Misinterpreting Confucius

When reading an old text, particularly on morals or politics, it's easy to ascribe the author modern views. Confucius, for instance, talks in terms translated as "sage", "gentleman" or "benevolent man", or often uses male pronouns. When reading this I find I reflexively interpret these as gender-neutral. It's similar to Barbara Jordan's sentiments on the US Constitution. Jordan was the first black woman from a Southern state to serve in the US House of Representatives.

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "We, the people." It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.
Of course neither Confucius nor the American founding fathers had any intent to include women within the scope of their sweeping statements. But it's easier to admire them, or to grapple with their ideas, if we pretend they secretly held our own liberal views.

It's for these reasons we rely especially on historians and translators to remind us that these were in fact people of their time.

This doublethink or mental retcon is not a purely negative effect. It's also an attempt to synthesize our beliefs with older ideas. In that sense wilful misinterpretation is a constructive process, as it allows new ideas to emerge out of the jury-rigged remnants of the old.
Permalink, Misinterpreting Confucius, Sep 2006, adam
cam: That is the tension between: history as informant and the rationalistic approach of ideas being useful for their own sake. Jefferson\'s ennunication of the inalieanable rights or man is a wonderful ideal which has been pursued throughout political history, so much so that modern history has been one of the battle for increasing suffrage and rights. Enough that we have been inching closer and closer to pure universalism in liberalism and libertarianism.

I dont accept that conservatism and progressivism is a binary choice, as both can be used to inform superior outcomes in a situation. Human affairs are messy and context often decides the effectiveness of an approach or idea. The ideals in Jefferson\'s summation of the enlightenment or Deniehy\'s equation tyranny as the main impediement to moral virtue gain value, if anything, as human progress adopts a more liberalistic stance. Their philosphy gains in credence with changing circumstance.

cam

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