Confucian Cultures of Authority

Ought We Throw the Confucian Baby Out with the Authoritarian Bathwater?:A Critical Inquiry into Lu Xun’s Anti-Confucian Identity

Ought We Throw the Confucian Baby Out with the Authoritarian Bathwater?: A Critical Inquiry into Lu Xun’s Anti-Confucian Identity Virginia Suddath Introduction The concerns of this paper emerge out of a number of interrelated interests and ongoing intellectual problems; primary among them are those arising from contact between Western and non-Western cultures and values, specifically between post-Enlightenment European culture and that of post-Qing Confucian China. One culture was in the full thrust of its intellectual and expansionist glory, and the other at a moral and political ebb. What took place during this earlier phase of contact and the resultant anxieties and sociopolitical realities necessitated by interchange are still being played out today. The questions are still being debated in China as to how best to respond to the challenges that this encounter and these new options pose to the Chinese worldview. Witness the debate over human rights in China and the process of democratization that is ongoing. What kind of a democracy will emerge as a result of the intersection with traditional Confucian socialization? How do assumptions of a rights-based view of autonomous individual achievement intersect with a culture that has an equally powerful, but radically different, understanding of human flourishing? In which domains is free speech, especially speech critical of the central government, to be sanctioned ? These are several of a host of areas of ongoing intercultural discussions and discontinuities arising out of initial contact. More narrowly, this is an inquiry into the practice of remonstrance (jian) within the Confucian tradition. Jian can properly be seen as an indigenous means of protest, one that has been a documented part of 215 216 Virginia Suddath the Confucian state bureaucracy from at least the Han Dynasty, with some elements dating back to the Zhou Dynasty. This topic is one especially worth pursuing at this time given that China is at present experiencing difficulty in negotiating a place for protest within contemporary society. Questions arise as to whom in the government or which policies can be properly or safely criticized and to what degree or level of command this criticism can extend. For instance, the central authorities’ tolerance toward localized strikes and tax demonstrations and their overt encouragement of such protests as those against the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade contrast sharply with the persistent campaign of repression that has been directed against Falun Gong members and the silencing of those who publicly question the policies of the Central Committee. Exploring such a homegrown means of protest not only demonstrates that this technique has historically had a place within the Chinese tradition, but also is useful in countering those who might claim that protest or freedom of speech need be discussed in rights language and its practice imported. My aim here is not to address directly the applicability of such a conception of protest in contemporary China; rather, in examining jian as both a philosophical and an historical phenomenon ,IaimtocontributetotheprojectofrearticulatingConfucianism, making it more relevant and giving it greater cultural currency. Recent discussions within social science circles on “Rethinking Confucianism in Asia” have a tendency to depict contemporary neoConfucianism as some kind of moral “software” informing the “hardware ” of East Asian authoritarianism or authoritarian capitalism. The arguments are often between those making positive claims about neoConfucianism as the moral and cultural software in China’s modernization —the glue that holds the culture together and enables stability in the course of rapid change—and negative claims about its role in legitimating patriarchal social relations and authoritarian political habits. “NeoConfucianism is responsible for the subjugation of Asian women” is a common theme, although studies of elite women in late imperial China increasingly challenge this stereotype.1 Another is: “Neo-Confucianism provides a liberal vision of human agency and mitigates against autocratic government,” even though most Confucians since antiquity have willingly served authoritarian rulers and many late-twentieth-century politicians who call themselves Confucians favor neoauthoritarian governments . Moreover, we know that Confucianism in East Asia has been rife with dissension among elites in the face of state orthodoxy, especially in China during the late Qing and Republican periods. And certainly it can be argued that during the Mao era, the persistence of Confucianism Ought We Throw the Confucian Baby Out 217 is evidenced by the virulence and violence of the various campaigns to eradicate any of its dogged cultural manifestations. It is a...