The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism by Michael David Kaulana Ing (review)

the Kongzi jiayu (9.9, 15.2). While it may appear in Analects 13.18 that Confucius places family feeling above social justice, Huang argues that in fact there is no dilemma here: the son should conceal the father’s wrongdoing in order to be able to ‘‘gently admonish’’ the father in an atmosphere of family intimacy that will allow the father to take seriously the admonishment and change his ways. Thus the purpose of Confucius’ advice is to preserve both the family relationship and social justice in the long run, by increasing the probability that the father will not commit such crimes in the future. This, in my view, is an excellent solution to the problem, a solution that goes beyond the troubling statement in the Analects and takes into account the broader meanings of filiality. Confucius: A Guide for the Perplexed is true to its title in that it addresses some of the points from classical Confucian thought which can be philosophically troubling. The argumentation not only refers to but engages with an enormous body of literature, ranging from Confucius and Aristotle to Chinese commentators over a span of 2,000 years, and extending to modern and contemporary Chinese and Western philosophers. While it will not take the place of a historical survey of Confucius or Confucianism, I would highly recommend it for any college or university-level class in early Chinese philosophy. JOSEPH A. ADLER Kenyon College MICHAEL DAVID KAULANA ING, The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 285 pp. US$35 (pb). ISBN 978-0-19992491 -2 In this work, Michael Ing shows how the Liji 禮記 [Book of Rites] recognizes and explains the fact that rituals sometimes fail to achieve their intended aims (the ‘‘dysfunction of ritual’’). He argues that both preventable and unpreventable failures in rituals are a central concern throughout the Liji and applies ritual theory’s focus on failures of rituals to the cases one finds in early Confucianism, arguing that these Confucian examples can augment our understanding of both Confucian ritual and the nature of ritual generally. Ing carefully specifies his audience: the fields of ritual studies and Confucian ethics (p. 16). He does not offer a comprehensive study of this text nor does he aim to offer an ethnographic account of early Chinese ritual performance (p. 8); rather, he offers a stimulating interpretation of what the Liji and other early Confucian texts say about the issue of ritual failure. In the first of eight chapters, Ing presents the view that, in the Liji, rituals are ‘‘scripted performances enacted by human beings for the purposes of ordering the world’’ (p. 18). He examines different conceptions of ritual in the Liji and introduces his terminology for the different functions of ritual. Interestingly, Ing refers to ritual participants as ritual ‘‘agents,’’ which for most ethicists connotes a more individualistic, autonomous understanding of ritual participants. In chapter 2 he describes ‘‘ritual dysfunction,’’ offering a typology of the different ways in which a ritual can fail to achieve the desired outcome and different BOOK REVIEWS 161 kinds of ritual agents. Readers should use caution here; since the term ‘‘dysfunction’’ (unlike ‘‘failure’’) suggests that something is faulty or abnormal —as opposed to simply incomplete or imperfect—references to ‘‘dysfunctional ’’ rituals may bring to mind something more serious than rituals that sometimes fail to produce the desired outcome. Ing’s primary concern is the Liji’s discussion of ‘‘unpreventable failures in efficacy,’’ or cases in which rituals fail to produce the desired outcome regardless of how good ritual agents are at modifying rituals in different circumstances to ensure their continued success—something he terms ‘‘fluency.’’ Chapter 3 offers a critique of how scholars of Confucian ethics have understood ritual failure. Ing argues that contemporary interpreters of Confucianism tend to erroneously interpret early Confucian views of the junzi 君子 as invulnerable, precluding, for instance, the ‘‘possibility that the virtuous agent might choose a right action but be left with despair, or that he might be confronted with failure and be unable to untangle the agencies involved’’ (p. 77). Instead, Ing argues that early Confucian sages were often deeply anxious and distressed when their rituals...