The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics)

by Leys, Simon

  According to Confucius, a king leads by his moral power. If he cannot set a moral example—if he cannot maintain and promote rituals and music (the two hallmarks of civilisation)—he forfeits the loyalty of his ministers and the trust of the people. The ultimate asset of the state is the trust of the people in their rulers: if that trust is lost, the country is doomed.

  Confucius often said that if only a ruler could employ him, in one year he would achieve a lot, and in three years he would succeed. One day a disciple asked him, “If a king were to entrust you with a territory which you could govern according to your ideas, what would you do first?” Confucius replied, “My first task would certainly be to rectify the names.” On hearing this, the disciple was puzzled. “Rectify the names? And that would be your first priority? Is this a joke?” (Chesterton or Orwell, however, would have immediately understood and approved the idea.) Confucius had to explain: “If the names are not correct, if they do not match realities, language has no object. If language is without an object, action becomes impossible—and therefore, all human affairs disintegrate and their management becomes pointless and impossible. Hence, the very first task of a true statesman is to rectify the names.”

  And this is, in fact, what Confucius himself endeavoured to do. One can read the Analects as an attempt to redefine the true sense of a series of key concepts. Under the guise of restoring their full meaning, Confucius actually injected a new content into the old “names.” Here I shall give only one example, but it is of momentous importance: the notion of “gentleman” (junzi, Confucius’s ideal man). Originally it meant an aristocrat, a member of the social elite: one did not become a gentleman, one could only be born a gentleman. For Confucius, on the contrary, the “gentleman” is a member of the moral elite. It is an ethical quality, achieved by the practice of virtue, and secured through education. Every man should strive for it, even though few may reach it. An aristocrat who is immoral and uneducated (the two notions of morality and learning are synonymous) is not a gentleman, whereas any commoner can attain the status of gentleman if he proves morally qualified. As only gentlemen are fit to rule, political authority should be devolved purely on the criteria of moral achievement and intellectual competence. Therefore, in a proper state of affairs, neither birth nor money should secure power. Political authority should pertain exclusively to those who can demonstrate moral and intellectual qualifications.

  This view was to have revolutionary consequences: it was the single most devastating ideological blow that furthered the destruction of the feudal system and sapped the power of the hereditary aristocracy, and it led eventually to the establishment of the bureaucratic empire—the government of the scholars. For more than 2,000 years, the empire was to be ruled by the intellectual elite; to gain access to political power, one had to compete successfully in the civil service examinations, which were open to all. Until modern times, this was certainly the most open, flexible, fair and sophisticated system of government known to history (it was the very system that impressed and inspired the European philosophes of the eighteenth century).

  CONFUCIUS ON EDUCATION

  It is often remarked that the most successful and dynamic societies of East and South-East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) share a common Confucian culture. Should one therefore conclude that the Analects might actually yield a secret formula that would make it possible elsewhere to inject energy into flagging economies and to mobilise and motivate a slovenly citizenry?

  The prosperity of a modern state is a complex phenomenon that can hardly be ascribed to one single factor. Yet there is indeed one common feature that characterises the various “Confucian” societies—but it should be observed that this same feature can also be found in other social or ethnic groups (for instance, certain Jewish communities of the Western world) which are equally creative and prosperous and yet do not present any connection with the Confucian tradition—and it is the extraordinary importance which these societies all attach to education. Any government, any community or any family willing to invest a considerable proportion of its energy and resources in education is bound to reap cultural, social and economic benefits comparable to those currently being achieved by the thriving “Confucian” states of Asia, or by some dynamic and wealthy migrant minorities of the Western world.

  In affirming that the government and administration of the state should be exclusively entrusted to a moral and intellectual elite of “gentlemen,” Confucius established an enduring and decisive link between education and political power: only the former could provide access to the latter. In modern times, even after the abrogation of the civil service examination system and the fall of the empire, although education ceased to be the key to political authority—which, in this new situation, was more likely to come out of the barrel of a gun—the prestige traditionally attached to culture continued to survive in the mentality of the Confucian societies: the educated man, however poor and powerless, still commanded more respect than the wealthy or the powerful.

  Confucian education was open to all—rich and poor, noble and plebeian. Its purpose was primarily moral: intellectual achievement was only a means towards the end of ethical self-cultivation. There was an optimistic belief in the all-pervasive power of education. It was assumed that errant behaviour came from a faulty understanding, a lack of knowledge: if only the delinquent could be taught and be made to perceive the mistaken nature of his actions, he would naturally amend his ways. (The Maoist concept of “re-education” that was to generate such dreadful excesses at the time of the “Cultural Revolution” was in fact one of the many unconscious resurgences of the Confucian mentality, which paradoxically permeated the psychological substructure of Maoism.)

  Most importantly, Confucian education was humanistic and universalist. As the Master said, “A gentleman is not a pot” (or also, “A gentleman is not a tool”)—meaning that his capacity should not have a specific limit, nor his usefulness a narrow application. What matters is not to accumulate technical information and specialised expertise, but to develop one’s humanity. Education is not about having, it is about being.

  Confucius once rebuffed quite rudely a disciple who asked him about agronomy: “Better ask any old peasant!” For this reason, it is often alleged now that Confucianism inhibited the development of science and technology in China. But there are no real grounds for such an accusation. Simply, in these matters Confucius’s concerns centred on education and culture—not on training and technique, which are separate issues altogether—and it is difficult to see how one could address these topics any differently, whether in Confucius’s time or in ours. (C.P. Snow’s famous notion of the “Two Cultures” rested on a basic fallacy: it ignored the fact that, like humanity itself, culture can only be one, by its very definition. I have no doubt that a scientist can be—and probably should be—better cultivated than a philosopher, a Latinist or a historian, but if he is, it is because he reads philosophy, Latin and history in his leisure time.)

  THE SILENCES OF CONFUCIUS

  In the short essay he wrote on Confucius, Elias Canetti (whom I quoted earlier) made a point that had escaped most scholars.[4] He observed that the Analects is a book which is important not only for what it says but also for what it does not say. This remark is illuminating. Indeed, the Analects make a most significant use of the unsaid—which is also a characteristic resource of the Chinese mind; it was eventually to find some of its most expressive applications in the field of aesthetics: the use of silence in music, the use of void in painting, the use of empty spaces in architecture.

  Confucius distrusted eloquence; he despised glib talkers, he hated clever word games. For him, it would seem that an agile tongue must reflect a shallow mind; as reflection runs deeper, silence develops. Confucius observed that his favourite disciple used to say so little that, at times, one could have wondered if he was not an idiot. To another disciple who had asked him about the supreme virtue of humanity, Confucius replied cha
racteristically, “He who possesses the supreme virtue of humanity is reluctant to speak.”

  The essential is beyond words: all that can be said is superfluous. Therefore a disciple remarked, “We can hear and gather our Master’s teachings in matters of knowledge and culture, but it is impossible to make him speak on the ultimate nature of things, or on the will of Heaven.” This silence reflected no indifference or scepticism regarding the will of Heaven—we know from many passages in the Analects that Confucius regarded it as the supreme guide of his life. But Confucius would have subscribed to Wittgenstein’s famous conclusion: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” He did not deny the reality of what is beyond words, he merely warned against the foolishness of attempting to reach it with words. His silence was an affirmation: there is a realm about which one can say nothing.

  Confucius’s silences occurred essentially when his interlocutors tried to draw him into the question of the afterlife. This attitude has often led commentators to conclude that Confucius was an agnostic. Such a conclusion seems to me very shallow. Consider this famous passage: “Zilu asked about death. The Master said, ‘You do not know life; how could you know death?’” Canetti added this comment: “I know of no sages who took death as seriously as Confucius.” Refusal to answer is not a way of evading the issue but, on the contrary, it is its most forceful affirmation, for questions about death, in fact, always “refer to a time after death. Any answer leaps past death, conjuring away both death and its incomprehensibility. If there is something afterwards as there was something before, then death loses some of its weight. Confucius refuses to play along with this most unworthy legerdemain.”

  Like the empty space in a painting—which concentrates and radiates all the inner energy of the painting—Confucius’s silence is not a withdrawal or an escape; it leads to a deeper and closer engagement with life and reality. Near the end of his career, Confucius said one day to his disciples: “I wish to speak no more.” The disciples were perplexed. “But, Master, if you do not speak, how will little ones like us still be able to hand down any teachings?” Confucius replied, “Does Heaven speak? Yet the four seasons follow their course and the hundred creatures continue to be born. Does Heaven speak?”

  I have certainly spoken too much.

  1997

  * The Analects of Confucius: translation and notes by Simon Leys (New York: Norton, 1997).

  POETRY AND PAINTING*

  Aspects of Chinese Classical Aesthetics

  CHASING bits of truth is like catching butterflies: pin them down and they die. “As soon as one has finished saying something, it is no longer true.” This observation by Thomas Merton[1] could serve as a warning for the reader and should indicate the proper way of perusing this little essay.

  In Chinese classical studies, it is necessary to specialise. It is also impossible.

  Specialisation is necessary. The wealth, scope and diversity of Chinese culture wildly exceed the assimilating capacities and intellectual resources of any individual—and more particularly, they should drive to despair the wretched Western sinologists who, unlike their Chinese colleagues, did not have the chance to start their training in early childhood and thus approach their discipline at least fifteen years late.

  Specialisation is impossible. China is an organic entity, in which every element can be understood only when put under the light of other elements; these other elements can be fairly remote from the one that is under consideration—sometimes they do not even present any apparent connection with it. If he is not guided by a global intuition, the specialist remains forever condemned to the fate of the blind men in the well-known Buddhist parable: as they wanted to figure out what an elephant actually looked like, they groped, one for the trunk, one for the foot, one for the tail, and respectively concluded that an elephant was a kind of snake, was a kind of pillar, was a kind of broom.

  Conversely, the global intuition that alone can grasp the essential nature of the subject (we shall have much need for it here) is invariably accompanied by a shocking neglect—if not downright ignorance—of surface details. This problem should not worry us too much, if we remember Lie Zi’s story about the connoisseur of horses.[2] This parable was quoted earlier in this volume†: it should be used as an introductory warning whenever we attempt to make general statements, not only on Chinese culture but also on any rich and complex issue in the field of the humanities.

  In the course of this inquiry, I may well become guilty of simplifications verging on distortion that could at times induce the reader to suspect that here too the colour and the sex of the beast have been mistaken . . . Anyway, I shall seek no further excuses; after all, what is an enterprise like this but an attempt to prolong or to echo, however clumsily, those moments of bliss that we sometimes experience in our encounters with poems and paintings? (Can artistic and literary criticism have any other justification?)

  China is a world. Any tourist who has just spent two weeks there will tell you that much. (Though, in this case, I wonder if it is not a misunderstanding, as I doubt that the People’s Republic has actually succeeded in preserving the universality that defined Chinese culture for some 3,000 years. Of course, it is obviously too early now to attempt an evaluation of thirty years of illiterates’ rule. But this is another story.)

  Still, when it is applied to traditional China, this old cliché—as is often the case with commonplace statements—covers a truth that runs much deeper than one usually suspects while uttering it.

  More exactly, one should say that China is a certain world view, a way of conceiving the relations between man and the universe—a recipe for cosmic order.

  The key concept of Chinese civilisation is harmony; whether it is a matter of organising human affairs within society or of attuning individuals to universal rhythms, this same search for harmony equally motivates Confucian wisdom and Daoist mysticism. In this respect, both schools appear complementary rather than antagonistic, and their main difference pertains to their area of application—social, exterior and official for the former; spiritual, interior and popular for the latter.

  The various currents of Chinese thought all spring from one common cosmological source. This cosmology (its system is schematically summarised in the most ancient, precious and obscure of all Chinese canonical treatises, The Book of Changes) describes all phenomena as being in a ceaseless state of flux. Permanent creation itself results from the marriage of two forces that oppose and complement each other. These two forces—or poles—represent a diversification of “having.” “Having,” in turn, is a product of “non-having” (wu),[3] a concept that is constantly mistranslated as “nothingness,” whereas it rather corresponds to what Western philosophy would call “being.” The Chinese thinkers have wisely considered that “being” can only be grasped negatively: the Absolute that could be defined and named, that could have qualifications, properties and characteristics, or that could lend itself to all the limitations of a positive description, obviously cannot be the true Absolute—it merely belongs to the realm of “having,” with its ephemeral and kaleidoscopic flow of phenomena. The process that we just sketched here does not form a mechanical chain, nor is it the outcome of a causal sequence. It could be better described as an organic circle within which various stages can simultaneously co-exist. In the earliest texts, “non-having” seems sometimes to precede “having,” but in later commentaries their relation is described in the form of an exchange, a dialectical union of complementary opposites, giving birth to one another.[4] “Being” is the fecund substratum, the field where “having” germinates—or, to put it in other words, emptiness is the space where all phenomena are nurtured. Thus, “being” can only be grasped in its hollowness; it is only its absence that can be delineated, in the same fashion as an intaglio seal shows its pattern through a blank: it is the absence of matter that reveals the design. The notion that the Absolute can be suggested only through emptiness presents momentous implications for Chinese aest
hetics, as we shall see later.

  It is by cultivating the arts that a gentleman can actually realise the universal harmony that Chinese wisdom ascribes as his vocation: the supreme mission of a civilised man is to grasp the unifying principle of things, to set the world in order, to put himself in step with the dynamic rhythm of Creation.

  The arts are essentially poetry, painting and calligraphy; music should also be included here (for the Chinese scholar, music means only the zither qin); however, my incompetence in the latter field shall unfortunately prevent me from making more than passing reference to it.

  A gentleman practises the arts in order to realise his own humanity. For this very reason, unlike all crafts (sculpture, carving, architecture, music played on vulgar instruments and so forth), no art could constitute a professional, specialised activity. One should naturally be competent in all matters pertaining to poetry, calligraphy and painting inasmuch as one is a gentleman, and no one, unless he is a gentleman, can achieve this competence. By definition, such fundamental activities can only be pursued by non-professionals; when it comes to living, aren’t we all amateurs?