Autonomy in Kant and Confucius



Transcendence in Kant and Confucius

Cheng, Chung-Ying. (2006). Theoretical Links Between Kant and Confucianism: Preliminary Remarks. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 33 (1), 3-15.

“… Leibniz and Wolff, who in their times have spoken of Confucianism as a significant philosophy of humanity focusing on human autonomy.” (Cheng, 2006). p. 1.

“… the basic theme on autonomy of moral will as the defining quality of human worth in Confucian philosophers such as Confucius and Mencius in the classical Confucian period, Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming in the Neo-Confucian period …” 1

“… humanism in the Confucian philosophy is not just concerned with humanity alone but with humanity in relation to the world of human experience which generates human knowledge and human values. “ 1

“… a Confucian understanding of Kant would bring out a more distinctive focus on the Kantian theme on ontological unity of reason and action, whereas a Kantian understanding of Confucianism would bring out a more accentuated focus on the Confucian theme on centrality and totality of humanity.” 1

“But we cannot fail to see that there no doubt exists a common root of concern and common aspiration for the future of the human person as both the concern and aspiration are conceived as ontologically rooted in an underlying nature of humanity …” 1

“… whether we have intellectual intuition of thing-in-itself or things-in-themselves. We know that the most influential contemporary Neo-Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan (1909–95) spent the later half of his academic career in translating and evaluating the philosophy of Kant from the point of view or perspective of Chinese philosophy that includes Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism.” 2

intuition (Anschauung in German and zhijue in Chinese)

“ … he would not claim that we have any knowledge of it or them (transcendent things/persons-in-themselves) because we have to know things only through experience and we do not have any experience of the noumena or things-in-things, even though they can be conceived as required or posited as formal conditions of transcendental deduction for knowledge of objects in the sensible or phenomenal world.” 2

“Kant could not adopt the paradigm of manifestation of phenomena by the noumena as in the Indian Brahmanic tradition of Upanishads.” 2

“In this case the intellectual intuition of the ultimate reality as originally intended becomes a dialectical deduction or involution of ideas and objects. Kant certainly would not anticipate such a result, nor did he seem to follow through the transcendent-dialectical approach. A more reasonable interpretation of Kant seems to suggest that he would take things-in-themselves as transcendental ideas that could serve a regulative function for intrinsic purposes of reason.” 2

“… the transcendental self or mind as an object of intellectual thinking that needs not to be separate or separable from experience and understanding of things. It can also be made to serve the function as the posited subject for will and emotion of the human person and therefore to be explained in terms of what we can will as a moral person and as a reflective judge and enjoyer of aesthetically experienced things in nature and in culture. In other words, it could be a nontranscendent ontological subject, which has all our experiences in life organized in order and harmony and an ideal and even a developing subject that continues to organize, order, harmonize, and unify our life and cultural experiences.”2

“… a human being has his inner consistency and creativity which could exhibit itself in a form of universality of knowing and in a form of universality of acting. It is in these two forms of universalities that a human being becomes conscious of his being as human, namely, as having the power of autonomy and freedom, and possessing the sense of responsibility and dignity or self-respect. It is from this human self-awareness or self-consciousness that Confucius comes to speak of ren or care for others because it is in the care for others that one realizes the power of universality of acting. Hence he speaks of ren as "ai ren" (love all people).” 3

“This is because Confucius does not conceive the human subject as merely a rational practical employment of pure reason. Instead, he conceives the human being as being endowed with a mandate to reach universality of acting in a process of self-cultivation, which can only be accomplished in a process of interacting with other people in community and society. He takes a developmental model of human feelings rather than a super-positional model of reason as in the case of Kant. But this difference between Confucius and Kant should not blind us to the fact that they orient themselves and strive for the same goal, namely, the universality of acting for the development of the human person. Confucius has made a more human (heart–mind in unity) and more processual approach whereas Kant has made a more rational (reason versus sentiment) and more juridical/juristic approach.” 3

“With regard to classical Confucianism, however, we may nevertheless point out that there is Xunzi (298–238 BCE), who, like Aristotle, has been much concerned with logic and knowledge. He takes these concerns as a matter of "knowing the way" (zhidao) and as a matter of understanding the great principle (dali) of things. There is a strong basis for linking Xunzi's philosophy to Aristotle and also to Kant in so far as seeking knowledge through experience and observation is concerned.” 3

“First, knowledge and morality for Confucianism are to be developed in time and realized in a person or community in a process of self-cultivation and mutual interaction toward universality. Whereas Kant tends to see knowledge and morality as accomplished forms, Confucius and his Confucian followers tend to see them as evolving but progressive efforts (gongfu) to be achieved. Second, whereas Kant sees knowledge and morality and even aesthetics as three separate faculties or uses of human pure reason and should be dealt with separately, the classical Confucian would read them as reciprocally implicative and mutually dependent on concrete experiences of the human. In particular, the practical and the theoretical must go together so that one must lead to the other and development of the one must require development of the other. This is called the thesis of unity of knowledge and practice (zhixing heyi). This difference suggests that the Confucian always keeps a sense of unity and wholeness of the human person and pays strong attention to the development of the whole person in a social context rather than an abstractly isolated individual person. Of course, we must be reminded that Kant has also raised the question of what a man is and has strived to restore a sense of unity of the human person in the progression of his writing from CPR to Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR) and Critique of Judgment (CJ)” 4

“It may be actually a finite process as human life is limited in time, but in the nature of the process there is always the vision of the totality and wholeness embodied in knowing and action of a person who could explain this ideal state of being and who acts in virtue of such vision to inspire others at present and in the future. Such a person is called a Sage (shengren) in Confucianism. A sage is accordingly a creative person who creates li (ritual and system of rules of organization and behavior) for the whole humankind for their self-realization and for their enjoyment of an order and harmony in which respective self-realizations of individuals become possible. In this sense the Sage can be said to know both the nature of the human person and the destiny of the human person, which is equivalent to knowing the mandate of heaven (tianming) that is knowing of the unknown.” 4

“Confucius, Zisi, Mencius, and even Xunzi may be said to come to know the thing-in-itself in a sense that they come to realize it as an end of human life and that they could see it as an end of human action. This is referred to as the thesis of the unity of heaven and man (tianren heyi). In this light we can see that whereas Kant maintains that we do not have intellectual intuition of the thing-in-itself in a context of epistemology of pure reason, the Confucians could equally maintain that we may come to have an intellectual experience of the ultimate as a result of moral cultivation and life cultivation. The underlying ontological presuppositions in the two are radically different: One is objectivist as conditioned by the Greek tradition of dualism of reality versus appearance as well as by the Hebrew tradition of divine transcendence, the other is trans-subjectivist as conditioned by the Yijing tradition of comprehensive harmonization. Yet we can still maintain that the Confucian provides a new interpretation and perhaps a way of reconciliation between things-in-themselves and the changing world of phenomena including ourselves on the basis of our intellectual but nonintuitive understanding.” 4-5

“… the Confucian is also right in insisting that our purpose of life is to seek understanding of the ultimate described as "pushing the principles of understanding to the utmost limit, fulfilling my nature to the utmost extent and reaching and realizing the destiny of the ultimate (qiongli jinxing yi zhiyu ming)."6 The ming (destiny) here is precisely the thing-in-itself just as the xing (nature) and li (principle) are, a point to be further elaborated in the large systems of the Song–Ming Neo-Confucians.” 5

“… our physical finitude does not bar us from having a continually self-transcending experience of reality, which is not limited to a finite mind. Our mind does have the vision of the infinite and can engage itself in a creative process of self-transcending without limitation. This is a different way of conceiving the human mind, a way that suggests the creative unity of the finite and the infinite in human origin, human intentionality, and in human action, which requires a new ontological and onto-hermeneutical framework of thinking.” 5

“… our conception of the ultimate as the thing-in-itself or even things-in-themselves needs not to be an intuitive experience but rather a result of reflection based on what I have referred to as transcendental integration (chaorong in Chinese).9 We may also come to see that a person could develop and embody a sense of self-containedness of our ideas and feelings that would justify our beliefs in values, which may also guide our actions. If we see intellectual intuitions in this way, then perhaps we may see that we are capable of making and having intellectual intuitions which need no conceptualizations of objects but only formations of attitudes and mentalities which should enrich the individual person in an open world of creative change and spiritual development. But we must simultaneously recognize that we do not have intellectual intuition that must point to a transcendent object, even though we can avoid contradictions in conceptual formulations, or correlate it with scientific knowledge of the reality.” 5

Reihman

“Leibniz praised Chinese culture and urged European scholars to study Chinese thought more seriously. In a detailed account of Chinese philosophy, he claimed that Chinese metaphysics was closely akin to his own monadology. Relying on this similarity, Leibniz refuted those who viewed the Chinese as atheist by pointing out that the Chinese shared his view of God as the ultimate organizer of moral and ontological principles.3 He also held Chinese ethics in such high esteem that he called for moral missionaries to be sent from China to teach Europeans about ethics.4” 1

 3. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Discours sur la théologie naturelle des Chinois [Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese] in Leibniz-Handschriften, no.1 (Hannover: Lower Saxony State Library, 1810), 37. For an English translation, see Julia Ching and Willard Gurdon Oxtoby, Moral Enlightenment: Leibniz and Wolff on China (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1992), or Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Writings on China, ed. Daniel Cook and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (Chicago: Open Court, 1994). The Discourse was originally written in 1716.

 4. Leibniz writes, "[If] we are their equals in the industrial arts, and ahead of them in contemplative sciences, certainly they surpass us (though it is almost shameful to confess this) in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and use of mortals" (Preface to the Novissima Sinica, §§ 2–3, in Leibniz, Writings on China, 46–47). After pointing out that Europe has sent mathematicians and scientists to China, he notes that "it is desirable that they in turn teach us . . . the greatest use of practical philosophy and a more perfect manner of living, to say nothing now of the other arts" (Preface, § 10, in Leibniz, Writings on China, 51).

“Wolff, too, held Chinese philosophy in high regard, echoing Leibniz's claim that China's moral and political systems in many respects surpass those of Europe.5 Unlike Leibniz, Wolff concluded that the Chinese had no distinct knowledge of God. However, this conclusion was not a problem for him; in fact, he was the first Western philosopher able to bring together two ideas that earlier thinkers were unable to reconcile:6 That the Chinese had no concept that was equivalent to the Christian God and that they nevertheless had developed admirable and exemplary political and ethical systems.7 Wolff declared that the elements found in Chinese morality—a commitment to reason as a guide for action, an acknowledgement of a law of nature, a devotion to continual progress, and a focus on helping others improve as well—are "the summary of all natural law."8” 1

 5. See Christian Wolff, Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica: Rede über die praktische Philosophie der Chinesen[Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese], German trans. Michael Albrecht (Hamburg: Meiner, 1985). The Oratio, published in 1726, is the annotated version of a lecture Wolff delivered in 1721 at the University of Halle, entitled De Sinarum Philosophia Practica. Parts of the Oratio are translated into English in Ching and Oxtoby, Moral Enlightenment.

6. In fairness, it should be noted that Pierre Bayle first expressed this conclusion. Bayle, in his Dictionaire historique et critique of 1697, used the atheism of the Chinese as evidence for his conclusion that morality could exist independently of religion. However, Wolff had justifications for his pronouncements that are lacking in Bayle who, it seems, was simply inverting the typical conclusion drawn from assumptions of China's atheism for his own argumentative ends.

 7. This claim caused considerable controversy. When Wolff's adversaries at Halle accused him of heresy, King Frederick William I dismissed Wolff from his position and gave him 48 hours to leave Prussia, under threat of death by hanging. For additional details of this fascinating event, see Donald F. Lach, "The Sinophilism of Christian Wolff (1679–1754)," in Discovering China: European Interpretations in the Enlightenment, ed. Julia Ching and Willard Gurdon Oxtoby (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1992).

 8. Wolff, Oratio, 55 (Discourse, 177–78). For a helpful commentary on Wolff and China, see Robert B. Louden, "What Does Heaven Say? Christian Wolff and Western Interpretations of Confucian Ethics," in Essays on the Analects of Confucius, ed. Bryan William van Norden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). I am grateful to Robert Louden for making available to me an early version of his essay.

“Kant's philosophical project can in fact be seen as a series of powerful arguments that theoretical reason is powerless to address the topics that are most important to the human mind (the existence of God, the freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul) and, further, that these concerns can best be approached from a moral point of view. “ 2

“Kant argues that being moral means following our moral nature (i.e., the moral law within) rather than authority, custom, or natural feeling.” 3 Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, in Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind, trans. Peter Heath (New York: Cambridge University Press 1997), 5 (Ak 27:9).

“And here we arrive at the heart of Kant's critique of Chinese ethics: The Chinese may have passed what we might call the "inclination test"—their actions are not guided by their baser inclinations—but they have failed the "autonomy test," for they act as they do not because they are guided by rational reflection or respect for the moral law, but only out of obedience to the command of experience and custom. While Kant ranks the Chinese set of customs higher than others, he presents this as an accidental state of affairs: It just so happens that their customs are particularly strict and modest.”

“Confucius teaches in his writings nothing outside a moral doctrine designed for princes . . . and offers examples of former Chinese princes. . . . But a concept of virtue and morality never entered the heads of the Chinese.”25

“Confucian morality, he claims, is merely an empirical morality grounded in the historical actions of exemplary figures, aimed at teaching rulers how to rule. But despite any prudential efficacy of such advice, it does not count as genuine morality because it has not been raised to the level of conceptual reflection. When he says that "a concept of virtue . . . has never entered the heads of the Chinese," the stress should be on the term "concept" (Begriff), for the point is that the Chinese are not thinking about what they are doing.” 6

25. Kant, Physical Geography, Ms. 2599, p. 304, in Glasenapp, 103. The citation is from a manuscript containing Kant's notes for the Physical Geography lectures. I have borrowed Glasenapp's system of referring to these notes. See Glasenapp, xv–xx, for an explanation of his system of labeling the various manuscripts. Julia Ching also makes use of this passage in comparing Confucian and Kantian ethics, in Julia Ching, "Chinese Ethics and Kant,"Philosophy East and West 28 (1978): 169.

“Kant believes that God's existence, though unprovable, is an absolutely necessary postulate of practical reason.33 His argument is, in short, that—contrary to the demands of justice—good behavior is not necessarily rewarded in this life nor is wicked behavior punished. Thus, if one is to follow a system of morality, one needs to believe in the existence of God as the arbiter and guarantor of this justice.34 This view, combined with a conviction that experience shows that happiness is not matched with morality in this world, leads Kant to endorse belief in the existence of an afterlife. "God and a future life are two presuppositions that are not to be separated from the obligation that pure reason imposes on us in accordance with principles of that very same reason. [Without these postulates, we would have to] regard the moral laws as empty figments of the brain."35

34. Kant does not believe that ethics should grow from revealed religion or that we should act out of obedience to God. Since we can have no concept of God and hence no understanding of his will, a divine command theory of morality would require an arbitrary guess at the content of the command and (worse) a heteronomy of the will insofar as we are obligated to obey only to the extent that we fear, love, or respect the commander: "So far as practical reason has the right to lead us, we will not hold actions to be obligatory because they are God's commands, but will rather regard them as divine commands because we are internally obligated to them. We will . . . believe ourselves to be in conformity with the divine will only insofar as we hold as holy the moral law that reason teaches us from the nature of actions themselves" (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A819, B847, p. 684). See Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, 160.

35. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A812, B840, p. 680.

 Kant regards the "recognition of all duties as divine commands" as lying at the heart of religion (Kant, Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, Ak 6:153, quoted in Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, 160). This recognition, again, does not mean that we derive the content of the duty or justification from God, but rather that we recognize the universality and certainty of the duties that we have derived.

Chan, Wing-Cheuk. (March, 2006). Mou Zonsan’s Transformation of Kant’s Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Volume 33.

“Mou Zonsan (1909-95) his idealist Confucianism results from a transformation of Kant's transcendental philosophy. This is particularly shown in the title of his magnum opus, Xianxiang yu wuzishen (Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself).2 Historically, this work might be the most significant publication in Chinese philosophy of the twentieth century. “

“Under the influence of Christianity, Kant only assigns intellectual intuition to God. In contrast, Mou Zongsan claims that such intellectual intuition is also possible for human beings. First, the Confucian liangzhi (original mind) is not only the transcendental ground of our moral actions, but at the same time the ontological origin of all things. As the absolute and infinite principle of creativity, liangzhi is an intellectual intuition. Second, in letting things spring spontaneously, the Daoist xiongzhi (mystical seeing) is an "objectless" intuition. With the help of the daoxin, things are given in themselves. In spite of the lack of any moral import, xiongzhi represents a principle of aesthetic creativity. So, it is an intellectual intuition which is at the same time aesthetic and cosmological. Third, what is witnessed by the Buddhist prajna (wisdom) is the suchness of the world. That is to say, as a nonsensible intuition, prajna sees the things in themselves. As particularly pointed out by the Tiantai perfect teachings, "all things originate from the non-dwelling ground."11 As such a nondwelling ground, prajna also signifies an ontological origin of all beings. All this indicates that the Confucian liangzhi (original mind), the Daoist xiongzhi (mystical seeing), and the Buddhist prajna (wisdom) satisfy the conditions of Kant's conception of intellectual intuition. Though there is no God in the Christian sense in Chinese philosophy, the Confucian Sage, the Daoist true man, and the Buddha are understood as infinite beings.” 2

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