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What Can Americans Learn from Confucianism?

Jay McDaniel

1 America's best hope is to adopt a more Confucian lifestyle: more focused on education, more respectful to old people, better able to subordinate private needs to public goods, more responsible to the needs of family, more polite in our daily lives, and more hardworking.

2 Of course, many Americans wouldn't call this adopting a Confucian lifestyle. They would call it becoming a good and responsible person. Confucianism does not have a monopoly on hard work or care for families. But these are among the virtues that Americans come to admire, when they begin to learn about Confucian-influenced cultures. Confucianism is a window into these and other virtues.

3 If Americans take time to study Confucianism, they may quickly realize that it is not a "religion" in the same way that, for example, Christianity and Judaism and Islam are religions. Its focus is not on a creator God above the world, but rather on the world itself, as a place where ultimate meaning is found. If we equate ultimate meaning with what is truly sacred in life, then Confucianism finds the sacred in the secular, in the relationships of ordinary life.

4 The sacred is found in preparing and sharing meals with family and friends over a dinner table; in harmonious and respectful relations in the workplace; in being a gracious and hospitable host to guests who visit your home; in appreciating the gift of learning and taking "education" as one of life's greatest gifts; in having a sense of inner self-discipline and restraint, not needing to share every emotion or ventilate every emotion; in being polite and respectful to old people, knowing that they have a wisdom which comes from experience; in being willing to give yourself to the needs of your family even at the expense of personal sacrifice; in having the freedom to live simply and non-ostentatiously, in a humane and caring way, without needing to be famous.

5 These are among the primary values of a living Confucianism: a Confucianism for ordinary life. But the values at issue are best realized, not by reading about them in books, but rather by seeing them in action, as exemplified in the humane grace of another person: a grandfather, a grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, a teacher, a cousin, a friend. In the Confucian tradition, we learn to become virtuous by seeing others who are virtuous and by being inspired by their example.

6 Underlying these values is an even more fundamental value that permeates every one of them: a sense that harmony is the highest ideal in life. The harmony that is so important in East Asia has diverse expressions. It is a harmony that can be heard in music; that can be seen in the variety of foods on a dinner table; that can be felt in mutually respectful relations with other people and in the more general order of the natural world. This harmony is not sameness. It is not a collapse of everything into one thing. It is also not stagnant. It is not the harmony of a statue that seems fixed in one place. It is a moving harmony, a changing harmony, a dynamic harmony.

7 In other words, Confucianism is, above all things, a leaning toward harmony as life's highest ideal. The harmony at issue is dynamic not static, flexible not fixed, diversified not homogenized. It is a harmony that includes healthy disagreements and has a democratic spirit, respectful of the voices of individuals as well as groups.

8 Among Western philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead offers a similar vision. He sees harmonious intensity and intense harmony as the happiness—the satisfaction—which all living beings seek at every moment of their lives. Love, for Whitehead, is the ultimate form of harmony. In Confucianism this is called human-heartedness or Ren. The loving person is a person whose heart is attuned to harmony and who embodies harmony in his or her own life.

9 Finally here is a question: Is Confucianism enough? Can a person find its alternative way of being religious sufficient for a healthy and satisfying life? My own hope is that self-identified Christians and Buddhists, Jews and Muslims, will gradually learn more and more about the wisdom of Confucianism, incorporating elements of it into their lives. The ideas enunciated above are all compatible with a walk with Christ, a practicing of the Dharma, a walk with Torah, a practicing of Islam. Living Confucianism can enrich the practice of these religions. There are also the large numbers of people in many parts of the world who are not identified with any other formal religion, but who do indeed want to be good people, who find themselves leaning toward harmony, and who find the various meanings of ordinary life—family, friendships, service—sufficient for a satisfying life. Some people speak of them as spiritual but not religious. For them something like Confucianism is indeed enough. It need not be called Confucianism. It can simply be called being a good person.

10 The living Confucianism of China and other East Asian nations can help people all over the world grow in the arts of becoming good people. It can help people with and without other kinds of religion. As Americans enter into the Pacific Century we can welcome, and indeed celebrate, the living Confucianism we find in East Asian friends. Every time we find ourselves living with respect for others; every time we help Heaven by sharing goodness with the world; every time we choose to live simply and humbly, without needing to be the center of attention, we are Confucian in our way. And there is something beautiful in it.