A Review of Lionel Jensen’s Manufacturing
Confucianism
by Michael Ing 7/1/04 (rating #)
Review and Commentary (# of posts)
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“[W]e may simply
observe once again that the question “Is Confucianism a religion?” is one
that
the West has never been
able to answer, and China never able to ask.”
(Wilfred Cantwell
Smith, quoted in Jensen, 136)
The central call to action of Manufacturing
Confucianism is presented immediately as Jensen states, “I
propose that we resist the reflex to treat these entities, Confucianism and
ru, as equivalent and consider rather that what we know of Confucius
is not what the ancient Chinese know as Kongzi. I suggest instead that
Confucius assumed his present familiar features as the result of a
prolonged, deliberate process of manufacture in which European intellectuals
took a leading role. Our Confucius is a product fashioned over several
centuries by man hands, ecclesiastical and lay, Western and Chinese” (5).
While his two part conclusion of differentiating between Confucianism and
ru, and Confucius and Kongzi is generally accepted by all scholars in
the field, his subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) implications of taking
such a position are lightning rods of criticism. He provides a rather
balanced effort in neither “defending, nor attacking Confucianism” (28), but
is forced to deal with the result of deconstructing two very entrenched and
misappropriated terms, and is therefore almost by default taken up in the
position of dismantling the house, and no longer having a home to return to.
Thus while he presents no aggression toward ‘Confucianism’, there is a
direct affront to those that use the terms he has outmoded. His direct
attack on such appears on page 142, “Obviously there are risks in using the
term; it assumes much, conveys little, and by its simplicity conflates too
many former meanings, thereby preventing a productive modern reading of the
Chinese texts.” Manufacturing Confucianism does an excellent job at
taking the reader to the point of grasping the complexity of the issue, but
offers no solution to the dilemma. Not that it needs to; for it at least
initiates a dialogue that searches for a solution to the problem. But at the
same time Jensen downplays any salvific hope of ever using the terms
‘Confucius’ or ‘Confucian’ in a respectable way.
The manufacturing of Confucianism was a three part
process, stretching over two centuries, and arguably still taking place
today. The first was the intentional religious manipulation by Jesuit
missionaries beginning in the early seventeenth-century, interested in
finding a direct juxtaposition for Christianity, for the sake of mitigating
their proselytizing efforts. Jensen claims, “their interpretations may be
taken as self-serving or ideological in offering justification for their
evangelical work” (137). They imported a foreign concept, namely ‘religion’,
and because they assumed an absolute world wide religiosity, they quickly
saw ‘religion’ within the Chinese. In a sense, their position of Christian
religious superiority lead them to be willing to accommodate themselves
culturally but not to change what they saw as the essence religion.
Therefore conforming to an alien definition of the term was not even a
rejectable possibility. The second process was a social manipulation by
European intellectuals interested in a foreign realm, but also looking for
answers to questions of their times. They applied a new series of questions
to the Chinese religion, and the answer they got was an assumed reality
called ‘Confucianism’. ‘Confucius’ came to symbolize anything Chinese, and
Confucianism came to represent an ideal system of political morality. The
third process, unlike the previous two, was not a conscious manipulation to
serve a current Western trend, rather it was the importation of those ideas
full circle back into China primarily by indigenous Chinese trained in the
West. It left China as explained by the Jesuits, was interpreted by European
intellectuals, and returned as ‘Confucianism’ rather than the native
original concept.
If you stare at anything long enough you’ll eventually
see what you were looking for. Such may be said to be the case of the
Jesuits that came to China at the close of the sixteenth-century. They came
in the name of religion, and eventually found it. Using the theory of
accommodation, embodied by Paul in his discourse on the unknown god,
missionaries of the Order of Jesus created a sectarian religion in China
that became compatible with their version of Christianity. It was cut and
shaped to fit the needs of Jesuit justification in an attempt to demonstrate
the conformity of the two traditions. This is not to say that any of the
early priests had harbored any malecontent. They saw the ru tradition
as one on par with their own, and of the sanjiao, was the only one to
be fully Latinized whereas the other two are hybrid Anglo-Romanizations.
Matteo Ricci even called the ru, ‘la legge de’ letterati’ (The
Order of Literati), strikingly similar to the same term used to describe the
Order of Jesus. They translated many Chinese religious texts, and even
accorded Confucius the seat of a saint. They were even successful in
persuading many on both Eastern and Western hemispheres that Confucianism
was completely complementary to Christianity.
In doing such however, the Jesuits made “a native Christianity
that was indistinguishable from ru.” And at the same time forced each
tradition to answer previously unasked questions. In a sense, they created
meanings for ‘Confucius’ and ‘Confucianism’ that are not transferable back
into the original Chinese. By taking the ru customs, which at the
time had at least nine different classifications, and downplaying certain
characteristics, such as the religious aspect of rites to Kongzi, and
emphasizing others, such as Shangdi and Tian, the Jesuits were
successful in not only manufacturing a new way of life, but also persuading
others that what they taught was the Zhengxue, and what they
possessed was Zhengdao.
There are three primary alterations the Jesuits were responsible
for:
- They
invented the term ‘Confucius’. The Chinese characters
孔夫子do
not appear in any of the main stream philosophical literature; only a few
obscure texts from the Yuan dynasty. The Jesuits chose most likely chose
this translation to set Confucius apart for a Western audience, from other
philosophers, especially those considered heterodox, that had the zi
suffix. The Chinese did not need the extra hint. And in communicating
with them, early Jesuits like Ricci, usually wrote ‘kongzi’, or ‘zhongni’.
- They
redefined Xianru and Houru. For the Chinese this was a
chronological distinction and for the Jesuits it became an ideological
distinction, separating the original orthodox from the contemporary
heterodox.
- They
reordered the Four Books, placing the Analects in the front,
and Mencius in the back.
European intellectuals were responsible for taking the
Jesuit concept of ‘Confucius’ and creating the term ‘Confucian’. Primarily
coming from Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, “European scholars
embedded “China” and “Confucius” in the fearful symmetry of their then
struggle to reconcile the plurality of God’s vast creation with the unity of
science” (139). ‘Confucianism’ became an idealized realm of moral unity used
in opposition to the scourge of factionalism in the revolution. This same
sense of ‘Confucianism’ was then later imported back into China from the
West.
A
Personal Reaction
Once ‘Confucius’ and ‘Confucian’ have been dismantled,
we are left with two possible courses of reconciliation- Either justify our
current usage of these terms, or shun away from them in favor of a more
fitting alternative. Jensen unfortunately does not investigate
comprehensively the former option and therefore relies on the latter, but is
also unclear in constructing more fitting alternative. Thus arises the
unclaimed position, of wholesale avoidance of the tainted terms (although I
think he personally does a wonderful job at using almost all of the words he
feels create ambiguity, vagueness, and uncertainty). Jensen exacerbates the
situation by classifying ‘Confucius’ as a “figment of the Western
imagination” (9), and draws three particularly grinding conclusions. First
he states, “Obviously there are risks in using the term [Confucianism]; it
assumes much, conveys little, and by its simplicity conflates too many
former meanings, thereby preventing a productive modern reading of the
Chinese texts” (142). He then goes on to say, “Thus, I would contend, pace
Jordan Paper, that to employ the term “Confucianism,” which we know lacks
representational accuracy, in situations where accuracy is desired, is to
create confusion” (144). And “I believe that to pronounce ru “Confucian” or
Kongzi “Confucius” awakens the long history of the Jesuit project of
accommodation responsible for these inventions” (139).
Beyond the fact that he offers no grounding of ever
resolving the dilemma, and taints the terms beyond the point of return, the
application of his position in not using vague expressions is detrimental to
his original thesis. Under closer scrutiny even it falls victim to his
implied conclusions, and is therefore not without serious ideological
perfunctories. It is worth stating again, “I propose that we resist the
reflex to treat these entities, Confucianism and ru, as equivalent and
consider rather that what we know of Confucius is not what the ancient
Chinese know as Kongzi. I suggest instead that Confucius assumed his present
familiar features as the result of a prolonged, deliberate process of
manufacture in which European intellectuals took a leading role. Our
Confucius is a product fashioned over several centuries by man hands,
ecclesiastical and lay, Western and Chinese” (5). He uses two terms in
particular that are at least, if not more, packed with ideological luggage
than ‘Confucianism’. The first is ‘ancient Chinese’ and the second is
‘intellectual’. ‘Ancient Chinese’ presents an over simplified attempt at
unifying a diverse period of time. Jensen of course accepts the notion that
definitions change over time. However presenting a holistic, absolute
version of China in his thesis makes the Jesuit “manufacturing of
Confucianism” in the seventeenth-century appear all the more unprecedented.
The term ‘intellectual’ traditionally referred to scholars that stood in
opposition to the state, and while such may include the individuals he has
in mind, that in no way represents the entirety.
Interestingly enough in the glossary of the book,
Jensen glosses de (德)
as ‘mana’, the Polynesian word for spiritual power. This is a perfect
example of a word that is out of place in a book on deconstructing the
purposive creation of culture by one party assuming superiority that
deliberately transmits the manipulated version globally. In the end, there
really are no words without baggage, and therefore rather than advocating a
loss of all language, why not call for an added sensitivity in word choice?
Of course the problem is much more complex than the simple answer I have
provided, but that is not necessarily the purpose of this work. Rather, I
see myself writing this for the sake of legitimizing the alternative that
still maintains the usage of terms that may have unintended meanings, but is
not willing to concede the power to assign appropriate designation. In a
sense we all shu er bu zuo (述而不作).
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