Naturalizing Mencius. Philosophy East and West, Volume 61, Number 3, July 2011, pp (Article)

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1 Naturalizing Mencius James Behuniak Jr. Philosophy East and West, Volume 61, Number 3, July 2011, pp (Article) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: /pew For additional information about this article Access provided by National Taiwan University (17 Jul :20 GMT)

2 NATURALIZING MENCIUS James Behuniak, Jr. Department of Philosophy, Colby College In a recent paper titled Mencius and an Ethics of the New Century, Donald J. Munro argues that recent theories in the evolutionary sciences regarding the biological basis of altruism and infant bonding might lend credence to Mencius philosophy of human nature. 1 Such theories, says Munro, support Mencius contention that certain moral concepts derive from something that is inborn. What such naturalistic theories do not address, however, is whether or not these moral concepts are also founded on something transcendental, and by this Munro is referring to the suggestion that human nature (renxing 人性 ) is derived from Heaven (tian 天 ). 2 Munro suggests that contemporary philosophers who draw inspiration from Mencius might consider filtering out such religious claims in order to focus on the more naturalistically viable features of Mencius philosophy. These features, Munro surmises, will survive [such a] sifting to become for the new century the essence of the Mencius text, separated from what will then be disregarded as the dross. 3 Not all commentators have greeted Munro s proposal with enthusiasm. Some regard it as neither desirable nor necessary to filter Heaven out of the Mencius. Irene Bloom, for instance, submits the following: When Mencius speaks of what is endowed in human beings by Heaven (and, of course, the word tian in Mencius may in most cases be more aptly translated as Nature rather than Heaven ) he is giving voice to a deep yet un-testable sense for what the world is like and why and to an equally un-testable sense for what we can make it through our efforts.... [Such an] un-testable but undeniable sense of being part of a whole is not something [that] should be filtered out. 4 Philip J. Ivanhoe agrees. He observes, however, that the disagreement between Bloom and Munro (or between tian and evolutionary biology) may not go very deep. Much depends, says Ivanhoe, on how one understands tian in relation to Mencius core teachings. According to Ivanhoe, the idea that our evolutionary past has woven us inextricably into Nature, and that we continue to receive much of our most powerful inspiration and most profound satisfaction from [Nature], resonates with certain features of tian in the Mencius, features that suggest the interconnection between the self and the natural world. These features, Ivanhoe suggests, are already present in the Mencius and are worth retaining and savoring. 5 Ironically, the notion of Heaven that Ivanhoe ascribes to Mencius stands in tension with this sentiment. While he allows that early Confucians did not conceive of tian as a creator deity who exists independently of the Natural order, 6 Ivanhoe maintains that it was nevertheless conceived as an agent with a plan for the world, one that formulated and set in motion a design for the human race. 7 Following Ivanhoe s reading, Mencius believes that 492 Philosophy East & West Volume 61, Number 3 July by University of Hawai i Press

3 Heaven has arranged things in the world in such a way that for each thing there is a proper role and function and the general scope and particular parts of this grand plan are things that human beings can and must come to understand. 8 Ivanhoe reminds us that, for Mencius, human nature possesses a natural structure (ti 體 ) the parts of which have natural functions (guan 官 ). 9 Such a nature is composed of four nascent impulses or sprouts (duan 端 ): humanity (ren 仁 ), 10 appropriateness (yi 義 ), ritual propriety (li 禮 ), and wisdom (zhi 智 ). 11 In Ivanhoe s view, Mencius believes that humans have these sprouts pre-installed into their natures, and that they must be developed in order to obey Heaven and fulfill Heaven s grand design for us and for the world. 12 Heaven so conceived, as the divine architect whose intelligent design is to be obeyed, is transcendent by any philosophical standard and supernatural by any scientific standard. It is incompatible with Nature as conceived in the physical sciences, and it suggests nothing about our evolutionary past. In short, Ivanhoe s Heaven is precisely the kind of thing that Munro proposes that we leave behind. It remains to be seen, then, whether or not Mencius core teachings can be understood and preserved within the framework of a more naturalized tian and whether such a conception reveals religious features that are worth retaining and savoring, as Ivanhoe claims. It is argued here that a viable naturalistic reading of Mencius is indeed possible, and that there are religious features revealed adequately only in light of such a reading. In articulating these, the philosophy of John Dewey and other process thinkers is both pertinent and illuminating and will be used as a stimulus in thinking naturalistically about Mencius. Among the dividends of naturalizing Mencius is that such a reading renews our appreciation for family relations as the most important component of his theory of human nature. This component is often neglected and typically underserved by treatments that position Heaven as the sole, transcendent source of the human experience. The more naturalistic reading offered here brings family back into the foreground and locates it at the center of Mencius philosophy, where it belongs. Also, shifting focus away from Ivanhoe s Heaven enables us to appreciate the normative dimensions of our experience that Mencius regards as an extension of the natural world. Together, family and the norms of Nature (tian) furnish religious experience in early Confucianism, and this is a conception that is found to be surprisingly resonant with contemporary sensibilities, especially those expressed in process and evolutionary philosophies. Naturalizing Human Nature in the Mencius Since we are reading Mencius in the twenty-first century, let us begin with a contemporary supposition. Let us suppose that Mencius, as a theorist of human nature, is not being perfectly objective. By his own admission, he enters into theoretical debate reluctantly, only to counter the teachings of those he reviled, 13 and he intends to do so with expediency. 14 Mencius maintains that the Mohists and Yangists are animals. 15 And here, no doubt, he tips his hand. When Mencius assigns a sprout to human nature in direct correspondence with a Confucian virtue, how are we to James Behuniak, Jr. 493

4 know that he is not in fact making a claim corollary to his belief that non-confucians are less than human? There is nothing dispassionate about Mencius theory of human nature: it is prompted by and devised solely to defeat his adversaries. All the while his intentions are clear: he means to defend the tradition of the Confucian Sages. 16 He does this in the face of spreading, viable alternatives to that tradition. It is important to acknowledge that, in a climate such as this, the claim that Confucian virtues belong to human nature is also a claim that Confucian virtues alone are qualitatively human. Calling such a human nature good (shan 善 ) amounts to providing normative guidance. It tells us that Confucian lives are good to live, and that anything less is barbaric. 17 Such an admission is neither scandalous nor fatal to the cause of Mencius. It is only a more direct way of expressing what we already know: that Mencius theory of human nature is presented as support for those goods that he thinks are important. Such an admission does not require us to drop the whole notion of human nature, nor does it require us to drop the claim that Confucian-friendly impulses are innate in human beings. All that needs to be dropped is the claim that these are part of a structure that transcends human experience. According to the more transcendent reading, Heaven (tian) installs sprouts into the very structure of human nature as part of a prefabricated design or plan. In order to develop the present reading, we will limit ourselves to saying that Nature (tian) conditions in us a range of impulses, some of which are better than others to follow, and that Confucian practice wisely selects a number of these innate impulses and supports their preservation and development. These, in turn, are recognized as the sprouts of proper human development and are deemed to be human nature (renxing). These desirable impulses are regarded as good (shan) in the same way that the tradition itself is good. Given this reading, Mencius can still speak of the goodness of human nature. He can even have a theory of human nature. 18 But what, according to this reading, does Mencius mean when he says that human nature is good? He still means what he says he means, namely that we are born with the capacity to become good (keyi wei shan 可以為善 ) and, given the proper Confucian-oriented conditions, that we will indeed tend in that direction. 19 As now understood, however, the four sprouts represent at most vague impulses that a particular historical tradition deems worthy of isolating and of cultivating into habits. Again, to regard them as such is not to deny that they have characteristics that are innate; it is only to insist that their meaning as sprouts is shaped within a social medium rather than existing in some form that transcends that medium. Dewey would formulate the matter this way: Habits [i.e., the Confucian virtues] as organized activities are secondary and acquired, not native and original. They are [however] outgrowths of unlearned activities which are part of man s endowment at birth. 20 For Mencius, the virtues of humanity (ren), appropriateness (yi), ritual propriety (li), and wisdom (zhi) are acquired moral habits, socially organized activities. As full-blown character traits, obviously they are not native not, that is, to infants. 494 Philosophy East & West

5 Such habits do begin, however, as sprouts (or, as Dewey says, as outgrowths ) of activities that are unlearned and present at birth. Now, according to Mencius, these inborn and unlearned (buxue 不學 ) activities are those related to family affection (qin 親 ). Moral habits, Mencius teaches, grow out (da 達 ) directly from one s family-born activities. 21 Let us pick up Dewey again: In the life of the individual, instinctive activity comes first. But an individual begins life as a baby, and babies are dependent beings. Their activities could continue at most for only a few hours were it not for the presence and aid of adults with their formed habits.... [Babies] owe to adults the opportunity to express their native activities in ways which have meaning.... In short, the meaning of native activities is not native; it is acquired. It depends upon interaction with a matured social medium. 22 In keeping with such a formulation, Mencius four sprouts can be understood as vague, innate impulses that are selected and reinforced within a social medium and are subsequently cultivated into habits. According to Mencius, to possess the four sprouts means that we are human: having them is what distinguishes humans as a sort (lei 類 ). 23 Strictly speaking, however, it is not the four sprouts that make us human; rather, the four sprouts are something that all humans have (you 有 ), just as we have four limbs. 24 What makes us human is being born into an environment of family affection, and thereby to have our four sprouts chosen and activated among the welter of untutored impulses. Mencius makes this reading plausible. As he says: if one is not engaged in family affection, one cannot be called human (ren 人 ). 25 Compare this to a statement from the recently recovered Six Positions (Liuwei 六位 ) document, which expresses the same point with greater clarity: Sharing family affection (qin 親 ) with one s close and distant relatives: being human lies solely in this (weiqi ren suozai 唯其人所在 ). Engage (de 得 ) in this affection, and the human begins to be present (ju 舉 ); disengage from this affection, and the human ceases to be (zhi 止 ). 26 According to this thinking, family affection is the medium through which human nature comes to be. For Mencius, it also remains the supporting environment in which the sprouts of virtue develop into qualitatively human habits. Thus, as Mencius sees it, human capacities begin to emerge the moment one is born into a human family. And since the family consists of socialized, role-bearing members already, persons living in humanity (ren) supported and ennobled through ritual propriety (li) with concomitant standards of appropriateness (yi), one enters by default into relationships that select and reinforce the corresponding sprouts in oneself. Here, Dewey s conception of early human development is particularly illuminating. We are all born into families, 27 Dewey writes, and from there our roles begin to take shape: The family... is something other than one person, plus another, plus another. It is an enduring form of association in which the members of the group stand from the beginning James Behuniak, Jr. 495

6 in relations to one another, and in which each member gets direction for his conduct by thinking of the whole group and his place in it Think of any human adult in a concrete way, Dewey elsewhere writes, and at once you must place him in some social context and functional relationship ; it then becomes glaringly evident that social stands for properties which are intrinsic to every human being. 29 Dewey s formulation of how intrinsic traits are determined through functional relationships provides a framework within which the claim that the Confucian sprouts are intrinsic (ben 本 ) can be understood. Such a reading recommends itself if human traits are understood to be born and bred within the family, and Mencius suggests that they are. With this reading, the transcendence question now pertains to the status of the family institution, not to human nature antecedently conceived. Does family affection transcend natural history according to Mencius? No, it does not. According to his account, it was the legendary Xie (the minister of education under Shun) who first inaugurated family affection along with the five relationships (renlun 人倫 ) that originally separated humans from animals. 30 We need not take his narrative literally, but still, if there is credit to be given for the advent of human nature in the Mencian framework, that credit goes to the Sages acting in history. Interpreters like Ivanhoe, however, are quick to suggest that there was a transcendent human nature at work even here, and that the Sages, in realizing Confucian civilization, were simply the first to develop their pre-programmed natures to their fullest extent. 31 There is a chicken and egg problem that hampers the logic of Ivanhoe s reading, however. If the sages were the ones whose moral sprouts were able to mature 32 and this requires a certain kind of environment, 33 then which came first the realized Sage or the environment necessary for that realization, an environment that the Sages were the first to establish? One way to resolve this puzzle is to understand the process in terms more consistent with evolutionary theory. As Dewey puts it, the chicken precedes the egg. But this particular egg may be so treated as to modify the future type of chicken. 34 A more naturalistic reading would be that the nature (xing 性 ) of any living organism is formed in transaction with the environment in which it takes shape. Such an idea is not foreign to early Chinese thinkers: it is how xing 性 is understood in the Outer Chapters of the Zhuangzi. As the expert swimmer reports: I was born on dry land and was at ease on dry land; this is a fact (gu 故 ). I was then raised in water and became at ease in water; this became my nature (xing 性 ). Not realizing how I became what I am; this is what is given (ming 命 ). 35 It is conceivable that Mencius understood xing 性 in a similar fashion. The institution of family, as Mencius imagines it in his historical narrative, altered the environment in which our natures take shape. The dynamic of family life, as here envisioned, is powerful in selecting and reinforcing certain impulses from birth, disposing (xing 性 ) 36 us to tend in certain directions. The result of such conditioning, for all intents and purposes, is our human nature, and Mencius claims that it is demonstrably 496 Philosophy East & West

7 good. There is no transcendent source required to account for this. Instead, it is family that is paramount. Now, it is highly unlikely that the Sages single-handedly inaugurated family affection, as Mencius describes; but that is the narrative he relates. He does not, in any case, claim that Heaven inaugurated family affection. Instead, he echoes Confucius in saying that the Sages modeled themselves after tian (zetian 則 天 ) in establishing the five relationships. 37 The religious import of this lies in the fact that the Sages are understood to have operated as co-equals with tian 天 in creating the conditions for human nature, and thereby to have contributed to the cumulative and continuing cultural legacy that tian 天 represents. 38 The religious implications of this will be explored in the second and third sections below. With this we have, I think, accounted for Mencius theory of human nature without recourse to anything that strictly transcends natural history. The key to this account is the recognition that, for Mencius, human nature is directly linked to family affection, and family affection has a history. To understand human nature as the product of this history still allows Mencius his main debating points with Gaozi. 39 As Mencius sees it, family-born impulses already correspond with virtues in the Confucian tradition. Thus, one is spontaneously led in a Confucian direction, just as water flows downwards, 40 provided one is born into a human family. And who, since the inaugural work of the Sages, is not born into a human family? It is viable, perhaps even accurate, then, for Mencius to claim that humans are naturally and originally disposed (xing 性 ) to develop in certain Confucian directions. Not unlike the barley seed whose growth pattern is of a certain, generic sort (lei 類 ), the growth pattern of the family-borne disposition (renxing 人性 ) also exhibits certain generic habits rooted in and nourished by its origin in family affection and associated life. 41 One might even regard these tendencies as essential to human nature, so long as such an essence is understood to have been shaped by forces that parallel its own history. Richard Shusterman argues that the notion of a historicized essence is consistent with Dewey s own naturalism. As Shusterman understands it: [Such essences exist] in the form of powerfully effective biological and social norms [and] contingent necessities regularities or needs that are virtually necessary given the contingent evolution and current structures of human biology and history. 42 Within such a framework, even Dewey can refer to the intrinsic nature of man, and the distinction between a lower and a higher self, with the understanding that such conceptions reflect natural rather than supernatural processes. As he suggests, such conceptions grow naturally out of the very conditions of human life. 43 Similarly, when Mencius refers to the structures (ti 體 ) and functions (guan 官 ) of human nature, not only is it possible to understand these ideas in more dynamic, naturalistic terms, but the interpretation is positively warranted. The naturalistic framework makes better sense of what Mencius teaches, and it situates him more comfortably in his own philosophical milieu. 44 The naturalistic reading also happens to lend Mencius position more credence and, as Munro suggests, positions him favorably to be taken seriously in the future. James Behuniak, Jr. 497

8 The Religious Dimension of Confucian Norms There remains one problem, however. Even in the form of a historicized essence, appealing to human nature prescriptively is a questionable philosophical move. For even if one allows as a fact that we are disposed to follow certain tendencies, and that these tendencies drive us toward a certain ideal, this does not mean that we ought to pursue that ideal. To claim that we ought to develop habits in accord with certain impulses simply because those impulses are part of our human nature is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. To add, as Ivanhoe does, that one must follow these impulses in order to obey Heaven hardly mitigates the fallacy. If some rival culture or philosopher comes along and claims that we ought to act contrary to such impulses, or to follow other impulses, that claim would have as much, or as little, moral standing as the initial claim. 45 Some normative criterion is required to account for why the family-born sprouts are worth developing, and why such a human nature is good. As it currently stands, one might charge that Mencius reasoning is ultimately circular: he projects onto human nature qualities derived from his cultural tradition, and then uses that human nature to argue that the tradition itself is natural and good. Again, some independent, normative criterion is required to explain why this family-borne human nature is worth according with. Mencius provides such a normative criterion. To recognize it, we must return once again to the historical work of the Sages. Mencius may indeed commit some fallacy in assigning to human nature qualities derived from his tradition; but the greater fallacy would be to use these qualities to account for the existence of that from which they are deduced, and Mencius does not do this. As argued above, there is a chicken and egg problem in understanding human nature as preceding the advent of Confucian civilization and as accounting for its very emergence. As it turns out, Mencius never claims this to be the case. What he claims instead is that, in inaugurating the Confucian tradition, the Sages were the first to have apprehended in our feelings what is commonly so, and by this he means that they were the first to apprehend the normative qualities of pattern (li 理 ) and rightness (yi 義 ). Together, according to Mencius, these qualities bring satisfaction to all humans. 46 The abstract qualities of pattern and rightness are too vague in themselves to determine the final medium of their own expression. For Mencius, however, they are fully realized within the Confucian tradition as inaugurated by the Sages. 47 The argument for there being such normative qualities is made by analogy with our musical, culinary, and other aesthetic experiences. As Mencius famously says: Palates are similar in their preferences, why not our feelings as well? 48 Such analogies serve to underscore the generality of the normative criterion under consideration they function, in other words, as a corrective to overly programmatic readings of human development. We all recognize delicious food, but who would then conclude that there is a single, perfect dish whose recipe has already been designed by a transcendent Heaven? Not Mencius, according to whom the Sages themselves invented the unique recipe for Confucian civilization and thus modeled themselves after tian (zetian 則天 ). The manifest goodness of the human nature that embodies the 498 Philosophy East & West

9 resultant tradition does not owe itself to a transcendent design or plan. Rather, that goodness is founded in the fact that it realizes the norms of pattern and rightness. As Bloom observes, when Mencius refers to tian in attributing innate features to human beings, he gives voice to a deep yet un-testable sense for what the world is like and why and to an equally un-testable sense for what we can make it through our efforts. 49 The norms of pattern and rightness operate on such a deep and untestable level. They direct us toward features intrinsic to nature that account for every attainment of value, beauty, and significance in our experience. Pattern and rightness find expression in the classical aesthetic norm, unity in variety, which, Dewey reminds us, is an ancient formula for the achievement of beauty in nature and in art. 50 The term that Mencius uses here, yi 義, is suggestive. In this context, it means more than moral appropriateness. As Bernhard Karlgren notes, the term yi 義 is cognate with yi 宜, aesthetic rightness, and it also denotes sense and signification. 51 In pairing yi 義 with pattern (li), Mencius displays an understanding that neither aesthetic rightness nor significance is ever achieved in a vacuum. Without order of some kind, rightness and significance never emerge, and the value of experience never registers. 52 Bound together, rightness (yi) and pattern (li) are the source of life s consummate moments and of its ultimate meaning. We have an inborn tendency to appreciate this fact. This basic formulation is recognized by other process thinkers as well, such as Alfred North Whitehead. According to Whitehead, the positive feeling of aesthetic unity and of the significance that it affords is one of the strongest forces in human nature, and, like Mencius, Whitehead also understands this aesthetic intuition to be at the base of family affection. 53 Again like Mencius, Whitehead maintains that the social and cultural evolution of human beings has involved the gradual intuition for an essential rightness of things, 54 and that this apprehension reveals a character permanently inherent in the nature of the world. 55 The very reason for the world, according to Whitehead, is adjustment toward greater rightness within the immanent patterns of nature for the sake of aesthetic attainment. 56 Needless to say, there are countless differences between the worldviews of Whitehead and Mencius, but they share an insight into the satisfaction that humans instinctively find in the achievement of pattern (li) and rightness (yi). The insight is, as Bloom says, untestable; but it suggests something about what Nature (tian) is like and why, and it certainly points us toward those features of the world that make our most powerful inspiration and most profound satisfaction possible: those features that Ivanhoe encourages us to retain and savor in the philosophy of Mencius. Basing the goodness of human nature on such normative features saves Mencius from committing the naturalistic fallacy. It also illuminates the way in which family experience enters into the nascent activities of its members so as to condition the good human nature. Families grant pattern (li) and significance (yi) from the moment of birth. Each family bestows upon its members a meaningful identity, literally a personal share (shenfen 身份 ) in a whole greater than the singular self. As Mencius sees it, human capacities begin to emerge the moment one is born into James Behuniak, Jr. 499

10 such a situation. One enters by default into relations with socialized, role-bearing others. The resultant environment is one that selects and reinforces the Confucian sprouts and their related habits and attitudes. Insofar as one takes on a significant role within the greater whole of one s family, this serves as a cultural embodiment of norms continuous with sources of value deep in the natural world with li 理 and yi 義. This is what accounts for the profound reverence for family that we find in the tradition. Along with the other aesthetic examples that Mencius uses music, physical beauty, and cuisine the institution of family embodies the norm of harmony (he 和 ), the unquestioned good for Confucians. Confucius teaches that Exemplary persons seek harmony (he) over sameness (tong 同 ), whereas petty persons seek the opposite. 57 As the stated aim of the tradition, harmony is what Mencius has in mind when he claims that pattern and rightness bring satisfaction to all humans. 58 Harmony entails the achievement of an optimally functioning, optimally varied order that most fully expresses the worth of its constituents. In early China, this notion is regularly illustrated through culinary arts such as cooking soup. The motif appears in the Book of Songs and the Book of Documents, 59 as well as in the Zuozhuan: Harmony (he 和 ) is similar to cooking soup. Soup is made by adding various kinds of seasoning to water and then cooking fish and meat in it. One mixes them all together and adjusts the flavor by adding whatever is deficient and reducing whatever is in excess. It is only by mixing together ingredients of different flavors that one is able to create a balanced, harmonized taste. 60 The harmony of a soup is measured by the degree to which it succeeds in incorporating its particular ingredients in an aesthetically pleasing way. It entails both the achievement of a good order (i.e., pattern, li ) as well as the satisfaction of meaningful inclusion in that order (i.e., significance or rightness, yi ). It is said of Confucius that before singing in a group he would always ask to hear the song again before joining in. In this instance, Confucius defers to an ongoing harmony in order to integrate meaningfully into a whole greater than himself. As a result, his participation in that order is deeply satisfying. 61 Confucians like Mencius understand family to be generative of the same qualities in human life, qualities based on the normative measure of harmony and analogized through the culinary and musical arts. Such cultural interests reflect the presence of aesthetic norms in nature, the preference for which Mencius considers innate to human beings. For Mencius, these norms underwrite family as a self-evident good. The Book of Songs echoes his sentiment: Dishes may be abundant. And wine consumed to the limit. But when brothers are in attendance. This is harmony (he), joy, and happiness. Happy union of wife and children: it is the melody of lutes. But when brothers are joined. The harmony and joy (le 樂 ) are profound. 500 Philosophy East & West

11 It is fitting (yi 宜 ) to have a home and a family. It is a joy to have a wife and children. As soon as one considers it, it is just as soon the case. 62 John Dewey once remarked that it is the deepest urge of every human being to feel that he does count for something with other human beings and receives recognition from them as counting for something. 63 This deep, human urge is what ultimately recommends the Confucian dao 道. The religious dimension of this tradition expresses itself in the profound joy and meaning that one finds in associated living, and family is its primary manifestation. 64 Confucian religious values, then, are based on the aesthetic norms of pattern and rightness, intrinsic features of nature that account for every attainment of value, beauty, and significance in our experience. Confucian religious experience, as such, is continuous with processes deep in the natural world. Confucian religiousness has features in common with process naturalism: in both traditions, religiousness involves the integration of self and world and harmonious adjustment toward greater wholeness and rightness. 65 For Dewey, the satisfaction that humans find in integration and adjustment is a function of our biological histories. 66 For all natural organisms, these features lend deep and enduring support to the processes of living, 67 and the human desire for them registers the continuity between human culture and the rest of nature. The loss of integration with environment and recovery of union becomes conscious in human beings, says Dewey, and the process of adjustment toward greater integration and unity bears the germs of both our aesthetic and our religious experiences. 68 Dewey s development of the notion of adjustment reveals features of experience that parallel those of concern to Mencius. For Dewey, adjustment is composed of two processes that differ in terms of the facts entailed and the responses involved: the first is accommodation, which entails the fact that there are conditions we meet that cannot be changed, 69 and the second is adaptation, which entails the fact that we re-act against conditions and endeavor to change them to meet our wants and demands. 70 Mencius also understands the human relationship to tian and to the conditions that it mandates (ming 命 ) as involving both accommodation and adaptation. As the Confucian tradition develops, consummate human experience begins to be expressed in terms of integration (cheng 誠 ) within this framework. As we will see, this term comes to represent harmonious integration in the natural world as well as the co-creative role that human beings play in achieving harmonious orders in that world. Tian 天 and the Human Experience Ivanhoe s robust account of Heaven finds support in the fact that tian is sporadically portrayed as an agent in the Mencius and that Mencius teaches that it is important to accept what tian does. 71 As for the nature of its agency and purposes, however, Mencius is not very specific, and even Ivanhoe must acknowledge that the James Behuniak, Jr. 501

12 Mencius provides only a vague sketch of what tian actually is. 72 Mozi maintains that tian has definite intentions (zhi 志 ) and that it makes these intentions clear (ming 明 ). 73 Mencius leaves the matter more ambiguous, claiming that tian does not speak (buyan 不言 ) but instead manifests itself through happenings in the world. 74 Not unlike the agency that we attribute to Nature, the activities of tian are diffuse for Mencius: what is done without a doer is tian. And they duplicate the functions of a collective: what the people see and hear are the eyes and ears of tian. 75 Mencius maintains a clear distinction between tian and human beings (ren 人 ), but they also seem to overlap in function, such that while political legitimacy is presented as the business of tian, it is also said that no one becomes ruler without winning the hearts of the people. 76 The recently unearthed Guodian materials can help us to reconstruct the complex relationship between tian and human activity in the early Confucian tradition. The issues treated in Failure and Success according to the Times (Qiongda yi shi 窮達以世 ) parallel those raised in the Mencius. The document opens with the following observation: There is tian and there are people. Between them there is a difference. By examining the difference one understands how to proceed. If one has the people but not the right age (shi 世 ), then even those of quality will not proceed effectively. Yet, if the age is right, what difficulties could there be? 77 The theme of Failure and Success according to the Times is echoed by Mencius. For him, too, success and failure (qiongda 窮達 ) depends on circumstances beyond the aspirations (zhi 志 ) of particular persons. 78 Reflecting, then, on the failure of Duke Ping of Lu to call upon his services, Mencius relates: When a person proceeds effectively something facilitates it. When a person is hindered, something interrupts it. Proceeding effectively and being hindered are not within a person s control (neng 能 ). That it did not come to pass (yu 遇 ) that I would meet the Marquis of Lu is a matter of tian. 79 Success and Failure according to the Times also identifies what comes to pass (yu) with tian, 80 forging a conceptual link between the age (shi) in which one lives and the forces that hinder or facilitate successful action in other words, with tian. Pondering what it means to consider the age in which one lives when discussing tian, Pang Pu draws the following conclusion about the meaning of the term in this period: [Tian in the Guodian strips] is a force beyond the human being that humans can neither anticipate nor control yet must accept. It is an opportunity that comes and goes or appears in cycles, and it is the conditions under which one prospers if one grasps it and declines if one loses it, but it cannot be commanded. It is an environment people yield to fearfully and rely on to survive. Hence, what was then called tian took on a special meaning. Using modern concepts, it is actually the social context, social conditions, social opportunities, or simply put, social forces Philosophy East & West

13 Instances in which Mencius alludes to the agency of tian can often be understood as references to the sort of collective will that we identify with notions of public interest, acceptance, and censure: notions that transcend individuals yet maintain continuity with human activities. 82 Such notions of large-scale agency can remain consistent with naturalistic assumptions. Dewey, in fact, defends at length the notion that a public can exercise agency. In defending the viability of such an idea, he begins with electrons, atoms, and molecules and ultimately argues that conjoint, combined, associated action is a universal trait of the behavior of things and that such action has results. 83 There are, then, naturalistic resources for understanding the agency of something like Society or Nature broadly construed. Understood as such, the mandates of such large-scale forces (tian 天 ) become the conditions (ming) under which things in the world can or cannot come to pass (yu). Such conditions must be recognized and accepted; for there is only so much that an individual can do in facing them, and the rest is up to tian. 84 To recognize and accept the actions of a force beyond one s control (neng) is a sign of wisdom. This does not, however, necessarily imply faith in a divine plan. Mencius, in fact, does not always believe in the wisdom of what tian lets pass. 85 As Michael J. Puett sees it, Mencius distinguishes between what is right and what [tian] actually does. 86 This is not to say that Mencius does not elsewhere piously defer to tian and to the conditions (ming) that it mandates. 87 As Puett suggests, Mencius final position is that we must side with [tian] and do so without resentment. 88 Nevertheless, there is a creative tension in the text that is not easily resolved. Like Confucius, Mencius clearly stands in awe of conditions (ming) and seeks to understand conditions (ming). 89 He does not, however, always see fit to capitulate to them. There is a discretionary prerogative in effect. Mencius explains: There is nothing that is without conditions (feiming 非命 ). One goes along with and accommodates only those conditions that are proper to accept. Thus, one who comes to understand conditions will not go on standing beneath a wall on the verge of collapse. One who dies after bringing the dao to optimal term has lived within conditions properly; one who dies in fetters and chains has not. 90 Bringing dao to optimal term is more important than simply accommodating every condition that is met. The early Confucians are not, as Mozi charged, complete fatalists. 91 Mencius himself maintains that sometimes given conditions (ming) must be changed for the sake of achieving the optimal course. Thus, the value of what Dewey calls adjustment, that is, accommodation and adaptation toward greater integration and harmony, is operative in Mencius. This dynamic is most evident in relation to what Puett identifies as the trend toward selfdivinization in the early Confucian tradition. According to Puett, Mencius represents a trend in early China toward acknowledgment of the potentially divine capacities of humans and the potential conflicts between such claims and notions of [tian 天 ]. 92 Unlike Ivanhoe, Puett presents Mencius as less sanguine about following Heaven s plan and more active in his approach toward conditions (ming) as they James Behuniak, Jr. 503

14 stand. For Puett, Mencius seeks to improve conditions and thereby exercise the divine powers of human beings over and against the constraints that tian imposes on such aspirations in the form of conditions (ming), even while tian itself is the ultimate source of the norms or patterns that make such achievements possible. 93 The position that Puett ascribes to Mencius is complex; but it would be coherent to say that tian, as Society or Nature, can and does arbitrarily act in opposition to normative measures that it also furnishes. One can think of such arbitrary acts in terms of blind habits, accidents, mutations, abominations, or disasters propagated by large-scale forces (tian) and still retain the premise that such forces carry their own adjudicative measure, especially if that measure is understood as the vague aesthetic formula, unity in diversity. We are, in fact, the beneficiaries of this norm and of its historical manifestations in both Society and Nature, but both forces can wreak havoc or act to frustrate present aims that are worthy of the standard. Often in such cases, it is ill advised or simply impossible to resist the mandates of Society or Nature. 94 In any event, one must accommodate certain conditions (ming) just as they stand. Other sets of conditions, however, are disposed to improvement through human effort and can be adaptively cultivated in order to get the most out of them (jin 盡 ). Human nature, in the philosophy of Mencius, is defined entirely by the latter type of condition. Mencius explains: The relationships between mouth and taste, eyes and color, ears and sound, nose and smell, and the four limbs and physical repose: these are a matter of natural inclination (xing 性 ), and something about them has the quality of being mandated as conditions (ming 命 ). Exemplary persons do not consider these as their [human] dispositions (xing 性 ). The relationships between humanity (ren) and the parent /child relation, appropriateness (yi) and the ruler/subject relation, ritual propriety (li) and the guest /host relation, wisdom (zhi) and the person of quality, and the Sages and the course of tian: these are [also] conditions (ming), but something about them has the quality of a [human] disposition (xing). Exemplary persons do not consider these as conditions that are simply mandated (ming). 95 Mencius is interested here in a definition of human nature that goes beyond those traits that are given simply by virtue of biological inheritance. Distinctly human traits, here listed as five, correspond to the four sprouts plus Sagacity, thus underscoring the fact that what makes one distinctly human are the cultural conditions inaugurated by the ancient Sages features like family affection that, in the mind of Mencius, first separated humans from animals. The Sages initiated a force into history on the level of Nature itself (tian). Thereby, the Sages modeled themselves on tian and are revered as the paragons of human achievement, those whose cultural legacy bestows felicitous conditions to posterity in the name of tian. These felicitous conditions gave us human nature. To get the most (jin) out of this family-borne nature is to realize (zhi 知 ) with the Sages what in our feelings (xin) is commonly so the preference for pattern and rightness and thus to realize a felt connection with the larger processes of Nature (tian). To cultivate human nature as broadly and richly as possible within the constraints of circumstance is an achievement of enormous significance to Mencius. It is equivalent to what Puett calls 504 Philosophy East & West

15 self-divination, for the consummate human being takes on nothing less than the work of tian. Mencius explains: Getting the most out of one s heart-mind is to realize one s nature (xing). To realize one s nature, one then realizes tian. If one maintains one s heart-mind and cultivates one s nature, one thereby does the work of tian. Neither premature death nor long life should cause one to be of two minds about this. One should cultivate one s person and await the consequences, and thereby take one s stand (li 立 ) within conditions as they are given (ming). 96 For human nature to flourish within conditions as they stand (or as they shift) is to maintain through adjustment or integration the optimal level of felt harmony in the life process, and thereby to experience deep and meaningful satisfaction, a satisfaction based on aesthetic norms operative in nature. From the perspective of process naturalism, this satisfaction can be understood as a source of religiousness in the early Confucian tradition. This religious dimension is developed and refined in the Zhongyong, wherein integration (cheng) becomes a term of art in getting the most (jin) out of the natural dispositions (xing) of all things. This process is presented as something fundamental to the character of all natural events with aesthetic quality. The text explains: Integration (cheng) is self-consummating, and its course is self-directing. Integration is an event (wu 物 ) carried from beginning to end. Without such integration, nothing happens. This is why exemplary persons value integration. But integration is not limited to the consummation of one s person alone; it is how everything becomes consummated. To consummate one s person is to become associated in one s living (ren 仁 ); to consummate an event is to achieve its realization (zhi 知 ). [Integration] is the quality/potency (de 德 ) of a natural disposition (xing), and the way of bringing into coordination (he 合 ) the outer (wai 外 ) and the inner (nei 内 ). Thus, whenever [integration] takes place, it is aesthetically right (yi 宜 ). 97 The resonance between this statement and the teachings of Dewey is striking. Early on, Dewey came to recognize that every natural unit of behavior involves adjustment in the form of an integrated coordination between what happens on the inside of an organism and what happens on the outside in its environment. 98 This insight eventually led him to recognize that any discursive event was capable of taking on aesthetic quality to the degree that its transactional course, from beginning to end, marked a consummation and not a cessation. 99 Such an event became individuated in the developing movement toward its own consummation, and thereby had the character of being integral. 100 Such integration, for Dewey, is not a feature of isolated events merely. The mutual adaptation of the self with other objects can also result in the felt harmony of integration when our dealings with them are brought to consummation in aesthetic quality. 101 The potential for this felt harmony in natural activity greatly influenced Dewey s understanding of religious experience. 102 Important for our purposes is that this quality, like the Confucian quality of integration (cheng), carries religious significance without transcendence. For Dewey, the form of religiousness based on such an ideal [attaches] itself to the James Behuniak, Jr. 505

16 possibilities of nature and associated living, and thereby [manifests] piety towards the actual. 103 The early Confucian tradition, likewise, stands for just that. The Zhongyong begins with the Mencian premise that What tian conditions is a natural disposition (Tianming zhi wei xing 天命之謂性 ). 104 What tian mandates in this instance, however, has the quality of being open to growth and development. Hence, the Zhongyong states that human nature (xing) is to be furthered along and improved upon through education. 105 As in the Mencius, this involves the process of getting the most (jin) out of what is given and thus realizing the potential (de) of one s nature (xing). The process begins with integration (cheng), but it proceeds in ever-broadening terms until human beings, by bringing aesthetic completion to their total surroundings, become co-creators with tian: Only those most optimally integrated (zhicheng 至誠 ) into the world are able to get the most out of their natures (xing). Once one gets the most out of one s nature, one is then able to get the most out of the nature of others. Once able to get the most out of the nature of others, one is then able to get the most out of the nature of things and events. Once being able to get the most of the nature of things and events, one can assist in the transforming and nourishing processes of tian and earth. Once able to assist in the transforming and nourishing processes of tian and earth, one becomes the third member in a triad with both. At this apex of human self-divinization, the Zhongyong describes those who are able to get the most out of the nature of things as the counterparts of tian (peitian 配天 ). 106 Elsewhere, they are simply equated with tian. 107 The Sage performed this role in the distant past, and, according to Mencius, anyone can become a Sage. Sagacity entails nothing more than getting the most out of one s conditions and achieving the optimal degree of pattern and rightness available in one s circumstances. To do this even in the most familiar way, through faithfulness to one s family, is a profound religious achievement in this tradition, for, as Mencius says, the way of Yao and Shun is simply to be a filial family member. 108 For Mencius, the most profound religious experience emerges from and remains rooted in such beginnings. Concluding Thoughts In the final analysis, we must acknowledge that the meaning of tian in the Mencius is forever ambiguous. To further complicate matters, the text of the Mencius exhibits what E. Bruce and A. Taeko Brooks call a time depth, meaning that it is likely composite and representative of an evolving discourse. 109 Readers in our hermeneutically sophisticated century must recognize that the purpose of reading the Mencius is not to finally get it right, but rather to join in a commentarial tradition that extends as far back as the text itself. Each new generation of readers brings to the Mencius a philosophical imagination shaped by their own influences, thus revealing new facets of a tradition that is still ongoing. It is in this spirit that Munro observes that every age picks and chooses which parts of a complicated text [like the Mencius] it wishes to emphasize. 110 The ability of readers to do so, century after century, and 506 Philosophy East & West