羞耻与儒家“义”的观念

Shame and the Confucian Idea of Yi (Righteousness)

作者：卢盈华（华东师范大学思勉人文高等研究院教授）

来源：作者授权儒家网发布，原载 International Philosophical Quarterly 2018年第1期 

ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes the relation between shame and a Confucian notion of yi (righteousness, rightness), especially through discussions from Confucius and Mencius. Section one clarifies Mencius’s position that righteousness is both external and internal. Although this idea includes rules, it is primarily something intended by our innate moral feelings. Section two illustrates the point that if one’s action is not right (yi), the feeling of shame spontaneously arises and motivates a self-correction. This section also clarifies the difference between the idea of shame in Max Scheler and in Confucian thought. Section three compares absolute yi with general li (ritual propriety) as well as the roles that shame and duty play in relation to ren (primarily humane love).

摘要：

本文是另一文《羞耻现象学》的姊妹篇。文章立足于儒家传统对羞耻与“义”的联系进行了具体的描述。第一部分澄清孟子的立场：义既是外在的，又是内在的。尽管义具有规则的含义，它原初地是由我们内在的道德情感所意向到的。第二部分说明如下观点：如果一个人意图或行为不正当（不义），自发的羞耻感就会产生并且推动自我改正。本部分还阐明了马克斯·舍勒与儒家羞耻观念的差别。文章最后比较绝对的义与一般的礼，以及仁爱与羞耻-义务所发挥的作用。

小结：

义既是外在的，又是内在的。尽管义具有规则的含义，它原初地是由我们内在的羞耻情感所意向到的。羞耻揭示了较高价值与较低价值的冲突，在儒家看来，在此冲突中呈现出了应当、义务（见得思义、义利之辨；为机变之巧者，无所用耻焉。不耻不若人，何若人有？）。如果人们现在或将要进行的行为不正当，羞耻感就会自发地出现，并施加力量促使人们改过迁善。对于内在的、独自感到的原初羞耻感微弱的人来说，由他人触发的、外在的显明羞耻可以促使当事人更正自身的意图和行为。

羞耻和鄙视都可以指向自己和他人，尽管羞耻原初是个人的，鄙视是指向他人的。“为他人感到羞耻”与“鄙视”不同。为某人而羞耻是一种激励，在其中仍可有尊重，指向积极的改进，而鄙视是一种惩罚、看轻，意味着自甘堕落而难以救药。 在集体主义文化中，当一个人的行为不光彩时，他不仅将其自己置于可耻的境地，也玷辱(dishonor)了与他相连的人，如他的老师、家人、朋友，甚至辱没了他的祖先。尽管儒家基本上被视为一种集体文化，但对人格的尊重无疑也是突出的。君子应当遵从本心，不把错误的羞耻观（即便是被广泛接受的羞耻观）看作真实的羞耻，并试图逃避它。

羞耻揭示出了作为正路的义。尽管背离规则可以带来巨大的好处，但义人会为此感到羞耻。礼代表一般的规定，以使人们的关系恰当与和谐。对礼来说，有偶然违反的空间，甚至可以对一般的规定做出大规模的修改，以更好地实现仁与义。相比之下，义是绝对的原则，或绝对的价值之秩序，它不允许偶然的违背。仁代表道德行为者较高的、主动的追求，与之相比，义意味着底线的要求与永不应违背的责任。在舍勒的爱的伦理学中，应然的、义务的伦理学受到了严厉的批评。而儒家则同时重视仁-爱与义-耻两方面，以同时确保爱的主动性与自发性，以及义的强制性与基本要求。

THIS PAPER IS AN EXTENSION of my article“The Phenomenology of Shame: A Clarification in Light of Max Scheler and Confucianism.”【1】In that essay I clarified the phenomenological experience of shame in light of the thought of Max Scheler as well as such Confucian philosophers as Confucius and Mencius. This paper will undertake a more specific description of shame and its connection with yi according to the Confucian tradition. It may be helpful to review the conclusions in that earlier work.

Shame is an unpleasant feeling in which we experience self-reproach and reproach by others. We tend to regard ourselves as unworthy. Shame implies that there is a hierarchy of value. It occurs when there is a conflict among different values and when the agent tries to sacrifice the higher value for a lower one. Shame can also take place when one is treated by others merely as an object or as a sensuous being rather than as a spiritual being with personal dignity. Among other points, I there distinguished destructive shame from humiliation. While genuine shame is indispens- able for proper living, wrongly felt shame is destructive to the cultivation of virtue. There are three kinds of destructive shame: (1) the shame as vanity, (2) the shame of producing cowardice, and (3) the shame as indecision. A humiliated person is in the situation of being manipulated in an intense manner through a violation of his or her will, or of being rendered radically powerless by action or by language. The argument in this paper is based on these positions.

1. YI: OBLIGATION AND INTERNAL FEELING

The Chinese term yi is sometimes translated as“appropriateness,”【2】 but the specific  context will make clear whether this is an accurate translation. For instance, wearing   red clothes at a funeral ceremony is certainly not appropriate, but normally doing so  is not regarded as“not-yi,”whereas an officer’s embezzling public funds is certainly   not yi since to do so would be to violate his duty. His action is not right. Generally,  a more proper translation of yi would be“duty”or“righteousness”or“rightness.” I will argue in support of Mencius’s claim that, like ren (humaneness or humane love), yi is internal to us. It is precisely what is intended in the feeling of shame, a feeling that reveals something deep about what it means to be a person. In order  to make sense of the relation of shame and yi, let me consider a famous discussion  between Gaozi and Mencius. Gaozi begins with the claim:

He is elderly, and I treat him in the manner suitable for treating an elderly person (I treat him with respectful behavior). It is not because I previously respected him in my heart. Similarly, that thing is white, and I treat it as white, according to its being white externally to us. Hence, I say yi is external. . . . I love my younger brother; the younger brother of a person from Qin I do not love. I take the explanation for this to be in me. Hence, I say that ren is internal. I treat as elderly an elderly person from Chu, but I also treat as elderly my own elders. I take the explanation for this to lie in the elderly person. Hence, I say that yi is external.”【3】

According to Gaozi, as a form of love, ren is a feeling and hence is inside oneself. If someone does not love another person, no one can force him to do so. We love our brothers but might not love the younger brother of a person from Qin. This difference come about because love is determined by one’s own feelings. In this sense ren is internal. By contrast, yi is an objective regulation that we need to obey no matter how we feel. This duty (and thus our righteousness) is determined by the rule that applies to the actual situation. Regardless of whether we happen to love the elderly person from Chu or not, we have to treat him in the manner in which we should treat any elderly person. Therefore, yi is external to us.

Confucians, we should note, also admit that ren is primarily a feeling of love and yi a matter of a regulation. Mencius affirms one aspect of ren when he says that “noble people preserve their hearts with ren and li (ritual propriety). People with ren love others, and those who have li respect others.”【4】 He also says that“between a father and his children there is affection; between a ruler and his ministers there is righteousness.”【5】 Both rulers and minsters must obey certain regulations. For Mencius, however, Gaozi makes two mistakes. First, despite the undeniable fact that that ren is a feeling, it is notjust arbitrary and not merely subjective. There is also something that is a priori and orderly.【6】 Truly humane love is not a matter of partiality.7 Second, although yi is an obligation, it is not something imposed on us from the outside, but something that arises from our own moral tendencies. Mencius says:

Elderliness is different from whiteness. The whiteness of a white horse is no different from the whiteness of a gray-haired person. But surely we do not regard the elderliness of an old horse as being no different from the elderliness of an old person? Furthermore, do you say that one who is elderly is righteous, or that the one who treats another as elderly is righteous? . . . Liking the roast from Qin is no different from liking my own roast. This is also the case with other things. Is liking a roast, then also external?”【8】

There is a difference between treating an elderly person in an externally respectful manner and treating him with real respect in one’s heart. This point is often neglected because the same Chinese expression zhang zhi (regarding or treating him as an elder) applies to both cases. What Mencius indicates here is that the external rules regarding how to treat an elderly person are not simply imposed on us randomly but are in accordance with our natural moral feeling. As a matter of one’s own preference, one’s liking roast is not determined by the cook. Through this metaphor, Mencius conveys that respecting elderly people flows from one’s own feeling of respect and is notjust an external requirement. Nevertheless, the external regulation that needs to be obeyed is helpful for realizing and cultivating a respectful state of mind.

An interesting contrast can be made here between Gaozi and Kant. For Kant, feel- ing should not be a determining factor in formulating the moral law used in making a moral decision, and in this sensefeeling is precisely external to us on account of its empirical feature. Furthermore, duty is for Kant internal to us since“duty is the necessity of an action from respect for the law”【9】 and the moral law is made by the autonomous free will. Yet, from the standpoint of Confucianism as represented by Mencius, not only is duty internal to us but feelings also provide the grounds for genuinely moral action. Thus, it is something internal to us. Moral feeling can be both experiential and a priori, both subjective and objective.【10】 But we still need to explain how yi is given to people through the fact of the moral experience of shame and disdain.

In the above example Gaozi and Mencius implicitly use the emotion of respect to illustrate yi, and this point can also be found in other passages of Mencius. Generally, however, the emotion of respect is correlated with ritual propriety. Mencius claims: “The emotion of deference and respect is the initial manifestation of ritual propriety  (li).”【11 】Despite the fact that there is always some ambiguity in human experience, the primary emotions of righteousness and ritual propriety are distinct on account of the different roles that these two virtues play in ethical conduct. Indeed, Gaozi unwisely uses respect and its correlate li to illustrate yi. Mencius’s argument shows that even the root of external li is established through moral feeling, and this is also true for yi, which is deeper than li in moral significance.

2. SHAME AND RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE CONFUCIAN CONTEXT

Confucians believe that the feeling of shame is indispensable for acting in a way worthy of a person. Mencius claims:“A person should not be shameless. The shame- fulness of shamelessness is a lack of shame indeed!”【12】 The person with no sense of shame could not feel shameless in the very moment of being shameless even though this shamelessness is always felt by others. Antony Steinbock explains the point by saying:“Whereas I do experience shame in the present, I experience neither my own absence of shame nor my own so-called shamelessness in the present. Either I experience shame, or I do not. But it is possible to experience another as lacking shame or as shameless.”【13】  Whenever one feels shame or realizes one’s previous shamelessness, one is not shameless anymore. Shamelessness is actually something to be ashamed of, and thus Mencius calls it“the shame of being shameless.”It is a pity, however, that this sort of shame cannot be experienced as shame by the moral agent at that moment. Hence Mencius sighs that it is indeed a lack of shame.【14】

Spirit and Righteousness as Revealed by Shame

Confucius holds that governing people by laws and punishments is insufficient to help people cultivate themselves. He says:

If you guide people by laws and maintain order with punishments, the common people will try to avoid the punishment, but they have no sense of shame. If you guide people by virtues and maintain order with ritual propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and moreover they will set themselves right.【15】

In this case, if one’s own action (present or future) is not right, the feeling of shame can spontaneously arise and motivate one to correct oneself with irresistible force. Shame is different from guilt in a number of ways. While we usually feel guilty for actions that have serious consequences such as harming others, we could be ashamed of any unrighteous action we have done, no matter whether this action causes hurt or not. Bernard Williams’s discussion is insightful on the difference between guilt and shame. He says:“What I have done points in one direction towards what has happened to others, in another direction to what I am. Guilt looks primarily in the first direction. . . . Shame looks to what I am.”【16】

In addition to the role of moral guidance shame plays with regard to our autonomy, shame also indicates moral judgment from others. If guilt is one’s self-reproach, then shame incorporates both reproach from oneself and others. If one’s action violates one’s duty or is not right (i.e., not yi), one will feel ashamed, but observers may also have a sense of shamefor him or her. When we feel shame in accordance with its objective order, it usually indicates the occurrence of something wrong. In terms of phenomenological intentionality, the intended content of a morally wrong action or intention correlates with the intending activity of the feeling of shame. To someone with a weak sense of internal original shame that one feels alone, the external apparent shame triggered by others can contribute to the correction of the person’s intentions and behaviors.【17】

Even if one debases and ignores one’s own personhood and thus does not feel ashamed in doing unrighteous things, others still could generate the shamefor him or her. Confucius says:“clever words, an ingratiating countenance, and excessive respect—Zuo Qiuming was ashamed of them. I also am ashamed of them. To conceal resentment against a person and to appear friendly with him—Zuo Qiuming was ashamed of such conduct. I also am ashamed of it.”【18】  Excesses in one’s appear- ance and words might win affection from others, but insofar as they are insincere, seductive, and manipulative, Confucius judges that such people tend not to possess true virtue.【19】 Unrighteous conduct is shameful on account of its lack of dignity.

According to Max Scheler, morally right action consists in preferring a higher or greater value to a lower or smaller value. For Confucianism there is a duty to do so. Shame arises when one fails to realize a higher or greater value. Confucianism affirms the relation between shame and wrong action. Mencius explains:“Shame is indeed important for people! Those who are crafty in their contrivances and schemes have no use for shame. If one is not ashamed of not being as good as others, how will one ever be as good as others?”【20】 Shame can motivate people to work harder and achieve greater values. A person who has not lost his original heart (benxin) will be ashamed of his laziness, cheating, injustice, excessive enjoyment, and so on.

Whether a given person should be ashamed of his poverty needs to be treated care- fully since poverty itself cannot serve as the sole evidence (criteria) of a shameful thing. Confucius comments:“When a state is with order (i.e., in accordance with the Way), poverty and base conditions are things to be ashamed of. When a state is not with order (deviating from the Way), richness and nobility are things to be ashamed of.”【21】 In a well-ordered society, the people who work diligently in pursuing greater values and carrying out the Way (Dao) will be rich or highly esteemed, therefore poverty and a base standard of living are things to be ashamed of. In order to carry out and fulfill the Way, noble people need to work hard to acquire resources (wealth, reputation, or high position) as necessary conditions. There is nothing wrong with pursuing these external goods because there is no conflict between values in which one does not have to sacrifice lower values (such as wealth) for achieving higher values (such as righteousness).

In an ill-ordered society, people only can acquire riches and high status through unprincipled deeds, so richness and nobility are things to be ashamed of. On this point Confucius says:“Wealth and nobility attained by unrighteousness concern me no more than the floating clouds.”【22】 The correct functioning of shame is therefore not dependent on an external condition or on the attainment of a lower value (like wealth) but on internal insight that enables one to see whether an action sacrifices a higher value for a lower value or not, as shame implies a sense of duty or righteousness.

Shame and Disdain

Mencius claims:“The emotions of shame (xiu) and disdain (wu) is the initial manifes-   tation of righteousness.”【23】The term wu is sometimes understood as dislike, disgust,   aversion, detest, or abhorrence (which corresponds with yanwu or zengwu). There are, however, two reasons to reject such a reading. First, the common element of these emotions is hate, which is more the opposite of love than of shame. Second,  these emotions, like disgust, are not necessarily relevant to morals. We could speak of  “loving goodness and hating evil”in expressing one’s attitude toward moral principle.  But when people speak of“the emotion of liking and disliking (hao wu zhi xin),”

they usually express a kind of partial attitude that ought to be discarded. For instance, Confucius claims:“You love a man and wish him to live; you dislike him and wish him to die. Having wished him to live, you also wish him to die. This is a case of delusion.”24 The Classic of Documents also says:“Without selfish liking, pursue the kingly way. Without selfish disliking, pursue the kingly path.”【25】

For this reason I accept Van Norden’s argument that wu is closer to xiu, even though they are sometimes used interchangeably.【26】 By comparison with shame, the meaning of wu in Mencius’s passage is extended to“disdain.”Disdain points to a defect in one’s personhood, and thus it is more morally relevant. Zhu Xi comments: “Xiu is being ashamed about what is not good in oneself. Wu is disliking what is not good in others.”【27】 This interpretation, which limits the range of disliking to immoral acts, makes sense because“disliking what is not good in others”is integrated with disdain. His definition of xiu and wu, however, is somehow over-simplified. Both  shame and disdain can be directed to oneself and to others, despite the fact that  shame is primarily personal and disdain is primarily directed to others. One can also feel shame for others and disdain oneself. Kwong-loi Shun expresses a similar idea in opposing Zhu Xi’s definition. But as he points out, Zhu Xi’s interpretation  is still informative. Shun writes:

Even wu can be directed at one’s own actions or things that happened to oneself, the attitude involved in wu when so directed is like the attitude one has toward what one dislikes in others. This is unlike the attitudes occasioned by xiu and chih [chi], which cannot be directed at what one dislikes in another person unless the other person stands in some special relation to oneself.【28】

Feeling shame for someone else is clearly different from disdain. One often feels shame for his friends or relatives without disdaining them. Shame points to posi- tive values in which one looks forward to the establishment of a higher value in oneself or others. By contrast, disdain is largely negative. Seeing a person indulging in sensuous pleasure and failing to perform spiritual acts, we may disdain him if we no longer hold out hope for his improvement. While shame is in fact a form of spurring, disdain is a punishment. Both, however, are crucial for motivating one’s self-cultivation.

If there is only tolerant shame and no stringent disdain, one may not be pushed to morally rectify oneself. If, on the other hand, there is only the stringent disdain without tolerant shame, one may feel no warmth of love and hence generate only hatred in his heart for others. Yet, disdain is not as primary as shame. It dissolves at the moment when one sees a disdained person’s effort to improve himself. It is not proper to be occupied with a strong feeling of disdain in one’s deep heart since it is primarily a punishment and an exclusion rather than an encouragement and an inclusion.

Dishonor and Social Shame

If one’s action is disgraceful, he not only puts himself in a shameful situation but also dishonors (dian ru) the people connected with him, such as his teachers, fam- ily, friends, and even ancestors. He can even bring shame to his country when he is regarded as representing the country. Compared to an individualistic culture, shame is more prominent in a collective culture where people are deeply interconnected and the atomistic individual is not recognized.29 The avoidance of collective shame leads people to care for each other in a community. Yet, this may (perhaps paradoxi- cally) lead to a group’s oppression of an individual by social standards, which may be not in accordance with the rightness revealed by a priori shame.【30】For example, a certain kind of marriage may not be accepted by a society, but this marriage does not really violate yi. People would feel shame for those people who want to marry each other contrary to social conventions, or even disdain them. To avoid shame and disdain, the group they belong to will push them to give up their intended union. This collective shame is not the a priori shame pointing to spiritual values, but one dominated by social convention. Here we could see why the people who are fond of individualism debase the value of shame. Shame destroys their negative freedom (freefrom external constraints), even though it promotes people’s positive freedom (the freedom to overcome desire and achieve self-cultivation.)【31】 For individualists, one person cannot represent another person and cannot bring shame to others; there is no collective shame caused by an individual. One takes responsibility for his own action, and it is not another person’s rights or obligations to restrain or care for him by leading him away from shame.

If we do not mistake socially sharped shame for genuine shame, we do not have to take an extremely individualistic approach. Although Confucianism is basically regarded as a collective culture, the individual is undoubtedly prominent. A noble person should attend to his heart and not take a mistaken sort of shame (even one that is widely accepted) as if it were genuine shame and try to escape it. Confucius supplies an example:“Kong Wenzi was diligent and loved learning, and he was not ashamed to ask and learn from his inferiors! On these grounds he has been styled Wen.”【32】 In addition, being together with a person who really performs shameful deeds may not necessarily bring me shame, let alone those persons whose deeds are only socially but not genuinely shameful. A group with a tolerant spirit would not expel or isolate the people whose marriages are non-traditional.

Shame and Yi as the Right Way

Compared with other Confucian virtues, yi possesses a strong sense of lawfulness. Mencius says:“Ren is people’s peaceful abode. Yi is people’s correct path.”【33】 Fol- lowing a duty, a rule, what one ought to do, or what is right to do is required and commanded by yi. There is no room for any pretext to violate yi. Yet, Confucian yi is not a Kantian notion of duty, which can cause confusion when there is a conflict of duties. Confucius claims:“The noble person understands righteousness, whereas the petty person understands benefit.”【34】 Confucian yi consists in following the order of the hierarchy of values, especially when there is a conflict among values, or a case in which one has to sacrifice one value for another value. Confucius and his pupil Zizhang both emphasize the moral priority of righteousness over benefit. They claim: “Thinking of righteousness when presented with an opportunity for gain (jian de si yi).”【35】 There is a story in Mencius that discusses how acquiring benefit by violating the right path is unprincipled and hence shameful:

Formerly, Viscount Jian of Zhao sent Wang Liang to drive the chariot for his favorite,  Xi. At the end of the day, they had not caught a single bird. Xi reported back that Wang  Liang was the worst at his craft in the world. Someone told this to Wang Liang. Liang  asked,“May I try again?”Only after some pressing was he allowed to do so. In one day,   they caught ten birds. Xi reported back,“He is the best at his craft in the world.”Viscount   Jian said,“I will have him take charge of driving for you.”When he told Wang Liang,  Liang disapproved, saying,“I drove my horses in the prescribed manner for him, and by   the end of the day we did not catch one thing. I violated the rules for him, and in one day   we caught ten. The Odes say,‘They did not err in driving. They hit the target when their   arrows were let loose.’I am not accustomed to driving for a petty person. I ask to decline.”

Even the charioteer was ashamed to collude with the archer. Colluding with him to get birds and beasts, although they were piled as high as a hill, is something he would not do. So how would it be if I were to bend the Way to follow those others? Besides, you are quite wrong: those who bend themselves have never been able to make others upright.”【36】

Though deviating from the rule can bring great benefit, a person with yi would feel shame of doing so. With this analogy Mencius holds that the action of yi is just following the right way, and there is little room for flexibility.

There are at least two differences between Schelerian and Confucian notion of shame. First, unlike Scheler, who highly examines the significance of sexual shame and discusses its workings, Confucians pay much more attention to the shame of unrighteousness, which is a kind of shame of the spirit. It is clear that sexual shame plays the governing role for the ritual relation between men and women in the Con- fucian context as well. This is evident from the Confucian esteem for the virtue of chastity. For Confucianism, however, it seems that there is no need to discuss its function, and the relation of genders is just a portion of ethical life and hence not worth great attention. Indeed, for classical Confucians, even discussing sexual shame is perhaps considered shameful. Second, Scheler does not endorse the notion that shame reveals our duties, whereas Confucianism affirms this feature of shame, as we will see in the next section.

3. RITUAL PROPRIETY, HUMANENESS, AND RIGHTEOUSNESS

I have offered a description of shame and righteousness in Confucian context. In order to see the characterization of yi more clearly, at this point it will be helpful for us to return to the comparison between righteousness and ritual propriety (li). Ritual propriety stands for the general regulations needed for making human rela- tion proper and harmonious. There is room in ritual propriety for an occasional violation, or even a large-scale modification to this general regulation in order to achieve ren and yi. By contrast, yi is an absolute principle (an absolute order of preferences) that prohibits even an occasional violation:“If any could obtain the world by performing one unrighteous deed, or killing one innocent person, he would not do it.”【37】 The accusation of one’s not being yi is more severe and intense than disobeying li. Unrighteousness is absolutely wrong and more deserving of punish- ment since it represents breaking a basic moral requirement. The relation among generality, particularity and the absolute principles of morality can be seen in a dialogue between Mencius and Chunyu Kun:

Chunyu Kun said,“Does ritual require that men and women not touch when handing something to one another?”

Mencius replied,“That is the ritual.”

Chunyu Kun then asked,“If your sister-in-law were drowning, would you pull her out with your hand?”

Mencius replied,“Only a beast would not pull out his sister-in-law if she were drowning. It is the ritual that men and women should not touch when handing something to one another, but if your sister-in-law is drowning, to pull her out with your hand is a matter of expediency.”

Chunyu Ken continued, “Currently, the world is drowning! Why is it that you do not pull it out?”

Mencius replied, “When the world is drowning, one pulls it out with the Way; when one’s sister-in-law is drowning, one pulls her out with one’s hand. How could I save the world with my hand?”【38】

In this dialogue, the ritual protocol requiring that men and women not touch each other embodies a generality; the expediency (quan) according to which a man touches a woman in order to save her life represents particularity; saving a person by hand stands for the absolute principle. A general ritual prohibition can be disobeyed in a specific occasion, but the spirit latent within the general regulation should never be violated, like yi. The particular expediency apparently disobeys li, but it does not violate yi.“Expediency”can never be an excuse for doing anything one likes. The term“quan”also can be translated as“weighing”instead of“expediency.”Even so, there has to be a ground for weighing which value is heavier. As we see, the ground is the order of values.

No matter the general li or the particular expediency, they are all enforced for the sake of enabling people to better cultivate humane love and follow moral principle. Saving the life of one’s sister-in-law is one’s duty, and the necessary means to save her life is by hand at that situation. The changeable is the general ritual, whereas the unchangeable is saving a person by hand. Similarly, saving the world is regarded by Mencius as what he ought to do, and the necessary means to save the world is by the Way. The unchangeable is saving the world by the Way. Therefore, if he devi- ates from the Way to get employed, he is not really performing the duty of saving the world. That is one reason why Mencius chooses to expound the Way rather than serving in the government to help save the world.

If we use the Song and Ming Confucian terms and their modern concepts to ar- ticulate the notion ofyi, yi is a virtue of human nature (xing), which involves obeying one’s duty. It is a value on the level of principle or pattern (li), which is a duty or an obligation of righteousness itself that permits no dodging. There is no essential difference between xing and li, for the former is the embodiment of the latter in human beings. For Confucius, ren is the core virtue or value, which is mentioned more often than yi, but Mencius often talks about ren and yi together. For instance,

Mencius said,“Ren is the human heart and yi is the human path. To leave one’s path and not follow it, or to lose one’s heart and not know to seek for it—these are tragedies! If people lose their chickens or dogs, they know to seek for them. But if they lose their hearts, they do not know to seek for them. The way of learning and inquiry is no other than to seek for one’s lost heart.”【39】

Dian asked,“What does it mean to‘aim one’s will high’?”Mencius replied,“Let him simply be humane and righteous. To kill one innocent person is to fail to be humane. To take something that one is not entitled is to fail to be righteous. Where does he dwell? Humaneness. Where is his path? Righteousness. If he dwells in humaneness and follows righteousness, the task of a great person is complete.”【40】

Mencius said,“People all have things that they will not bear. To extend this tendency to what they will bear is humaneness. People all have things that they will not do. To extend this tendency to that which they will do is righteousness. If people can extend the heart that does not desire to harm others, their humaneness will be inexhaustible. If people can extend the heart that will not trespass, their righteousness will be inexhaustible. If people can extend the real tendency of not wanting to incur disdain like‘you,’‘you,’there will be nowhere they go where they do not do what is righteous.”【41】

Although Mencius puts much more emphasis on yi, he admits the core value of ren as well. Ren is the main activity of the human heart, which may be lost and should be sought for. Why, then, does Mencius evaluate yi so highly? While ren stands for  the higher and active pursuit of the moral agent, yi represents the basic requirement of not violating moral duty. One can call another person who refuses to help him “not-ren”on account of that person’s lack of love or benevolence, but he may not claim that another person is not yi since helping him with an affair may not be that person’s duty. In the time of the Warring States (475–221 BC), wars were extensive and cruel, and the persecution of civilians was severe. As a whole, there were incredibly unrighteous deeds happening, and a number of people did not fulfill their basic moral duties. It was urgent to restore peoples’feeling of shame and the significance of righteousness, which is Mencius’s main concern, whereas ren entails long-term cultivation. As we can see, the basic requirement of yi is not transgressing justice as well as of keeping away from shame and disdain.

While disobeying customs is not necessarily“not yi,”violating one’s duty is definitely not yi. Merely fulfilling one’s ordinary duty, however, would normally not be praised as righteous when there is no conflict of values since one does not have to make a sacrifice. For instance, it is not praised as yi for a student to go to school to attend classes, whereas it is deemed as righteous for a witness to give honest testimony even when facing the danger of losing wealth and even life. This point is also shown in Kant’s discussion in the Critique of Practical Reason.【42】 In general cases of obeying/disobeying a rule, one’s actions are neither“yi ”nor“not yi.”

While upholding an ethics of love, Scheler launches a criticism of Kant’s de- ontological ethics (or the ethics of ought). For Scheler, the existence of a moral imperative presupposes the existence of the striving towards a negative value, only under which the imperative makes sense. He writes: “Every ought (not only the ought-not-to-be) is directed toward the exclusion of disvalues, but it does not posit positive values!”【43】 For instance, it is meaningful when I tell a student who used to or intends to skip class:“Do not skip Class!”It is meaningless, however, if I give the same order to a student who never misses class. What is worse, it leads the hearer to feel insulted, or even to resist the order’s content due to the resistance against the order’s form. Scheler writes:

An ethics that recognizes only what is“commandable”as“good”and only what is“pro- hibitable” as“evil”(as Kant once rejected the moral value of love because it cannot be “commanded”) makes that demand which belongs to the essence of all norm—namely,  that they be doubly“justified”—basically unfulfillable, no matter if one commands himself or another. The“pragmatism”of this ethics is, morally speaking, as impractical as can be; for the moralist of this view does not notice that with his“norms”he only tends to produce factually what he so strongly forbids, nor does he notice that with his command- ments and imperatives he prevents free moral persons who will the good—not because it  is commanded, but because they see it—from doing what they see. To make the medication of commandments and prohibitions our normal moral nourishment is nonsense.【44】

Scheler is concerned that the ethics of duty only works in the moral field through the negative side of“curing”moral disease, which cannot fulfill our highest moral potential, not to mention that it practically leads to the disobedience of commands. Scheler’s criticism needs to be re-examined. Love and duty each possess their merits and flaws in establishing moral persons. Duty has a strong mandatory and constraining force that urges people to overcome their psychophysical instincts to act in accordance with the law (how to understand the law is another issue). Respect for the moral law can be one’s motive for fulfilling duty, as Kant maintains.

There is, however, a problem with Kant’s ethics. He cannot guarantee our moral autonomy since he regards emotions as sensible and empirical rather than spiritual and a priori. That is to say, emotions are contingent, and there is no transcendental ground in them that can serve as a basis for respecting moral law. Admittedly, Kant claims that respect is a unique emotion that is motivated by the moral law itself—an emotion different from normal emotions. But how moral law motivates such respect is in controversy. In Confucianism, this mandatory force of duty is guaranteed by the a priori emotion of shame, which is still functioning when respect for moral law is absent. The cooperation of respect for moral law and shame constitutes the moral motivation for fulfilling duty. Certainly, there are other motivations for performing duty, such as avoiding external punishment, but they are not from an awareness in one’s own heart. On the other side, for the moral agent, duty is a pas- sive obligation rather than an active achievement. In Kant’s view, if I do something because I like to do it, then this action has no moral value. For him, in doing good, one should perform what one ought to do even if one does not like it, and this is a manifestation of the freedom of the will. For Scheler, however, such an act is not freely acting upon the person’s a priori moral tendency. Duty is a medication for willing evil, but it cannot promote the will toward good. It morally discourages the person who will the good since it diminishes his or her admirable personhood into merely obeying the law.

In Scheler, doing good is not just a matter of following our preferences, but  following the motivations of love. Love possesses the feature of spontaneity and activeness, which is a positive inspiration. On the other side, however, I want to  propose the following statements. First, impure love—for Kant, this is precisely the  real sense of love—is largely conditioned by our psychological instincts. That is to say, love is not stable; one can love a person one day but stop loving that person  another day. As Kant and Scheler both agree, no one can command another to love.  Scheler claims that we can freely love in accordance with its objective lawfulness without command, and thus the genuine love is not unordered. But for people who  have not cultivated the heart with genuine love, the power of duty is undeniably  more forceful than love. Second, even genuine love—holy love and humane love, which for Kant is not love in a strict sense, but a command of practical reason—is both active and stable, it bears no constraining strength either. It is an endless process   for one person to fulfill the ideal to act spontaneously upon genuine love in every moment. Confucius therefore does not credit any living person with“humaneness” (ren), including himself.45 If one refuses to do a good thing, one is not praiseworthy,   but one cannot be blamed either if no duty has been established and thus it is not  clear whether doing this good thing is one’s duty or not. Scheler correctly illustrates  that the idea of ought is based on the hierarchy of values. It is not that the good is  grounded in the idea of ought, but he somehow overlooks the role that duty plays in commanding and prohibiting one’s action. On account of his rejection of an ethics of duty, Scheler does not draw the needed connection between shame and duty.

Another effort to resolve the dichotomy of love and duty is to regard love itself as a kind of duty. For instance, Li Minghui argues that both Mencius and Friedrich Schiller hold that people are born with a love for duty.46 This understanding does not do justice to our moral experience. This synthesis will inevitably cancel the ac- tiveness and spontaneity of love, and the mandatory feature and basic requirement of duty, and hence undermine the value of both love and duty.

Dong Zhongshu also points out the difference between humaneness and duty (or righteousness) regarding the self and others. He writes:

What the Spring andAutumn Annals regulates are others and the self. The principles with which to regulate others and the self are humaneness and righteousness. Humaneness is to give others peace and security and righteousness is to rectify the self. Therefore the word‘humaneness”(ren) means others (people, ren) and the word“‘righteousness’means the self. The distinction is made in the term themselves. . . . The principle of humaneness consists in loving people and not in loving oneself, and the principle of righteousness consists in rectifying oneself and not in rectifying others. If one is not rectified himself, he cannot be considered righteous even if he can rectify others, and if one loves himself very much but does not apply his love to others, he cannot be considered humane. . . .【47】

In advocating ren and yi together, Confucianism does not place love and duty in opposition. Given that ren as revealed by humane love is primordial in Confucian virtues, yi as revealed by shame is essential as well. In contrast to not endorsing himself with ren, Confucius expressed that he could achieve“non-transgressing”in his lifetime:“At seventy, I can follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right (norm).”【48】 While achieving ren is an endless process, obeying duty and being righteous is an achievable aim in one’s lifetime, which also possesses moral worth rather than diminishing the value of the person as claimed by Scheler. In Confucian ethics and moral cultivation, there is a combination between the highest pursuit and the basic requirement, between the positive inspiring and the negative accusation. Although the ultimate moral ground is the objective hierarchy of values, the methodology of moral effort (gongfu) is pluralistic.【49】

 

reference
1  This article is under review. A pre-revised version can be found in Yinghua Lu,“The Heart Has Its Own Order: The Phenomenology of Value and Feeling in Confucian Philosophy”(Dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 2014), ch. 5.
 
2 The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, trans. Roger Ames (New York NY: Ballantine Publishing Group, 1999), pp. 53–55.
 
3 Mengzi: with Selectionsfrom Traditional Commentaries, trans. Bryan. W. Van Norden (Indianapolis IN: Hackett, 2008), 6A4, with modification. Unless otherwise noted, translations ofMencius are from this book.
 
4 Mencius 4B28,
 
5 Mencius 3A4.
6 See Yinghua Lu,“The A Priori Value and Feeling in Max Scheler and Wang Yangming,”Asian Phi- losophy 24, no. 3 (2014): 197–211.
 
7 See Yinghua Lu,“The Heart Has Its Own Order,”ch. 3.
 
8 Mencius 6A4.
 
9 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), p. 7.
 
10 Yinghua Lu,“The A Priori Value and Feeling in Max Scheler and Wang Yangming.” 
11Mencius 6A6.
12 Mencius 7A6.
 
13 Anthony Steinbock, Moral Emotions: Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart (Evanston IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 2014), p. 89. He also makes a distinction between the experience of“the absence of shame in another”and of another as shameless. 
 
14 For a different translation and interpretation of this statement, see Bryan W. Van Norden,“The Emo- tion of Shame and the Virtue of Righteousness in Mencius,”Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 2 (2002): 64. Van Norden translates this sentence thus:“The shamefulness of being without a sense of shame is shameless indeed.”I intend to make it clear to mean that the shame of being shameless cannot be experienced as shame (by the shameless person). Otherwise“shamefulness is shameless”would hardly make sense. Another modern Chinese translation is the following:“Regarding a lack of shame as a shame, then one would not incur shame.”See Peirong Fu, Jiedu Mengzi (Shanghai: Shanghai Sanlian Shudian, 2007). This translation conveys encouragement rather than reproach, and thus is also meaningful. But this translation is not very convincing since it is almost not possible for one to exempt from shame, even if he recognize that shamelessness is a shame.
 
15 Analects 2.3. Confucius, Analects: with selections from Traditional Commentaries, trans. Edward Slingerland (Indianapolis IN: Hackett, 2003), with modification. Unless otherwise noted, translations of Analects are from this book.
16 Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley CA: Univ. of California Press, 1993), pp. 92–93.
 
17 Apparent shame is to contrasted with original shame. While the former refers to the shame that is trig- gered by others’evaluation, the latter is the shame one feels due to one’s own assessment. See Yinghua Lu, “The Heart Has Its Own Order: The Phenomenology of Value and Feeling in Confucia,”ch. 5.
 
18 Analects 5.25. This passage could express the meaning of being ashamed of those deeds, as well as the shame for those people.
 
19Analects 1.3.
 
20 Mencius 7A7.
21Analects 8.13.
 
22Analects 7.16.
 
23Mencius 2A6, 6A6.
 
24Analects 12.10.
 
25Great Plan 7.
 
26Van Norden,“The Emotion of Shame and the Virtue of Righteousness in Mencius,”66–67.
27Zhu Xi, Collective Commentaries on Four Books (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), p. 237.              
28Kwong-loi Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Philosophy (Stanford CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997),p. 60.
29As we see it, the ethos of shame is prominent in East Asia with a collective culture. For example, Ruth Benedict has described the shame culture in Japan. See Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1946).
 
30For the difference between a priori shame and social shame, see Yinghua Lu,“The Heart Has Its Own Order,”ch. 5.
 
31See Isaiah Berlin,“Two Concepts of Liberty”in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford UK: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 124–26, pp. 163–66.
 
32Analects 5.15.
 
33Mencius 4A10.
34Analects 4.16.
 
35Analects 17.10, 19.1.
 
36Mencius 3B1.
37Mencius 2A2.
 
38Mencius 4A17.
39Mencius 6A11.
 
40Mencius 7A33.
 
41Mencius 7B31.
42Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 128–29.
 
43Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New Attempt toward the Foun- dation of an Ethical Personalism, trans. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1973), p. 209.
 
44Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 214.
45Analects 7.34.
 
46Minghui Li, Confucianism and Kant (Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1990), p. 79.
 
47Wing-Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 285–86, with modification.
 
48Analects 2.4.
 
49This work is supported by the Zhejiang Provincial Social Science Foundation in China under Grant 16NDJC201YB.