1 Yang Xiao 1997 Trying to Do Justice to the Concept of Justice in Confucian Ethics

8/22/2019 1 Yang Xiao 1997 Trying to Do Justice to the Concept of Justice in Confucian Ethics

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YANG M A 0

T R Y I N G T O D O J U S T I C E T O T H E C O N C E P TOF J USTI CE IN CONFUCI AN ETHI CS

bIn his dealings with things under heaven chiin-tzu ( the nobleman)2 is not invariably for or against anything. He jus t doeswhat is ria jus t , appropria te)

X o n f u c i u s , t he Analects (4.10)

I. INTRODUCTION

That is not i t a t all. That is not what 1 m e a n t , a t all. We oftenhear people saying this in ev eryday dialogues and conversations. This isa way fo r one t o protes t otherss mis interpretat ions of her/his views. V eryof t en , one may also add, You are not d oing jus t ice to what I said, a t all.What thi s means s e e m to be the following: You a re no t do ing justice t owhat I said if yo u d o not render the correct meaning (cheng-yi ) t o wha t Isaid, because yo u are rendering some thing that is no t mine to me, yo u arebeing insensitive to the part icular and u nique meaning of what I said. Thisuse of the word jus t ice indicates that hermeneu t ic issues are e thicalones.

f

This paper was originally presented at a panel on Confucian viewsof justice at an American Philosophical Association meeting. I wassupposed to read a paper, written in English, on Confucian views ofjustice. Under such condi t ions , 1 have bee n especially on the alert againstany possible injustice I might do to Confucian ethics. One seems to havea special duty to b e jus t when one wri tes o n t he concept of justice. Hence

-t he t i tle Trying to do jus t ice to the concepts of jus t ice in ConfucianJournal of Chinese Philosophy 24 ( 1 9 9 7 ) 521-551C o py ri gh t 0 1 9 9 7 by Dialogue Publishing Com pan y, Honolulu, Hawaii, U . S . A .


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5 2 2 YANG X I AO

ethic^."^ To regard hermeneutic issues as ethical ones is also a Confuci antradit i on. When a great Confuc ian scholar Chiao Hsiing w r o t e a c o m m e n -tary on t h e Mencius, he ent i t led i t Meng-tzu cheng-yi which could bet ranslated as T he correct mea ning of the Mencius. In terest ingly enou gh,early Confucian Hsiin Tzui used it.

Therefo re , I have to take seriously the fo l lowing object ion: Onemay immediately object to this paper by say i ng t ha t t he mom en t 1 wri tedown the t i t le , I have already done injustice (o r violence) t o Confucianethics; when I ut ter the Engf ish words the c oncept of just ice in Confuci anethics , which imply that Confucian ethics d o have a concept that can beexpressed by the Enghsh word justice, I am i mpos ing a modern Westernconcep t o n Confucius, Mencius and their fo llowers i n ancient China. Theinjustice I have done to them is double, because they are nei ther modernnor Western. To put this objection in one sentence, i t i s impossible forme to do just ice to the conce pt of just ice in Confucian ethics i f I wri te ina language that is not Confucianss language.

Let me first clarify what is really going on in this objection. Asw e shall know at the end of th is paper , th i s object ion cannot be ful lyresponded to here. In the one-sentence version o f the object ion theterm language is actually used in t wo ways and t hus can mean t wothings:

h

cheng-yi or iginal ly means upr ight and just. That i s , at least , how the

i) a particular ordinary language l ike Chinese or Engl ish;let me call i t the l inguist ic sense of the termlanguage

ii) a par t icular set of categor ies and concepts (when Thom asKuhn says that Einstein and Newton speak two di f ferentlanguages, he does not mean that the form er speaks inGerman and the lat ter in English) le t me call this i tsconceptual sense. Very of ten , when people use the

term langwge in i t s conceptual sense, they p u t i t intoquotat ion marks (so one native English speaker may say


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JUSTICE IN CONFUCIAN ETHICS 5 23

to another nat ive Engl ish speaker: we cant unders tandeach o th er ; i ts as if we are speaking in tw o languages.)

Accordingly, there are actually two thin gs going on in t he ob ject ion .The first is the objection that a Western language (English) is not appro-pria te in the Chinese context . However, i t does not part icular ly have to d owith Confucians ; i t appl ies t o the case where one ta lks abou t Taoism inE n a s h , or, about Aris tot le in French, e tc . Th e second objection is thatthe set o f Western categories and concepts - he concept of jus t ice beingpar t o f it - s not appropria te to apply to Confuc ian ideas . Thus thereare actually tw o objections.

In section 11, I shal l t ry to c lear up some concep tual confus ions thatare involved in bo th object ions and int rod uce a crucial dis t inct ion betweenconce pt and concept ion . (Not ice that 1 use concept , not concept ion,in the ti t le of this paper). In section 111, I shall propo se a work ing formu-l a ti o n o f t h e concept of jus t ice , which shows h ow the term jus t is usedand w hat i t i s l ike to have a concept of justice, m ore specifically, wha t i tis like if i t is the case that there is the conc ept of justice in Confucianethics . Sect ion IV is a textual analysis which shows how, in the Analectsand the Mencius, the term yia is used in th e way described in the workingformula t ion of the concept of jus t ice . That is to say, we can indeed fmdthe co ncep t o f justice in Confucian ethics. Howe ver, i t will also be shownthat the Confucian unders tanding of the concept is a very particular one.

I shal l come back to the object ions in sect ion V . I t i s about th e veryposs ibi l i ty of doing jus t ice to the concept of justice in Confucian ethicswhile writing in English. Interestingly eno ugh , wha t surprised even myselfis that the justice of trying to do justice t u rned out to be the s amekind o f jus t ice of the concepts of justice in Confucian ethics . There-fore , this paper becomes an at tem pt to t reat the concept o f just ice inConfucian ethics in a Confucian manner, or in a manner that i s just inits Confucian sense.


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524 YANG XIAO

11. SOME CONFUSIONS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEENCONCEPT AND CONCEPTION

Almost everyone who ever talks about the issue of justice in Con-fucian ethics in Engllsh h as been keenly aware of, and o ften overwhelmedby , two obvious facts ab out the differences between Confucian languageand W estern language bot h in its linguistic and concep tual sense. Thefirst fact is actually abou t its linguistic difference, the secondconceptual difference. In this section, I want to say a few words aboutsome possible con fusions involved in interpreting these two facts.

Let me start with th e first one. Thoma s H.C. Lee begins hs articleThe Idea of Social Justice in Ancient China by saying that One of th emos t im porta nt c haracteristics of Chinese social philosophy is its con -spicuous lack of o n e word [my emphasisjthat we can readily translateas justice.6 R P . Peeren boom also claims: There is no t even u te rm[my emphasis] for justice in the classical lexicon of Confucius. Healso dismisses wha t he calls the most likely candi dat e, the Chinesecharacter y ia , by saying that it has been translated in terms associatedwith justice - ighteousness, duty, principle, obligation - hough never,to m y knowledge, cons istent ly as justice. Moreover, David Hall and RogerAmes have argued quite convincingly t hat . such Western-influenced langu-age is inappropria te in the Confucian context.

I would Wte to make two remarks about ttus linguistic fact. Thefirst one is that we cannot presuppose that there must be one word orterm in Chinese that corresponds to the English word justice. Theremight be a complex relationship between the Enghsh word justice anda set of Chinese words, n ot just one Chinese word. Or, if there is a corres-ponding relationship between justice and a Chinese word , it may bethat only some uses of this Chinese word, not necessarily the other uses ofthe wo rd, can be said to mean justice. As I shall show later, this appliesto the Chinese word yia. In fact, th e reluctance of translatingyia as usticealso has to do with the extremely diverse uses of yia in Confucianethics. I shall say mor e abou t this later. Here let me just say tha t, from


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th e linguistic fact that there is no one word that can be readily translatedas justice, it is a fallacy to draw the conclusion that there is no concept ofjustice in China. Th e conclusion one can draw is simply that there is nosuch neat word-to-word correspondence between Chinese and Westernthought. We may no t expect that complex concepts such as justicewould be like concepts such as wateror table,which usually can havea neat word -to-wo rd translation in anoth er language.

The second remark I want to make is about Peerenbooms claimthat, since justice is a part of Western-influenced language, it thuscannot be a proper translation of y ia . Two senses are packed in the termlanguage; from the fact that two people speak two different languagesin it s linguisric sense, we cannot immediately infer that they must speaktwo different languages in its conceptual sense. One cannot say thatChinese-speaking people must think differently from Enghhspeakingpeople. It may turn ou t that they do think differently ;it may also turnout that they do no t. Or, i t may turn ou t that neither is thecase - thatis, a detailed study may show that they thlnk somerimes differently andsometimes (e.g., when it comes to the concept of justice) similarly. Thisseems to be a conclusion that is hard to swallow for philosophers whoalways love the mo dal term always but never sometimes. However,one should no t ex pect to draw neat and systematic conclusions if shetries to do justice to the particular. As we shall see, this is the spirit ofConfucian conception of justice. I shall say more about this in the lastsection.

The second fact, which almost everyone emphasizes, is that intraditional Confucian ethics there is no modern liberal conception ofjustice in terms of equ al liberties and inalienable individual rights. Liberalsin todays China have put the blame on traditional Confucian ethics forthe absence of the conception of individual right in modern China. How-ever, this absence is not a unique feature that only ancient Confucianethics has. Aristotles ethics does not have the mo der n concep tion ofequal liberties an d rights, either. Liberalism is a quit e recent pheno men oneven in the West.


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5 26 YANG X l A O

In discussions co ncer ning justic e and societies of the past, a questionhas often been asked.

(q1)Can we say that ancient Confuciunism or ancienr Con-fucian China, is unjust in its mode rn liberal sense?

This is a very complicated issue. I cant go into it here. I would simplysay that this question should not be confused with the following questio nconcerning a present society .

(q2)Can we say that today s China, given that it can be calleda Confuc ian country, is unjust in its mo dern liberalsense?

The first question is about ancient China, the second todays China.A lot of arguments for the idea that one cannot apply the conceptions ofequal liberties and rights to todays China are based on he confusion ofthese two quest ions. What those arguments actually establish is simplythat we should say no to th e fust questio n; since the two que stions areconfu sed, people can be easily misled to believe that the it has been arguedthat we should say no to the second question as well. So let m e makeit clear that the following argument regarding a relativistic view of ancientConfucian China is about ancient Confucian China and cannot be appliedto todays China, even if it can still be called a Confucian cou nt ry .

I want to call attention to the fact that one can say no to the firstquestion and say yes to the second at the same time. That one can do sois due to the following tw o crucial differences between ancient China andtodays China.

i) In todays China, the idea of liberty and right is, ofcourse, no t yet totally institutionalized; it has, neverthe-less, become part of the political-legal culture of thenation . T o a certain degree, it has become a (potential)


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JUSTICE IN CONFUClAN ETHICS 52 7

overlapping consensus, by a p p e a h g to which civil dis-obedience can even be justified in todays China.I4

All these cannot ap ply to ancient China.ii) Todays China is no t a homogeneously C onfucianist

country, even if one still wants to call it a Confuciannation (h owever, if tha t could be do ne, then, in a similarway, one can also say that the pluralistic society of th eU.S. is a Christian nation). It seems safe to say that intodays China Confucianism, as a revival tradition, is no tthe dominant political-legal culture as it used to be inancient C hina; it has to com pete with other conceptionsof good life, including liberalism.

I am aware that these two observations are controversial. However,here what I really need for my argument regarding a relativisitic view ofancient Confucian China is a weaker claim, which is the following: it washistorically impossible for Confucius to have a modern liberal conceptionof justice in terms of liberties and rights, whereas such a modern liberalconception has become a historical possibility in todays China. Itseems to be a widely shared intuition that it is not just (fair) to requireConfucius or Aristotle to have a mod ern liberal conception of justice,which was historically unavailable to them . If one thinks historically, asHegel does, one will see that it takes time (history) for ethc al ideas tobecome possible and actual. An d, accordingly, a criticism of an age fornot living up to an ideal will remain an empty and impotent moralcriticism until the ideal, on which the criticism ,isbased, becomes histori-caUy possible. One d oes not have to accept Hegels who le cont rove rsialphilosophy of history to see this point. Bernard Williams, who has criti-cized Hegels redemptive conception of history,16 also shares this intui-tion. He says,


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One can defi ne a relativistic view of justice. There is somepressure, if one thinks historically a t all, to see mod ern con -ceptio ns of social justice , in terms of equal rights, for instanc e,as simply not applying to hierarchical societies of the past.Th e obvious fact that those societies would not satisf y thecondit ions I quoted from Rawls in chapter 5 seems relevantneither to those societies nor to the merits of Rawlss criteriaas proposed f or mode rn societies.

The tw o conditions Williams quot ed from Rawls are the fa mous fund a-mentai principles of justice in terms of equal liberties and rights, which,as Rawls says characterize the liberal conception of jus t ice .

Notice the term beging used here is conception, not c oncept .Rawls makes a very important dis t inct ion between conception andconcept . the concept of justice is about the basic terms of peoples asso-ciation , people m ay disagree about which specific principle of justicesshould define the basic terms of their association - .e . they may havedisagreement about the conception of just ice, but they each have aconcept of justice, which is abstract and vague sufficiently to comm andwidespread assent so that it would ac t, in public argument as well asprivate rumination, as a kind of plateau on which further thought andargument are buil t . As Rawls puts it, it seems natural t o think of th econce pt of justice as distinct from the various conception s of justice andas being specified by the role which ... [i ts] d ifferent conceptions have inC O ~ O I I . ~ ~o we c an say that liberals and utilitarians have a differentconception of us t ice, bu t the same concept of justice.

The ancient Confucian society, a hierarchical society of the past ,clearly does not have these two principles of justice, which specify theliberal conception of just ice. There is then some pressure not to applythe modern l iberal conceprion of justice to ancient China. Under thispressure of relativistic view of justice, one might be easily tempted to.concl ude that a ncient Con fucian China does not even have a concept ofjustice. I shall call someone a radical relativist if she believes that


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JUSTICE IN CONFUCIAN ETHICS 5 2 9

hierarchical societies of the past, such as ancient China, do not even havea concept of just ice.

It seems clear that, if we want to see whether Confucians have aconcept of justice, the concept of justice we should defme has to be suf-ficiently emp ty, broad and abstract. That is to say, this con cept of justiceshould be fo rmu lated not in terms of particular ideas such as equa l rights,which can only be fou nd in a modern liberal conception of justice; itshould be a con cep t tha t is shared by all the particular con cep tion s ofjustice, includmg the very peculiar modern liberal conception of justice.

Ill. WHAT IS IT LIKE TO HAVEA CONCEPT OF JUSTICE?

In the passage I quoted from Williams in th e last section, he arguesthat there is some t rut h in a relativistic view of justice a nd he nce there issome pressure to see the modern conception of justice in terms of equalrights as simply not applying to hierachical societies of the past. How-ever he also argues that the con cept of social justice is a special case inrelation to relativism and that Justice and injustice are certa inly ethicalnotions and arguably can be applied to past societies as a whole, evenwhen we understand a good deal abo ut them.0 Notic e that here whatcan be applied to past societies is not the modern conception of justice interms of equal rights, but justice as ethical notions. I read what hesays as meaning that, although the mode rn conception of justice in termsof equal rights does not apply to societies of the past, the concept ofjustice seems t o be a non-relatively shared on e. That is to say, Williams isnot a radical relativist. This is especially obvious from wha t he immedi-ately says right after the passage I quoted in the kast section.

Yet th ere are strong pressures for the justice or injustice ofpast societies not merely to evaporate in the relativism ofdistance. Even if we refuse to apply to them determinatelymodern ideas, some conceptions of ustice were used in those


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societies themsehes [my emphasis] and it is not a pun ora linguistic error t o call them that.

However, the issue is no t as simple as i t sounds. How does one know thatthe proposition that some conceptions of justice were used in thosesocieties themselves is true? Th e truth of this propo sition is exactlywhat a radical relativist den ies. Especially in the cases where t he pastsociety had a different language, how do we know that some concept ofjustice was used in that society? It seems that we cannot know it unlesswe have already translated a certain word in that language as justiceor S U S t . Then that would be begging the question. For what a radicalrelativist denies is exactly the possibility of translating any word in thatlanguage as justice or just.

1) the past society was anEnglish-speaking on e, ii! !he past soc iety was ancie nt China. Let us fur thersuppose the past society we are concerned with is medieval England, andwe find the following sentence written by Shakespeare in 1601. Hewas my Friend, faithful, and just to me. A Radical relativist couldinsist that, although Shakespeare spoke the same language (English) aswe do tod ay, it is only t he same language in its linguistic sense, he actuall yspok e a different lan guage in its conceptual sense. He has a totallydifferent set of co ncepts an d categories. A radical relativist may say thatWe and Shakespeare do no t even share the same conce pt of justice .In this case, Williams could indeed argue convincingly against this radicalrelativism by saying that

Let us consider two possible cases.

(E) It is not a pun or a linguistic error to call the concept,which is expressed by the word. just Shakespeare used ,a concept of justice.

However when we m ove to the second case where the past society isancient Chma, it seems that Williamss strategy wouldn t work. For itcannot convince anyon e b y saying that


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(C) I t is not a pun or a linguistic error to call the con cept ofjustice used in ancient China the conc ept of justi ce.

It will be tautological to call the concept of x used in society y theconcept of x . A radical relativist will not be convinced by this. Th estatement (C) has already presupposed that there is the concept of justicein ancient China, which is exactly what we want to prove and a radicalrelativist denies Tha t is to say , we cann ot refute radical relativism at suchan abstract level. We have to do a detailed study of how certain w ordsin ancient Chinese are used, and how they are used in what kinds ofpractices and contexts (e.g., in the practice of accepting gifts). If, throughthis study, we can manage to show that there are uses, at least some uses,of a certain word - et us call it c - n ancient Chinese which aresimilar to th e uses of just then, we can say,

(C) I t is not a pun or a linguistic error to call the concept,which is expressed by the word c in ancient Chinese,a concept of justice.

More specifically, in order to show that the Chinese character c expresses the concept of justice, one has to show that the word c is used - t least sometimes - in the same way the word >u st isused as defined by a formulation of the concept of justice. This is what Iam going to do in the next section. And, the word c will turn out tobe the character >yia which expresses one of the central concepts inConfucian ethics.

Notice that it does not require that the word )ia always behaveslike the word ?just. The fact that sometima i t behaves like just isenough for proving that there is a concept of justice in ancient China. Aparallel case might be he lpfu l here. Th e Greek term dikaws, as GregoryVlastos observes, could be used to cover all soclal conduct which ismorally right and its sense is thus much broader than just.n Mostscholars have translated it as just. So does Vlastos. For it is enough


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that some of its uses are similar to the uses of Tust. This is also howRawls argues that his concept o f justice ca n be said to tally with tradi-tion, by tradition he means Aristotles concept of justice, which isexpressed by the Greek term dikaios or d i k ~ i o s y n 2 . ~ ~

Before we move to the next section, where we will figure out thecondition under which Confucius and Mencius would use yia , the last too lwe need is a formulation of the concept of justice, which shows underwhat condition we will use the term just. Then we will be able tocompare this condition with the condition under which Confucius andMencius use the word pa . I would like to propose two formulationsof a working concept of justice and 1 shall show that the second one isappropriate for our purpo se in this paper.

The first one is a modified formulation that is found in Rawlsslater work Political Liberalism, which is different in many respects fromhis early work A Theory ofJust ice . However, the distinction betweenconcep t an d conc eption is still there; he says in Political Liberalism,

This pair [of concept and conceptio n] is distinguished as theywere in Theory, pp. 5f. Roughly, the concept is the meaningof a term, while a particular co nct!ptio n includes as well theprinciples required to apply it. ... People can agree on themeaning of the concept of justice and still be at odds, sincethey affirm different principles and standards for decidingthose matter^."'^

What he means by *those matters is, as he puts it, to make distinctionsbetween persons in assigning bcsic rights and duties, ...[And to establish]prope r balance between com peting claims (ibid, my emphasis). Thisformulation is not broadly framed, because it is still formulated in termsof basic rights which can only be found in the modern liberal conceptio nof justi ce. Nevertheless, I think, Rawlss concept of justice need not beso narrowly defin ed. What is being assigned need no t be *basic rights andduties; let us modi fy it by replacing them by things, which can be


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a variety of things, such as wealth a nd ran k, profit s, a wife,2s respect,honor, and so on.

Another problem with Rawlss concep t is that it seems to pre-suppose the existence of a nationstate or the basic structure of a nation-state because he sometimes also says that the concept of justice is aboutthe basic terms in which citizens of a nation-state design their basicstructure. Form ulated in this way, the concep t of justice would applyonly to the basic structu re, not to actio ns and persons. But we need aconcept of justice that can apply to basic structures (or institutions)and actions and persons as well. J6The second formulation, which is the one I am going to use in thispaper, is form H.L.A.Hart. In fact, Rawls borrow s the distinction betweenconcept/conception from Hart. But it seems that he does not noticethat Harts formula tion is a broader o ne. According to Hart, justice istraditionally thought of as maintaining or restoring a balance or propor-tion, and its leading precept is ofte n formul ated as Tr ea t like cases alike;thoug h we need to add to th e latter and treat differen t cases differently:And this traditional precept is a concept of justice, not aconception of justice. Hart says,

[Tlhough Treat like cases alike and different casesdifferently is a central element in the idea of justice, it is byitself incomplete and, until suppleme nted, canno t afford anydeterminate guide to conduct. This is so because any set ofh um an beings [ o r s i t ~ a t i o n s ] ~ ~ill resemble each other insome respects and differ from each othe r in othe rs and, untilit is established what resemblance and differences are relevant,Treat like cases alike must remain a n em pty

We can ask wh eth er a person treats like cases alike and different casesdifferently , or whether anac tion is cond ucted in such a way tha t like casesare treated alike and different cases differently . Formu lated in this way,the concept of justice can apply t o actions, persons, et c, not just to th e


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basic structu re of a society.I also want to express this form ulation in a different version, which

will be proved to be more useful in the next section. Harts version is thefollowing:

(J ) To be just is to treat like cases alike and different casesdifferently.

One may also say that those like cases form a kind (the Chinese charac-ter: lei) and that different cases belong to different kinds there fore,(J ) can also be expressed as follows:

(J ) To be just is to treat cases that belong to the same kindalike and cases that belong to different kinds diffe rently.

Obviously, this is a concept of justice, because it remains an empty fo rmuntil it is established, by a particular conception of justice, which could bea system of classifications telling us specifically wha t cases form th e samekind (leim) and what cases belong to different kinds.

In the next section, I am going to show that the concept expressedby the term yia in Confucian ethics is a concept of justice. More specific,in order to prove this, what we need to find is the following:

(Y) To be yia is to treat like cases alike and different casesdifferently.

Or to formu lated in terms of kinds (leim),(Y)To be yia is to treat cases that belong to the same kind

(leim) alike and cases that belong to different kindsdifferently.


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IV. TEXTUAL ANALYSIS:HOW Yp IS USED IN CONFUCIUS

AND MENCIUS

The character yia occurs twenty-four times in th e Analects, on ehundred and eight times in the Mencius. Its uses are diverse. Chen Ta-&in a contem porar y scholar of Confucianism, once i n a paper classifiedthe uses of yia in the Mencius into four kinds: 1) self-regarding morality2) others-regarding morality; 3) norms of values; 4) principles of humanaffairs. In a boo k published later, he criticized himself for making afarfetched classification of the uses of ria. In the en d he has given up thisclassification. What he later did was to put togethe r similar uses of theword in the text without imposing his own classification system. Whatcame ou t was an amazing classification: a) yi a of respecting the elderlyand obeying the elder brothers, b) yia between the ruler and the ministers;c) yia that has to do with taking and giving; d) yia of the heartlmind ofshame, e) yi that is said to be the human path or way f ) yia that conflictswith profits, g) yia that is said to be internal; h) yia that is said to becommon yia of the world.30 And this list can go on an d on.

What should we make out of this? How should we explain such abizarre classification? How is it possible to use one wor d to cover somany different uses? Fortunately, here we d o not need t o answer thesequestions. It may be that there is a comm on thread underlying all thesediverse uses; or the uses have no thread running through but only afamily resemblance, or, anoth er interpr etation is that Menciuss use ofthe w ord is simply another particular case of th e oriental way o f thinkingand classifying which is always exotically chaotic and incoherent.As I said earlier, for my purpose in this paper, it would be sufficient if Ican show that some uses of yza satisfy the formu lation (Y) or (Y). There-fore, I will just focus on one group of uses of yia that has to do wi thtaking, having or accepting things (grou p c) above.

Confucius says that one of the three ch aracteristics of a completeperson is that the complete person t h i n k s about ria at the moment of


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having profit (14.12 ). At two places, Confucius says that a chiin- tzibwould think about yia at the moment of gaining something (19.1 and16 10). In the Analects and the Mencius, the objects that can be take n,gained and accepted could be a variety of things:

wealth and rank (7.16, 4.5), profit (14.12), a state (7A:34),the tyrant of a state (3B:5), the office of minister (5A.8),a wife (6B.1), food (6B :l) a present of a hundred yi of goldof superior quality (2B:3), the Empire (3B:4), a basketful ofrice (3B:4).

Let g be any one o f the things listed above. In all the above cases, Con -fucius and Mencius claim that one should always ask Is it yia t o t akeCpain, acce pt) g ? rr33

If we say that, for Confucius and Mencius, yia is the principle fortaking, gaining and accepting things, we have to qualify it by adding a loto f warnings. On e of the m is the following: the principle of yia doesnot have the form of what I shall call strictly universal princip le. Hereare some examples of strictly universal principles:

( U , ) It is always just or right to takeg. (Or , Always takeg .?( U , ) It is always just or right not t o take g.

(Or, Always d o not take g.)I shall call someone a strict universalist if she believes that a principle ofjustice must take the form of a strictly universal principle - .e., aprinciple of justice can only take either the form ( U , ) or the form (LIZ).For a strict universalist, one cannot say, It is just (o r right) at rime tto take g. Fo r it does no t make sense to say that something is just (right)at one particular time; it is either always right or always wrong - his isthe strictly universal grammar of the term just or right. Thatis to say, for strict universalism, a principle of justice cannot have thefollowing form :


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(P) It is sometimes right or just, and sometimes not , to take g .I shall call those particularists who think that theprinciple of justice should take the form of (P)

Let us assume someone accepts a gift or present at time t l a nd refusesa present at time t2 For a strict universalist, if she is just to accept apresent at t, then, she must be unjust at t2 . All th e cases of gift-taking,regardless of wha t a particular circumstance a case is in, form on e hom o-genous kind, and all cases of gift-taking thus must be treated alike. Oneonly has two options: i) either to accept all the gifts, regardless of whooffers, when they are offered, in what manner they are offered , whatparticular situation one is in; or, ii) to refuse all the gifts, regardless of whooffers, when they are offered, in what manner they are offered, whatparticular s ituation o ne is in. Acc ordi ndy , strict universalism can alsobe expressed as follows,

(U) All cases of gift-taking form one homog eneous kind andshould be treated alike.

That is to say, for a strict universalist, a principle of justice cannot havethe following form:

(P) Some cases of gift-taking form a kind, and some casesof gift-taking form a different kind. Th e cases belongingto the same kind should be treated alike and the casesbelonging to a different kind should be treated dif-ferently.

Notice that both strict universalism (U) and particularism (F) share theidea that cases belonging to the same kind should be treated alike andcases belonging t o different kinds should be treated differently. Tha t isto s ay, they share the same concep t ofju stice. But since they have totallydifferent particular ideas about what caes belong t o which kind, th ey have


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5 38 YANG XlAO

different conceptions o f justice.I now want to show that the debate between Chen Chen and

Mencius in 2B:3 is actually a debate between a strict universalist and aparticular ist. Chen Chen, according to Chao Chis, is one of Menciussdisciple^.^' He seems to be a strict universalist. He someho w believes that

the principle of accepting gifts should be either Always accept giftsor Always do not accep t gdts. He once asks Mencius: The o ther dayin Chi you refused to accept a present of a hundred yi of gold from theKing, but in Sung you accepted a present of seventy y i in Hsiieh youlikewise accepted fifty yi. And, Chen Cen objects to Menciuss actionsby saying tha t,

If you r refusing the gift in the first case was right, yo uraccepting in the latter cases must be wrong;on the oth er ha nd ,if your accepting in the latter case was right, your refusing inthe first case must be wrong. You cannot escape on e or th eothe r of these two alternatives. (2B:3)

To put his poin t in oth er words: You have treated cases of gift-takingdifferently; you should have had one single universal way to treat all casesof gift-taking. For either it is always right to accept gifts or it is alwayswrong t o accept gifts. One only has these two alternatives, there can notbe a third alternative, which is that it is sometimes right and sometimeswrong to accept gifts. An d, this is exactly what Mencius denies in hisanswer to Chen Chen

In 2B:3, Mencius is recorded as replying to Chen Chen in thefollowing way . He says, B oth my refusal and accepta nce were right.Then he goes on to give his explanations about how the latter two casesare similar and hence are treated alike and how the first case is differentfrom t he t w o cases and hen ce is rightly (justly) trea ted in a way differentfrom the two cases. W h a t he does is to treat similar like cases alike, anddifferent cases differen tly. Mencius, like Confucius, has no absoluteyes or absolute no (wu-ko-wu-pu-kou)egarding what is to be done


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JUSTICE IN CONFUCIAN ETHICS 539

(18.18). He is not invariably for or against anything he does what isappropriate. Mencius can be perfectly characterized by Confuciuss fol-lowing saying,chiin-fzub is not invariably for or against any thin g. Hejust does what is yra. (4.10) So it seems that yia does satisfy the formu-lation (Y).=

When Mencius left Chi, on the way Chung Y uv, a disciple, asked:Master, you look somewhat unhappy. I heard from y ou the ot he r day theprinciple that Chiin-fzu reproaches neither Heaven nor man. Menciusanswered, This is one time (shihw); that was another time (shihW)(2B: 13). The concrete applications of the Confucian general principlebChiin-tzu reproaches neither Heaven nor man thus vary from time totime.

In fact, Mencius calls Confucius the sage of shih w (th e sage whoseactions are timely) (5B: 1). By this, Mencius means tha t He was the sortof man who, when it was proper to hasten his departure, hastened hisdepa rture, when it was proper to delay it, delayed it when it was properto remain in the state, remained in the state, when it was proper to takeoffice, took office, all according t o circumstances ( S B : I , also see 2A:2) .

Let me end this section with one of my favorite anecdotes in theAnalects, which is another good example t o illustrate the Confucianconcept of ria.Confucius was once being asked by two of his disciplesthe same question: Should one immediately put into practice whatone has learned? The Master gave totally different answers. T o studentTzu-lu, it was A s your father and elder brothers are still alive, you arehardly in a position to put immediately into practice what you havelearned. To another student Jan Yu, he answer was simply Yes. Oneshould. When the master was asked why his answers were dif feren t, hereplied, Jan Yu hold s himself back. It is for this reason tha t I tried tourge him on. Tzu-lu has the energy of two men. It is for this reason th atI tried to hold him back (1 1.22).

What the anecdote shows is that Confucius is extremely sensitive tothe richness a nd complex ity of the particular. He cultivates people whohave different particular characters in different ways. He refuses to insist

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5 40 YANG X l A O

on absoluteness, refuses to be inflexible (see 9.4). For Confucius, chi n-tz u must have the sensibility to the particular, to the richenss and com-plexity of the particular. The above anecdo te is a perfect example toillustrate what exactly Conf ucius means in the passage I cited as a mottofor this paper (4.10). Confucius is not generally (abstractly) for th egeneral rule Put in to practice immediately what one has learned; nor ishe generally (abstrac tly) against th e general rule. His sensibility to th eparticular makes him distrus t any of this kind of general rules. In cert ainconcrete situations he is concretely for it and in certain situationsconcretely against it; it all depends on particular situations. For Con-fucius no general rule can cover each and every unique particular case.If som eone invariably sticks to a general rule, he does not havey ia. There-fore, yia is not only a sensibility; it also has to be a capacity for judgingwhat is appropriate to do in particular situations. As Chung-ying Chen gputs it, A man of yi a, therefore, must be a man of creative insights whois able to make appropriate moral judgements in particular situations,judgements which will preserve the totality of goodness and j~stice.~

b

V. TRYING TO DO JUSTICETO THE PARTICULAR

Now let me turn to the particular issue concerning the possibilityof doing justice to the concep t of justice in Confucian ethics I mentionedin the introd uction. Armed with the Confucian spirit of justice, I thinkthat we may be able to try to do justice to this particular issue and give aCon fucian justifi cation for what we have been doing in this paper.

The same issue will arise if I were to write a paper on some othertopics, say, the concept of G od in Confucian ethics, or the conc ept ofindividual rights in Confucian ethics, etc. The list can be endless. So itseems that the question Can we do justice to the concept of justice inConfucian ethics? is just a particular case of a general question of Canwe even talk about Confucian ethics in English without doing injusticeto i t or Can we talk about one culture (o r language) in terms of cate-


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gories of another different culture (or language) without doing injusticeto i t . One may thus be tempted to say that we should first solve thegeneral question, Which has to do with translation, interpretation, languageand cultural relativism, and th en apply t it to ou r particular case concern ingthe concept of justice.

However, from Confucius, we have learned not to cling to anygenerality tha t is indep endent of concrete reality.36 With the help fro mConfucius, we should t ry to resist the te mptation t o see the whole issuein this way. Confu cius and Mencius help us to see tha t this approach doesnot do justice to th e particular. For it rules out the possibility that allthe particular cases, like the gifts offered to Mencius, might not form ahomogeneous kind; and, therefore, each of them requires a differenttreatment. As Confucians have insisted, there might be no abstract genera-lity th at can cover each and every particular case. What one can say abou tthe concept of individual rights in Confucian ethics may not apply tothe co ncept of justice in Confucian ethics.

Nevertheless, it is not easy to resist the te mp tatio n. One may beattracted to the following approach: one starts with a general theory oflanguage and interpretation, claiming that two languages, in general, cannever be translated into each other without doing injustice (or violence)to each of them. The second step is to apply this general theory t o theparticular case of the English term justice, concluding that one cannever do justice to the concept of justice in Chinese ethics if one talksabout it in English. To utter the English sentence I am doing justice tothe co ncept of justice in Confucian eth ics, according t o this general viewof language, would be a performative contradiction. I have argued else-where that this general view of language is problematic, so I will notaddress the issue here.9 In fact, 1 do not even need to determine whetherthis general view is correct. Whether it is correct is irrelevant here. Thepoint is not about the general view itself, but rather, about the approachof solving our problem by regarding it as a particular case of a generalview.

Another seductive approach is similar in this regard; the difference


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542 YANC XlAO

is just that the first step is to decide whether cultural relativism, anothe rgeneral theory, is correc t. If it is correc t, by application, we automa tical-ly know the answer is no to our particular question Can we talk aboutthe concept of justice in Confucian ethics in Western-influencedlanguage?

In th e 1970s an d ~ O S ,here had been a debate about relativism inth e English-speaking world? It is a vice of the debate that i t oftenremained at the a bstract level. People argued whe ther relativism in generalis true or false by appealing to some more general theory of language ortheory of understanding (o r theory of practice). One can often finddiscussions cond ucted in the following abstra ct way: one assumes twocultures o r languages, A and B, and then, based on some general theoryof culture or language, one proceeds to draw the conclusion that A and Bare radically different (or similar). Conf ucius and Mencius, had theyknow n this, would wonder how one can ever know, in such a general way,whether two such abstract things are alike or radically differ ent. In thiskind of discussion, a possibility, which particularists are very sensitive tobut strict universalists are not even aware of, was ruled out u priori. Thepossibility is the following: perhaps two concrete cultures, say, ancientChinese and ancient Greek are very much alike, whereas ancient Chineseand mo dern Western culture s are radically differ ent. And, these have tobe determined by detailed studies of the two cultures involved. No one inthe debate addressed the question at a concrete level, or dealt with anyparticular cultures or particular co ncep ts in particular culture s. It is theirbelief that after they get the answer at the general level by philosophicalspeculation, they can just apply it to the particular cases.

However, it should be the other. way aroun d. We should not startwith the general questions, but rather, with the particular cultures andparticular concept^.^' We must try to d o justice to the particular andtreat different cases differently. Whenever someone talks about culturalrelativism, ask him/her With respect to which particular cultures? With respect to which particular concept? What follows then shouldbe detailed analysis and comparison of the particular concepts of these


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54 3USTICE IN CONFUCIAN ETHICS

two concrete cultures. This step is unavoidable. Justice requires it?'

GRADUATE FACULTY, NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

NOTES

1. This is a mu ch revised version of a paper presented at a pane l, organized b yInternational Society of Chinese Philosophy, on Confucian Views of Justice"at the Eastern Division Meeting, American Philosophical Association (Atlanta,December 28, 1996). I am very g ra te fu l to my com menta to r P ro f . Chung-ying Cheng for this very helpful comm ents, which called my a ttention t o thediversity of uses of the term yia in Confucius and Mencius, which led me torevise the paper. I hope Prof. Cheng will agree for t he better . I have alsobenefit ted from co mm ents by participants at th e meeting thanks especiallyto Deborah Ach tenberg . Xunwu Chen , Lik Kuen Tong . 1 am particularlygrateful fo r Prof. Kwong-loi Shun for taking th e t ime to read th e early versionpresented at APA; his commen ts and crit ique have helped me t o realize thatthe pa r t on the relation between Con fucian justice and self was not satisfac-to ry . I d o not include tha t part in this version of the paper. 1 am indebtedto Prof. Richard Bernstein for teaching me the importance and, perhaps,more importantly, the elusiveness, of phronesis as sensibili ty to the particular,in a seminar on Gadam er's hermeneutics. I am also gra te fu l to Ann Dobbs fo ra conversation with her on Pascal's view on he impossibili ty of justice, whichinspired m e to further revise the paper. Thank s, f inally, to D.D Sun,withou twhose support, advice, and sense of justice I would not have finished thispaper

2 . The Chinese term chun-rz ub has been translated as "the gentleman" "thevirtuous man." These patriarchal terms are closer to the actual meanm g.Grammatically speaking, the Chinese characters themselves do not havegender, but it is clear that by chun- tzu Confucius meant male officials andgentl eme n. Howeve r, Wte Aristotle's views of just ice , Conf ucian views ofjustice can sti ll be useful today. Therefore, I also often try to include women

b


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YANC XIAO44

3.

4 .

5 .

in my t ranslat ions by using t e rms like "person"; i t i s not designed to cover upConfucians ' injus t ice to women . Deborah Achtenbe rg has convincingly arguedthat feminis t ethics can f ind resources in Aris totle, who is , as she put s i t ,"a paradigmatically sexist thinker," see her "Aristotelian re source s for femi-nist thinking," in Feminism and Ancient Philosophy, ed . Julie K.Ward (NewYork: Rout ledge, 1 996) pp. 95-1 17. Similar arguments can be made withregard to Confucianism and feminis t thinking. I t i s doing jus t ice to Confucia-nism if we are sensitive to i t s potent ial uses and possible developments .All quotat ions from t h e Anulects are to book and passage numbers in Lun-yu i-chuc, tr. Yung Po-chin (Beijing: Qlung-hua shu-chi , 1980) . Forexample, (7.3) means ' Book 7 Passage 3." I have consulted English transla-t ions by D.C Lau, James Legge and Arthur Waley. Al l quo tat io ns f rom theMencius are to book and passage numbers (with book numbers 1A -79 sub-stituted for number 1-14) in Meng-tzu i-chue, tr . Yung P o x h i n d ( Be ij in g:Chung-huu shu-chi, 1984 ) For example , (2B: 3) means "Book 2 Passage 3."I have consul ted Engl ish t ranslat ions by D.C. Lau, James Legge. Since thereferences from the Analects and the Mencius have dif ferent forms, the forme rhaving the form (7.3) the lat ter (2B:3) , I wil l not indicate the Anulects or th eMencius each time.In this paper I shall only focus on the pr imary texts , the Analects and theMencius.We find "chen&" an d "yia" in the Analects and the Mencius, bu t no t "chengy i f . ' * Hsun Tzui i s probably the f irs t one who pu t the two characters together ,for example, in chapter 13 "On the way of Ministers," Hsin Tzui says , " Atradition expresses my poin t: 'One should follow the Way and not fol low thelord. ' Thus, if ministers who are upright and just ( c h e n g y i ' ) are given posi-tions, then partiality will not characterize the court." Hsun-rzui ( 13 / 19 - 20 ) .All references are to chapter and l ine number in the H Y ed. I use John K no-block's three volume translation, Xunzi: A Trunslurion and Study of th eComplete Works, vol. 11 (Stanfo rd: Stanfo rd University Press, 1990), p. 200.

d

6 . "The Idea of Social justice in Ancient China," in Sociul justice in rh e AncienfWorld, ed . K.D. I rani and Morr is Si lver (Westpor t? G reenwood Press , 19 95) .p. 125.


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5 4sUSTICE 1N CONFUCIAN ETHICS

7.

8 .

9 .

10

'Confuc ian Jus t ice : Achieving a Humane Society," Infernutionul Philosoph i-cal Quurterly, Vol . X X X , No. I , March 1990, p . 17.'*Confucian justice," p. 17. However, Heiner Roetz, a German sinologist, hastranslated y f consistently a s justice, see Heiner Roe tz, ConfucianEthics ofthe Axiul Age (Albany: Sta te University of New York Press, 1993). But thebook was published af ter Peerenboom's 199 0 paper from which this passagewas cited. Nevertheless, in his excellent three volume translation of Xunzi(Hsiin Tzui), John Knoblock has consistently translated yia as justice orsocial justice. Th e first volum e was published in 1988 se e Xunzi: A Tmnslu-tion and Study of the Complete Works, ol. 1 (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1988). Peerenboom no t ices tha t yia in Hsun Tzui has been o f ten t rans-lated as justice. But he insists that justice may very well be the m ost appro-priate translation of yia fo r Hsun Tzu', bu t n o t fo r Confuc ius . Th e ques t ion ,as he says, then becomes what this tells us abou t the d i f ference between t hephilosophy of Hsun Tzui and that of Confucius ( ibid. , p. 1 7). I shall deal withthis questio n elsewhere. Here let m e just say that we have to make th e distinc-tion betw een conc ept and concep tion, which 111 introdu ce soon , i t may bea fact that Hsun Tzu' and Confucius have different conceptions of y? ( thedifference between their philosophies). b ut this fact should not be confusedwith a different claim that they do not even share the same concept ofyia.As I said, I shall deal with the question about the difference between HsunTzul's and Confucius 's conceptions of justice elsewhere,Both Lee and Peerenboom carefully avoid drawing such a conclusion. Afterthe passages I cited above, they imm ediately ad d, respectively, "Practicallyall discussions that have bearing on the issue of justice or social justice arefound in the Chinese articulations on a moral philosophy of polit ical or socialorder" (L ee, p. 1 2 6 ) . and . 'This is not to say that Confucius was notconcerned with issues which fall under the rubric of justice understood in abroad sense" (Peerenboom, p . 17)As Amartya Sen puts i t , " i t is not even clear to me that Confucius is entirelymore authoritarian than Plato or St . Augus t ine . I t is true, of course, thatmany - hough no t a l l - of the ex ponen ts of justice or tolerance or freedomin Asian classical l i terature tended to restr ict th e doma in of conc ern to some

. .


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5 46 YANG XlAO

11 .

12 .

13 .

14 .

people, excluding others, but that is also true of the ancient West. Aristotlesexclusion of women and slaves does not make his works on freedom andjustice irrelevant to th e present-day world We have to see the origin andexposition of ideas in terms of their factored components. (Humanity andCitizenship in For Love of Counny: Debating the Limits of htriotism, ed .Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 1 18).The sentence todays China can be called a Confucian country is a contro-versial statem ent I am not making that statement here; what I am making hereis a different, conditional one: Given that dodays China can be called aConfucian country.Governmental spokesmen of several Asian countries such as China and Singa-pore - or example, in the Vienna conference of 1993 , to dispute the relevanceof human rights in Asia - often m ake such argume nts based on he confusion.This fact is often overlooked or underestimated by Westerners. Here 1 shallonly mentioned two examples, one being extremely well-known and o ne beingunknown (especially to outsiders). Let m e start with the latter. Since 1988there ha s been a rights-based law movement in mainland China. I t startedwith a debate on What is the basis of law: rights or du ty ? at the FirstNational Conference on Basic Legal Categories held in June 1988. Since then(and even after 1989 ), there have been m any articles focusing on th e issuepublished in magazines and newspapers. Th e movement criticizes Chinasstate-based duty-based conaption of law and i ts te , lency to one-sidedly emphasize duty. One of the major spokespersons of the movementsays that individual rights are the basis and goal of the existence of otherrights and that only a governme nt that takes citizens rights seriously canhave peoples trus t, respect, and obedience to t he law. Only a rights-basedtheory of law can satisfy this need. This movement is not just an intellectualmovement. It is a reflection of the change of Contemporary political-legalculture and popular cu lture in todays China. I t also prepared the atmospherefor the 1989 Prodemocratic movement, which is, of course, a much well-known example.1 have given an argu ment for this claim in a paper in Chinese: Rawlss

kTheory of Civil Disobedience and its Chinese version, Zhe-m e ping-lun


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JUSTICE IN CONFU CIAN ETHICS 547

15 .

16 .

17 .

18.

19 .20 .21.2 2 .

23.24 .

25 .

26.

(China Philosophical Review), voL 1, no. 1, (Beij ing: Zhong guo-she -huike-xue Publ ish House, 1993 ) . (This journal is the f irs t independent phi losophyjournal in China s ince 1949.) Also see He Huaihong's."On the t ranslat ion of

I'civil disobe dience ': a reply to Xiao Yang's critique," Zhong-gueshu-ping(China Book Review), No. 2 , 1994. Thi s j ournal is published in Hong Kongb u t is also distributed in mainland China.I have given a mor e detailed argum ent fo r this claim in "Hegel's the oiy of thestate and civil disobedience," a paper presented in Prof. Agnes Heller's seminaron Hegel's Philosophy of Right at the New School for Social Research in1994. Th e basic idea is that , s ince the modern l iberal concept ion of jus t ice,and that of citizenship, have become historically possible, and even actual inHegel's sense, in today's C hina, civil disobedien ce can th us be justified.See his Shame and N ecess i ty. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);see, for example, p. 166.Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1985) , p. 165. Also see his easy 'The Truth in relativism" in Moral Luck.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198 1) , pp. 1 32-14 3.These words are Ronald Dworkin's, L a w ' s Empire, (Cambrdige: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 198 6). p. 70 . He also gives a mo re articulated acc oun t of thedistinction, see especially pp. 46-53, 70-76.A Theory o f h s r i c e . (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 197 I ) , p. 5 .Ethics and the L imits o f Philosophy. p. 165.Ethicsand the Limits ofPhilosop hy, p p. 1 6 5 6 .Gregory Vlastos, "Justice and Happiness in t h e Republic': Pluto: A Collectionof Critical Essayr, vol. 11, ed. Gregory Vlastos (Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 1978) , p. 66.A Theory of Justice. pp. 10-1 1.Political Liberalism, papcrback, (New York: Columbia Universi ty Press, 19 96) .p. 14 , n. 15.I intentionally include "a wife," so this formulat ion cf t he concept of jus t i cewill be broad enough to be also shared by a sexis t conc ept ion of justice; see(6B: 1) in the MenciusNeverthelss, it seems that Rawls would agree that a concept of justice need


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548 YANG XIAO

not have these features . At on e point , he says that Aristot le ' s def ini t ion ofjus t ice is f ramed to apply to ac t ions and persons , whereas the def ini t ion ofjus t ice he ad opts " is des igned to apply direct ly to the most im portant case,the jus t ice of th e basic s t ructure." But , right af ter this, he says , 'Th ere is noconfl ict wi th the t radi t ional not ion." Th e term "not ion" here obviouslymeans "concept ." To put i t in other words , Rawls and Aris tot le share thesame concept or not ion of j us t ice ; s ee A Theory of Iwn'ce, p. 11. 1 shal l no tuse th e modif ied formulat ion of Rawls s in this paper . However , i t wi l l be avery useful one when we want to know wha t Arutot l e or Confucius wouldsay abo ut th e basic s t ructure of a society and whether their views of jus t iceare comparable with l iberal ism.Rawls acknowledge s this , see A Theory ofJurtic e, p. 5 ."Cases" d o n ot have to be l imited to 'human beings", so I add "situations"to make th e concept a real ly broad one.The Concept o f k w . Oxf ord. Oxf ord University Press, 196 I ) , p . 155 .Mengrzu fui.chieh-luo (Taipei: T'ai-wan shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 19 80 ), pp.

2 1 .2 8 .

29.30 .

4168.31. Fo r those wh o bel ieve in the last option, this classification very likely would

remind them of a passage in Jorge Luis Borges , which later has be come wel l-known s ince Michel Foucaul t s tar ted his book The Order of Things with thispassage and claimed tha t his book first arose out of i t . This passage quo tesa certain Chinese e ncyc loped ia in which it is writte n tha t anim als are classifiedinto: a) belonging to th e Emperor , b) embalmed, c) tam e, d ) sucking pigs ,e) sirens, f) fabulous , g) stray dogs, h) included in the presen t classification,i ) f renzied, j) innumerable, k) drawn with a very fine Lamelhair brush, I )et ceferu, m) having just broken the water pi tcher , n) that f rom a long way offlook like fhes. Like oth er things abo ut China Borges "describes" in his shortstories, this on e is also his invention. Fouc ault wan ts to use this exot ic inven-tion of classic China for purposes that have to do with challenging Westernclassifications. This raises complicated issues, such as, wh ethe r it is doingjustice t o classic Chin a when the invention in its nam e is being used as mean sfor ends other than fur ther ing bet ter and more' balanced unders tandings ofclassic China. But I can t go into th ese issues here.


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JUSTICE IN CONF UCIAN ETHICS 54 9

32 . For a detailed analysis of the other uses of via,such as those that have to d owith t he sense of honor and sha me, and th at have to d o w i th ria as beinginternal, see Kw ong-loi S hun, Mencius und Early Chinese T houg hf (Stunford:Stanford University Press, 1997). There is a tension between yia as beinginternal and ria as being just to the particular. I t is almost impossible t o holdthese two uses together. I shall try to show how Mencius does i t e lsewhere.Except in 3B:4 and 4.5, where Mencius and Confucius do no t use yia b u ttoop instead. What they ask is: Is it in accordance with toop ( the way orprinciple) to t a k e g? However, toop and yia are tightly related and probablyrefer to the same thing. In 7.16 and 4.5, Confucius usesya nd tuop in asimilar way: each eta n 7.16 and mop in 4.5) is said to be a principle accor-d ing to which one de te rmines whe ther one shou ld take or gain wealth andrank. More importan tly, for Mencius and Confucius, th e metaphor for yia isalways tuop ( t h e w a y or p a th ) s ee 5 A : 7 , 4 A . 1 0 , 6 A : l l , 7 A : 3 3 , 4 B :2 .In fact. with regard to Menciuss saying in 4B:2, [The great man] walks inthe great tuop of the world, Chu Hsiq makes the following comment: Thegreat tuop isyia.*Here I follow Chung-ying Cheng (On ria as a universal principle of specificapplication in Confucian morality , in his New Dimensions of Confuciunisrnan d Neo-Confuciun Philosophy, Albany: St ate University of New York Press,1991 , pp . 2 33 45 ) , and Dav id L. Hall and Roger T. Ames (Thinking ThroughConfucius, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, pp. 101-2).However, 1 think that Hall and Ames have gone too far in saying that weshould not use the term principle o/yia at all; their reason is the following:More often than not. this entails the assumption, tacit or explicit , that suchprinciples are transcendently grounded (p. 101). But , as the phrase moreoften tha n not alsoindicates, to use the term principle does n ot necessarilyentail th e assumption, just l ike the term justice do es not necessarily entailthe con ception o f equal r ights.From the nature o f confrontation between him and Mencius in other passages(7B:23 we m ay also include 2B:lO and 5B: 14, if we agree wit h Chao Chisthat Chen Tzu in these two passages is Chen Chen), I suspect that he isprobably not Menciuss disciple. Especially, judged fr om his positio n, very

33 .

34

35 .


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likely he is a Mohist. Or, if he is a disciple, he is, at least, influenced byMohisms universalism regarding the principle of ria;also s ee my next note.Here I do not have space to show that it also satisfiesanother version of (Y),i.e., (Y) which is formulated in terms of leim (see my section 111 above).In fact, it is not difficult to show that this is the case. In 3B:lO and 5B 4 ,Mencius himself speaks of ya n terms of leim. The way to understand thesepassages is that we m ust take seriously the fact that the deb ate recorded inthese passages is a debate between Mencius and Mohists and that they usethe logical term leim in the way it is used in Mohist logical texts, which isavailable to us. This is crucial, because Mencius does not leave us any logicaltext, although he appears to be very good at it. It seems that leim is a logicalterm commonly used by Mohists, Mencius and other carlier thin kers (e.g.,Hsin Tzu). This paper is part of a larger project which will show that theMencius as a whole can be better understood within the framework sketchedin this paper. Som e very difficult passages. such as3 B: lO, SB :4, 2B :8, 7B :2 ,1B:8, 3 8 5 , etc. in th e Menchrs can be better interpreted. Th e project alsoshow s that yia is used in the way sketched here in other early Chinese tex ts.New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy (Albany: StateUniversity of New York P ress, 19911, p. 236.N ew Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. pp. 236-1.Derrida seems to be endorsing such a general view, for a critique of it, seemy paper Justice and Interpretation: A Wittgensteinian critique of DerridasForce of Law, which was presented in Prof. Albrecht Wellmer and Prof.

Ru th Sondereggers seminar Toward a critique of H ermen eutic reason atthe New School for Social Research in 199 5. Derridas essay was first publish-ed in Cardozo Luw Review, vol. 11 , 1990. It was reprinted in Deconstru ctionun d rhe Possibiliry of Jusnce, ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld andDavid Gray Carlson (New York Routledge, 19 92) .Some of the important papers o n he issue can be found in Rufionulify andRelufivisrn, e d. M artin Hollis and Steven Lukes (Oxfo rd: Blackwell, 1982 ).There are also quite a few books on he issue the literature is massive.I owe this point to Prof. Richard Bernstein. 1 am also grateful to him forencouraging m e t o explo re the issue in Confucian ethics. As he pointed out

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to m e in an unforgettable conversation, th e debate ab out relativism has tomove to the particular level; and, furthe rmore , every move is pred ic tab le o rhas already been made a t th e abstract level.However, I am also aw are that these claims are sti l l abstract. Th e slogan D ojus t ice to the pa r t icu la r, like all the other slogans such as Pu t t ing immedi-ately into practice w hat on e has learned, i sju st another general, abstract andemp ty rule. Th e slogan c an push peop le to the oppos i te of what i t says. Itcan negates i tself and be carried to extreme - that is , an abstract relativism,which , for example, may claim that Chinese culture, as a partic ular, is totallydifferent from Western cultur e and canno t be characterized by any Westerncategories. What David Nivison says abo ut th e virtue of modera t ion or t h emean also applies to the virtue of justice or sensibili ty to thepar t ic ukr . I t wou ld seem tha t if we g ive the no t ion of the mean any pos i-t ive content, we can imagine a situation in which it negates itself, at a higher(o r lower) level: even moderation can be carried to extremes. (Replies andComments , in Chinese Lo ny age, Thou ght, and Cul ture: Nivison and hisCndcr,ed. Philip 1. Ivanhoe, Chicago: Open Co urt, 1996, p. 291).

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1 Yang Xiao 1997 Trying to Do Justice to the Concept of Justice in Confucian Ethics

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