Azərbaycan Milli Elmlər Akademiyası Fəlsəfə Ġnstitutu “Müasir fəlsəfə problemləri” Ģöbəsi
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- 3) Veneration of Saints – Presence of one’s own Ancestors
- 4) Universalism – Exclusivity
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2) Utopia – Back to the Ancients Political philosophy has been an important resource for critique and for development of the public sphere in various European societies. For Thomas Morus as for other European authors of ―utopias‖ the literary products of their artful imagination were tools to criticize existing conditions in their countries by confronting them with a fictitious alternative. But in contrast to European imagined descriptions of an ideal condition of the public sphere, Confucius‘ critique of the deplorable status quo engulfing him during his lifetime was based on the conviction that the splendid alternatives he saw in front of his mental eye had actually existed in the not-to-distant past – or at least he perceived it as having existed then. This vision was kept alive as a view of a peaceful, prosperous, and happy age in the collective memory of his people that really existed, not on some remote imagined island, but on this very earth and in their own country 62 .
uniquely different from Western social philosophies. It also gave him considerably more authority in demanding change as a return to what had proven to work well in the past. By implication as well as in some texts explicitly, his powerful critique of the status quo and a consistent demand
61 Simmel, op. cit., 154. 62 This paragraph and the following text are based on H. J. Helle, China: Promise or Threat. A Comparison of Cultures, Chicago: Haymarket Books 2017.
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on people to change their ways by looking back at how their immortal ancestors had behaved, was and is a highly significant aspect of early Chinese philosophy. But what was the future state of affairs going to be? Was it possible to simply demand that a people, a society, a culture step back into its own past? Questions like these did not prompt many people in the West to return to a real or imagined splendid ancient order and to arrive at a view comparable to the Confucian Fugu (复古go back to the ancients). But Confucius, by teaching his disciples who in turn defended his views, spread the firm belief in a historical reality that was worth being brought back from the past. He inspired generations of Chinese with that dream. To him it is quite clear that the fundamental concepts and ethical rules for a peaceful and cultured society have already been implemented in his own country. They were tragically lost due to human wickedness. According to Confucius it is the task of normative knowledge, for learned Chinese to study the ancient corpus of wise insights and bring it back to again become
As a result of the principle ―go back to the ancients‖, China maintains a stable culture through the ages and combines it with various stages and types of civilization and technological progress. The West, by contrast spent at least the last three centuries in refining a specific civilization, based largely on progress in the natural sciences plus technology, combining that with various types of cultures. Thus, perhaps in China there is one lasting
transient cultures. If this comparison between China and The West has any merits, it must start by considering the Shang period with its bone inscriptions as that era during which the fundamentals of the uniquely Chinese continuity of culture came about. Following the assumption just outlined, those foundations would stay intact during the evolution of China throughout the following millennia. We can test the usefulness of this approach in applying it to various areas of social reality. What we know in the West, for instance, about the Presocratics was passed on because Aristotle wrote about it, and only few and fragmentary texts were found later to make his reports more rounded. But the research results published by Schwartz transcend the barrier of written sources and refer to conditions that prevailed even prior to the creation of texts as historical 527
records 63 . In the Shang period, which is central for Confucius when he looks back at an admirable past, animal bones and turtle shells were exposed to extreme heat in a fire until the material cracked. A religious specialist, a shaman or diviner, would then read a specific meaning into those cracks, by supposedly being inspired from the beyond. What had been revealed to him was then written on the bone or shell in which the crack occurred. This made it possible for Schwartz to construct a picture of the Shang period that can be dated to start at approximately the time of 1766 64
witnessed nothing but phases of decay, because the splendor of the Zhou era which he admired so much, ended before he was born. In his teaching he later referred to even the Xia dynasty which preceded the Shang, however, at that point mythology and history merge. To Confucius the eras of the Xia, the Shang, and the Zhou follow each other, and each contributed to the age of splendor. After that was lost prior to the days of Confucius, Chinese history drifted into what is referred to as the Spring and Autumn Period (since 722) and finally into the centuries of the Warring States (481- 221) at the end of an era of disarray 65 . The religion of the Shang period as it becomes accessible in the inscriptions on the oracle bones appears to be based on divining, as is familiar from studies on shamanism. Many cultures develop a liturgical procedure for finding out from the beyond what the divine spirits, including in the case of China the ancestors, expect their mortal followers or relatives to do. To this end they feel the need to know something about their future, or even about the meaning of their respective present. All this is perceived as results of what immortals decide. Illustrations for similar behavior in other cultures with comparable intentions are, for instance, inspecting the intestines of a slaughtered animal, laying out Tarot Cards, or throwing dice. But in China the rituals around the creation of inscriptions on oracle bones and turtle shells are more distinctly religious than in other cultures, since they serve to initiate a dialogue with the immortals. Yet, the heavenly powers, including the spirits of mountains and stars, appear secondary to
63 The following text is based on Benjamin I. Schwartz (1916-1999) The World of Thought in Ancient China, Cambridge, Mass. & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1985. 64 All years mentioned in this context here must be understood as BCE. 65 Livia Kohn, Kohn, Daoism and Chinese Culture, 3 rd edition, St. Petersburg, Florida: Three Pines Press 2012: p. 211. 528
the ancestors who are better known and of course closer to home for everyone. This can be seen as the foundation for the very special significance the family has in China to this day. According to the inscriptions on the oracle bones and turtle shells the entire ritual that led to those inscriptions was performed to address deceased members of the royal family. This can be concluded from the purpose of the sacrifice, the quality and meaning of the cups and other containers used, and from the burial site of the departed. The explanation of family and polity as originating pari passu from the same ancient social organization may be useful in examining the history of the relationship between – or the absence of a clear separation of – the private and the public in China and in explaining, why the two areas of social behavior have not become as clearly distinct from each other as in the West. The ease with which Chinese even today define people to whom they feel close as their adoptive kin or quasi brothers and sisters is striking to a Western observer.
In China since at least 1200 BCE the power of the ancestor appears to be based on a concept comparable to what in Western religious terminology is called Realpräsenz (being really present). For the faithful Catholic, Orthodox, and (since 1577) Lutheran Christian during consecration as the climax of the liturgy, God is in fact present in the consecrated bread and wine and thus constitutes a Realpräsenz in the midst of the congregation. In the Orthodox Christian tradition, the same is true for the respective saint who is believed to be present in his or her icon, provided that icon was created by the artist according to fixed rules for painting icons. Like the Christian God during the liturgy, or the Saint seen in his or her icon, one‘s own ancestor in China is really present in the family ritual. Schwartz clarifies that by quoting from the book of Mozi (also spelled Mo- tsu or Mo-tse): ―The spirit of the man is not the man, yet the spirit of your elder brother is your elder brother. Sacrificing to a man‘s spirit is not sacrificing to a man; sacrificing to your elder brother‘s sprit is sacrificing to your elder brother‖ 66 . Just as – from the perspective of ―we‖ versus ―they‖ – in The West the concept of Realpräsenz can only apply to ―us‖ as members of our own religious community, in China what was quoted here from the book Mozi, can only apply to members of ―our own‖ family. This creates a highly significant boundary between kinship groups: My ancestors are really present in this world, yours are not, at least they are not in my
66 Schwartz, op. cit.: 21. 529
presence. The flexibility of the kinship-oriented social system can be attributed to the life cycle of individuals: Over time sons become fathers, daughters become mothers and – more significantly under the patrilocal family tradition – daughters become mothers-in-law, and eventually, of course, they all become ancestors. In addition, some of the power a parent has over his infant child, is retained, checked and mitigated by love, if such love prevails. This means that the departed as well as the living need to primarily fulfill their duties according to what they owe the members of their clan. And attending to those duties is largely ritualized. They all, the living and
roles in the family drama as on the stage of a theater. Life is a ritual, ethics are the duty to perform that ritual with as much perfection as possible. Neglect of the ritual obligations towards living family member as well as toward the departed is sinning against one‘s ancestors. If a Chinese person does not play his or her role well on the stage of the kinship theater at home, then that person is nothing more than a poor actor. Why is that so? The ritual that can be reconstructed from the inscriptions on the oracle bones summons the ancestor as follows: The well-known immortal family member is asked to be present. This will remind him or her of their duties toward their own clan. In return the assembled faithful promise to perform their ritual obligations directed toward him or her. How can the living perform the ceremony of divination and expect the dead to be addressed by it, to abide by their respective role, unless the living themselves are willing to do that? Every role-play of course depends on how the correlate roles are performed, unless on stage in an exceptional situation an actor performs a soliloquy like Hamlet. But the question ―to be or not to be‖ can be raised only by an individual, not by a clan: The clan is eternal; the option ―not to be‖ does not exist. An individual can apologize for a deviant act; a clan cannot, because it includes immortals endowed with a certain degree of infallibility. That makes it more difficult for a Confucian Japanese to apologize for atrocities committed during World War II than for a Christian German. It is clear from these deliberations that the Chinese family as well as the ritualized interaction (li = 礼) in its context have a religious base of its own. Whereas in Christian cultures marriage and childbirth are attributed religious meaning from a religion located primarily outside the kinship system, i.e. in congregation and church, the Chinese tradition provides the source of religion from within the clan. This means of course that the Western family can more easily lose its religious dimension than the 530
Chinese family can. In the West, Catholic and Orthodox traditions are closely connected with the worship of saints, a practice which clearly depends on the extent to which the respective saints are known and appear familiar to the worshippers. In the absence of a dualistic world view in China, the beyond is more or less a continuation of this world with the same type of personnel living as members of large kinship systems and performing their well-known family roles here as they do there in the beyond. It is therefore plausible that the social structure of the beyond is a replica of the society of mortals, or vice versa, both including good as well as evil characters.
How do Orient and Occident compare from the perspective of ethics? The German poet and playwright Bertholt Brecht (1898-1956) was conscious of the work of the Chinese philosopher Mozi (also spelled Mo-tsu or Mo-tse 墨子ca. 490 – ca. 381 BCE) and his ethical principles of universal brotherly love. Brecht considered those to be a pre-Christian version of ethical universalism. But many devoted followers of Confucius (551-479), particularly Mencius (also spelled Meng Zi or Meng Tzu 孟子ca. 372 or 379 – ca. 289 BCE) who were aware of Mozi‘s teaching, reacted by claiming that it would be wrong to approach all human beings with equal love and respect. Mencius and his followers rejected Mozi‘s universalism because, as they saw it, it could only be achieved at the expense of special care and closeness within the family. Universal brotherly love, as taught by Jesus, and centuries before him by Mozi, the most impressive alternative to Confucius, would therefore result in the loss of a special emphasis on kinship ties. The description given above of Mozi‘s belief in brotherly love among all humans matches the concept of a universalistic ethic. However, such a position was not allowed to take root in China: Instead, Mencius, the Confucian, gave detailed reasons for his attack on Mozi‘s point of view: Animals too do not distinguish between family members and other individuals belonging to their own species. To the extent to which humans follow the notion of universal brotherly love, they would behave like animals. Accordingly, in the ethical debate that evolved, the Confucians rejected Mozi‘s teaching of brotherly love as animal-like. As a result of this attack, the teachings of Mozi disappeared from the agenda of Chinese philosophy
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and were not rediscovered until the middle of the 19th century 67 . Instead, the rule of placing the highest importance on the ties between relatives, developed into the dominant ethical position in China: An ethic of exclusivity based on kinship was to be acknowledged by the majority of the Chinese as fundamentally human to this day. In the West, a universalistic ethic was seen in connection with the ‗sinfulness‘ of everyone, including the rulers from Charlemagne to Henry VIII. It was part of Christian teaching and found its painful confirmation in history. This experience constantly reinforced the need for institutionalized ethical knowledge in the church as well as in the academy. In China there were intermittently truly admired monarchs whose presence in history could be interpreted as supporting the claim, that the ruling family was able to find within its ranks the one son who after his father‘s death had the ability to realize in his reign the combination of ―the highest possibility of human experience‖ 68 in ethics, with the concentration of absolute power in one person. The ethics of exclusivity helped justify that members of the imperial family had rights that no other family could claim, following the medieval Western saying quod licet Jovi no licet bovi (what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the ox). Looking at it this way, China may have had so many admired emperors since the beginning of the Common Era that the need to subject the individual sovereign‘s power to any law above him did not develop into a lasting institutionalized order because there seemed to be no need for that. Also there seems to be no need for human rights outside the West.
As a consequence, and in the absence of any structural option like a church, which in China could become the guarantor of ethical behavior – or at least of ethical knowledge outside the family –, the scholar and intellectual as
upon the unchecked authority of the emperor. China has been and is to this day ruled by persons, not by principles: The notion that everybody including the holder of the highest position in government is subject to a law binding to all, is absent. Even today in contemporary China any verdict
67 Wolfgang Bauer, Geschichte der chinesischen Philosophie, herausgegeben von Hans van Ess, München: Verlag G. H. Beck, 2006: 64. 68 Schwartz, ibid. p. 63. 532
handed down by a court of law can be annulled by the Communist Party 69 .
The absence of the general Western notion of equality from China is related to the central position of family values there. The inner order of family life everywhere is not egalitarian, it is instead hierarchical. In the context of family interaction, a parent surely claims rights from which smaller children are barred. Western demands for equality find their origin in sources other than the kinship system, or, if one wants to insist on the family context, in the idea of a universal brotherhood of all humans as siblings rather than the image of a three-generation kinship group in which social status is attributed according to age. The Western norm of equality before the law is based on equal rights awarded (by God?) to individual citizens over against their government. The Chinese tradition of inequality by contrast emphasizes the different duties individuals as family members have in protecting and caring for weaker ones under their domination. The centrality of kinship relationships in China makes the individuals less dependent there upon government action. It is true, that compared to the West, a Chinese person must acknowledge more duties toward family members, must provide financial support, and must take care of ailing and aging kin. But as a consequence, Chinese relatives depend on each other rather than on the government, which is certainly an ambivalent state of affairs. ―In the period of transition between feudalism and imperialism the school of thought which reflected the philosophic trend of the times best was that of Confucius and his followers. But the Confucian school was only one of many in this period of the ‗hundred schools‘" 70 . The reason why Confucianism became the dominant system of ethical teaching is attributed to the fact that its popularity in kinship contexts coincided with its adaptability to ―the Chinese imperial system‖ 71 . Yüklə 6,92 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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