Marcus asks

Does virtue always equal to benevolence?

You mean the Chinese term rén 仁 in the Analects? In many passages, it refers to a specific virtue that can be distinguished from other virtues (e.g., 14.28), often translated “benevolence”. In a few passages, it refers more to the sum of all the virtues, or just “Virtue” or “Goodness” (and so translated in some editions) (e.g., 14.4). But note that in the above, “virtue” is in English, meaning roughly ethically desirable attributes, and “Virtue” would be roughly sum of all the ethically desirable attributes. There is a term dé 德 in the Analects that is translated “(moral) virtue” by Lau. For this, see the glossary entry in Readings, 389.

Is straightness/uprightness linked in any way to benevolence or morality? E.g. a ren/yi person?

It’s a more general term compared with terms like rén 仁 and yì 義, which can be counted as specialized ethical terminology. It is literally “straight”, though the sort of straight that is normally contrasted with being crooked (zhí 直 vs. qǔ 曲; see 2.19) rather than the sort of straight that is contrasted with being slanted (zhèng 正 vs. xié 斜). Can be used metaphorically to talk about someone being (morally/ethically) upright, proper, (perhaps) principled.

Does the word ‘rite’ refer both to the rites (practises) and ritual propriety?

The same Chinese term lǐ 禮 is used to refer to both. Context will determine (usually not that difficult to tell though). On the flip side, “rites”, “ritual”, “ritual propriety” are all meant to translate the same underlying Chinese character.

In 6.29: The Master said, ‘Supreme indeed is the Mean as a moral virtue. It has been rare among the common people for quite a long time.’ What does ‘Mean’ refer to?

It’s rather unfortunate that despite the nature of the claim in 6.29, that’s the only place in the Analects where zhōngyōng 中庸 is mentioned in the text. (It also doesn’t appear in the Mencius.) Later Confucians will make a big fuss about the term and craft a whole treatise (and traditional of thinking) based on it, but it would be speculative to equate that stuff with whatever is going on in 6.29 if the idea can really be dated back to Confucius himself. The other possibility is that the passage itself is late, inserted into the corpus by the later members of the tradition who were big about zhōngyōng.

The term zhōng meaning “middle, balance, equilibrium”. The term yōng is harder. It can mean “mediocre”. But here, it quite likely means something like “use, application”. But possibly also “constant” (think of something that can be used or applied all the time). So if we abstract 6.29 from the later discussion, a not overly thick reading will take the Master to be highlighting the high value of not going to extremes but settling for a mean that balances out or harmonizes opposing considerations, even equating it with Virtue (dé). (Put another way, Virtue consists in a mean between both excess and deficiency; consider 11.16) Ideas in this ballpark are suggested by passages such as 1.12, 6.18, 13.21, 17.8. In 20.1, Sage Yao instructs his successor Shu to “hold to the middle (zhōng)”.

Consider these four passages: Analects 4.15, 6.30, 12.2 and 15.24 (refer to them in your text—it will make more sense this way as you read the below).

From 4.15, we learn that there is supposed to be One Thread that binds the whole of Confucius’ Way. In this passage, the disciple Zengzi [Tseng Tzu] identifies it as zhong shu. In 15.24, however, Confucius cites shu as  one yan (word, maxim) that could, perhaps, guide a person in his conduct throughout his life, elaborating it as: “do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire”. By the way, this is connected with the background reasons why the translators Ames and Rosemont render shu as “putting oneself in the other’s place”. Lau’s “using oneself as a measure to gauge others” (Lau) is in the same spirit, though intriguingly, he might have gotten the direction reversed (more about this below).

The following thought is now suggested. Given 15.24, it might be best to take the One Thread stated in 4.15 as emphasizing shu, rather than as two things: zhong and shu; the easiest way to do that would be take the zhong as verbal (“to be devoted to…”) with the shu as the object. On this reading, and helping ourselves to the expansion of what shu involves in 15.24, we can now rephrase the One Thread of 4.15 as—to be devoted to living in such a way as to never impose on others what one does not desire for oneself. But whether or not this is the best interpretation of 4.15, the least that can be said is that shu is connected to the One Thread (whether as part or as whole), and it can be understood, in the first instance, as not imposing on others what one does not desire for oneself.

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As I will (briefly) discuss in Friday’s lecture, the terms junzi and xiaoren in the time of Confucius are ambiguous between a moral and a sociological reading. On the moral reading, the junzi is an exemplary moral agent, while the opposite xiaoren is a vicious agent. On the sociological reading–which pre–dates the moral reading–the former is a member of the aristocracy while the latter is someone of low birth. But right around the time of Confucius, a transition began to happen where the moral reading will become more and more accentuated until it tends to overshadow the sociological reading (the situation in modern Chinese; though the sociological meaning never completely disappear).

Turns out that the transition between the aristocratic-junzi and the moral-junzi is not unique to Chinese. There was a parallel thing that happened to the English word “gentleman”, which is part of the reason why the term is so apt for rendering junzi.

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Hopefully, this will clarify some things I discussed in the last section of today’s lecture on “Confucian Ritualism”. This much you need to keep in mind: the phrase “Confucian Ritualism” is my own invention and is meant to stand in for Confucius’ position regarding the li (ritual, rites) as it is reported in the Analects. Why do we care about this? –because it seems to be one of those things that tie up a large chunk of his sayings in the Analects. Figuring what this position amounts to thus gives us an entry point for appreciating Confucius’ Way.

But note that what I have called Confucian Ritualism says is something that we haven’t fully explored yet, and I will be returning to it next week. This much I have said in class. First, Confucius either says or implies that Ritual represents the true measure of culture and the good society in general, so much so that he understood the perceived disorder of his own time in terms of people and communities not conducting themselves according to Ritual (e.g., 16.2). In at least one passage, Confucius even appears to define benevolence (in the particular, possibly “Virtue” or “Goodness” more generally) in terms of conduct that is strictly in compliance with Ritual (12.1). Second, as I also emphasized in class, “Ritual” in the Analects almost always refer to the specific prescriptions of regarding ceremony, manners, and general deportment, covering both religious and the social-political intercourse of the elite instituted by the early Zhou Dynasty. This connects up Confucius’ emphasis on Ritual with his “preference for antiquity”, or more specifically, for the Zhou.

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