Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (review)

146 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 Philip J. Ivanhoe. Confucian Moral SelfCultivation. The Rockwell Lecture Series, vol. 3. New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Wien, and Paris: Peter Lang, 1993. xii, 116 pp. Hardcover $35.95, isbn 0-8204-2200-2. For those who search perpetually for works that will accurately and effectively convey, especially to undergraduate students, some sense ofthe many threads of continuity within Confucian thought across time, Confucian Moral SelfCultivation is indeed a welcome—if expensive—volume. The book is an expanded rendition ofa series ofthree talks delivered by the author as part ofthe distinguished Rockwell Lectures at Rice University in 1992. It concisely presents the individual visions of six traditional philosophers of Confucian persuasion—Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming, and Dai Zhen—on the discrete but integrative theme ofmoral self-cultivation. However, we must quickly acknowledge that, even in presenting the unified and yet distinct visions ofthese thinkers, as a fellow specialist, Philip J. Ivanhoe was himself confronted with a daunting challenge. This is because one ofthe chief aims of the book was that it should "appeal to philosophically inclined people who may have little or no knowledge of the history of Chinese philosophy, and historians and others interested in Chinese culture, who may have little or no knowledge ofphilosophy" (p. xi). Nevertheless, ifwe are meant to assess the worth of any scholarship by how well it fulfills at least the majority ofits professed goals, then we are fortunate in being able to consider Confucian Moral SelfCultivation to be a work of genuine value. Nevertheless, in all fairness, even while we must recognize it as the crystallization of a medium (i.e., the lecture) that is often intentionally simplified, Confucian Moral SelfCultivation, at key points, manifests some disturbing elements of oversimplification. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in its introduction, which is deficient primarily because it fails to provide the reader with either a replete or a truly balanced depiction of die context in which Confucianism and its values arose. Absent from the picture Ivanhoe presents are all indications of the contending currents ofideological tension that were operative at the same time as the formulation of Confucianism. Ivanhoe's description of the emergence of the Confucian primacy on the moral acculturation of the individual —whether at the beginning (eleventh century b.c.) or certainly at the midpoint (seventh century b.c.) ofthe Zhou dynasty—is overly idyllic, and it suggests that this philosophical evolution somehow arose and achieved fruition in a kind© 1999 by University of intellectual vacuum, unchallenged by any conflicting alternatives. Although the ofHawaii Pressclassic age ofthe "hundred schools" is ofcourse coterminous with the late Zhou (from the fifth century to the end ofthe third b.c.), many of the precursors to Reviews 147 what would become its famous rival doctrines (e.g., die ideas attributed to Guan Zhong via the Guanzi) had their inceptions and flourished much earlier. This reality deserves at least passing mention,1 for the Confucian heritage that we now possess is largely the result of a concerted response to significant political and intellectual countertrends that it confronted during the earliest stages ofits development. Consequendy, an introduction to a work ofthis type that makes no mention ofthese countertrends and that suggests by omission that Confucianism —alone and exclusively—was ideologically preeminent more than ten centuries before the actual fact is not altogether helpful, especially to an intended audience of novice readers. This initial problem notwithstanding, Ivanhoe begins Confucian Moral Self Cultivation in earnest as we might expect: with a first chapter dedicated to the views on moral self-cultivation of Confucius (551-479 b.c.), founder ofthe school that, in the West, is named after him. In faithfulness to his stated theme and much in the spirit ofthe majority ofscholarship that has since appeared in reaction to the landmark study of Herbert Fingarette (which, oddly, is mentioned only in a footnote),2 Ivanhoe describes the self-cultivation program ofConfucius as one that accommodated and even empowered the individual at the same time that it levied its prescribed social demands. Ivanhoe contends that Confucius promoted an acquisition model ofmoral self-cultivation, one that occupies...