The boy is now a man, set to go out into the world. His mother prepares for his departure, mending his coat, possibly for the last time. He feels that he is in her debt as strongly as if he were a blade of grass and she the sun, a debt he can conceive only through images, a debt he can never repay. In the tiny universe of his family he feels he is like the earth looking up at heaven, and he is in awe.
Filial piety expresses reverence within the family. Children learn to be reverent by practicing on their parents; they pay them the respect that propriety demands and in so doing they learn to play their proper parts as adults in the larger hierarchies of society. They are restrained. They come under control. And this is how many westerners think of filial piety in Confucian China—as the basis for a system of powerful restraints that bend individuals to the will of the larger society.
This is wrong—terribly wrong as an expression of Confucian ethics, and quite a bit wrong about China. Genuine filial piety does not bend a child’s mind, but provides a structure for the expression of its natural feelings towards its parents. Filial piety must be sincere and reverent, and it expresses feelings that are natural in the sense that they distinguish human beings from animals: “to acknowledge neither father nor king is to be in the state of a beast” (Mencius 3B:9.9).
When Zi-you asked about filial piety, the Master said: “Nowadays filial piety merely means being able to feed one’s parents. Even dogs and horses are being fed. Without deference, how can you tell the difference?” (Analects 2.7)
All acts of reverence must reflect appropriate feelings, and these must come from within. They cannot be imposed from outside by force or discipline. The metaphors “inside/outside” mark the difference between what is natural and what is forced: Water naturally flows downhill; it would have to be forcefully carried uphill; and left on its own it will resume its downward path. So it is with virtue: It belongs to the character of the person who has it. A good person behaves well without being forced to do so; that is why virtue is of the utmost importance when men are so powerful that they have no one to force them to behave.
Like ancient Greek hosiotēs, Confucian Li leads human beings to accept their proper niche between the divine and the animal. The ethical consequences are similar; both virtues act as restraints on human power, and both work indirectly to protect the weak. The main difference is obvious: ancient Greek culture harps on the cognitive aspect of the virtue—on knowing human limitations—while Confucian practices build an implicit sense of those limitations through the careful observance of ceremony.
Ceremony matters to Confucius only when it expresses feelings that belong to one’s character—when, in other words, it flows from what I have been calling a virtue. As I said earlier, a virtue is a developed capacity to have the right feelings at the right time. It begins in a natural capacity for those feelings, and is developed by the exercise of that virtue into a fairly reliable condition of one’s character. In the Analects and in The Book of Mencius, Li is primarily the exercise of virtue through ceremony. In some contexts, Li is also a virtue in its own right, close kin to ancient Greek reverence.
Usually translated as “rites,” “rituals,” or “ceremony,” Li refers also to civility or reverence. In Confucius, Li is the practice that leads to the primary virtue, Humaneness (Ren). In Mencius, Li itself is one of the four virtues, along with Humaneness, Justice, and Wisdom, that flow from four natural sets of feelings known as the four beginnings. Taken together, the two Confucian positions place Li at the pivot between natural feelings and developed virtue:
Filial piety and brotherly obedience are perhaps the roots of Humaneness. (Analects 1.2, cf. 1.9 and 12.1)
A human being without the feeling of modesty (ci) and deference (rang) is not human … the feeling of modesty and deference is the beginning of Li. (Mencius 2A: 6.4–5 [Cf. 6A: 6.7 where the feelings of deference and respect, gong and jing, are said to be the source of Li])
Through filial piety, children cultivate a sense of their positions in the scheme of things, along with habits of reverence which they will apply as adults on a larger stage than that of the family. Even if one becomes emperor, he is supposed to remember his habit of deference through the practices of Li, and this habit of deference is not mere ceremony, but a developed capacity for moral feelings. Those who have cultivated Li—that is to say, not mere ceremony, but ceremony accompanied by the right feelings—have developed their capacity for feeling grief, shame, respect, and reverence when appropriate. They have also developed capacities for virtues other than Li, most notably Ren, humaneness (about which I have more to say in a moment).
Filial piety is an expression of gratitude from child to parent. Meng Zhao’s poem (the one in the epigraph to this chapter) is crafted through an artificial balance of oppositions—loving/leaving, thread/coat, hand/shoulders, fine stitches/long time—but we would be wrong to dismiss it as an exquisite artifact. The feeling it expresses is strong enough to bring tears to the eyes of those who know it in its own culture. Personal as that feeling is in its beginning, however, the poem shows that such feeling grows, by heartfelt analogy, to fill a larger stage: as the boy feels grateful to his mother, he feels himself in harmony with earth in its gratitude to Heaven.
The hierarchy of Heaven over earth lies behind every expression of Li. This gives us a clue to the most important fact about it: Although it begins as an exercise for children, Li ends as an internal restraint on the most powerful people of all, on kings and emperors. To call the emperor “Son of Heaven” is to remind him that there is something of which even the most powerful human being must stand in awe. After the decline of ancient Chinese polytheism, we would not expect an emperor to be naively afraid that the gods would punish him for wrongdoing, but he should nevertheless be capable of dreading the loss of Heaven’s favor. A grown-up son no longer fears the penalties his parents imposed on him as a child, but he still wishes to remain on their right side, because he has taken their values as his own. So it is with Li. Weaker people may have no choice but to follow Li out of fear, but not the powerful; if they truly follow Li they do so because they feel that it is right to do so—because Li has become a settled virtue in them. The holders of power, more than anyone, require training in Li, because holders of power are restrained only from within, only by means of a virtue. And the virtue of internal restraint is Li.
As with Greek reverence, we bring Li most clearly into focus when we plot its boundaries. What, exactly, do you have to do in order to violate Li? Except for Book Ten (which may be a fairly late addition), the Analects do not give detailed directions for the practice of Li. On the contrary, the Master asks advice from others (Analects 3.15, 10.21) and gives different people different sorts of advice on the same topic (for example, filial piety, Analects 2.5, 2.6). What he says, moreover, is often deliberately vague:
The Master said: “A gentleman enlarges his learning through literature and restrains himself through ritual; therefore he is not likely to go wrong.” (Analects 6.27)
And sometimes explicitly allows variations from ancient rules:
The Master said: “According to ritual, the ceremonial cap should be made of hemp; nowadays it is made of silk, which is more convenient; I follow the general usage.” (Analects 9.3, in which he proceeds to mention a case in which he keeps up the old way.)
Some rules, however, are sacrosanct in the Analects. These mainly turn out to be rules restraining powerful people from usurping the dignities of the Son of Heaven, the Emperor. Confucius has nothing to say about minor violations of Li by ordinary people; he addresses himself to rulers, and it is rulers he most plainly seeks to hold in check through the cultivation of Li. The hierarchy that is supported by Li, I conclude, is mainly a moral hierarchy and not a human one, since it serves mainly to keep in line rulers who have no human superiors.
There was no emperor at the time of Confucius; he considered the rulers he addressed (“princes” in Legge’s translation) a substantial step down from the Son of Heaven. This title refers in Confucian teaching not to any historical character but to the supreme human ruler conceived as a moral ideal—rather like one of Plato’s philosopher-kings. Philosopher-kings must give up theoretical philosophy when they involve themselves in the daily work of administration; but Confucius’ Son of Heaven seems untroubled by administrative duties. He is fully a sage when he is on the throne—a man of such perfection that all the world will follow him by the sheer force of his example.
In other respects, however, Plato and Confucius have similar ideals for rulers: both believe that competition has no place in the lives of those whose primary goal is virtue. Neither author finds there to be an ideal ruler in the corrupt society of his own time, and both are careful to see that no impostors pretend to the power or dignity that goes with perfection. Confucius would set up a guardian in the personal character of every candidate for power—the habit of reverence developed by practicing Li for a lifetime with precision. Plato would guard the avenues of power by refutation (he portrays Socrates as one who can refute all unworthy aspirants), but he too thinks of virtue as a kind of vaccine against moral decay. Both recognize that such guardians are not sufficient, that a corrupt society is corrupting, and that no matter how “inner” your virtue may be, you will have a hard time keeping it up by yourself, isolated from the shared practices of a virtuous society.
The central virtue of Confucian ethics in the Analects is Humaneness or benevolence (Ren). Now Li is at least instrumental for Ren, and Confucius would agree with Plato that reverence is instrumental to order in society, but both Confucius and Mencius hold, in addition, that Li is a cardinal virtue conferring value on other virtues:
The Master said, “Without Li, respectfulness becomes a laborious bustle; without Li, carefulness becomes timidity; without Li, courage becomes insubordination; without Li, frankness becomes rudeness.” (Analects 8.2.1)
“When gentlemen treat their kin generously, common people are attracted to Humaneness; when old ties are not neglected, common people are not callous.” (8.2.2)
The Greek and Chinese traditions are closely analogous in this. The fate of Pentheus and his family, in Euripides’ Bacchae, could be an illustration for what Confucius thinks goes wrong without reverence. First, a lack of reverence vitiates what would otherwise be admirable behavior. Kadmos (Pentheus’ grandfather) and Tiresias the prophet exhibit respectful behavior to each other and to the new religion, but without reverence they are tiresome, even comical, since their acts of respect border on charade. As for Pentheus, he has a bravery which, without reverence, is quarrelsome; and his frankness to Tiresias and the visitors from abroad is brutal. Second, the same loss of reverence that loosens family ties also unravels the fabric of society. The royal family Thebes has been ungenerous to its weakest member—the pregnant girl Semele—and through the same failure of reverence, they have fallen out of touch with the people over whom they rule.
At this point I imagine an incredulous reader bursting out “Surely Greek and Chinese reverence belong to different religions. Greeks and Chinese are reverent toward different gods How, then, could they possibly have cultivated the same sort of reverence when they had different beliefs?”
Part of the answer is that reverence is basic to any society and to just about anything that is done in society. Of course it may occur in religion, but it may also occur outside of religion, and its ethical character is not determined by religion (more on this in the next chapter). But classical Greek and Chinese conceptions of reverence bear a common relation to theism: Both conceptions of reverence blossom with the passing away of polytheism and the rise of agnosticism. Reverence survives and flourishes in these circumstances because it is something that human beings need in order to face the most obvious, common, and inevitable facts of human life—family, hierarchy, and death. When rising doubts cloud the certainty of religious claims, reverence is all the more important.
Beliefs have not shown the same power to survive in human history that reverence has; different beliefs can support the same rituals, and it is the rituals that we need, reverently performed. Both Greeks and Chinese insisted on careful disposal of the dead from very ancient times; but they would have given different beliefs, and different beliefs at different times, to explain their insistence on burial. That both cultures chose burial over other means of funeral disposal may be coincidence, but it is no coincidence that both cultures enjoined ceremonies, and that these ceremonies had to be performed reverently, allowing grief its full and proper expression within certain boundaries.
We can readily see the value to ordinary people of restraining kings and emperors through cultivating Li; the trouble is that we can equally well see the value to kings and emperors of cultivating Li in ordinary people. It would appear that Li develops habits of submissiveness, and this is a common criticism of Confucian ethics. Does Li give moral support to rulers who suppress the weak or silence dissent? Certainly not as Confucius intends it; Li keeps a ruler in check and affects him more than it does his subordinates:
Duke Ting asked: “How should a ruler treat his ministers, and how should ministers treat their ruler?” Confucius replied: “A ruler should treat his ministers with courtesy [i.e., according to Li], a minister should treat his ruler with loyalty.” (Analects 3.19)
“All right,” says the critic. “Perhaps Confucius and Mencius did piously hope that Li would hold back powerful people more than weak ones. But in actual experience, restraint through ceremony is inherently bad because it encourages people to sink into bad habits, quietly accepting authority without question.” The critic may think that Confucian-based cultures fell behind European cultures in the eighteenth century precisely because they were restrained by ceremony. Unable to question tradition or authority (on this view), Confucian-based cultures languished in a wooden rigidity, while Europe, with its voracious appetite for questioning, its bold impatience with hierarchy, inevitably forged ahead.
That picture is wrong. The restraint that comes from ceremony is never absent, in any culture, from any system of power, whether conservative or revolutionary. As for the Far East, the criticism is belied by history overall and by recent events. China made enormous advances in technology, in social forms, and in other ways for many centuries after Confucian thinking became general. Li does not stand against change, but regulates and orders it. Criticism has trouble surfacing in any system, but it has no more trouble in principle under a Confucian system. All cultures seem to run through alternating periods of growth and rigidity; I doubt if there is a single explanation for these. But the age of reverence in Greece was a time of enormous change and creativity; it brought democracy to the forefront for a small moment in history, and it saw reverence as the virtue that best protected this new and vulnerable form of governance.
True, powerful people have used Confucian philosophy as a tool for silencing dissent, but they are in error about Confucianism. A Confucian ruler is supposed to know how to take criticism:
Zilu asked how to serve a prince. The Master said: “Tell him the truth even if it offends him.” (Analects 14.22)
But not in public. I have found that a respectful Confucian student is quite ready to correct me as his teacher to my face, but not in front of other students, and in this he follows the example of the Master.
Confucian Li often reminds people of their differences in status without obscuring their common humanity. The Analects put an emphasis on status because Li has more useful work to do within a hierarchy than it does among equals. Equals have less need of internal restraints in acting upon one another than unequals do. Competition aside (and Li does put competition aside), there is a natural harmony among peers. But when people find themselves at different levels of power, they are liable to clash.
Li does not impose hierarchy, but where there is hierarchy Li makes it harmonious and humanizes the behavior of people at all levels. Respect is reciprocal: great leaders earn the respect of their followers by treating those followers with respect. In a system restrained by Li, no ruler treats his subordinates like beasts of burden, and no subordinate fears his rulers as one might fear a beast of prey. Where there are power differences—and there are always power differences—Li takes the sting out of obedience for those below, and it lifts from rulers the burden of using force, rather than example, to maintain control.
Hierarchy is not the only context for Li as understood by Confucius and Mencius. All human beings, in being human, have the capacity for virtue, and therefore people at all levels of power may cultivate virtue in themselves through education and ceremony. Ceremony does, in the end, celebrate universal brotherhood:
Sima Niu was grieving: “All men have brothers; I alone have none.” Zixia said: “I have heard this: life and death are decreed by fate, riches and honors are allotted by Heaven. Since a gentleman behaves with reverence and diligence, treating people with deference and courtesy, all within the Four Seas are his brothers. How could a gentleman ever complain that he has no brothers?” (Analects 12.5)
Ancient Greeks would recognize the sentiment and its connection with reverence. In both cultures, thoughts about reverence lead people to ask why privileges should be associated with birth. Confucius prefers to see common people rise to positions of authority, because they are more likely to have been properly trained in Li (Analects 11.1). And he evidently taught that a noble crosses the boundary of Li if, by virtue of high birth, he lays claim to knowledge or virtue he does not actually have.
The power of leaders derives from character, and their authority is essentially moral. The practice of Li humanizes power by recasting it as moral authority. But the Confucian point is stronger than that: Li simply is the human way to exercise authority:
The Master said, “If you can govern your country with Li and deference, what difficulties will you have? If you cannot do so with Li and deference, what is the use of Li?” (Analects 4.13 [see also 8.2, 9.14, 13.4, and 15.33])
This seems to imply that Li is the very means by which the ruler has influence over people. At first sight, this seems absurd. How could the mere practice of ceremony secure the power of a ruler? No one who has taken Machiavelli to heart would believe this for a moment; Machiavellians are convinced that it is better for a ruler to be feared than to be loved. But Confucius’ teaching does not address the issue between fear and love; above all, his teaching deals with what we would call respect, and the importance of this to leadership.
Reverence is a virtue of leadership because it promotes mutual respect between leader and follower. Leaders generally find that respect is far more reliable than either fear or love for securing obedience. John Locke observed:
He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders must have a great reverence for his son. (Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693])
A son may love his father and still treat his father’s values with contempt; a son who fears his father will seek every opportunity to escape his father’s influence. But a son who respects his father has a chance to make his father’s values his own. And Locke is surely right: within the family or not, leaders cannot retain the respect of their followers without showing due respect to them in return. Juvenal said that the greatest reverence is due the young (14.47), deliberately reversing the tradition that directs reverence ever upward.
This is one way to explain how power can grow from Li—through the respect that gathers around good leadership. But this respect travels both ways in the hierarchy, both up and down, and the emphasis in the Confucian tradition has mainly been on deference to higher ranks, even though it is the very highest rank that has the greatest need to show deference. There is a puzzle here, which I will take up in connection with leadership in modern life. Reverence generally points upward. But if so, how can it help to promote respect that is mutual and goes both ways? And, if reverence points upward, at what does it point? Must the object of reverence be a divine being? And if so, does it matter what you believe about the divine?
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster.
—From the Prologue to
Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”