Lead Them with Virtue: A Confucian Alternative to War by Kurtis Hagen

Opining in the introduction of the now-classic edited volume Chinese Ways of Warfare, John King Fairbank (1907–1991) observes that a "disesteem of physical coercion was deeply embedded in the Confucian teaching" and that doing "the right thing in the right way and at the proper time not only maintained the web of civilized relationships; it also confirmed one's position within it."¹ By "the right thing," in this instance, Fairbank here means to refer essentially to the basic Confucian predisposition of ordinarily abstaining from confrontational violence as much as possible and, to date, no secondary study as yet has pursued this premise more purposefully or exhaustively than Kurtis Hagen's Lead Them with Virtue: A Confucian Alternative to War. As Hagen himself asserts in his own introduction, "This book argues that Confucius's most influential early followers, Mencius and Xunzi, who spoke more directly about warfare than did Confucius, would support the strategy of leading with virtue as an alternative to military interventions" (p. x). Hagen's introduction also provides a summary of the structure of the book, revealing it to consist of eight chapters and a conclusion.

Immediately thereafter, via chapter 1 ("A Brief Overview of Confucianism"), Hagen mainly introduces us to the principal classical Confucian philosophers recognized as advocating the anti-violence stance, who happen to be none other than the most familiar successors to the tradition after its namesake, Mencius (ca. 372–ca. 289 B.C.E.) and Xunzi (ca. 325–ca. 235). Hagen also employs this chapter to explicate what prevailed as the "Confucianized" interpretations of seven key classical terms, with those being: junzi 君子 (exemplary persons); de 德 (influential virtue); ren 仁 (benevolence); li 禮 (ritual propriety); yi 義 (appropriateness); tian 天 ("Heaven"); and dao 道 (way). For the most part, interpreting these terms quite conventionally, Hagen regards the first five as more closely associated with "the idea of moral leadership" (p. 3) than the latter two, which he identifies with "a religious, or at least quasi-religious aspect" (p. 7) of Confucianism.

Chapter 2 ("Western and Chinese Attitudes Regarding Warfare") is of unquestionably high significance because it is herein that Hagen unveils his principal argument in the form of a purported "Confucian solution" that is expounded in the next four chapters in succession. However, any solution first necessitates a problem, which, in this case, Hagen discerns in what he regards as the two most prevalent and mutually discrete Western attitudes toward warfare, which is either to romanticize it or to moralize it. In Hagen's view, the implications of either of these approaches to war are as misguided as they are deadly because it distorts the grim realities of contestation by combat. Relying chiefly on the representative examples of the first of these attitudes posed by Niccoló Machiavelli (1469–1527) and Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), Hagen posits that romanticization, on the one hand, basically conflates gallantry with virtue, thus encouraging, even more, an overindulgence in war. On the other hand, the moralization of war imposes unrealistic expectations for conflict, wherein rules of engagement, based on a logic that moral constraints must be maintained even during wartime, are presumed to apply in situations in which they are neither applicable nor enforceable. For Hagen, the solution to be found in the Chinese tradition, and articulated in a variety of classical texts, ranging from the ostensibly militarist Sunzi and Sun Bing to the Mozi to the Daoist Laozi (though much less so Zhuangzi) to the Confucian Mencius and Xunzi, is a stark and no-nonsense apperception of war that is unclouded by either romanticization or moralization. Once seen for what it really is, the truly virtuous will seek to avoid war at all costs and, accordingly, even wars with humanitarian rationales could be deemed to be unworthy of support.

Chapter 3 ("Anticipating Confucian Just War Theory") is an essential table-setting chapter for the next three that follow. It is constructed to accomplish many tasks but the two most important of these are that of broaching the emergence of Confucian just war theory, which both shares some commonalities and yet evinces some departures from the Western understanding of the concept, and that of articulating a variation on righteous militaristic response that is referred to as "humanitarian intervention." We may regard the operative assumptions behind this latter concept as peculiarly Chinese and perhaps preponderantly Confucian because, as Hagen describes its incidences, "Note that the common justification for humanitarian military intervention parallels the justification of torture in a ticking-time-bomb scenario. In such a situation, justification for torture, which is prima-facie wrong (or inhumane, buren 不仁), is based on larger humanitarian concerns—concerns for the welfare of others." However, paradoxically, in the absence of direct textual evidence of its premises in practice, humanitarian intervention is also contrary to the point of antithetical incompatibility with Confucian mores and sensibilities because, as Hagen also aptly states, "it is hard to imagine that Mencius would condone torture even to achieve some good end" (p. 51).

Chapter 4 ("Mencius on War and Humanitarian Intervention") appropriately delves further into this paradox that is humanitarian intervention, particularly through the example of Mencius, especially as the idea is interpreted chiefly via the contemporary commentator Daniel A. Bell. In chapter 5 ("Xunzi on War and Humanitarian Intervention"), Hagen examines the Xunzian perspective on humanitarian intervention and finds it to be uncharacteristically congruent with that of Mencius. In both cases, Hagen finds the positions of these two icons of Confucian tradition on interventionism by force of arms to be more pacifistic than is suggested by a host of later modern commentators. Through chapter 6 ("Mencius and Xunzi on Tyranny and Humanitarian Intervention: A Response to Twiss and Chan"), Hagen considers the humanitarian interventionist views of Mencius and Xunzi within the context for which they are most frequently cited—that is, in response to the non-virtuous oppression of misrule. To be sure, customarily, a legion of past and present commentators has contended that, from the standpoint of either Mencius or Xunzi, no context could be found to be more fitting for humanitarian intervention than that of tyrannical rule. Hagen, however, frequently relying on the same extant textual evidence, oftentimes quite compellingly, argues that they are wrong.

Chapters 7 ("From Human Nature to the Clash of Civilizations") and 8 ("Two Visions of Confucian World Order") of Lead Them with Virtue are quite overtly different from the rest in that they—evidently, by design—appear to be included to facilitate extension—and, arguably, the projection—of the author's position on classical Confucian pacifism from the past into the present. Both are chapters of aspirational advocacy, and thus, by definition, they are as wishful as they are hypothetical. In the former, premised on the foundational Xunzian claim of our innate evilness (best interpreted as inborn selfishness), Hagen makes the case for the benevolent imposition of "a system of mechanisms to encourage moral development" in our times and for a corresponding skepticism that is to be directed against all "arguments supportive of violence" (p. 113). In the latter, he proffers the establishment of either of two Confucian alternative governance models, whether a "Xunzian global order" or a "Mencian international harmony," that might supersede and supplant the current-day fractious order of competitive nation-states (p. 131). In concluding his book, Hagen casts his lot in favor of the latter Mencian substitution. However, upon reflection, he decides that the victory of the former—as suggested by a more charitable interpretation of Xunzi than is typical—might very plausibly differ little from the latter. Most important to Hagen is that the establishment of either would be preferable to the real-world ever-violently combustible status quo, thus representing—by his own subjectivist account—the modern-day equivalent of leading with virtue.²

We can little doubt that the contrarian arguments of Kurtis Hagen in Lead Them with Virtue are adversative and counter-conventional, sometimes seeming to be willfully so. Yet, given that they do indeed stem from what appear to be honest and good-faith readings of nothing other than the very same limited fund of well-known extant texts available to us all but about which, nonetheless, it is impossible to be wholly conclusive, Hagen's postulations necessarily possess an interpretational sanctity of their own and are thus deserving of our thoughtful consideration, if not our full adoption. However, all the same, if there is any weakness in Hagen's effort, then we must attribute such a shortcoming to forces beyond his control, with the same sources that have informed and advantaged his viewpoints being incapable of advancing him or anyone else much further. Indeed, in my opinion, that singular weakness that surfaces is that, even at the end of reading Lead Them with Virtue, we are brought no closer to knowing the perspectives of Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.) on the matters of war and the violence that attends it than when we began. Interesting, too, is despite the boldness of interpretation evinced in relation to Mencius and Xunzi, Confucius clearly poses an enigma for Hagen that neither of his successors does and, while by no means intending to diminish the author's achievement, I, as a knowledgeable but still inquisitive reader, would have much preferred the trade-off of less certainty about the stances of the former two for significantly more speculation regarding that of the latter. In truth, there is a substantial and growing body of recent and ongoing scholarship, beginning with that of E. Bruce and A. Taeko Brooks in the late 1990s, that is strongly suggestive of the possibility that, with respect to his views on militarism, the Confucius of received tradition has been sanitized and civilianized well beyond what more proximate generations and certainly his contemporaries would have recognized.³ Consequently, we ultimately have no choice but to acknowledge that like-mindedness between the namesake of the tradition and those intellectual descendants born barely a century after his death might have been quite tenuous. Hagen, for his part, despite his strident defense of the pacifism of Mencius and Xunzi, seems more-than-tacitly to accept this prospect, stating "I acknowledge that it is unclear that Confucius himself would endorse the positions I attribute to Mencius and Xunzi. He may have been too flexible regarding the use of force. But much remains unclear about this" (p. xi). Even as we look past Hagen's unrestraint in conveying his acknowledgment interlaced with a possibly too gratuitous value judgment, in the end, probably to our betterment as inquisitive, nimble, and independently minded thinkers ourselves, this indeterminacy regarding the precise thinking of Confucius with respect to war is perhaps just as subject to debate, inconclusive, and enduringly open-ended as it should be.