Panel: Freedom’s Limits? Core Values in a Changing Worl

Jamyang Norbu

English

Iowa Research Online

University of Iowa 
International Writing Program Archive of Residents' Work 
10-14-2011 
What Confucius Might Say in a Free Society 
Jamyang Norbu 
Panel: Freedom’s Limits? Core Values in a Changing World 
Rights 
Copyright © 2011 Jamyang Norbu 
Recommended Citation 
Jamyang Norbu, "What Confucius Might Say in a Free Society" (2011). International Writing Program 
Archive of Residents' Work. 846. 
https://ir.uiowa.edu/iwp_archive/846 
Hosted by Iowa Research Online. For more information please contact: lib-ir@uiowa.edu. 
 
1 | NORBU 
 
Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, October 15, 2011: 
Jamyang Norbu (Tibet), Milena Oda (Germany), Francisco Suniaga (Venezuela),  
Zoë Strachan (Scotland), and Jeremy Tiang (Singapore) 
For electronic texts please visit iwp.uiowa.edu 
Jamyang NORBU 
 
What Confucius Might Say in a Free Society 
 
In this discussion on whether Western principles of freedom and democracy 
should accommodate such traditional values of “order” or “honor” existing in 
certain traditional societies in Asia and elsewhere, I would like to focus on one 
philosopher, whose ostensible doctrines are often mentioned in support of certain 
arguments.  
 In October 2000 when President Clinton signed an act granting China 
“Permanent Normal Trade Relation” with the US and de-linking trade with human 
rights, he felt obliged to point out that “a proud Confucian culture that prizes order 
over liberty is specially reluctant to take a step that is perceived as kowtowing to the 
US.” 
 Actually, the sage is on record as saying, “Let humanity be your highest 
standard.” Confucius may not exactly be a democrat by present-day standards, but 
he believed in the rule of law and accountability in government. Though Confucius 
was convinced that hierarchy and ritual were vital to the running of a state, he was 
clear that princes should rule through moral authority and not through violence and 
oppression. An even more humanist and democratic development of Confucianism 
is represented by Mencius, who not only put the interests of the people above that 
of the ruler but even vindicated tyrannicide. 
 In his book The Burning Forest, the Belgian art historian and China scholar 
Simon Leys tell us that “In traditional China, ‘morality’ (which means essentially 
Confucianism) was the main bulwark against incipient totalitarianism.” He refers to 
the Chinese historian Yu Ying-shih, schematically summarising an article by him on 
this question as follows: “Confucianism described the world in terms of a dualism; 
on the one hand there is the concrete, changing realm of actual politics, on the 
other hand there is the realm of abstract, permanent principles. The duty of the 
scholar-politician is to serve the ruler insofar as the ruler’s behaviour and policies 
harmonise with the unchanging moral principles, which provide a stable reference 
by which to judge them. In case of a clash between the two realms, the Confucian 
scholar must, in the strong and unambiguous words of Xun Zi, ‘follow the 
principles and disobey the Prince.’” 
 At the end of the last century, the neo-Confucian scholar Kang Yu Wei 
(1858–1927), who was also China’s first great modern reformer, came up with a 
radical interpretation of Confucius’ teaching which shook the intellectual world of 
the Chinese gentry-literati. In Kang’s view, Confucius was a forward-looking “sage 
king” who saw history as a progressive unilinear development from an age of 
disorder where kings and emperors ruled over people, through an age of 
approaching peace guided by constitutional monarchies, eventually to an age of 
universal peace and republican government. 
 Kang had been the main inspiration behind the extraordinary but short-lived 
 
2 | NORBU 
 
Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, October 15, 2011: 
Jamyang Norbu (Tibet), Milena Oda (Germany), Francisco Suniaga (Venezuela),  
Zoë Strachan (Scotland), and Jeremy Tiang (Singapore) 
For electronic texts please visit iwp.uiowa.edu 
reform movement of 1898 by the Manchu Emperor Guangxu. The emperor’s 
aunt, the ruthless, reactionary Dowager Empress Cixi, had the young emperor 
arrested and six of the main reformers beheaded. Kang just managed to flee China 
in a British warship. In exile in Darjeeling (my old hometown) in British India, he 
completed a synthesis of Confucian, Buddhist and Western Utopian ideas, which 
he explained in his astonishing Book of the Great Community (Datongshu). 
 Beside such standard utopian prescriptions as the abolition of nation states, 
the creation of a world government, and the ending of all wars, class and economic 
distinctions, Kang’s most original reflections concerned the problems of abolishing 
the two other “boundaries” in the Great Community, the boundaries of the family 
and boundaries of gender. Such ideas were at the time revolutionary not only for a 
Confucian scholar but even for a Western one. 
 Long before the seeds of Communism were first planted in China, there was 
a broad intellectual movement embracing democracy. “Mr. Democracy and Mr. 
Science” represented, for the youth and intelligentsia of turn-of-the-century China, 
the two fundamental requisites for a modern Chinese state. The founding father of 
the modern Chinese state, Dr. Sun Yatsen, was a democrat. His widow, Song 
Meiling, together with Cai Yuanpei, chancellor of Beijing National University and 
the writer Lu Xun, founded the Chinese League for the Protection of Human 
Rights as early as 1930. 
 It should be stressed that democracy and human rights do not merely 
represent foreign values now being forced on a reluctant Chinese or Asian society. 
They existed in China’s political debate since the end of the last century. They 
appear now never to have existed only because of the effectiveness of totalitarian 
propaganda in erasing the political memory of an entire nation and in blurring the 
historical perception of the rest of the world. 
 The notion of a set of “Asian values” (as Confucian values are referred to in a 
larger context) of hierarchy, order and tradition that places little value on freedom 
and democracy can be dismissed outright if we take into account a large section of 
Asia which is oddly, but invariably, overlooked in this debate. I mean, of course, 
the world’s largest and, arguably, liveliest democracy, India. The Nobel Prize 
winning economist, Amartya Sen, has strongly condemned this attempt to depict 
Asian history “in terms of a narrow category of authoritarian values which does little 
justice to the rich varieties of thought in Asian intellectual tradition.” In his 
Freedom as Development, he brushes aside such negationism with a brusque 
dismissal: “Dubious history does nothing to vindicate dubious politics.” 
 For those who advocate order and security above freedom and democracy, 
China’s great modern writer, Lu Xun once helpfully provided “… a formula that it 
seems no one has thought of yet – and that is the model offered by Number One 
Prison in Peking. The inmates need not worry anymore that the neighbours’ house 
may be on fire; their two daily meals are guaranteed; cold and hunger cannot affect 
them: their shelter is stable and soundly built, and there is no danger that the roof 
will cave in. As they are carefully watched by their jailer, they have no opportunities 
 
3 | NORBU 
 
Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, October 15, 2011: 
Jamyang Norbu (Tibet), Milena Oda (Germany), Francisco Suniaga (Venezuela),  
Zoë Strachan (Scotland), and Jeremy Tiang (Singapore) 
For electronic texts please visit iwp.uiowa.edu 
for new brushes with the law. They are being afforded superb protection against 
burglars. One could not dream of a safer place. Only one thing is missing – 
freedom.” 


What Confucius Might Say in a Free Society

https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1847&amp;context=iwp_archive

What Confucius Might Say in a Free Society

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Iowa Research Online