讀書筆記——The Authentic Confucius
Feb. 23, 2016
(originally posted on Amazon)
A. Chin (2007), The Authentic Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics. New York: Scribner.
中文版: 金安平(著)，黃煜文(譯) (2008)，孔子—喧囂時代的孤獨哲人。台北: 時報。
I am from Taiwan, where because of convoluted historical reasons, Confucius (孔子) is especially highly valued as as sage, as goes the tradition, and high school students are still required to memorize numerous sayings from The Analects (論語).
What Chin did, then, seems particularly valuable to me: to unravel layers of ideology propagation advertised by purposeful rulers, and misconception that has piled up over the course of two thousand years, in order to find the “authentic” Confucius.
Chin traces Confucius’s life in an extremely meticulous manner. She literally quotes different available sources regarding the same event, compares them in details, and carefully adds her own interpretation and guess. She holds disbelief even in Sima Qian (司馬遷)’s well-acclaimed The Record of History (史記). For example, because absence of data of Confucius before his middle age, the narrative begins with his leaving state Lu (魯國). Likewise, when sources contradict each other regarding the route Confucius took and their order, she compares Sima Qian’s account and Zhuangzi’s (莊子), and analyzed which is more reasonable. She often paraphrases the Zuo Commentary (左傳) for pages to supply the reader the background history. This is great, but I have to admit, from time to time it can be rather dry.
Aside from this, what’s equally important is Confucius’s thinking — Chin deals with this beginning mainly in chap. 6. “Well” — the reader may wonder — “can’t you read The Analects yourself?” No, the original text of The Analects contains many archaic expressions even modern Chinese reader cannot understand without referring commentary; while those annotators in Han dynasty, it seems to me, could not decipher many ones either. The consequence is that there are too much interpretation, and too little excavation of original meaning.
(By the way, while it is English version that I read, someday I discovered the Chinese translation of this book in the 2nd hand bookstore, but found that actually original English is easier to read, because Chin’s word-choice reflects her interpretation of the source when meaning is uncertain, which is lost as the translator simply replace original Analects text.)
The lack of jargons in Confucius’s conversation style seem to be a double-edged sword: on the surface, Confucius’s opinion seems amicable and informal; on the other hand, the vagueness hinders a progressive discussion. His frequent change of opinion when facing different audience gave rise to contradictory statements. If you think Confucius appears trite and paradoxical, it is not your fault — he is.
A focus is always the concept “ren” (仁), emblem of Confucian thinking. Many times, direct inquiry about “ren” to Confucius is circumvented by examples of what behaviour counts as “ren-ness”. One might have the impression that “ren” is too all-embracing to be meaningful. All benevolent characters, even conflicting ones, are said by Confucius to be “ren-ness” a “Gentleman / Junzi” (君子) possesses. Put in bookish manner, “ren” has included too many intension so there is no extension left.
(It reminds me of the joke that Newton’s first law may be put in other words that “Everything is either moving or remains still”, and second law is a trivial definition “F := ma”, and the third law seems to be a law but is wrong in presence of EM field, because momentum no longer conserves in naive manner — there are field momentum. The point here is that whether a bunch of words is actually a tautology is not always transparent.)
But this is hardly fair to Confucius. He seemed to have meant something very specific — A Gentleman shows compassion to the world, retains virtue and moderation, and rejoice in the orderliness of ritual music. A Gentleman thinks of the good and evil, rather then power and fame; of the proper, not the strategical.
Thinking of this, I cannot resist to add a point about the concept “Junzi”, that Chin seems not to have made clear. The rendition “Gentleman” captures very well the original sense of “Junzi”, which we easily forget because of the familiar Confucian usage. Literally “a Lord’s son”, the word “Junzi” simply means “aristocrat”, and “Xiaoren” (小人), as opposed to Junzi, simply “commoner” — this is not intended as an obscure metaphor. Some have translated it as “Superior Man”, which totally misses the point.
Think of the time Confucius was. Treachery, dictatorship, tyrannicide, murder … the Spring-Autumn era is in endless war. Confucius, then, is a sad figure. He tried in vain to save the world just beginning to fall apart, by asking us to act “like an aristocrat”, following the ideal perhaps once suitable in the legendary times.
But I don’t think this as classism. Essentially, his point is to ask us to face this sinful world with gentlemanly poise. He expects us to model ancient sage by meticulously following traditional ceremony, and to find comfort in ritual music known only to aristocrats.
It is not without reason that Confucius is often likened to other three well known figures, the Buddha, Socrates, and Jesus, that were also active in the antiquity times. But perhaps it is Confucius about whom least account survived.
We have numerous dialogues featuring Socrates written by Plato. Being quasi-drama, there has been considerable doubt about their accuracy. But Plato’s dialogues were published while Socrates was alive, so it’s suggested it’s unlikely to be drastically different with Socrates’s view.
And the Buddha’s sayings are preserved in the Āgama collection; they fills several bookcase units. The Indian oral tradition are said by scholars to be very reliable.
Lastly, sources about Jesus include not only canonical gospel, but dozens of non-canonical books as well, adding up to thousands of pages. They both build depth to Jesus’s portrayal. Apart from supernatural accounts, at least Jesus’s words are seldom ambiguous.
However, very little sure is known about Confucius. Materials that survived the Qin censorship and Qin-Han wars were already scarce. Yes, we have a fragmentary, unordered collection of his sayings in the slim book, The Analects. There are also occasional appearances in history Zuo Commentary. Except for these, however, we have only spurious stories featuring Confucius in the collection Zhuangzi, and the biography of Confucius written by Sima Qian, whose showy storytelling borders on fiction work rather than history.
No wonder many Analects entries remain riddles. We find the puzzling remark that (these translations are all mine) “Confucius met Nanzi”, but have no idea why Zilu was “annoyed”, to which Confucius “vowed that ‘If I had done what you disapprove, may Heaven loathe me, may Heaven loath me!’ ” (子見南子、子路不說。夫子矢之曰、予所否者、天厭之、天厭之。)
What made Zilu unhappy? Was it because Nanzi had a promiscuous reputation? Or did Zilu disapprove the fact that Confucius found job through despicable persuasion, if he did? We simply do not know.
We don’t know, either, the significance that one passersby, Jie Yu, sang to Confucius as thus, “Phoenix, ah, Phoenix! Why is the virtue declining? What has passed we cannot correct, and what is yet to come, we still may pursue. Enough, ah, enough on this! Now the ruler is dangerous.” (鳳兮、鳳兮、何德之衰。往者不可諫、來者猶可追。已而、已而、今之從政者殆而。)
What was this metaphor referring to? Was Jie Yu hinting that a particular political figure would be dangerous? And who was the phoenix (鳳)? Was it Confucius? Did Jie Yu think “the Phoenix” was too noble to be in this messy world? Did he, then, suggest hermitage as an evasion from the world?
Or when Confucius “was in the state Chen, he said, ‘Go back, alas, go back! Youths among our men are reckless and plain — brilliantly forms a piece of cloth, not knowing how to be trimmed.’ ” (子在陳。曰、歸與、歸與。吾黨之小子狂簡、斐然成章、不知所以裁之。)
The word “kuang jian”, rendered here “reckless and plain”, is long disputed. The modern sense of “kuang” is “mad, crazy”, and that of “jian” is “simple, concise”. But “jian” also may be “bamboo slip”, so some suggest that Confucius’s students are “careless in dealing with canonical works”. What’s more confusing, the phrase rendered here “brilliantly forms a piece of cloth” is an archaic idiom that may also stand for “well-written prose”. The analogy is to view writing as stitching, and rhetoric, embroidery; indeed the stem of “wen” (文), “a word, a symbol”, is “pattern, heraldry”.
In the above, I gave a more literal translation than Chin did. Having quoted several excerpts that Chin examined at great length, what I wish to illustrate for the Western reader is what the Analects is actually like. I do not mean to doubt Chin’s scholarship quality — She is incredibly rigorous. Nevertheless, the readers may notice that many words are obscure, even in native tongue’s view.
Yes, I do think Confucius, this untimely thinker, is great, in many timeless way. But despite two-thousand-year quest, the “authentic Confucius” already is lost forever.
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