On Confucius (review)

On Confucius by Peimin Ni is a volume in Wadsworth's series on major (mostly Western) thinkers. Organized into six brief chapters, Ni's introduction to Confucian thinking is presented in terms of comparative philosophy and from the perspective of contemporary new Confucianism. Ni discusses Confucian ideas with an eye to issues having cross-cultural relevance, and he incorporates views not only of Confucius, from the Analects, but also of later Confucian thinkers, modern scholars of Chinese thought, and Kant from traditional Western philosophy. This approach results in a very interesting, if sometimes questionable (in my view), analysis. Still, even when I found myself objecting to some claim or interpretation, I admired his stimulating and thought-provoking discussion. His voice is clearly present in this book in many ways, from his own comments on the ideas scattered throughout the text to the very way he frames the concepts for discussion.

The first chapter provides a sketch of the historical context of the Zhou dynasty, the life of Confucius, and the development of Confucianism. Much of the information here is based on traditional understanding, rather than on contemporary scholarship, and so its historical reliability is shaky in places. We are told, for example, that Confucius composed the Book of Rites and arranged parts of the Book of History, and there is no mention that these and similar traditional claims have long been challenged by modern historical and philological research. Ni does not include the results of recent research specifically concerning Confucius as a person and the Lunyu as a layered text. Undertaken by such scholars as Lionel Jensen, Robert Eno, and Bruce and Taeko Brooks among others, this research has radically revised our view of Confucius and ancient Chinese philosophy. The introductory chapter thus appears rather perfunctory in terms of its being a historical introduction. It serves more as a way to set up the following discussion, in which Ni examines many of the central concepts and positions of Confucius and later Confucian thinking.

In chapter 2, "The Unity between Heaven and Human Being," Ni presents various issues concerning how human beings are related to the cosmos. He orients the reader to the ideas presented by placing the Chinese concepts in subsections that have titles suggesting dualistic oppositions. Thus, "This World vs. Other Worlds" focuses on Confucius' views on life and death, "Immanence vs. Transcendence" on the meaning of the concept of Heaven (tian), "Anxiety vs. Curiosity" on the fundamental orientation of Chinese traditional culture, "Heart-mind vs. the Intellect" on the incipient moral tendencies of humans and on the Decree of Heaven, "Decision vs. Discovery" on the human choice of affirming morality, "Decree of Heaven vs. Fate" on the controllable and non-controllable aspects of a person's life, and "Contextual Person vs. Atomistic Individual" on the relational conception of human beings.

The categories themselves and the fact that these dualisms have different origins—from traditional Western philosophical concerns to historical Chinese concerns to contemporary interests—make for a stimulating approach. By deliberately placing Chinese ideas in a cross-cultural philosophical context, Ni organizes the material so that new questions can be asked of Chinese thought and one can think about the ideas in terms of new contexts. His discussion shifts back and forth between engaging in Confucian thought as a living set of ideas related to contemporary concerns and analyzing the material in terms of what it meant in past tradition. He cites various texts to clarify Confucian ideas. For instance, in his discussion of tian (Heaven), he cites not only from the Analects (17/19), but also from the Book of History and the Book of Odes. He offers further explanation by drawing on Hall and Ames' discussion of part-whole relations, which employed the Hua Yan Buddhist concept of the interpenetration of all things. As he does in many sections, Ni concludes with a summarizing comment, here that "characteristically all Confucians feel that the Decree of Heaven is bestowed on them" (p...