[nasional_list] [ppiindia] CONFUCIUS - East and West echo the sage: 'The ideal society is like a famil
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- Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:27:01 +0200
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Sunday, Sept. 10, 2006
CONFUCIUS
East and West echo the sage: 'The ideal society is like a family'
By MICHAEL HOFFMAN
This story is part of a package on Confucius. The introduction is here.
Is Confucius dead?
He walked the Earth more than 2,500 years ago, his thinking focused even then
on the remote past. Why bother with him today?
The eminence of his name, combined with aspects of his teachings that seem to
favor absolute rule and unconditional obedience, have made him a convenient
prop for Asian tyrants seeking to justify their dictatorships.
But does he have anything meaningful to say to the rest of us? Confucius, after
all, knew little of technological change. We know nothing of stasis. To us,
yesterday's wisdom seems obsolete today. To him, a filial son was one who made
no change to his father's ways until the father had been dead at least three
years. What can our globalized universe possibly learn from such a sage?
A good deal, argues a book titled "Confucianism for the Modern World." The
volume is a collection of essays by 18 scholars, Asian and Western, who
evaluate the master's legacy in terms of its contemporary relevance. Their
point is that the incoherences and dissonances of our time have more in common
than outward appearance might suggest with those that troubled Confucius
2Emillennia ago Eand that we, too, would be the better for a stiff dose of li.
Li is generally translated as "rites" or "rituals," but those words, with their
connotation of empty forms, strike the wrong note. Think of it instead,
suggests contributor Hahm Chaihark, a professor at South Korea's Yonsei
University, as "a marvelous combination of education, self-cultivation,
training, discipline, restraint, authority and legitimacy."
For Hahm, li served as a kind of unwritten premodern constitution, a constraint
on government absolutism rather than an encouragement of it.
"For example," he writes, "during the Choson dynasty in Korea (1392-1910), the
central bureaucracy included many offices" Estaffed by experts in li E"whose
explicit duties were to educate, correct and criticize the behavior of the
ruler."
It's a model worthy of careful study, Hahm maintains, for "once the citizens of
modern East Asian countries begin to emulate their Confucian scholar-official
ancestors, who first disciplined themselves with ritual propriety and then
demanded the ruler's discipline, their countries will become constitutionalist
states."
Skeptics doubt a globalized regime's capacity to nourish civilized values
beyond mass entertainment and mass consumption. Geir Helgesen, senior
researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen, warns in his
essay in the book of globalization's tendency to overwhelm the individual and
trigger "a retreat into personal, private spheres of interest .EE "
Accordingly, he says, "globalization might turn out to be a much more effective
enemy of democracy than the totalitarian ideologies of the recent past ever
were."
So, should we disembark from the Internet and dust off our copies of "The
Analects"? Maybe we should.
Helgesen cites a recent South Korean survey showing 89 percent of respondents
agreeing with Confucius that "a leader should care for the people as parents
for their children." Ninety-one percent felt comfortable with the orthodox
Confucian notion that "The objective of good government is to maintain
harmonious social relations." For 87 percent, as of course for Confucius, "The
ideal society is like a family."
Well, that's South Korea, the Confucian nation par excellence. But Helgesen's
institute also conducted a similar survey in Denmark. "To our surprise," he
reports, "75 percent of Danish respondents agreed that 'the ideal society is
like a family.'E
What should we conclude from that? This at least, says Helgesen: "By teaching a
social morality which stresses proper rituals based on the emotional pattern
people recognize from family life, Confucianism may well have something to
offer [our] 'runaway world.'"
For other stories in our package on Confucius, please click the following links:
A man in the soul of Japan
The Japan Times
(C) All rights reserved
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