Confucian values and the internet: A potential conflict

Journal of Chinese Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 159-175

  Bockover, Mary I ^a  

^a HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 20444482059     PISSN: 03018121     EISSN: 15406253     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6253.00112     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. One of the results of this combination of the first-world interest in modernization and the third world's lack of standards for regulating the effects of such growth is the incredible air pollution that now hangs over a great deal of China. Major cities can hardly been seen from above when one flies into them, and a yellow-gray smog covers the land like a grim blanket, even in agrarian areas. One of the main reasons for this is that the dirtiest coal on earth is burned routinely to provide for cooking and heating needs, and so forth. But there is no regulation of the emissions from factories and no emissions controls for automobiles, etc. In fact, Beijing was denied the privilege of hosting the Olympic Games in the year 2000 because the pollution was so bad. The government has made concerted efforts to change that, so the Olympics can now be help in that city in the year 2008. Contact the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, for references to any number of studies related to pollution, population growth, education trends, and so forth, in Asia. My experience also came directly from flying over China and into Beijing in the summer of 2001, as well as extensive ground travel in the country itself
2. Some of the earliest records of Chinese metaphysics can be found in the Yijing, with its yin-yang cosmology of balance and harmony, and its central principle of Dao, the "way" or "path" of the cosmos. This work is thought to precede the Analects of Confucius by at least several centuries, while Confucius offered an ethic that applies the principle of harmony to the distinctively human realm. The point here is that the same basic cosmology can also be found in the Taoist Daodejing attributed to Laotse, and in general, in much of the Buddhist texts, such as the Lotus Sutra, Heart Sutra, and the Diamond Sutra. Also refer to Buddhism in China, by Kenneth Ch'en (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964)
3. My position here is not to ignore the influence that Maoist and Marxist thought has had, and continues to have in China. But proportionally, that influence has existed in China for only about fifty years, whereas Confucianism has been an essential-and I would argue the most central-influence on Chinese cultural values for over 2,000 years. This thesis has also been well argued, for example, in Angus C. Graham's book entitled Disputers of the Tao (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989)
4. The remarkable influence that Confucius has had on Chinese thought in general is also a central topic of writers such as Chung-ying Cheng, Tu Wei Ming, Herbert Fingarette, Henry Rosemont, Roger Ames, Wing-Tsit Chan, D. C. Lau, James Legge, among many others. That all state officials had to take the Confucian exams for hundreds of years, into Qing rule, which fell only in the early 1900s, should be evidence enough that Confucianism was not just central to the religious and philosophical spirit of China, but also to the very structure of its politic. Communism in China even took on a distinctively relational flavor that was compatible with Confucianism in many ways. For example, the state can be considered analogous to a large family where the leader is responsible for the people in the same way that a father would be for his family
5. "Right action" here refers to the concept of yi, or appropriate conduct
6. In this article I often use a contemporary application of Confucian values to the feminine case, something not found in the original text for the obvious reason that in ancient China, like the rest of the world even today, women and children were always considered to occupy a subordinate role. Whether this is a necessary feature of Confucian ethics is a question of great importance
7. Zhu Xi attributed this passage to Confucius but there is no concrete historical reason to believe this is so. Generally, the work is understood to be the writing of Zisi, Confucius's grandson. See Daniel Gardner's book, Chu Hsi and the Ta-Hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986)
8. Ta-Hsueh (or The Great Learning) translated by Lin Yutang, in The Wisdom of Confucius (New York: Modern Library, ca. 1938), p. 227
9. Notice here that ren also means person, and the Chinese character for "person" is the pictogram for person and the pictogram for two combined into one character or ideogram. This clearly signifies that the Chinese concept of person means something like "one who stands in relation to another."
10. This is Herbert Fingarette's rendering of passage 6:28 of the Analects of Confucius in Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), p. 41. Fingarette's book relies on Arthur Waley's translation of the Analects throughout the text, but he sometimes gives his own interpretation of the classical Chinese characters for the sake of clarity and precision, as in this passage. Fingarette's book has been reprinted by Waveland Press (1998)
11. I must again stress that the Western concept of autonomy is distinguished by the fact that a person is thought to be an independent or "free" agent instead of an interdependent member of some personal relation. This is not to underestimate the importance of moral or upright choice within the basic Confucian relations, however. For example, the imperial responsibility for a subordinate minister to correct a ruler was taken very seriously throughout much of Chinese history. But this is not "autonomy" in the Western sense. The subordinate had a responsibility to correct because of his position; his relation to the emperor, for example, was to advise. This "freedom" to correct is more of an obligation to act properly, established by the interdependent nature of the relation of ruler to minister, and sometimes even took place at the expense of the minister's life. This can be sharply contrasted with the Western sense of autonomy, where one is conceived as an independent agent of moral choice, instead of being governed by some hierarchical relational structure. A possible exception might be the Daoists and Buddhists in China, who could be thought of as advocating personal, moral, and creative autonomy, even in the extreme. I would then want to qualify the concept to show that even here, moral and creative agency is still embedded in, and governed by, a larger principle (e.g., Dao, the "four-fold noble truth"). As such, one role-indeed one's very being-is taken to be an interdependent part of a larger whole (e.g., the dynamic unity of Being itself). One is simply not conceived as morally self-contained, with a "self-legislating will" that is an "end-in-itself" (Kant's language)
12. Here, I urge the reader to consider that the economic and material disarray of modern China is not a necessary result of the traditional values that have shaped its identity for thousands of years, nor is China's lack of "prosperity" to be strictly attributed to its reluctance to "globalize." If nothing else, it is clear that the communist attempt to provide a suitable and sustainable infrastructure for China was a failure. Despite China's prior exploits, the country will spend much time (like Cuba, the former Soviet Union, and much of the Eastern bloc) in the effort to build a sustainable and humane future, but must be mindful that, to the degree that globalization means westernization, caution is greatly needed in moving forward with this endeavor
13. Consider the hu tong, or traditional Chinese village (some of which are still even found in some of the major cities). These are built around a common area and promote a system of neighborly relation that resembles an extended and interdependent family, instead of a collection of independent households strung together by linear streets and roads
14. Of course this is changing very rapidly. The more globalization occurs and Western values of "autonomy" are imported into China, the more China will diverge from its traditional Confucian view of personhood
15. This is not unlike the influence of the television with all its commercials. There has been a movement in the United States to keep children "unplugged" for this reason-so they are not conditioned into the strongly materialist lifestyle so characteristic of the average American
16. This is why "saving face" is so much more of a priority in China over just "telling it like it is": Free expression is not deemed a good thing if it happens at the expense of one's reputation, and hence, the reputation of one's family and community
17. Consult the Bhagavad Gita, a classical Indian text (one excellent translation is by Barbara Stoler Miller [New York: Bantam Books, 1986]) as a primary source
18. As secondary sources, Indian Philosophy by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962) is the most widely used history of Indian philosophy, while the most comprehensive is the five-volume collection, A History of Indian Philosophy by Sure-dranath Dasgupta (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1922-1955)
19. Also consult the Dhammapada for a specifically Buddhist primary source (e.g., translated by Ananda Maitreya [Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1995])
20. and A History of Buddhist Philosophy, by David J. Kalupahana (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992)
21. The groundwork for these concepts was argued for by Mill in his treatise On Liberty, and by Locke, in his Two Treatises on Civil Government. These are a part of the public domain. However, in his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant put forth an even stronger position on "freedom," arguing that it is a necessary feature of our very humanity. For Kant, freedom determines the human will to be moral "a priori," or even before the fact of its empirical existence. We are essentially "self-legislating" beings, and without (this a priori concept of) freedom, we would not be capable of moral choice. The groundwork for seeing the person as an individual deserving of confidentiality, privacy, and voluntary consent, has a much longer philosophical history, however. Consider the influence that the Cartesian "cogito," or "thing which thinks," had on viewing people as independent and autonomous beings (essentially, as "subjects of experience"). Also consider the moral influence of the natural law ethics that took rational and free agency to be the marks of personhood, even before Kant gave his "transcendental" arguments. Natural law ethics set the stage for valuing things such as voluntary consent, privacy, and confidentiality, as basic obligations owed to persons by virtue of the innate ability to deliberately choose to do the right thing for its own sake (Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the natural law ethics found in the work of Augustine and Aquinas, to name a few)
22. "Person," "human being," and "moral agent" are all synonymous in this context
23. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though not yet ratified by the U.S. government, is the most central of these documents; it is distinguished by the fact that freedom, conceived as political rights to autonomy, is considered universally valid for all persons, without exception. This document has an absolutist flavor that extends to a global level and not just a national one, that is, where freedom is considered a necessary good and first principle for all of humanity-the most primary human good of all
24. For example, see the translation of the Mencius by D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin Books, 1970)
25. Even if one were to argue as a good Kantian that compassion, or any kind of moral agency, is possible only insofar as one is a free agent, this still does not make it sufficient. Rational and free agency may well not be enough for moral agency to be possible; one may also have to feel meaningfully connected to others, for example, to family and friends, or to other human beings by virtue of the fact that they are human, and so on. In any case, the point of my discussion is to show that different ethical systems have different first principles. For example, morality-and I would say its realization-is not possible without ren for Confucius, or without compassion for Mencius. To the contrary, for Kant, free agency-where one is conceived as an independent and self-legislating person-is taken to be sufficient and all else (for example, natural sentiments) are considered only contingently relevant. Freedom in this (Kantian) sense is simply not to be found in the works of the Chinese ancients
26. This has been a very common presumption that reoccurs in the history of Western philosophy: If something can be conceived, it must be real or true. Consider the "transcendental" or nonempirically grounded philosophies of Plato and Descartes, to name a couple of other examples that make this kind of philosophical mistake of assuming conceivability is the criterion for both logical and practical truth. The converse has also been assumed: If something cannot be conceived, it is both logically and physically impossible. There is no grounding reason to believe the presumption in either case. The point here-and this pertains to my treatment of Kant in this article as well-is that the truth value of such transcendental claims, whether put positively or negatively, is inconclusive
27. It is also worth noting that the youth of China have been engaged in such "democracy" movements since the early 1900s, and the 1970s movement was in large measure a reaction to the momentous student involvement in the Cultural Revolution of communism in the prior decade. Consult, for example, Jonathan D. Spence's book, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990)
28. Consider pornography Websites, and the difficulty in restricting youth from accessing them. For an excellent overview of the various ethical topics bearing on new technologies, consult Society, Ethics, and Technology, edited by Morton E. Winston and Ralph D. Edelbach (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000)
29. Additionally, for the more specific ethical issues that pertain to computer technologies, see Computer Ethics, edited by Deborah G. Johnson (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985)
30. and Computers and Ethics in the Cyberage, edited by D. Micah Hester and Paul J. Ford (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001)