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Two Loci of Authority:Autonomous Individuals and Related Persons1
- State University of New York Press
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Two Loci of Authority: Autonomous Individuals and Related Persons1 Henry Rosemont Jr. I want to consider the concept of authority in cross-cultural perspective , with specific reference on the one hand to the contemporary United States, and on the other, to China, and even more specifically, classical Confucianism. Nuances aside, there are two ways authority may be exercised : by coercion, or threats thereof, based on strength and power; or by persuasion, based on knowledge and reason. In the former case, if the authorities have not come to their positions by democratic means we call them authoritarian, and in the latter case, the reasoned persuaders are considered authoritative. Hereafter I will say only very little about authoritarianism, concentrating on authoritative persons, who assist others in becoming the true authors of their lives. Authoritative persons usually are highly knowledgeable; we tend to do what our doctors tell us because they know more about health and disease than we do. Others are simply “wise in the ways of the world” (think of grandmothers). Authoritative persons appeal to some combination of reason (logic) and emotion (rhetoric—which is not devoid of reason). Given that persuasion involves getting people to act in ways they may not be inclined to act—it takes little persuasion to get a hungry person to eat—authoritative persons must offer arguments based on some basic assumptions shared by the other(s) they are endeavoring to influence.Theirworldviewsmustoverlapsignificantly,andatrock-bottom level, as I shall attempt to show, all parties should more or less share a similar conception of what it is to be a human being. Differing conceptions will thus lead to differing patterns of persuasion and have somewhat different consequences for the way a society is structured in its institutions, and in its values. Given one model of personhood (the modern West) justice will be valued, but freedom even more so; given 1 2 Henry Rosemont Jr. another model (the classical Confucian) the ordering will be reversed. Harking back to my title, authoritative persons will invoke the concept of the autonomous individual—free, rational, and self-interested—in the course of developing their arguments in the modern West, while the early Confucians based their arguments and concerns on the social and interpersonal nature of related persons. No one would insist that we are altogether autonomous individuals or altogether social, interrelated beings. By definition, self-consciousness implies an awareness of who and what I am as a unique person against all others. It is equally obvious that my sense of myself has been overwhelmingly influenced by my parents, relatives, teachers, friends, and many others. Thus the issue is not whether we are all one or the other of these conceptions, but which of them we take to be most fundamental, when others attempt to persuade us of the value of a particular course of action, or to weigh our values in a specific way. In what follows I will discuss these differing conceptions of what it is to be a human being in the context of the values of freedom and justice, and most specifically as these are implicated in the discourse on human rights as invoked by ostensibly authoritative persons. First I will briefly and critically sketch some major themes in contemporary Western moral, political, and legal philosophy, and some facts about the world today, with the aim of suggesting that the values of equality and justice—deeply rooted in Western culture—cannot be fully realized so long as we continue to more highly esteem other values, especially those pertaining to individual freedom and liberty. In the second part, I will sketch an alternative vision for ordering our values, the vision of the classical Confucians, with the aim of suggesting how and why we must begin to rethink what it is to be a human being, and what the good society might be, if the twenty-first century is to be a more peaceful and humane one than the twentieth. We are certainly not off to a good start. To avoid misunderstanding the nature of the arguments that follow, I must emphasize at the outset that in questioning the primacy of the value of individual freedom—which I will do—I am not going to suggest it be disvalued. In the same way, in championing classical Confucianism— which I shall do—I will not be urging you to take on a whole new set of values, for both as a matter...