Whose Tradition, Which DAO：Confucius and Wittgenstein on Moral Learning and Reflection

8/19/2019 Whose Tradition, Which DAO Confucius and Wittgenstein on Moral Learning and Reflection

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Whose radition? Which Dao?


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SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture—————

Roger . Ames, editor


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Whose radition? Which Dao?

Confucius and Wittgensteinon Moral Learning and Reflection

JAMES F. PEERMAN


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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2015 State University of New York

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No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval systemor transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the priorpermission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production, Eileen NizerMarketing, Kate R. Seburyamo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peterman, James F. Whose tradition? Which Dao? : Confucius and Wittgenstein on moral learning andreflection / James F. Peterman. pages cm. — (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture)

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-5419-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-4384-5421-4 (ebook)

1. Ethics. 2. Confucius. 3. Confucius. Lun yu. 4. Confucian ethics.5. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951. I. itle.

BJ1012.P438 2015 170.92'2—dc23 2014002776

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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o All of My eachers

曰.三人行, 必有我師焉. 擇其善者而從之. 其不善者而改之.Te Master said, “If there are several people walking on the road, surelythere will be my guiding exemplars among them. I would choose [from

among] them whoever is adept [at complying with the Way] and thenfollow them. In addition, I would choose whoever is not adept [at com-plying with the Way] and use their [examples] to rectify my conduct.”

—Analects 7.22


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Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

1 Introduction: A Prologue to an Unlikely Project 1

2 Confucius, Wittgenstein, and the Problem of Moral Disagreement 39

3 Confucius, History, and the Problem of Meaning 69

4 Wittgenstein and the Problem of Understanding at a Distance 95

5 How to Be a Confucian Pragmatist without Losing the ruth 121

6 Saving Confucius from the Confucians 167

7 Te Dilemmas of Contemporary Confucianism 185

8 Fingarette on Handshaking 219

9 Acknowledging the Given: Our Complicated Form ofRitual Life 251

Afterword: Te Way Backward or Forward: Wittgenstein or Confucius? 271

Notes 275

Bibliography 307

Index 315


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ix

Preface

Tis book offers the first full-length comparative study of the ethics ofancient Chinese ethicist Confucius and the moral aspects of the latertherapeutic approach to philosophy of twentieth-century philosopher Lud- wig Wittgenstein. Te title, Whose radition? Which Dao?: Confucius andWittgenstein on Moral Learning and Reflection, which alludes to AlasdairMacIntyre’s book, Whose Justice ? Which Rationality ? (1989), takes seriouslya key claim of MacIntyre’s: Any sustainable version of moral inquiry mustnot be committed to basic claims and principles that make that inquiryimpossible. o offer an example from MacIntyre’s playbook: If liberalism

claims that all moral traditions make arbitrary assumptions about moraltruth and it turns out that liberalism is itself a moral tradition, then lib-eralism makes claims that undermine its very possibility. I will refer tothis requirement as the requirement that moral traditions and their relatedversions of moral inquiry may not be self-undermining. Tis principle ofevaluation of traditions, or what MacIntyre calls “versions” of moral inquiry,can be traced back to the Socratic requirement that ethical judgments beaccounted for in a way that is coherent with the rest of the person’s consid-ered judgments. Tis book seeks to defend an interpretation of Confucius’sproject, depicted in the centrally important early Confucian text, Analects,as operating in what Wittgenstein scholar Cora Diamond, taking a phrasefrom Wittgenstein, refers to as the “realistic spirit.” Te “realistic spirit,” asdistinct from the philosophical realist, seeks, as she puts it, to clarify “ourlife” with concepts, including ethical life, in all its complexity, suspiciousof the simplification and nonsense bound up with traditional metaphysics.

Although the Socratic requirement that versions of moral inquiry notbe self-undermining is a basic principle for evaluation of competing versions

of moral inquiry, MacIntyre’s use of it to challenge the Confucian moraltradition is unsuccessful. Although I explicitly take up MacIntyre’s challengeto Confucianism in Chapter 7, the whole project of the book can be seen


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as offering an account of three key aspects of the version of moral inquiryfound in the centrally important Confucian text, the Analects , which offersa distinctive, credible version of moral inquiry. Tis approach to moralinquiry, like Wittgenstein’s quite similar approach to philosophical inquiry inthe realistic spirit, gives central place to moral practices and to reflection onthe meaning and significance of those practices by practitioners. Central toConfucian moral practices is the practice of ritual (禮 li ). Confucian moralinquiry requires training in ritual, as well as reflection on the practice ofritual guided by a master of such ritual practice and reflection.

Confucius approaches moral inquiry in a way that avoids abstract,theoretical reflection on questions of moral epistemology and ontology. As

a result, the presentation of the Analects ’ approach to moral inquiry is notas fully developed as is required for systematic assessment. o solve thisproblem, I turn to the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who offers anapproach to the relation between practice and reflection that is remarkablysimilar to Confucius’s. Drawing on Wittgenstein to develop an account ofthe early Confucian version of moral inquiry in Chapter 1, “Introduction: A Prologue to an Unlikely Project,” I use this version of moral inquirylater in the book to address a range of potential problems facing Confucianmoral inquiry, which, if not adequately addressed, threaten to undermine it.

In Chapter 2, “Confucius, Wittgenstein, and the Problem of MoralDisagreement,” I take up the question of whether this version of moralinquiry has adequate resources to address the problem of moral disagree-ment. Te problem arises inevitably from the way in which this versionof moral inquiry avoids appeals to foundational moral epistemology andontology. Any account of moral inquiry that offers no account of how toaddress the problem of moral disagreement is possibly self-undermining. Iargue that Confucius’s appeal to inherited practices learned by novices under

the guidance of a master offers a possible solution to the problem of moraldisagreement, one based on its commitment to the authority of a master who transmits traditional norms to novices.

Another serious problem for Confucian moral inquiry, with its appealto founding texts, like the Analects , is the problem of meaning of texts writ-ten more than two thousand years ago in a non-Western culture. Appealingto accounts of the meanings of the sentences in the Analects, which I referto as semantic nihilism and skepticism, John Makeham and Daniel Gard-ner have argued that the substance of the Analects has no meaning or no

knowable meaning of its own. For a version of moral inquiry that makesessential appeal to its founding texts as exhibiting norms of conduct, thisresult would be undermining, and this version of moral inquiry would be


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self-undermining. If Gardner and Makeham are correct, the meaning ofthe founding texts of the Confucian tradition would not be available toprovide guidance to the tradition. Instead, each interpreter of these textscreates merely his or her own personal meaning.

I discuss both of these views of meaning in Chapter 3, “Confucius,History, and the Problem of Meaning.” By appealing to Wittgenstein’s viewof meaning as use and the view of the principle of charity implicit in thataccount, in Chapter 4, “Wittgenstein and the Problem of Understandingat a Distance,” I argue against these views of semantic nihilism and skepti-cism. I argue that the meanings of the sentences of the Analects themselvesare internally related to practices of interpretation within a community of

trained readers of early Chinese texts who are committed to making maxi-mum sense of these sentences in light of historical evidence and to theirhaving learned the form of life that gives these sentences their meanings.Specifically, I argue that making sense of some unfamiliar texts embedded inan unfamiliar form of life requires learning the basic practices and originallanguage of that culture. I refer to this version of interpretive charity as thePrinciple of Insider Competency.

Like other recent interpreters of early Chinese philosophy, I offer anaccount of Confucian moral inquiry that gives a central place to practice

and reflection on the meanings of learned practices. We can refer to thisstrain of interpretations as “pragmatic.” But the best known versions of suchinterpretations, Donald Munro’s, Chad Hansen’s, David Hall’s, and Roger Ames’s, tend to offer a pragmatic version of early Chinese philosophy thatholds that it operates without a concept of or interest in truth. Te versionsoffered of this basic view are, indeed, subtle, and I cannot do them justicein this Preface. But I can say that if these accounts of early Confucianism were true, the early Confucian version of moral inquiry would be self-

undermining. Any putatively true claims Confucius would be making—andhe makes and implies many such claims—would be self-undermining. InChapter 5, “How to Be a Confucian Pragmatist without Losing the ruth,”using a suggestion of Hall and Ames, I argue that the focus on pragmaticsneed not come at the price of truth. I appeal to the philosophy of Wittgen-stein to support my argument. I develop the view that truth claims dependon background norms as their basis and that Confucius’s appeal to dao is just such a norm. I also develop an argument of philosopher Xiao Yang, which offers a way to understand Confucius’s speech acts that invoke dao

and presupposes the truth of Confucius’s spoken utterances.Even if my arguments are plausible up to this point, they should

make readers familiar with the Confucian tradition uncomfortable. For early


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on, the post- Analects Confucian tradition tended to develop metaphysicalviews of human nature and human psychology to underwrite Confucius’smoral claims and practices. Furthermore, the formation of the Confuciantradition as handed down to us is informed even today by the great SongDynasty Confucian Zhu Xi’s decidedly metaphysical interpretation of the Analects . As a result of its importance, a reason must be given for rejectingsuch an influential account. I take up this problem in Chapter 6, “SavingConfucius from the Confucians.” Tere, I defend early, commonsensicalcommentators on the Analects , such as Zheng Xuan and He Yan, who tendedat times to avoid metaphysical interpretations of key passages, like Analects12.1. My criticism of Zhu Xi’s metaphysical interpretation of Analects 12.1

proceeds through the development of a trilemma that Zhu Xi’s metaphysi-cal interpretation of original mind (本心 benxin) faces. Te trilemma arisesfrom the following three possibilities concerning the criteria for use of theconcepts, like original mind (本心 benxin), in his commentary: (1) hiscriteria for applying the concept of self-control are not different from ourordinary criteria, or (2) they are different, or (3) they are not specified. Ineach of these three cases, his commentary suffers by unnecessarily attribut-ing a questionable account to Confucius. Developing the notion of depthfound in Wittgenstein’s later therapeutic approach to philosophy, moreover,

I argue that the apparent metaphysical depth and significance that Zhu Xi’sinterpretation seems to offer can be captured better without invoking hismetaphysics.

Another serious contemporary challenge to Confucianism as a modernversion of moral inquiry, not just an historical relic, rests on twin problemsthat arise from the history and context of Confucianism. By virtue of its his-tory in East Asia, Confucianism can seem to be so embedded in that historyand culture of East Asia that it appears incapable of justifying any objec-

tive, ethical claims of its own. Moreover, whatever claims it makes seem toconflict with central moral intuitions common to modern Western (liberal)cultures. I take up two forms of this challenge in Chapter 7, “Te Dilem-mas of Contemporary Confucianism.” According to philosopher Jiwei Ci,contemporary Confucians must either embrace the essential commitmentsof historical Confucianism and admit that we Western moderns cannot beConfucians today, or we must remove problematic features of historicalConfucianism, in which case the position becomes formalistic, not distinctfrom other more updated versions of, for example, communitarianism and

its variants. I also discuss Alasdair MacIntyre’s dilemma that Confucianismmust embed itself in a defensible account of human nature and in a relatedmoral ontology, if it is to avoid being nothing more than an account of


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a local set of practices. Both of these dilemmas suppose that in order tooffer objective, justified moral claims, Confucianism must be embeddedin a theory of human nature and a related moral ontology. I resolve thesedilemmas by arguing that Confucianism needs neither to commit itself to atheory of human nature or a related moral ontology. It needs merely to beable to make ordinary truth claims about living well and what individualsought to do in particular circumstances. But as I argue, early Confucian-ism can make sense of its own truth claims, just as we all do every day, byappealing to norms embedded in its local practices, what Wittgenstein callslanguage-games, without appealing to moral ontology.

Te distinctively Wittgensteinian approach that I bring to early Con-

fucianism begs the question of what this approach to early Confucian moralinquiry can offer us today. What can such a deflationary view of philosophycontribute to a defense of early Confucianism? In the last two chapters, Itake up the philosophical need for “acknowledgment” of “given” aspects ofour human forms of life. Te need for acknowledgment, avoided in mosttraditional philosophy, which prefers to think of philosophy as seeking tosupply us with knowledge of basic principles, is central to Wittgenstein’slater philosophy. Philosophical confusions often arise from a failure toacknowledge basic features of our human form of life. In this way, acknowl-

edgment of those basic features has by itself philosophical importance. InChapter 8, “Fingarette on Handshaking,” I argue that Herbert Fingarette’sgroundbreaking book, Confucius: Secular as Sacred , offers a flawed theoryof ritual and a related interpretation of the Analects. His example of ritualhandshaking, does succeed, however, in offering an arresting example of aritual, which makes it easier than it would otherwise be for Westerners notschooled in Confucianism to acknowledge ritual as a part of their moralform of life. In Chapter 9, “Acknowledging the Given: Our Complicated

Form of Ritual Life,” I turn to the work of sociologist Erving Goffman oncontemporary, Western interaction rituals as a way to sketch out the rangeand complexity of our Western face-to-face rituals, which Goffman’s workcan help us to acknowledge. Tis range, suitably clarified, can provide us with what Wittgenstein calls a “perspicuous representation” of ritual, whichcan help clarify the role of ritual in what Wittgenstein calls “our compli-cated form of life.”

In making the arguments in this book, which I have sketched outbriefly in this Preface, I make no claim that that early Analects -style Con-

fucian version of moral inquiry is reducible to Wittgensteinian modes ofreflection. Troughout, I argue for their important similarities. Moreover, Ilook for ways in which so-called Wittgensteinian accounts of moral judg-


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ment and critique can benefit from Confucian inquiry, just as Confucianpractice of moral inquiry can benefit from Wittgensteinian philosophicalinvestigations. Tey are, in fact, members of a family. From Confucius, weknow that family relations can be mutually supportive, and from Confuciusand Wittgenstein both, we know that family membership does not requirereduction of all to a single form. Te use of Wittgenstein to articulate anddefend early Confucian versions of moral inquiry leaves us with the questionof how we can advance an early Confucian mode of inquiry today withoutlosing its distinctive character. In the Afterword, I take up this question andoffer a view of moral inquiry that appeals both to the Confucian traditionfor insights and to the Wittgensteinian quest for perspicuous presentations

of otherwise philosophically confusing aspects of our human form of life.1


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Acknowledgments

Even though the actual writing of this book started in 2008, the idea forthe project first emerged in 1998 during a National Endowment for theHumanities Institute, “Chinese Philosophical and Religious exts in Con-text,” directed under the able leadership of Professor Henry Rosemont, who was assisted by Professor Roger Ames. Never having had the opportunity tostudy Eastern philosophies in a formal academic context and believing thatit would be good if I could, on occasion, add some Chinese philosophicaltexts to my lower-level courses, I set out for Hawaii to attend this institute.Before doing so, I began for the first time to read Confucius’s Analects and

was horrified at its approach to ethics and politics. I doubted my abilityto teach a text that is so dramatically disorganized and so fundamentallycommitted to magical powers of ritual. By that time, however, I had alreadysigned up, and five weeks in Hawaii seemed attractive.

What happened at the institute was surprising, to say the least. Although I started out with my typical skeptical method toward all thingsphilosophical, I found myself drawn into what felt like a different mode ofacademic interaction. Later I realized that the culture of this institute reflect-ed the key commitments of the Confucian texts under discussion. Centralto the interpretations offered of the Analects , especially Roger Ames’s, werea focus on the practice of ritual and its creative and constructive character.Te relation between learning rituals and the ideals they embodied struckme as importantly similar to Wittgenstein’s later approach to the relationbetween ideals and language-games. I recall asking Roger Ames if anyonehad written on this relationship, and he said, “No.” I thought to myself,“Here is a project.” On further reflection, it struck me that the Confuciantradition offers us a glimpse of what it would mean to live in a tradition

committed to clarifying, rather than calling into question from the groundup, its practices, so as to help those in that tradition to live in agreement with their fundamental modes of living, an ideal central to Wittgenstein’s


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xvi Acknowledgments

later philosophy. Tis was, I thought, a reflective tradition that Wittgen-stein could warm up to. I returned to ennessee jokingly claiming to have“converted” to Confucianism, claiming to be “the last living Confucian inennessee.” For his insights, advice, and ongoing encouragement over theyears, I am indebted to Roger Ames.

Te academic year following this institute, I taught my first courseon Chinese Philosophy. I felt myself a fraud. Without reading the textsin Chinese, given the variety of translations, I wondered, how could Irepresent to students their real meanings? Te next year I took advantageof a follow-up East-West Center academic tour of sacred sites in China. Itook lots of photos of different types of temples, but the best thing that

happened on that tour happened on an overnight train trip: tour leaderNed Davis, University of Hawaii professor of history, persuaded me thatit should be possible for me to learn Chinese and use it in my academic work. I took the bait and the next summer traveled to Beijing LanguageUniversity to take part in its immersion course in Mandarin. Later thatfall, I sat in on University of California–Berkeley Professor Phil Riegel’sIntroduction to Classical Chinese. I spent the next semester poring over dic-tionaries, grammar books, and translations of the Analects , trying to developmy own translation. Every summer since then, except 2008, I have spent

the summer in China studying Mandarin or classical Chinese and tryingto get more familiar with all things Chinese. In one form or another, thistravel was supported by Dean of the College John Gatta and the ResearchGrants Committee at my home institution, Sewanee: Te University of theSouth. For the many opportunities given to me by Sewanee, including theopportunity to teach at the most culturally Chinese academic institution inthe United States, I will be forever grateful.

In 2002, under the auspices of ASIANetwork, four of my students and

I traveled to Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, China, and interviewedsome forty students on their attitudes to parental authority. Te results of thisstudy were published as “Te Fate of Confucianism in Contemporary China”in Asian Studies in America: Newsletter of the Asian Studies Development Pro- gram, Fall 2003. I wish to thank my Zhongshan University friends WangKun, Ai Xiaoming, and Ke Qianting for their assistance and conviviality. Iam especially indebted to Ke Qianting, who spent hours with me in con-versation later, when she was on a teaching-research fellowship at Sewanee.Much of my early thinking about how to understand Confucianism under

a Wittgensteinian lens came out of this research and these conversations.I am especially indebted to my mainland Chinese Mandarin teach-

ers and friends: in Beijing, Xue Er; in Kunming, Xu Peng, Xu Feng, and


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Zhu Lan; and to Keat’s School teacher and comrade in the dao, Pan Siyi, without whom my grasp of classical Chinese language and culture wouldbe all the poorer.

In 2008, under the auspices of the Fulbright Foundation, I spent tenmonths in aipei, aiwan, as a senior fellow, living and working at AcademiaSinica and traveling from one coffee spot to the next, writing the first draftof this book. My application for this fellowship was improved by expertadvice from my friends and colleagues, Professor Charles Brockett, ProfessorRichard O’Connor, and Dean Rita Kipp, and from Fulbright FoundationSenior Officer David Adams.

Although my work in aipei was supported and sustained by the

professional services offered by Fulbright aiwan, some of the most impor-tant conversations and opportunities were made possible by good friendProfessor Kirill Tompson of aiwan National University, who gave of hisprecious time to give me feedback on my work and to make sure I was incontact with other aiwan National University philosophers. o him, I amprofoundly indebted. In addition to introducing me to colleagues, Kirillalso arranged for me to spend four hours a week with my teacher, Yang Youwei Laoshi, in what has turned out to be his last chance to teach a longlist of Western scholars: Roger Ames, Carine DeFoort, Christian Joachim,

John Makeham, Randy Peerenbohm, Lisa Raphaels, and Kirill Tompson,to name a few. I feel humbled to have been the last student among such adistinguished group. Having published nothing of his own, Yang Laoshi’slifetime study of the Chinese classics lives on in the work of these scholars.

Yang Laoshi grew up in Beijing in a Confucian family, studying theclassics with the help of his uncle and mother, herself a committed Con-fucian from a family of scholar officials. Yang Laoshi’s linguistic insights were, to say the least, profound. He was nothing if not opinionated, fully

confident of the correctness of every one of his judgments, even when theychanged from day to day, able to riff from the meaning of a character, tothe bankruptcy of contemporary culture, to the problem with Americanforeign policy, as if he were discussing one topic. Despite his stubbornnessand the ferocity of his judgments and arguments, he was willing to listen when I was prepared, in my poor Chinese, to press my own points. Fromtime to time, I had the feeling that I was in the presence of a Chinese Wittgenstein, someone who represented an earlier culture, out of tune withhis own times, uncompromising in his intellectual and moral commitments,

but also in his commitment to me as his student.I traveled two times a week to Yang Laoshi’s apartment, where we

crawled line by line through the Analects. On occasion, I was able to share


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with him some of my work on this text. Although his academic work in theUnited States in the 1960s had been in psychology, he was deeply interestedin philosophy, but he was not familiar with the details of Wittgenstein’s writings. He was especially attracted to my characterization and use of Wittgenstein’s view of nonsense. Later in our times together, he seemed torelish characterizing certain problematic translations of Analects passages as pihua , nonsense, in this Wittgensteinian sense. I would like to think thaton a few occasions such as these, I managed to become a partner withhim in inquiry.

In the summer of 2010, I spent a week with Yang Laoshi when welooked over the translations of passages I use in this book. I am grateful

to him for his help and for the time we spent together. wo days before I wrote the initial draft of the Acknowledgments for this book, Yang Laoshipassed away. Te book’s dedication, “o all my teachers,” although notsolely for him, finds in my own 心 ( xin, heart and mind) a large place forhim and for the kinds of thinking and writing my time with him in aipeiopened up for me.

In addition to my weekly visits to Yang Laoshi while in aipei, I wasinvited by my friend Professor Sato Masayuki of aiwan National Uni-versity’s Philosophy Department to participate in their department’s lively

conference series, to give a lecture to the Philosophy Department duringthat fellowship year, to give another lecture the next fall, and to deliverthree lectures on parts of this book in the spring of 2009. On these occa-sions, I benefited from conversations with Professor Masayuki and his col-league, Professor Christian Wenzel. Tis book would be poorer withoutthose opportunities and without their efforts to welcome me and to discussissues that arose in the early version of my manuscript.

I am indebted to my friend Professor P. J. Ivanhoe of City University

of Hong Kong, who read the penultimate version of this manuscript andprovided a range of helpful suggestions about how to connect my argu-ments with the aspects of the Confucian tradition that I have not had anopportunity to investigate and with recent discussions of which I was notfully aware. My thanks also go to my friend and colleague at Sewanee,Professor Andrew Moser, who listened and gave feedback during hours ofmy thinking out loud about the issues I take up here, and to my copy edi-tor, Kathy Hamman, whose perceptive linguistic sense made the languageof the text clearer than I was able to make it by myself.

I have to express my deepest feelings of gratitude to my wife, Merissaobler, who resolutely, without a hint of complaint, let me reserve ten yearsof much of my spare time and attention to this project.


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Earlier versions of portions of this book this book were publishedin the following journals: Chapter 6: “Just the Details: A WittgensteinianDefense of Lunyu Early Commentarial radition,” 2008 東亞論語學國際學術研討會 Conference Proceedings. Chapter 3:《论语》的句子有意义吗? (“Do the Sentences of the Analects Have Any Meaning?”). Te Frontiersof Social Sciences (会科学战线), 160 (10), 2008, 54–58.

Earlier versions of chapters were presented in the following forums:

Chapter 1: “Master and Novice in Confucius,” Te International Societyfor Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy. Eastern American Philosophical Association Meeting, New York City, Decem-ber 28, 2009.

Chapter 2: “Confucius and Wittgenstein on Moral Disagreement,” Witt-genstein Workshop. Virginia Military Academy, Lexington, Virginia,September 2008.

Chapter 2: Invited Conference Presentation, “Ludwig Wittgenstein MeetsConfucius.” Contemporary Research on Chinese Ethical Tought.”Philosophy Department, aiwan National University, aipei, aiwan,

November 13–15, 2008.Chapter 3: “Are the Sentences of Lunyu Meaningful?: Kongzi, Wittgenstein,

and the Problem of Meaning,” aiwan National University PhilosophyDepartment, aipei, aiwan, December 10, 2007.

Chapter 3: “論語的句子有沒有意思?” (“Are the Sentences of Lunyu Mean-ingful?”). Presented in Chinese at Academia Sinica, aipei, aiwan(ROC), June 26, 2008.

Chapter 3: “Are the Sentences of Lunyu Meaningful?: Kongzi, Wittgenstein,and the Problem of Meaning,” International Society for ComparativeStudies of Chinese and Western Philosophy, Te 3rd ISCWP Con-structive-Engagement International Conference on “Te Methodologyof Comparative Philosophy,” Department of Philosophy & Instituteof Foreign Philosophy, co-sponsored by the Peking University Centerfor Comparative Philosophy, Beijing, China, and San Jose State Uni-versity, San Jose, California, USA, June 2008.

Chapter 6: “Just the Details: A Wittgensteinian Defense of Lunyu EarlyCommentarial Practice,” Program for East Asian Classics, 2008 East- Asian Lunyu Studies Conference. aiwan National University, March8–9, 2008.


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Chapters 1, 2, and 6: Invited Lecturer. Tree Lectures on “Kongzi and Wittgenstein: Te Way of Ethics without Philosophy,” Department ofPhilosophy, aiwan National University, May 25–27, 2009.

Chapter 8: “Fingarette on Handshaking,” Southeastern Early ChineseRoundtable. University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, October 23–25,2009, and ASDP National Conference, Seattle, Washington, March29–31, 2012.

Sewanee, ennessee April 1, 2013


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1

Introduction

A Prologue to an Unlikely Project

“In the beginning was the deed.” Goethe, Faust I.

—Quoted by Wittgenstein, On Certainty , section 396

Among the disciples, there was one who, on his own, had written downthe Master’s teachings. Hearing of this, the Master said, “Sages and

worthies teach in the same way that physicians prescribe medicine. Teyalways match the treatment to the ailment, taking into considerationthe various symptoms and, whenever appropriate, adjusting the dosage.Teir sole aim is to eliminate the ailment. Tey have no predeterminedcourse of action. Were they indiscriminately to stick to a predeterminedcourse [of treatment], rarely would they avoid killing their patients.Now with you gentlemen, I do nothing more than diagnose and polishaway each of your particular prejudices or obsessions. As soon as youmanage to make these changes, my words become nothing but uselesstumors. If, subsequently, you preserve my words and regard them as

dogma, you will one day mislead yourselves and others. Could I everatone for such an offense?”1

—Xilu, quoting Wang Yangming

Introduction

In the course of talking to philosophers about this book, though manyexpressed some interest in the project, just as many expressed reservations. What possibly could be the connection between Confucius and Wittgen-stein? Others seemed to think that even if there were a substantial, importantconnection, it would be very difficult to establish.

1


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2 Whose Tradition? Which Dao?

While working on this book, I have become increasingly convincedthat the connections I somewhat dimly sensed at the outset are real butthat clarifying these connections is considerably more difficult. Some of thedifficulties stem from the inherent problems in comparative philosophy, andsome have to do with the targets of my comparison: Confucius and Witt-genstein. Te difficulties of comparative philosophy concern the nature andpossibility and value of comparison across cultural, historical, and linguisticdivides; these divides or differences are so extensive that finding sufficientsimilarities to compare can be nearly impossible. Te difficulty of usingConfucius and Wittgenstein as objects of comparison has to do with thecomplex question of which versions of each thinker’s positions to select.

Even if we could specify only three different versions of each position, we would have nine different possible targets of comparison.

Tis chapter is a prolegomena to the study I have undertaken. Teprocedure will be to specify which Confucius and whose Wittgenstein willbe compared and then, given these choices, the points of the comparison.I take the goal of comparative philosophy not only to make comparisonsbetween philosophical views from different parts of the world, but also toarticulate for each side of the comparison possible problems and resourcesmore readily grasped in the other side. Te justification of the selection of

versions will come from the textual support for those selections and fromthe reflective, critical fruit of those versions.

However, if the argument I develop in Chapter 1 is reasonable, inter-pretive justification is not separable from evaluative argument. For, as Iargue, the principle of charity rests on the fact of under-determination ofinterpretation by textual and historical evidence. Tis means we are requiredto adopt those interpretations of texts and authors that maximize the reason-ableness of those positions.2 If that is true, it is inevitable that we acknowl-

edge different versions of Wittgenstein and of Confucius. Tis is not to saythat all versions are equally well defended, but it does mean that in manycases the sort of “gotcha” appeals to textual evidence, designed to refute analternative interpretation, are not likely to do that by themselves. For even“gotcha” passages will be subject to competing interpretations and differinginterpretive weights. What tips the balance in these interpretive argumentsis often an unstated appeal to the claim that one version of the position isstronger than the other, that it is thought to be philosophically superior.But one philosopher’s thinking that an interpretive argument is superior

does not make it so. Simple appeal to textual evidence, with one possibleinterpretation, will not necessarily refute alternatives. Te superiority of aninterpretation will be borne out in some way by appeal to reasoning and


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3Introduction

explication, making it clear that one version of the position is superior tothe other.

Although it is impossible to state the whole range of reasons I havefor adopting a particular version of the Wittgenstein position, it is possibleto specify that version and to explain why it sheds light on and shows thestrength of key aspects of Confucius’s project. Nonetheless, my approachcontains a few possible problems that I will spell out in this introductionand address in the comparative exposition.

If we draw a standard distinction between normative ethics and meta-ethics, we might wonder how it can be possible to compare Confucius’steachings, which appear normative, with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy,

which says next to nothing about ethics and would appear, if it were usedto think about ethics, to be “meta-ethical.”3 After all, Wittgenstein’s discus-sion of language-games is designed more to clarify how to resolve concep-tual confusions about language and concepts rather than to show which,of the range of possible language-games, including ethical language-games,is the correct one (whatever that would mean). In contrast, Confucius isdeeply embedded in a moral tradition, which he takes a stand on, studies,and passes on to others. Tus, an attempt to compare Wittgenstein’s laterphilosophy with Confucius’s teachings would appear to be a meta-ethical

normative ethical divide if ever there were one. A second issue I need to address is that even if I can show that

Wittgenstein’s later philosophical project and Confucius’s teachings sharesufficient similarities to overcome this initial objection, I still may not haveshown that the comparisons I am making bear any fruit for either position. After all, with sufficient cleverness, any position can be said to be similar toanother in some respects. Te similarities need, however, to be illuminat-ing and bear some fruit. For, at least in my conception of the comparative

philosophical enterprise, the point of comparison should be an examinationof the ways in which the comparisons and contrasts bear dialectical fruit,both in terms of the issues they raise and the resources they make availableto the positions under discussion.

My task in this chapter will be to provide a general sketch of the waysin which these two positions can be benefited by joining forces. In Chapter2, I raise fundamental dilemmas facing Confucius’s teaching and Wittgen-stein’s later philosophy. Both projects forego foundational theories, and indoing so, arguably face problems—even if different—of not being able to

justify key claims they must make in the course of carrying themselvesforward. For, as I will argue, both seek to embody a form of “spirit” thatthey leave unjustified by theory. By embodying a theoretically ungrounded


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“spirit,” it can be argued, they both are subject to the charge of arbitrari-ness, and both require some theoretical grounding if they are to be carriedforward. I will argue that by combining forces, the two forms of spirit candevelop even better strategies for addressing these criticisms than they areable to muster alone. In the course of this comparative study, I discoveredthat the unusual juxtaposition of Wittgenstein’s and Confucius’s philoso-phies, including their ungrounded spirits, produces not only a different,stronger spirit than either one embodies alone, but in so doing, addressesoutstanding issues, such as the meaning and truth of the sentences of the Analects , as well as its contemporary relevance.

Te way I develop these arguments depends on which versions of

Wittgenstein and Confucius I choose to discuss. My version of Wittgen-stein shares some similarities with the so-called “New Wittgenstein,”4 whois suspicious of metaphysical/epistemological theories designed to providean explanation of justification for ordinary linguistic practices. Wittgensteinholds that once our ordinary criteria for something being true or real areapplied to a situation to justify the correctness of a sentence, there are nofurther epistemological, metaphysical, foundational questions to raise aboutthe correctness of the language-game in which the utterance takes place. As Wittgenstein says of any particular language, “Tis is the language-game that

is being played.”5 Te fate of Confucius’s self-cultivationist approach to eth-ics and related eschewal of metaphysics, I argue, is wedded to the success of Wittgenstein’s very similar project. However, Wittgenstein’s later avoidanceof sustained discussion of ethics benefits from the sort of supplementationoffered by Confucius’s Analects.

Despite these affinities between my Wittgenstein and the New Witt-genstein, following recent work of Meredith Williams and Nigel Pleasants,I argue that Wittgenstein would not agree with the New Wittgensteinian

tendency to be suspicious of traditional moral authority. I take these issuesup in some detail in Chapter 2.In this chapter, I will provide an overview of Confucius’s and Witt-

genstein’s teachings. Te overview’s goal is to persuade readers that the twophilosophers share a roughly similar account of the norms embedded inhuman life and language, despite the large differences between their projects.I will call these accounts or commitments their shared basic insight thatour primary relationship to norms, one necessary for understanding them, isthrough learning. Tis approach constitutes a key stumbling block for inter-

pretation and evaluation of both thinkers’ projects. As a result of this insight,both projects address the problems they face—for Confucius, how to restorea life lived in conformity with dao, meaning the set of norms governing


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5Introduction

human life and, for Wittgenstein, how to resolve conceptual confusion inphilosophy and protect shared moral insights of humanity—through appealto contingent practices and the sorts of self-cultivation designed to bringus in agreement with them, not through the construction of foundational, justificatory theories.

Bedrock Practices

An important caveat to any comparative presentation of Wittgenstein’s laterphilosophy alongside Confucian teaching in the Analects is that whereas

Wittgenstein offers a view of language that would play a role in investigatingand resolving the problems of philosophy, Confucius’s teaching is designedto clarify dao with the goal of fostering self-cultivation and culture-widerecovery of dao, which had been left in disrepair with the gradual dissolu-tion of the political and cultural power of the Zhou Dynasty. Despite thesedifferences, Wittgenstein’s project centers on the key issue of understand-ing the role of norms within human life with an emphasis on language.Confucius’s project is formed out of a sense of the basic character of dao,the norms governing human life and, primarily, the care of human relation-

ships. It is true that some later passages in the Analects take up the politicalproject of rectifying names, but Confucius does not develop an interest inlanguage and rectification of names in general, beyond his limited interestin functional terms, like “father” and “ruler.” Tese terms imply norms, which, when strictly applied to people, require applying them to people who must live up to those norms.6

One additional noteworthy similarity between the texts is their pre-occupation with teaching and learning. Confucius describes the need for

a devotion to learning好學

(haoxue ), especially of ritual禮

(li ), as theprincipal first step in self-cultivation and also offers a phenomenology of what it is like to move along the path from novice to master of dao.Moreover, one of Confucius’s disciples, Master You (Youzi), supplementsConfucius’s focus on learning ritual with an account of how performingrelatively concrete practices, like keeping one’s word 信 ( xin), provides abasic practice that prepares one for the more complex range of practicesthat make up righteousness 義 ( yi ). Youzi’s focus includes an emphasis onbeing filial or obedience to parents, which he generalizes to obedience to

those in authority. Both Confucius and Youzi emphasize that basic, bedrockpractices are the first steps and constitutive features of understanding andpracticing norms.7


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Although there is reason to think that as an adult, learning dao froma teacher is different from learning language and related basic concepts forthe first time from one’s parents; if we analyze this apparent difference using Wittgenstein’s approach to clarifying the content of concepts and normsby appeal to learning contexts, this difference does not matter for purposesof conceptual clarification. Wittgenstein’s learning contexts in the openingpassages of Philosophical Investigations , for example, focus on the learningsituation of those who lacked the key concepts being taught. Learning con-texts in the Analects , however, focus on the learning of young adults andadults instructed by Confucius. But Wittgenstein in other writings, suchas Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics , focuses on the learning situ-

ations of a range of learners. What a concept or norm consists of is shownin the way it is learned and taught. What is bedrock will be displayed inthe learning context. In discussing paradoxes in mathematics, Wittgensteinclaimed, “All the puzzles I will discuss . . . can be exemplified by the mostelementary mathematics—in calculations which we learn from ages six tofifteen.”8 But his discussion of learning in Philosophical Investigations alsotakes up teaching how to help adults (presumably) to weigh and balanceimponderable evidence of whether another person’s feelings are genuine.9

Although Confucius does not discuss the ritual of teaching children

and their learning, Youzi’s account could apply to children even if Youzi, likeConfucius, is concerned only with moral cultivation in adults. In contrast, Wittgenstein focuses on language-games, which he describes as the sorts ofsimple language usages learned by children that adults use to clarify andcritique philosophical views. Tose same usages of language, he says, alsoapply to the process of learning concepts and related words as constitutiveof their meanings. Although Wittgenstein does not say much about morallanguage and concepts, he does say something; thus, it is possible to imag-

ine fruitful use of his mode of clarification to reflect on the meanings ofmoral concepts. Wittgenstein’s views tend to blur this distinction betweenchildren and adult learning while offering enough resources for the readerto discover both similarities and differences.10

In the rest of this section of the Introduction, I will explore some ofthe connections between Wittgenstein’s and Confucius’s views of learningand teaching as they apply to what Wittgenstein takes as “bedrock prac-tices,” those practices, which, as the inherited background of our actions andbeliefs, we convey in teaching-learning contexts, and which, as constitutive

of those beliefs and actions, are not justifiable by us. He says of them:“Once I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock, and myspade is turned. Ten I am inclined to say: ‘Tis is simply what I do.’ ”11


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7Introduction

Te Confucian project of self-cultivation and understanding dao asgrounded in the fundamental master-novice relationship is the means by which norms, which are embodied, are transmitted and understood. Incertain contexts, emphasis is given to the parent-child (father-son) relation-ship and in other contexts, to the teacher-disciple relationship. Nevertheless,this project provides room for reflection on these norms but only as anoutgrowth of learning practices.

Confucius offers, however, nothing in the way of a metaphysics ofnorms and little or nothing of what we would call normative theory. Somecommentators have found this feature of Confucius’s project problematic. We can distinguish three basic interpretive approaches to Confucius’s project:

A. Embodying a version of some Western philosophical theory

B. Being insufficiently philosophical

C. Presenting an alternative to Western philosophy.

MacIntyre12 and Slingerland,13 who read the Analects as presenting a viewsimilar to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, as well as Hall and Ames,14 who understandthe text in terms of Whitehead’s process philosophy or Dewey’s pragmatism,

exemplify type A. Fingarette,15 Graham,16 Hansen,17 and Schwartz18 exemplifytype B by treating the Analects as philosophically unsophisticated and in needof some theoretical foundation. Both of these types arise from a fundamen-tal principle held by many philosophers, that a non-Western philosophicaltext is philosophically significant only if it contains a theory that provides aprincipled justification for actions or beliefs. In contrast, I join with thoseof type C, the pluralists (Eno19 and Nivison20), who treat the Analects as analternative to Western philosophy but do so by arguing that the Analects offers

not theory, but self-cultivation practices and reflections思

(si ).Nonetheless, despite his departure from standard forms of philosophi-cal theory, Confucius, I argue, is still some sort of realist about norms. Although he offers no metaphysics of norms and is more concerned to guideothers’ self-cultivation than to offer abstract clarifications of dao, Confuciussays that the dao, which set of norms governing human life, is somethinga society either has or fails to have.21 He also says that dao is somethinga culture can get closer to and possibly even embody through a life self-cultivation.22 Tese are formulations nearly all realists would be happy with

even if they were to think more needed to be said. Yet, we might wonder,how can Confucius proceed with any confidence about the “reality” ofnorms if he lacks any philosophical account to give of its “reality”?


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Tis problem seems all the more pressing given that when Confuciusdiscusses dao’s constitutive ideals, such as goodness or humanity (仁 ren),filiality (孝

xiao), and trust (信

xin), he often characterizes them in various

ways.23 And in some cases, his characterizations seem designed specificallyfor the person with whom he is talking. Lacking any comprehensive defini-tion and any account of the reality of dao, one might argue that it is hardto see what basis Confucius might have for treating dao as “real.” Withoutsuch an account, we might think we need to accuse him of ethical provin-cialism if not wholesale bias.24

Tere are several aspects to an adequate account of Confucius’s so-called realism. If he is a realist, then he is a realist without a theoretical

elaboration of his realism. Confucian realism would have to be understoodas one would understand it from the vantage point of his fundamentalproject of self-cultivation in those practices, attitudes, and reflective under-standings and forms of sensitivity and responsiveness that constitute dao (the norms of living well).

Te burden of my argument will be to show what Confucius’s formof realism involves and why philosophers might want to take it seriously asan alternative to theoretical, metaphysical accounts of the reality of norms.o that end, I examine Wittgenstein’s approach to realism in Chapter 2.

Unlike Confucius’s realism, Wittgenstein intentionally seeks to place limitson the meaningfulness of metaphysical language as a way of protecting ourcomplicated forms of life and those ways of thinking and speaking central toit. Before that argument is made, it is important to understand Confucius’sand Wittgenstein’s shared basic insight, which is central to the form of real-ism that Confucius adopts. I borrow a term from Wittgenstein scholar andphilosopher Cora Diamond; she uses “realistic spirit” to capture Wittgen-stein’s realism. Confucius also embraces the realism of the “realistic spirit.”

At this point, I wish to capture one aspect of that spirit, specificallythe way in which Confucius appears to have no interest in questions ofmetaphysics and definitions of key normative concepts; nevertheless, hethinks of dao and its constitutive norms as “real.” In the account I offer, thereality of dao together with its constitutive ideals are embodied in Confucianpractices of learning; these practices constitute and illustrate real instances ofdao and its ideals. Te primary way to understand those ideals is to learn theritual practices that embody them. If this is true, then all we need to knowabout Confucian ideals comes from learning and acquiring them with the

assistance of someone who has mastered them. Confucius’s down-to-earthinstructions plus any extensions of the ideals taught by master practitioners,


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9Introduction

such as Youzi’s modifications of Confucius’s teachings, will provide us withall there is to know about these concepts and ideals.

Te best way to make sense of this approach todao

and its constitu-tive ideals, in terms of Wittgenstein’s and Confucius’s shared notion, is thatas novices we learn the basics of how to embody norms. Later, after yearsof study and practice, we may become masters of how to embody thosenorms in their full complexity. It is possible to understand Confucius’sproject of inquiry into morality along the lines of inquiry into the natureand meaning of the game of chess. Someone who wants to understand chessfirst needs to learn the basics of chess. After extended practice masteringthe basics, the novice will, perhaps by being offered examples of exemplary

chess moves from the history of chess, be able to operate at higher levelsof mastery, and eventually, if lucky, be able to create his own exemplarychess moves. We can imagine such a level of mastery as being accompaniedby reflection on the meaning of chess as playing a role in the human formof life. Tis reflection depends on the person’s earlier levels of mastery and would not be possible without them. But this project would be a form of“realism” about chess, its basic rules, its history, its exemplary moments,and so forth. Confucius’s similar realism lies in his acknowledgment thatcentral normative practices can be taught by those who have mastered them

and that learning from this teaching establishes students’ basic competency.His acknowledgment that the basic norms can be mastered and taught toothers limits what those norms are.

Given this basic approach, like Wittgenstein, we can view Confuciusas proceeding in a realistic spirit in his self-cultivation teaching project. Hecan insist that students be trained in basic practices of propriety. He canalso embrace a certain depth of dao that escapes simple clarification in termsof definitions yet allows for clarification as learners move to higher levels

of mastery of basic practices or mastery of even higher-level practices.25

Moreover, he can allow that some folks exhibit a higher degree of masteryof how to conform to dao than others. In short, dao can be understoodbeyond clear formulas, and it can be considered “real” precisely because itsnorms can be taught and students can choose to act on this learning eithercorrectly or incorrectly. From the vantage point of someone engaged in aself-cultivationist project, this is “realistic” enough.26

My basic approach to this “realistic spirit” of Confucianism derivesfrom the way that Wittgenstein investigates how norms are learned and how

they work in the context of various practices. In his later investigations, Wittgenstein presents a sustained examination of rule-following and how


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understanding concepts is constituted by learning bedrock, norm-governedpractices. He offers a way to understand these phenomena without offer-ing abstract, overly simple views of them, which gives rise to irresolvableparadoxes. For example, an intellectualistic view of rule-following mightallow that to understand a formula involves grasping the rule that allowsan individual to carry it out, but because rules can be interpreted in various ways, rule-following rests on grasping an acceptable interpretation of therule. But even deciding whether the interpretation of the rule is acceptableor correct can be interpreted variously.27 Wittgenstein concludes that thisaccount makes it unclear what rule-following consists of and, indeed, makesrule-following impossible due to its required distinction between getting the

rule right or wrong. In place of a view that gives central place to interpreta-tion, Wittgenstein argues that there has to be a way of understanding a rulethat is not an interpretation. Instead, Wittgenstein claims, rule-following isa practice.28 In addition, in On Certainty, he maintains that some empiricalpropositions function as rules that are part of the bedrock practices that lieat the bottom of our ways of thinking and talking:

94. But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myselfof its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its

correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which Idistinguish between true and false.

95. Te propositions describing this world-picture might be partof a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of agame; and the game can be learned purely practically, withoutlearning any explicit rules.29

In these passages, Wittgenstein makes the point that to learn the rulesand the ways of thinking and talking connected to them is to learn thosepractices. And those practices are learned from master teachers who, whenthey can, instill in novices the basic competency required to operate withbasic beliefs and concepts within the target area of belief and language.But learning bedrock practices does not exhaust how we learn concepts. InPhilosophical Investigations , Wittgenstein also discusses whether a person canlearn to become an expert in judging the genuineness of others’ feelings.Such judgment requires being influenced by “imponderable evidence.” A

master can teach a novice to use such evidence not by teaching a system,but through teaching correct judgments and giving the right hints.30 Witt-


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11Introduction

genstein’s account of how concepts are learned finds important parallels inConfucius’s account of moral learning. Next, I will investigate these parallels.

Bedrock Learning

A key feature of bedrock learning is that a novice is required to followblindly the teaching of the master. What distinguishes bedrock learningfrom other forms of learning is the fact that we do it without justification.It is just what we do. As Wittgenstein says:

“How am I able to obey a rule?”—If this is not a question aboutcauses, then it is about the justification for my acting this wayin complying with the rule.

Once I have exhausted the justifications I have reachedbedrock, and my spade is turned. Ten I am inclined to say,“Tis is simply what I do.”31

My act of obeying a rule rests on bedrock practices, which, whilethey supply me with a way to justify proceeding as I do, are not themselves

justified. Tey are what I do. But Wittgenstein is at pains to point out that what “I do” is the by-product of learning from someone who is already amaster of the practice I am engaged in. So at this bedrock level, a personcould just as well say, “Tis is what I learned.” Or, “Tis is what we accom-plished practitioners do.” Or, “Tis is what a master of this practice does.” 32

Te novice lacks a grasp of the conceptual terrain he is being initiatedinto, and only later, after mastering a bedrock practice, can he come tohave the basic concepts of that terrain. Terefore, Wittgenstein distinguishes

between “ostensive teaching” and “definition”: the latter requires conceptsin the terrain of the definition, but the former does not. So, if I am to ask what the meaning of the word “tree” is and understand possible answers, Ialready need to have mastered the concept of plants, height, longevity, andso on. In contrast, ostensive teaching simply involves pointing and naming,as a basic form of learning required before a person has understood theconcepts of tree, plants, and so forth.

Meredith Williams discusses this feature of Wittgenstein’s view ofconcepts in a way that is instructive. She argues that for Wittgenstein,

how a person learns a concept is constitutive of that concept. She quotes Wittgenstein in support of her claim:


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It may now be said: “Te way the formula is meant determines which steps are to be taken.” What is the criterion for the waythe formula is meant? It is, for example, the kind of way wealways use it, the way we are taught to use it.33

For this reason, Wittgenstein often turns to the question of how a conceptgets learned in the course of clarifying the concept. But what is distinctiveand important about Williams’s account is her clarification of the master-novice relationship. Tis relationship is crucial, for unless we understand thisrelationship, we will mischaracterize the character and context of bedrocklearning.

A master cannot function to teach a novice about a concept, forexample, the concept of expressing appreciation, without a good deal ofstage setting. Te context of teaching presupposes the practice of saying“thank you” in various contexts, done with the right expression of gratitude.Te master herself must have mastered those practices. Based on her priorlearning, she intends to teach the child and through a pattern of imitativebehavior expects the child eventually to learn to engage in this behavior without prompting. Te novice begins learning this language without theconcept of gratitude, which she will only later come to understand. But until

the novice’s “thank you” utterances come as matter of course, are suitablyexpressive, and she feels that she must utter them in the right contexts, she will not yet have adopted the concept of gratitude. Her developed sense of what she “must” do in situations where we typically feel a need to expressgratitude constitutes her grasp of a new concept. As Wittgenstein indicatesin his discussions of learning mathematical concepts: “Tis must shews thathe has adopted a concept.”34 Prior to this, the child will have a feeling ofpleasure at those things that please her teacher. Her first efforts to imitate

her teacher are only courtesy attributions of understanding of the conceptsto be learned.35 Until she has a mastery of the basics of the concepts andrelated judgments and knows when and how she must employ them, shelacks those concepts. Te sort of bedrock learning, say, of the concept oftable, requires blind obedience on the part of the novice that finally issuesin this sense on the part of the learner that she must say “table” to describecertain objects.36 Tis requirement is fully clear in Wittgenstein’s discussionsof the problem of skepticism, especially in a passage on learning in whichhe seems to liken the adult skeptic to the difficult child who doesn’t believe

his teacher or schoolbooks:37

314. Imagine that the schoolboy really did ask “and is there atable there even when I turn around, and even when no one


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13Introduction

is there to see it?” Is the teacher to reassure him—and say “ofcourse there is!”? Perhaps the teacher will get a bit impatient,but think that the boy will grow out of asking such questions.

315. Tat is to say, the teacher will feel that this is not really alegitimate question at all. And it would be just the same if thepupil cast doubt on the uniformity of nature, that is to say, onthe justification of inductive arguments.—Te teacher wouldfeel that this was only holding them up, that this way the pupil would only get stuck and make no progress.—And he would beright. It would be as if someone were looking for some object

in a room; he opens a drawer and doesn’t see it there; then hecloses it again, waits, and opens it once more to see if perhapsit isn’t there now, and keeps on like that. He has not learned tolook for things. And in the same way this pupil has not learnedhow to ask questions. He has not learned the game that we aretrying to teach him.

316. And isn’t it the same as if the pupil were to hold up hishistory lesson with doubts as to whether the earth really . . . ?

317. Tis doubt isn’t one of the doubts in our game. (But notas if we chose this game!)38

At the level of bedrock learning, there is no room for creative pro- jection of a concept onto novel items that the ordinary concept does notinclude. Indeed, bedrock teaching that tolerated such free-wheeling applica-tion of a concept would be irresponsible. Williams’s account sounds strik-

ingly Confucian:

For the novice . . . as part of the process of training itself, anindispensable courtesy is extended to his behavior and utterances.Tey are accorded the status of actions and judgments beforethey really are such.39

Tis makes the novice doubly dependent on the community.Like the master, his action is what it is only against the back-ground of its historical and social setting; but unlike the master,

this status is not ensured by his own competency, but by that ofthe master. For many performances of a novice, there is simplyno fact of the matter as to whether he understands correctlyor not. Tis is because it is not enough to go on correctly; the


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correct performances must be the exercise of the right kind ofdisposition. Acting from one’s competency, understanding, andacting correctly all go hand in hand.40

Te novice, like his master, depends on the historical setting for thepractices they eventually share in, but the novice’s competency as someone who “understands” is dependent on the competency of his master. Withouthaving the proper disposition to go on correctly, that is, to do as the masterdoes or would do, the novice cannot understand what the master is teach-ing. His novice-level understanding is dependent on the full understandingof his master. And those “gray-area” performances of the novice, not yet

clearly arising from the right disposition, are called instances of understand-ing only because of their derivation from his learning from a master, whohas that settled disposition.

Although Confucius does not address the question of the constitutiverelation between learning and concepts or the relation between that constitu-tive relation and the dependence of the novice’s understanding on the master’sunderstanding, he does show a profound sense of the need for bedrock learn-ing of ritual, as this learning forms a person’s moral sensibility. Confucius’s

disciple, Master You (Youzi) shows an understanding of the importance ofchildren learning filial obedience and other simple virtues as constituentsof more comprehensive virtues.41 Te Analects, then, makes, among others,two important claims about 仁 (ren), moral goodness.42 Youzi claims thatthe basis of being morally good is xiao, being filial, and the route to beingmorally good is through practicing ritual. Consider the following passage:

有子曰. 其為人也孝弟. 而好犯上者鮮矣. 不好犯. 而好作亂者.未之有也. 君子務本. 本立而道生. 孝弟也者. 其為仁

之本與.

Youzi said, “Tere seldom is one as a man who, being filialand fraternal, is strongly inclined to go against superiors. Terehas never been one [who was] not inclined to go against hissuperiors [who] is strongly inclined to foment rebellion. Teruler should undertake the fundamentals. After fundamentalshave been undertaken, the Way (the standard for appropriate

conduct in interpersonal relationships) is established. Being filialand fraternal, aren’t they perhaps the root of being morally good(in respect of conduct in interpersonal relationships)?”43


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15Introduction

In contrast, Confucius claims that the practice of ritual brings about 仁 (ren), moral goodness:

顏淵問仁.子曰.克己復禮為仁.一日克己復禮.天下歸仁焉.為仁由己.而由仁乎哉.顏淵曰.請問其目.子曰.非禮勿視.非禮勿聽.非禮勿言.非禮勿動.顏淵曰.回雖不敏.請事斯語矣.

Yan Yuan asked how to become morally good. Our Master said,“Controlling oneself and returning to ritual practice is the way tobecome morally good. On a single day, if a person has controlledhimself and returned to practicing ritual, then the whole empire

would categorize him as being morally good. Becoming morallygood comes from oneself; how could it come from others? Yan Yuan said, “May I hear the details?” Te Master said, “Don’tlook if it does not comply with ritual action. Don’t speak ifit does not comply with ritual action. Don’t act if it does notcomply with ritual action.” Yan Yuan said, “Although I am notintelligent enough, please let me devote myself to these words[instructions].”44

Due to the fragmentary character of the Analects and Confucius’s ten-dency to make hints and suggestions about how to engage in self-cultivation, we are left wondering how these claims about xiao and ren might be related.I suggest the following relationship. Filial piety and ritual propriety have afairly clear relationship. A child first learns forms of ritual propriety withinthe family. Te successful transmission of ritual propriety requires that thechild shows appropriate obedience to and so filial respect toward his parentsand teachers in the course of learning bedrock ritual practices. At the same

time, those ritual practices provide the child with ways to express his respectand love for his parents and elder brothers. Tese forms of expression alsohave appropriate correlates outside the family.

In whatever ways we clarify the relationship between parents as teach-ers and their children, it is clear that Confucius considers the learningof ritual practices as the basis for his self-cultivation project. Indeed, heemphasizes devotion to learning 好學 (haoxue ) as the key to self-cultivation. And although reflection, that is, thinking and questioning, is important,reflection cannot make headway—and, in fact, will get us into trouble—if

it is disconnected from bedrock learning:

子曰. 學而不思, 則罔. 思而不學, 則殆.


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If one learns something but does not successfully reflect onits meaning, he will learn in vain. If one merely thinks aboutsomething in the abstract but does not first learn it, he willface trouble.45

Tis slogan, reminiscent of Kant’s “concepts without intuitions are empty,intuitions without concepts blind,” also captures a key commitment of Wittgenstein in his two methodological dicta: “A philosophical problem hasthe form: ‘I don’t know my way about.’ And, the philosopher’s aim “is toshew the fly the way out of the fly bottle.”46 In both dicta, Wittgensteinis concerned to combat a form of reflection that proceeds disconnected

from concrete linguistic usage and practice, embedded in specific forms oflife (or language-games). Yet he is also at pains to acknowledge that ourforms of language can give rise to misleading philosophical pictures, whichtend to bewitch us into thinking about our concepts as detached fromtheir role in the commerce of ordinary life and language. Philosophicalreflection that is guided by misleading pictures and detached from con-crete linguistic usage leads to irresolvable conceptual puzzlement. Masteryof language-games by itself does not protect us from becoming bewitchedby pictures. And reflection that is not guided by concrete linguistic usage

embedded in specific language-games and forms of life will encourage ratherthan resolve this sort of bewitchment. Te resolution of philosophical tor-ment and the results of philosophical peace come from reflection guidedby concrete linguistic usage. Linguistic usage protected by such reflectionprevents philosophical confusion or resolves it if we fall into it. But thissort of limitation on reflection is central to Analects 2.15. Our reflectionsabout dao must arise out of and be limited by prior learning, primarily,but not exclusively, out of ritual.

A question, however, arises about whether this comparison can bemade between Wittgenstein’s master-novice relationship, which, for the mostpart, concerns learning contexts in which the novice lacks the concepts thathe is being taught by the master, and Confucius’s Master-novice relation-ship, which concerns an adult novice who understands the concepts he isbeing taught if only at an elementary level. In discussing a child’s learning, Wittgenstein distinguishes between ostensive definition and ostensive teach-ing. Te former requires some level of understanding of the concepts beingused and the ability to ask the meanings of the words that express them. So,

a question such as, “What is four?” when asked by someone who alreadyknows what numbers are, asks for a definition. Pointing to four objects would offer an ostensive definition of “four.” Ostensive teaching occurs when


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17Introduction

the novice has not yet learned basic mathematics and does not yet have aconcept of number. A parent or teacher saying, “Tis is four,” while point-ing to four objects, is part of the training. Under normal circumstances,this type of instruction leads the pupil to an understanding of the conceptof number, including the number four. Until that level of mastery occurs,the novice can be said to be counting, adding, and knowing what four andother numbers mean only because of the context of the learning and hisrelationship to the master of counting.

In contrast, the Analects ’ Master-novice relationships occur primarilybetween adults and young adults who have already, presumably, masteredthe basics of ordinary language, including the moral language of the rituals

and virtues. As helpful as this comparison might be between a child learn-ing numbers and an adult learning how to practice moral goodness, it isnot exact. Moreover, if bedrock beliefs and practices are understood onlyas the beliefs and practices taught to child-novices who are being initiatedfor the first time into a conceptual terrain and related language-games, thissimplistic understanding does not represent the situation of Confucius’snovices, who are mostly young adults and are already trained in the basiclanguage and concepts of living morally good lives.47

My response to this concern is multifaceted. Tere is nothing in the

Analects to suggest that Confucius would be hostile to the claim that moralunderstanding starts at a young age and that the training he offers adults issecondary to that. In fact, in Analects 19.12, Zixia makes this very argument:

子游曰.子夏之門人小子.當洒掃, 應對, 進退則可矣. 抑末也.本之則無.如之何.子夏聞之,曰.噫.言游過矣.君子之道.孰先傳焉.孰後倦焉.譬諸草木.區以別矣.君子之道.焉可誣也. 有始有卒者. 其惟聖人乎.

Youzi said, “Te young disciples of Zixia serve as sprinklers,sweepers, dealing with guests, their coming and going, and thesethey are worthy to do. But these are merely minor subjects; asfor regulation of the basics, they have none. How can I deal with them?” Zixia heard this, saying, “Alas, Youzi’s words areexcessive. As for the way of the well-cultivated man, what first istransmitted? Afterward what should last be transmitted? We canthink of it as similar to groups of plants and trees. We classify

them according to their differences. Te way of the gentleman,how could it be so falsely distorted? As for one who grasps boththe beginning and the end, won’t he alone be a wise man?”


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Although not Confucius’s argument, this passage shows an early apprecia-tion of the need to begin in childhood with very basic practices. o thispassage, we might also add the famous passage in which Confucius offershis spiritual autobiography, Analects 2.4, in which he says that he set hismind on cultivation since he was fifteen years old. Presumably, his seriouslevel of commitment did not arise from nothing, but rather, from his ownappreciation at that early age of the benefits of learning he had gainedprior to this.48

Nonetheless, it is true that moral cultivation of children is not thecore focus of the Analects. I would venture to say that because his projectconcerned moral cultivation of adults, it was not a topic Confucius felt a

strong need to discuss. It is also noteworthy that despite emphasizing theimportance of filiality, Youzi himself does not discuss filiality in children.Te demands of filiality that he and Confucius discuss are demands ofadult children toward parents. Children might seem to be on a moralholiday.

Other texts in the early Confucian canon also tend to ignore theproblem of moral training in children. wo sections of Te Record of Rituals (禮記 Liji ) address these issues, albeit in limited ways. Tese texts probablypostdate the Analects and reflect the efforts of authors to expound upon

aspects of ritual that go beyond discussions in the Analects. Some suggest avery permissive approach toward children. Consider the seventh section ofthe “Inner Pattern” (內則 neize ) chapter of the Liji , which contrasts earlymorning household requirements for children and adult family members:

孺子蚤寢晏起，唯所欲，食無時.

Te children go earlier to bed, and get up later, according to

their pleasure. Tere is no fixed time for their meals.49

However, sections 76–80 specify a curriculum from early childhoodto adulthood:

子能食食，教以右手. 能言，男唯女俞. 男鞶革，女鞶絲.

When the child was able to take its own food, it was taughtto use the right hand. When it was able to speak, a boy [was

taught to] respond boldly and clearly; a girl, submissively and[in a] low [tone of voice]. Te former was fitted with a girdleof leather; the latter, with one of silk.


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19Introduction

六年教之數與方名.七年男女不同席，不共食.八年出入門戶及即席飲食，必後長者，始教之讓. 九年教之數日.

At six years, they were taught the numbers and the names ofthe cardinal points; at the age of seven, boys and girls did notoccupy the same mat nor eat together; at eight, when going outor coming in at a gate or door and going to their mats to eatand drink, they were required to follow their elders: the teachingof yielding to others was now begun; at nine, they were taughthow to number the days.

十年出就外傅，居宿於外，學書計，衣不帛襦褲，禮帥初，朝夕學幼儀，請肄簡諒.

At ten, [the boy] went to a master outside and stayed with him(even) overnight. He learned the [different classes of] charactersand calculation; he did not wear his jacket or trousers of silk; inhis manners he followed his early lessons; morning and eveninghe learned the behavior of a youth; he would ask to be exercisedin [reading] the tablets, and in the forms of polite conversation.

十有三年學樂，誦《詩》，舞《勺》，成童舞《象》，學射御。二十而冠，始學禮，可以衣裘帛，舞《大夏》，惇行孝弟，博學不教，內而不出.

At thirteen, he learned music, and to repeat the odes, and todance the ko [of the duke of Zhou]. When a full-grown lad, hedanced the xiang [of King Wu]. He learned archery and chariot

driving. At twenty, he was capped, and first learned the [dif-ferent classes of] ceremonies, and might wear furs and silk. Hedanced the da xia [of Yu] and attended sedulously to filial andfraternal duties. He might become very learned, but did not teachothers—[his object being still] to receive and not to give out.

三十而有室，始理男事，博學無方，孫友視志.四十始仕，方物出謀發慮，道合則服從，不可則去。五十命為大夫，服官政.七十致事.凡男拜，尚左手.

At thirty, he had a wife and began to attend to the businessproper to a man. He extended his learning without confining it


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to particular subjects. He was deferential to his friends, havingregard to the aims [which they displayed]. At forty, he was firstappointed to office, and according to the business of it, broughtout his plans and communicated his thoughts. If the ways [whichhe proposed] were suitable, he followed them out; if they werenot, he abandoned them. At fifty, he was appointed a greatofficer, and labored in the administration of his department. Atseventy, he retired from his duties. In all salutations of males,the upper place was given to his left hand.50

I suggest that this later text, from the early Han, represents a stage of

institutionalization of moral cultivation beyond the sort of adult trainingConfucius gave to individuals. Although we cannot use these passages toargue that Confucius himself held these views of early childhood moraltraining, we can use these passages to show that early expositors of Con-fucius’s teachings for adults did not see any tension between his accountsand related accounts of childhood training.

Perhaps the more difficult issue is how far we can understand Con-fucius’s project as a training of adult novices by a master on the model of Wittgenstein’s initial training of children into a conceptual terrain they have

not yet encountered. I will now argue that there is no problem extend-ing Wittgenstein’s view of training in bedrock practices from children toadults. Tis argument requires two steps: First, I will argue that bedrockpractices are not essentially connected to the training of novices whoselearning requires equipping them with the most basic concepts and relatedlinguistic behavior. Second, I will argue that, in some contexts, young adultsfunction as novices, learning higher-level bedrock practices from a masterof such practices.

Wittgenstein’s discussions of master-novice relations are varied. Weknow from his discussions of puzzles about mathematics that he sought tounderstand how to resolve them by appealing to mathematical learning ofchildren from ages six to fifteen:

Knowing our everyday language—this is one reason I can talkabout them. Another reason is that all of the puzzles I will dis-cuss can be exemplified by the most elementary mathematics—incalculations which we learn from ages six to fifteen, or what

we might easily have learned, for example, Cantor’s theorem.51

Wittgenstein is pointing out that the puzzles that concern him as a philoso-pher involve ordinary concepts, and the puzzles can be exhibited in elementary


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21Introduction

mathematics. In this context, the bedrock that he appeals to involves ordinary ways of counting, speaking about proofs, operating with proofs (construct-ing them, understanding them, and drawing consequences from them), andperforming the elementary mathematical operations that exhibit these. Manyof the examples he uses in his discussions are of proofs in

Whose Tradition, Which DAO：Confucius and Wittgenstein on Moral Learning and Reflection

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