PHL 304: Sample essay, S. Phillips

Question: Explain the importance of harmony and sense of propriety, according to Confucius, as the way, or one of the ways, to develop character and to lead a good life. How does this view inform his view of a wise ruler? Do you think his advice to rulers sound?

Confucius emphasizes developing a sense of appropriateness and propriety--a sense of the right (rite!) ways to carry out rituals--as a way "to develop character and lead a good life." This is my understanding of the "harmony" and "propriety" mentioned in the question. I do believe that such a focus, or such effort, can build character, as I will explain. Confucius thinks that developing character, and exhibiting good character, on the part of a ruler is the most important requirement for good government. Here, however, I disagree. Good government depends more crucially on good laws and policies, not on the character of the rulers or people in power.

8.2: The Master said, `Be stimulated by the Odes, take your stand on the rites and be perfected by music.'

By reading poetry and getting the feel of it (the emotions behind it as well as the rhythms and rhymes), learning the proper times and proper performances of rituals and rites (from greeting people to, say, a funeral for a loved one), and learning music, again from the inside, one develops a sense of proportion and harmony and an intuitive sense of how to respond even in novel situations. Confucius emphasizes the importance of fellow-feeling, or jen ("benevolence"), as the spirit of right conduct, the spirit with which one should approach everyday affairs as well as formal occasions. But one can't just tell oneself to have fellow-feeling. One has to put it into practice, or, more precisely, develop it by practice. Thereby, one builds good character in the sense of appropriate behavior flowing from the person one has made oneself. In fact, one doesn't put jen so much into practice as emulate the practices of people one admires, and by careful attention to detail, by the care that goes into undertakings, a kind of love of the persons to which the practices are directed naturally develops. The jazz player gives fellow-feeling to her audience, but only by mastering the musical instrument, by long and patient hours of practice and emulation of previous masters of music. Perfect spontaneousness that is also a sort of perfect discipline is imaginably the ideal result.

Of course, it would be wonderful to have a President or King who was like this. Foreign policy might be successful, and other benefits result as well. But what if the state were organized on inherently unfair lines? Confucius does not address this, assuming, naively, that all will be okay just if the ruler is a good person. But, to give an example, women were not treated fairly in classical China, and it is my view that no personal character development of a ruler would do any good on this point so long as the assumptions, policies, and laws which structure the society were badly formed in the first place. Women might be treated graciously by a Confucian ruler. But how they ought to be treated by the State is fairly, with equal justice and opportunity.

Therefore, Confucius, as I read him, has good advice for us as we make ourselves. But his is not a good political philosophy.