This doctrine appears more specific in its application when it is realized that Confucius regarded his own society and mankind as coterminous. Barbarians, haunting the fringes of the world, were unconscious of jên; not being in sympathy with mankind, they were not as yet fully human.
Jên is a word which cannot be exactly translated into English. It is laden with a burden of connotations which it has acquired through the centuries; its variability of translation may be shown by the fact that, in the standard translations of the Chinese classics, it is written “Benevolence.” It might equally well be given as “consciousness of one's place and function in society.” The man who followed jên was one who was aware of his place in society, and of his participation in the common endeavors of mankind.
Jên, or society-mindedness, leads to an awareness of virtue and propriety (têh and yi). When virtue and propriety exist, it is obligatory that men follow them. Behavior in accordance with virtue and propriety is li. Commonly translated “ethics,” this is seen as the fruition of the force of jên in human society. Jên underlies and establishes society, from the existence of which spring virtue and propriety; these prescribe principles for human conduct, the formulation of which rules is li.[32] Auxiliary to li is chêng ming. Chêng ming is the rightness of names: [pg 032] li, the appropriateness of relationships. Li, it may be noted, is also translated “rites” or “ceremonies”; a rendering which, while not inexact, fails to convey the full import of the term.
Chêng ming, the rectification of names, may be regarded as a protest against the discords in language that had developed during the transitional period from feudalism to eventual unity. Confucius, of course, did not have as sharp an issue confronting him as do the modern Western innovators in social and political ideology. Nevertheless, the linguistic difficulty was clear to him. The expansion of the Chinese written language was so great at that time that it led to the indiscriminate coining of neologisms, and there was a tendency towards a sophisticated hypocrisy in the use of words.[33]
Confucius saw that, in obtaining harmony, language needed to be exact; otherwise long and fruitless disputes over empty words might be engaged in or, what was even worse, words might not conform to the realities of social life, and might be used as instruments of ill-doing. Confucius did not, however, present a scheme of word-worship. He wanted communication to cement society, to be an instrument of concord. He wanted, in modern terms, a terminology which by its exactness and suitability would of itself lead to harmony.[34] In advocating the rectification of names, Confucius differed from many other founders of philosophies and religions; they, too, wanted names rectified—terminology reorganized—to suit their particular doctrines; but there they stopped short. Confucius regarded the rectification of names as a continuous process, one which had to be carried on unceasingly if communication, for the sake of social harmony, was to remain just and exact.
Chêng ming is highly significant in Confucian thought, and exhibits the striking difference between the Chinese and the older Western political study. If the terms by means of which the communication within a society is effected, and in which the group beliefs of fact or of value are to be found, can be the subject of control, there is opened up a great field of social engineering. Chêng ming states, in recognizable although archaic terms, the existence of ideology, and proposes the strengthening of ideology. In recognizing the group (in his case, mankind) as dependent upon ideology for group existence, Confucius delivered Chinese political thought from any search for an ontology of the real state. It became possible to continue, in the traditional pragmatic manner,[35] thinking of men in simple terms referring only to individual men, avoiding the hypostatizations common in the West. In pointing out the necessity for the control of ideology by men, Confucius anticipated theories of the “pedagogical state” by some twenty centuries.
Li, in the terminology of the present work, is the conformity of the individual to the moral ideology, or, stated in another manner, the control of men by the ideology.[36]
Li, conformity to the ideology, implies, of course, conformity to those parts of it which determine value. Li [pg 034] prescribes the do-able, the thinkable. In so far as the ideology consists of valuations, so far do those valuations determine li. Hsü lists the operations of li in six specific categories:
(1) it furnishes the principles of political organization; (2) it furnishes details for the application of the doctrine of ratification; (3) it discusses the functions of government; (4) it prescribes the limitations of governmental authority; (5) it advances principles of social administration; and (6) it provides a foundation for crime and lawsuits. These are only the political functions of li. Its force is to be regarded as equally effective in every other type of human behavior.[37]
The approach to society contained in the doctrines of jên, chêng ming, and li is, therefore, one which largely eliminates the necessity for politics. Its influence may be estimated from three points of view: (1) to what degree was government different from what it might have been had it followed the line of development that government did in the West? (2) what was the range of governmental action in such a system? and (3) what was the relation of government to the other institutions of a Confucian society?