義. Michael Racine

義

Michael Racine

As we seek to understand the religious ethics of Confucius and his followers, we should do well to note the sacrificial imagery that is fundamental to some of the Master’s key terms. The exemplary person (君子) is one who has 義 as his basic disposition, develops it in 禮, expresses it with modesty, and consummates it with 信 (Analects 15.18, Ames & Rosemont p. 188). Taking the ancient pictographs at face value, the exemplary person would be one whose basic disposition is that of offering sacrifice. Of course, we will have to unpack this concept significantly if we wish to understand fully what Confucius meant when he used the term 義, but we shall attempt to work from the ground up.

The graph yì is composed of a hand holding a blade under a sheep. At the same time, the bottom half of the character (hand holding a blade) as a unit is representative of the first person “I”, “me”, and by extension, “we”, “us”. Thus 義 is profoundly tied to the concept of “me as I offer sacrifice”. In context, Confucius uses the term to refer to that which is commendable and appropriate. In so doing, he tells us a great deal about the relationship, in his worldview, between what westerners would call “religion” and right conduct. To keep more closely aligned with Confucius’s own vocabulary, we should try to purge ourselves of the baggage associated with our word “religion” (which has evolved so profoundly from its Latin root, religio) and open up the Chinese 禮.

I shall not seek to overstep the lucid definition of 禮 given by my professor and his colleague in their introduction to the Analects, but let me note what I find particularly important to my exploration of 義. First, it is of the utmost importance that the graph of lǐ depicts “the presentation of sacrifices to the spirits at an altar” (51). While Confucius is rightly called a philosopher, we must not defrock his thinking of its “religious” content, as the veneration of ancestral spirits in particular (and 天 more broadly) forms the basis for his worldview and his thoughts on how to live well. Second, and equally relevant, “the compass is broad: all formal conduct, from table manners to patterns of greeting and leave-taking, to graduations, weddings, funerals, from gestures of deference to ancestral sacrifices—all of these, and more, are li. They are a social grammar that provides each member with a defined place and status within the family, community, and polity” (ibid.). There is no Cartesian divide between the sacred and the secular; rather, one’s way in life (道) “is bound together with one continuous strand” (Analects 4.15, p. 92).

Given this understanding of 禮, the social fabric of Confucius’s China, we shall see how 禮 develops a person’s basic disposition of 義to form a 君子 as we look in the Analects (as in 15.18). Keeping in mind the intimate relationship between 義, 禮, and 信, let us draw a clearer picture of the nature of 義 by examining it in the context of the Analects.

We first encounter the graph 義 in 1.13, where 信 gets one close to 義 because “then what one says will bear repeating.” That is, if one is faithful to act on his words, he is commended in terms of 義. In English, we might praise him as faithful, dependable, or responsible—and we would not be incorrect. The next instance of the word in the Analects, where “failing to act on 義 is a want of courage” (2.24) strengthens the notion of duty or responsibility in the concept of 義.

The English word “duty” serves well to render 義 in that it connotes commendable behavior that is not always pleasant or to the apparent advantage of the person doing it. Analects 4.16, 5.16, 7.16, 14.12, 16.10, and 19.1 all very clearly contrast 義 with opportunities for personal gain or profit through inappropriate means, as exemplified in Confucius’s description of consummate persons in 14.12: “on seeing a chance to profit they think of 義, on seeing danger they are ready to give their lives, and when long in desperate straits, they still do not forget the words they live by.”

On the other hand, we tend to associate “duty” so closely with law that “doing one’s duty” and “doing what seems right or appropriate” are not always synonomous. Take Les Misérables for example: Javert has a zeal for doing his “duty” in pursuing Valjean, who has violated his parole and is thus technically in breach of the law, but by any human standard the reformed citizen Valjean should be left in peace. Such a connotation of “duty” has no place in Confucian ethics, where laws fall a distant second in importance behind good sense and good people in authority. In this regard, we do well to accommodate the Ames & Rosemont rendering of 義 as “appropriate conduct”.

The better we understand 禮, the more we can get away from the overly legalistic rendering of “duty” and consider “appropriate” or “right” conduct as something which is neither legalistic nor by any means casual or always natural. The primary concerns of the person who wishes to accumulate excellence (德) must be to do his utmost (忠), to stand by his word (信), and to do what is virtuous or appropriate given the situation in which he finds himself (義). Recalling that 禮 encompasses every aspect of social grammar from table manners to taking care of one’s aging parents, we might sometimes wish to render 義 as “appropriateness” and sometimes with a stronger word such as “virtue”, “duty”, or “right”, simply based on their connotations in common English. In Chinese, such gradation or distinction need not be made. 義 involves doing what a good person would do in a given situation.