Wednesday, September 21
Homework #2 is due at the start of class today.
Reading: Analects, Books VIII,
XVII, XVIII
Passages on Tian: 7.23, 9.5, 9.6 (9.7), 5.13, 8.19, 17.17, 6.28, 3.13,
3.24, 2.4, 14.35, 9.12, 12.5, 16.8, 11.9
For our last session on the philosophy of the Analects, we will focus on the issues of Tian and theodicy, and on the issue of "timeliness," which is formulated many times over in the text, but most succinctly conveyed in 8.13: "When the Way prevails under Heaven, appear; when it does not, hide."
The birth of philosophy in China was a product of a crisis in values which focused on the issue of theodicy: If Tian is what we always thought it was--the all-powerful all-good guarantor of order--then how can we make sense of the mess we've been in for centuries? Answers to the crisis in values, of which Confucianism was the first, generally tried to frame their answers in such a way as to remold the idea of Tian so that Tian could: 1) be once again viewed as an all-good, all-powerful force, 2) legitimize the specific doctrines connected with each answer to the crisis in values. Thus, the Analects' Tian ought to be all-good and powerful, and ought also to support the ritual interests of the text.
Look through the passages about Tian, and see whether you can pick out ones which seem to function in this way. In class, I'll be trying to pull most of them together to make the Confucian portrait of Tian a coherent whole.
In the Analects, the doctrine of timeliness is generally linked to the issue of political participation by members of the community of "Ru" (a name for Confucians). We will see that later in Confucianism, the idea of flexible action which it implies comes to be more broadly applied.
Book VIII is a queer book. It is structured like an asymmetrical onion. The core of the book appears to include passages 2 and 8-17, all simple aphorisms of Confucius (some quite important). If Books 3-7 together formed a single early text, as some people think, then this early core of Book VIII may have been a short, concluding book attached to that set. But at some time, followers of Confucius' youngest disciple, Zeng Shen, inserted passages 3-7, all quoting their late Master, including his deathbed words. The book was still a short one, however, and at a date later yet--perhaps during the late fourth century B.C., the framing passages were added (1 and 18-21). You might read the book as a puzzle, to find coherent themes which tie each of the three sections of the book together.
Books XVII and XVIII were almost certainly put together many years after Confucius' death. They incorporate legends about Confucius which are clearly fictitious anecdotes, but which illustrate tensions around the issue of political action in the light of the doctrine of timeliness. When you read Book XVIII, you should also take another look at Book XVII, and at a set of passages on a similar theme which occurs earlier in the text: XIV.38-42.