The Good, the Bad, and the Universal

Hsun-tzu believed that human nature was inherently bad. Hsun-tzu derived this belief by focusing on the biological aspects of humans. He believed that the biological make-up and tendencies of humans were the truest aspect of humanity. Our nature is to procreate, kill, and eat. Man is born an animal, which needs training to curb biological urges. He starts by looking at the masses for his norm of human nature. He saw very appetitive creatures and believed that humans needed to be trained by an externalized manifestation of li. This external li would control the bad nature of the body. His conception of li originates from past sages who created the concept to make people follow the rules of propriety. Propriety restrains the biological self by externally requiring people to behave properly. Hsun-tzu’s belief of curbing our bad human nature leads to authoritarianism, which gave birth to the legalist, who tried to administer li through the power of government. Through the state and socialization, li is used to render people more sage-like. Li was engrained into the people through education, rites, and discipline. This was the only way to curb the biological self, because the biology can never be at harmony with the spirit. Thus authoritarian rule must change the person in order to have any hope of harmony.

An example of Hsun-tzu’s human nature is Freud’s superego. Hsun-tzu’s external manifestation of li to control the biological appetite of the masses is like the superego regulating the id. The id is an impulse driven appetite that only sets out to please the phenomenal self. The superego represents societal norms and morals. The superego must be forced into a child’s head through education, discipline, and rituals. Once the superego starts working, the child will feel guilt for id-driven urges. Thus the child will become a socially stable creature.

Critique:
Mencius, when faced with Hsun-tzu’s theory on human nature, found it unnatural. A Hsun-tzu follower, Kao Tzu told Mencius that making morality out of nature was like making cups and bowls out of willow. Mencius refuted by pointing out that one must mutilate the willow to make cups and bowls; one can’t do it by following its nature. To Mencius, Hsun-tzu’s theory would be mutilating men and their natures to make them moral. In Hsun-tzu’s view, the body can never be at harmony with the spiritual self, so it has to be controlled externally. Mencius felt that li came from inside a person, which means the body and spirit need to reach a balance to be at harmony.

B. Mencius believed that human nature was intrinsically good. He held that if Heaven makes all men, then there is a standard that Heaven has engrained into them. With Heaven’s standard comes a natural self that is good. Humans possess an innate capacity for good and knowledge of what is good. Li is latent within man and therefore does not need an external force to bring it into man’s nature. It is merely a part of it. Mencius illustrates that water’s nature is to flow downward, just as man’s nature is pointed towards the good. He admits that an external force can keep water from flowing down, but it is hardly natural. He believed that to be truly human, a person must follow their nature, which is germinated in the Four Hearts. According to Mencius, every human needs the Four Hearts to truly be human. The first heart is the heart of compassion, which awakens empathy. The next one is the heart of shame, which makes an individual ashamed of failing to be dutiful. This forces humans to create aspirations. Third is the heart of courtesy and modesty, which is imperative in affirming the other. The final heart is the heart of right and wrong, which teaches the difference between quantity and quality. If a person can manifest these Four Hearts, they will be acting to their full nature. However, if they do not have these hearts, then the person is not a human. By aligning oneself with his or her original nature, the latent li starts to work through the person. If the person fully manifested the Four Hearts and strived for wisdom, they may be looked at as a sage. Mencius regarded the sage as the norm of humanity. Mencius thought one could find the full embodiment of human nature in the sages, because they are the pinnacle of what man is capable of.

A child is born with the Four Hearts built in. The child first takes on the heart of compassion when playing with his or her various dolls and stuffed animals. The child’s imagination makes the toys real and feelings will be created for them. If the toy is sad, then the child will be sad. A child’s first step to being human is empathy. Being empathic, the child must be courteous to others. With the heart of courtesy, the child will be successfully affirming the other with good manners and small human interactions such as greetings. As the child gets older, the heart of shame reveals itself. The child will feel bad for not doing as much as he or she can. A less-than-desirable grade in school will give the child drive to do better. Soon, when the child matures, the heart of right and wrong will surface. He or she may be confronted with the temptation to steal or to lie. A person, in the face of these choices, must make the right decisions and will become wise for doing so. This will also give the person the ability to differentiate between what makes quality and what is a product of social consensus (quantity). The person’s human nature will be pulsating with li and the person will be on the path of the sage.

Critique:

When Mencius looks at the sage as the normal example of human nature, he is not being realistic. When I look around, I don’t see many sages. They are referred to as ancestors throughout Confucian works. Creating an ideal based on people who lived long ago doesn’t take into account how people live today. The Four Hearts are the product of idealistic thinking and not reality. Humans are animals and need to be socialized.

C. Mo-Tzu’s doctrine of universal love is a way of eliminating family loyalty. His doctrine calls for everyone to love each other without distinction. The love Mo-Tzu refers to is not the Christian type of emotional love, it is a love created from intelligence. Mo-Tzu championed mental love, but rejected emotional love. Eros love, which is based on emotions, was ignored for agape love, which is his love of the mind. This love is defined as loving the other in the way and the sake of the other. To do this Mo-Tzu must take out the individual other and turn the other into humanity. One no longer loves for the way of the other, but loves everyone the same way. Love of the mind becomes a duty to humanity, which defines what humanity needs through law. His doctrine took on a utilitarian form because it required people to love everyone with the same intentions and work based on duties. You cannot love your child, for being your child; you have to love it for being a human along with a complete stranger. The needs of humanity are summed up in Mo-Tzu’s five goods, which are enriching the country, increasing the populous, bringing about good order, obtaining favor from the spirits, and preventing aggressive war. These things are supposed to be sought universally. The five goods must be enforced by a ruler. The people are made to understand why they need to believe in universal love.

The military unit is an example of Mo-Tzu’s doctrine of universal love. They must love the unit mentally, because an emotional love could get in the way of the unit’s duties. They all have a duty to each other to keep the unit alive and running smoothly, which is regulated by military law. For instance, risking the entire unit to save the life of a single comrade is prohibited. This demonstrates the mental love for the whole of the unit as opposed to emotional love for a close friend. The military unit is utilitarian because it uses law to instill duty equally, rather than placing emphasis on the individual.

Critique:
The Confucian objection to Mo-Tzu is in his destruction of the individual. Confucius believed in affirming the other through agape. His objectivism involving individuals would put him at odds with Mo-Tzu’s generalization of all human needs as defined by their duty. Mo-Tzu throws a blanket over the individual. Therefore, there can be no objectivism when looking for the good of the people. Mo-Tzu’s system would need to look to the ideals, which become laws that regulate the needs of humanity. By looking at laws instead of the individual’s needs, they lose any chance of doing what is truly good on an individual basis.

Confucian Harmony

A The superior man or the Chun-tzu is a man that stands in awe of three things. First he stands in awe of the ordinances of heaven. By doing this he knows where his power and influence stops and heaven’s surpasses his. Second, he stands in awe of great men, so the superior man can recognize when his contributions end and the great men supersede him. Third, the superior man will listen to the words of the sages. By recognizing the greater knowledge of the sages, the Chun-tzu will be in a constant state of reception of their wisdom. The mass man, on the other hand, seethes in mediocrity and is content with it. The mass man can’t live by the laws of heaven because he doesn’t know them. Mass man will disrespect great men and shrug off the words of the sages. The mass man won’t strive to attain anything greater than the average. He believes anyone above average is only there by social constructs and other external factors such as wealth. The mass man sees the norm of a person in the middle of the bell curve, while the superior man sees the norm of a person in the great men, or full manifestations of humanity. The mass man only tries to be average; therefore he will have no shame for his lack of education or wisdom.

A superior man is Thomas Jefferson. He stood in awe of the ordinances of heaven, so much that he felt compelled to draft his own version of the Gospels. Jefferson also stood in awe of great men and heeded the words of the sages. This can be seen in his writing which is heavily influenced by John Locke and Montesquieu. One day, a student in history class will be in awe of Jefferson and exclaim, “Jefferson was a genius.” Another so-called student, a mass man, may sneer and say “Jefferson was an elitist.” The mass man will throw the word elitist at anyone extraordinary. They seem to dislike it when greatness is juxtaposed against their averageness. Being content in the mundane bell curve, they will reduce the outliers to their socioeconomic status, the century they were born in, and terms like “elitist.”

B Confucius believed we were all born with a fate. Fate is what is given to a person, like ones sex, class, parents, and other unchangeable factors received at birth. With each fate there is a destiny. Destiny is a call to go beyond fate to a higher quality of living. This will raise a person above the mundane fated life into the spiritual life. The original state of a human was spiritual, which then became complicated in the mundane world and created an imbalance between the tranquil spirit and the phenomenal self. To balance the complications, one must use sincerity to reach harmony between the two. This is essential to one’s destiny, which becomes realized when harmony rises to the surface in all of your actions. Sincerity is a pure act of attention that will give you a singleness of mind when responding to the other. This attention is not spent on the personal or social level. These levels focus on the self. For instance, the personal level would only focus on the individuals own feelings, not the other’s. The social would only reveal something about a person against the backdrop of society. The attention Confucius writes of is spiritual attention. This is a non-attached attention, which lets a person objectively attend to the other. By having a singleness of mind when listening to the other, a person sheds their own biases. This will bring out the good in people and the self, creating harmony.

Fate and destiny can be exemplified in Siddhartha Gautama. He was born a prince with wealth, women, and a father willed him to become a world conqueror. His father blocked him from the outside world so he could never see death or suffering. This did not work and Siddhartha Gautama took the journey to realize his destiny. He had to walk away from all the riches to rise above his fate to his destiny. After finding the right path, he took what was offered by the cosmic forces and reached a new level of enlightenment. His fate as a prince was rooted in the mundane world, but his destiny allowed him to live the ordinary life in an extraordinary way. When it comes to the three attentions, we start with the personal level. Someone operating on the personal level of attention is only focusing on their self. This leads to them judging the situation with their feelings, not objectively. The social level of attention can be seen in someone who constantly worries about his lot in society. The person will only judge their position in society against others. The spiritual or non-attached attention is attained when the self lets go of his or her biases and objectively listens to the other.

C The doctrine of the rectification of names originated from Confucius’ belief that words had lost their essecial meaning. He thought the word must symbolize the essence of the thing it names to embody it and truly be a name. Words are not used as a simple communication tool; they must be used analogous to the thing. This doctrine lends its hand to the 5 relations, which are friend to friend, sibling to sibling, husband to wife, parent to child, and ruler to subject. By rectifying names, it gives these five relations meaning. By knowing the right word for father it leads to the essence of it. By knowing the essence of something, a child can be a better father or relate to your father. It allows a person to pay attention to the essence of fatherhood. By knowing the essences of the five relations one can better embody those roles in life. By embodying these roles li can fully operate in the relationships, which leads to harmony. Harmony comes from li bringing out the latent spirit within a relationship.

When I think of the doctrine of the rectification of names, the word mother comes to mind. It is usually one of the first words expressed as a child in short form as mom. The word gets to the essence of what a mother is. When said, it inspires a feeling of security and warmth. This word reveals the essence of a mother, which gives a child’s first words merit. If anyone understands what a mother is, it is her child. The mother also knows what her title entails and acts out on the parent to child relationship sincerely. If all people could get to the essence of what it is to be a friend, a parent, a child, a sibling, or a ruler there would be harmony in all relationships.

Critique of A:

The mass man could be right about everyone being equal. No one’s exploits of opinions should be held higher than their own, because everyone is entitled to their own feelings. Hard work has very little to do with success. It is mostly determined by socioeconomic status and other social factors. By saying that, anyone who is not equal in tastes or ability is elitist. The mass man would say that his tastes are just as good as someone who has sought after good taste in a subject.

Critique of C:

Sociologists argue that language is a tool for man to operate as a social creature. Words are just labels we assign to objects and are only valid through social consensus. In this view, there is no way to go beyond language, because it constructs our reality through labels. They would say any spirit we feel from a word’s relationship with the object is from the constant use of the word in our society. We just start to recognize an object by the word so much it seems to touch it essentially, but it is actually just from habitual use.

The Stand

The dusty road seems forever.

Men, women, children take their leave.

Shops lock, stocks lock, guns shake.

One man’s nervous hand

Steps out to make his stand.

The barkeep shakes his head.

The barber thinks him dead.

The whore pleads for his life.

Everyone turns away, even his wife.

The escaped killers ride.

The sun falls on their back.

A red sun.

The fires of hell are overdue.
The man hears time as it passes.

He listens to everything he loved.

With the snap of a Schofield

Bullets fall into six steel coffins.

The gun cocks and he feels his wife’s lips.

He can smell the whore’s perfume.

He can taste the barkeep’s whiskey.

He feels the barber’s razor

.The fires of hell roll in.

He stands alone

Face to face with hell.

He cracks an uncanny smile.

Four horsemen drunk with power break leather.

The man skins his smoke wagon.

Smoke and fire explode in the streets.

The killers sober at the rip of the bullets.

“Damn he’s fast” screams a wounded man.

Six dead ears hear nothing.
The lone man.

The deputy.

Stands above the wounded man.

Mercy, begs the coward.

Schofields snap back into leather.

He was fast

Bullets were faster.

The man falls.
Five dead men lay in the street.

A widow curses.

A whore cries.

He stood where no one else would.

A man has to do what a man has to do.

In the face of hell’s fire.

He didn’t flee.

What’s that say about me?