Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

The eremitic life may be tempting for a sage, but since we are neither birds nor beasts, we cannot escape among them; we must associate with our fellow men. And when the world loses the Way, the sage has a moral duty to reform society and to set it back on track.

Politics is an extension of ethics: “Government is synonymous with righteousness. If the king is righteous, how could anyone dare to be crooked?” The government is of men, not of laws (to this very day, this remains one of the most dangerous flaws in the Chinese political tradition). Confucius had a deep distrust of laws: laws invite people to become tricky and bring out the worst in them. The true cohesion of a society is secured not through legal rules but through ritual observances. The central importance of rites in the Confucian order may at first appear disconcerting to some Western readers (conjuring up in their minds quaint images of smiling Oriental gentlemen, bowing endlessly to each other), but the oddity is merely semantic; one needs only to substitute for the word “rites” concepts such as “ mæurs ,” “civilised usages,” “moral conventions” or even “common decency” and one immediately realises that the Confucian values are remarkably close to the principles of political philosophy that the Western world inherited from the Enlightenment. Montesquieu in particular (who, paradoxically, did not share in the Chinese euphoria of his time, as he detected a ruthless despotism at work in the political practice of eighteenth-century China) developed notions that unwittingly recapitulated Confucius’s views that a government of rites is to be preferred to a government of laws; Montesquieu considered that an increase in law-making activity was not a sign of civilisation — it indicated on the contrary a breakdown of social morality, and his famous statement, “ Quand un peuple a de bonnes mæurs, les lois deviennent simples ,” could have been lifted straight from the Analects .

According to Confucius, a king leads by his moral power. If he cannot set a moral example — if he cannot maintain and promote rituals and music (the two hallmarks of civilisation) — he forfeits the loyalty of his ministers and the trust of the people. The ultimate asset of the state is the trust of the people in their rulers: if that trust is lost, the country is doomed.

Confucius often said that if only a ruler could employ him, in one year he would achieve a lot, and in three years he would succeed. One day a disciple asked him, “If a king were to entrust you with a territory which you could govern according to your ideas, what would you do first?” Confucius replied, “My first task would certainly be to rectify the names .” On hearing this, the disciple was puzzled. “Rectify the names? And that would be your first priority? Is this a joke?” (Chesterton or Orwell, however, would have immediately understood and approved the idea.) Confucius had to explain: “If the names are not correct, if they do not match realities, language has no object. If language is without an object, action becomes impossible — and therefore, all human affairs disintegrate and their management becomes pointless and impossible. Hence, the very first task of a true statesman is to rectify the names.”

And this is, in fact, what Confucius himself endeavoured to do. One can read the Analects as an attempt to redefine the true sense of a series of key concepts. Under the guise of restoring their full meaning, Confucius actually injected a new content into the old “names.” Here I shall give only one example, but it is of momentous importance: the notion of “gentleman” ( junzi , Confucius’s ideal man). Originally it meant an aristocrat, a member of the social elite: one did not become a gentleman, one could only be born a gentleman. For Confucius, on the contrary, the “gentleman” is a member of the moral elite. It is an ethical quality, achieved by the practice of virtue, and secured through education. Every man should strive for it, even though few may reach it. An aristocrat who is immoral and uneducated (the two notions of morality and learning are synonymous) is not a gentleman, whereas any commoner can attain the status of gentleman if he proves morally qualified. As only gentlemen are fit to rule, political authority should be devolved purely on the criteria of moral achievement and intellectual competence. Therefore, in a proper state of affairs, neither birth nor money should secure power. Political authority should pertain exclusively to those who can demonstrate moral and intellectual qualifications.

This view was to have revolutionary consequences: it was the single most devastating ideological blow that furthered the destruction of the feudal system and sapped the power of the hereditary aristocracy, and it led eventually to the establishment of the bureaucratic empire — the government of the scholars. For more than 2,000 years, the empire was to be ruled by the intellectual elite; to gain access to political power, one had to compete successfully in the civil service examinations, which were open to all. Until modern times, this was certainly the most open, flexible, fair and sophisticated system of government known to history (it was the very system that impressed and inspired the European philosophes of the eighteenth century).

CONFUCIUS ON EDUCATION

It is often remarked that the most successful and dynamic societies of East and South-East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) share a common Confucian culture. Should one therefore conclude that the Analects might actually yield a secret formula that would make it possible elsewhere to inject energy into flagging economies and to mobilise and motivate a slovenly citizenry?

The prosperity of a modern state is a complex phenomenon that can hardly be ascribed to one single factor. Yet there is indeed one common feature that characterises the various “Confucian” societies — but it should be observed that this same feature can also be found in other social or ethnic groups (for instance, certain Jewish communities of the Western world) which are equally creative and prosperous and yet do not present any connection with the Confucian tradition — and it is the extraordinary importance which these societies all attach to education . Any government, any community or any family willing to invest a considerable proportion of its energy and resources in education is bound to reap cultural, social and economic benefits comparable to those currently being achieved by the thriving “Confucian” states of Asia, or by some dynamic and wealthy migrant minorities of the Western world.

In affirming that the government and administration of the state should be exclusively entrusted to a moral and intellectual elite of “gentlemen,” Confucius established an enduring and decisive link between education and political power: only the former could provide access to the latter. In modern times, even after the abrogation of the civil service examination system and the fall of the empire, although education ceased to be the key to political authority — which, in this new situation, was more likely to come out of the barrel of a gun — the prestige traditionally attached to culture continued to survive in the mentality of the Confucian societies: the educated man, however poor and powerless, still commanded more respect than the wealthy or the powerful.

Confucian education was open to all — rich and poor, noble and plebeian. Its purpose was primarily moral : intellectual achievement was only a means towards the end of ethical self-cultivation. There was an optimistic belief in the all-pervasive power of education. It was assumed that errant behaviour came from a faulty understanding, a lack of knowledge: if only the delinquent could be taught and be made to perceive the mistaken nature of his actions, he would naturally amend his ways. (The Maoist concept of “re-education” that was to generate such dreadful excesses at the time of the “Cultural Revolution” was in fact one of the many unconscious resurgences of the Confucian mentality, which paradoxically permeated the psychological substructure of Maoism.)