Although a ren zhe 仁者 (ren person) who leaves his community and joins a new one that is not exemplary may no longer count as a ren person, he will still, of course, have many virtues that make it possible for him to be ren when integrated into the right community, having adopted the right communal dao. Indeed, one could be especially effective in bringing about ren in a community due to one s own great de 德 Alexus McLeod 519