Confucianism among World Religions. A Dialogue with Tu Weiming

25/05/2007 - 15:00

23 - 25 May 2007

Leiden, the Netherlands


The workshop will commence with a public keynote speech by Prof. Tu Weiming on the afternoon of 23 May, followed by a reception.

LISTEN TO THE LECTURE OF PROF. TU WEIMING 

Convenor: Prof. Yen-zen Tsai, European Chair for Chinese Studies, IIAS

Venue: 23 May Arsenaal, Arsenaalstraat 1, Leiden 24 - 25 May Gravensteen, room 111, Pieterskerkhof 6, Leiden

Programme: See attachment

Summary of the workshop

Confucianism has played a determinant role in shaping the political ideology, social structure, intellectual outlook, human relationship, and general way of living among Chinese people and in East Asian countries in the past two millennia. With the demise of imperial China, the influence of Confucianism might have dwindled, but its vitality has been continuously present in Chinese society and many parts of the world. This is the more evident were one to look at it from the religious perspective.
It is pertinent and significant that, to have a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of Confucianism, one compare it with such world religions as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Hence the goal of this workshop is to examine Confucianism in the context of world religions and to explore the religious dimensions of this tradition in its modern transformation. Issues to be discussed include beliefs and rituals in Confucianism, recent revival movement of reading the Confucian classics, pluralism, globalization, definition of religion, insider / outsider, etc.
The workshop is organized around contributions from twelve scholars from Asia, Europe, and the United States. To have a better focus and to sharpen overall discussion, it will invite Professor Tu Weiming, foremost spokesman of contemporary Confucianism, as the keynote speaker and general respondent.

Background
When it comes to assigning Confucianism a place in world civilizations, scholarly opinions vary. Some regard it as antiquated and outmoded, museumized in dusty classical texts but irrelevant to moderns. They equate it with a state ideology that shaped Chinese political landscapes and intellectual elites in distant past but is better left for dead with the end of imperial China. Others suggest that we peel off the ideological husk of Confucianism to expose a social, ethical, even religious kernel that can still inform human and social relationships today. These diverse assessments no doubt reflect the multifaceted dimensions of a vast tradition that after all had sustained the cultures of East Asia for millennia. But more important, this lively debate belies the putative demise of Confucianism. If anything it shows the continual vitality of Confucianism as it is transformed in face of globalization.

So what will Confucianism look like in the new century? Will it be reduced to a formal code of conducts, a cultural relic recalling a bygone era? Will it remain a philosophical system devoid of religious elements? Or will it become a religio-ethical tradition that can be revitalized and reinvigorated to meet contemporary challenges? These questions are not new but have already been raised, more than four hundred years ago, by the Jesuits when they encountered Confucianism for the first time. To save Confucianism from the wrath of Christian monotheism, the Jesuits classified it as a non-religious philosophical system, compatible with Christian teachings, while branding Buddhism and Daoism as competing heterodoxies. Thus began centuries of misconstruing Confucianism as atheistic metaphysics or secular humanism.

Today, the religiousness of Confucianism is once again at the center of debate. Chinese Confucians during the late Qing and early Republican such as Kang You-wei, Liang Qichao, Xiong Shili and his students Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan, and Mou Zongsan had problematized the notion of transcendence under the siege of Western modernism and its forebear Protestantism. They attempted variously to interpret Confucian metaphysics in the Western terms of Kant and Hegel or to present Confucianism as a systematic Chinese religion borrowing liberally from Buddhism and Daoism. Political changes left little room for further development until the recent works of Tu Weiming, who has made transcendence a sine qua non in modern Confucianism. In conversation with Western thinkers, in particular Christian theologians, Tu has developed an anthropocosmic vision that centers on selfhood as a transformative agent. Challenged by Christian transcendence, Tu stresses the openendedness of this vision, which progresses inexorably towards the bounds of cosmos until it encompasses all humanity. But unlike the Christian notion of salvation, Confucian transformation is not gifted extra nos but begins with the perfectability of the human self; the locus of salvation lies with the transformative agency of the human subject and not with an extrinsic agent. Tu's vision has proved influential, as evidenced by the Christian theologian Robert Neville, whose recent call to establish a "Boston Confucianism" is based on Tu's vision of Confucianism as "a portable tradition in the late-modern world." A theological approach to Confucianism will remain a strong suit in years to come.

Tu's reappropriation of a metaphysical Confucianism is not without its detractors, however. Traditionalists sometimes criticize Tu for capitulating to Christian theology and for distorting the Confucian fundamental basis in humanism. Radical modernists, on the other hand, dismiss Tu's efforts for compromising their insistence on total Westernization and their appropriation of Christian humanism. The former want to return to a presumed core of Confucian orthodoxy; the latter would much rather abandon any and all attempts at reviving a system blamed for holding Chinese culture back from full-scale modernization. These criticisms do not obviate Tu's project but validate the need for it. In rejecting Tu's particular understanding of Confucian transcendence, traditionalists nevertheless look for it in the historical strata of Chinese culture. Similarly, radical modernists reject Tu only to adopt a Western (sc. Christian) notion of transcendence. In both cases, criticisms of Tu are issued not from indifference or disagreement but from a shared understanding that some form of transcendence must remain central to modern Confucianism.

SUGGESTED TOPICS OF DISCUSSION AND ORGANIZATION
So, whither modern Confucianism? Given the amount of controversies Tu Weiming's anthropocosmic vision has solicited among scholars, that might well serve as a fruitful starting point. Concretely, this means examining Confucianism in two parallel but related directions. In one, it seems necessary to interrogate Confucianism in light of recent theories on religion. For instance, it might be profitable to ask whether and to what extent Wilfred Cantwell Smith's understanding of religion as "faith" with "cumulative tradition" might cast light on the nature of modern Confucianism. Likewise, how might one interpret modern Confucianism in "religious" terms if one borrows from Ninian Smart's definition of religion as "worldview" with variegated phenomenological "dimensions"?

A second line of enquiry could take up concrete aspects of Confucianism that constitute its religious dimensions. These would include explicating the meanings of rituals, be they individual (such as quiet-sitting) or communal (e.g., public sacrifice); re-evaluating the Confucian classics or scriptures from a comparative perspective; and exploring the structure and characteristics of Confucian transcendence in classical texts and commentaries. It might also be appropriate to examine how modern Confucian thinkers formulate their vision for modern Confucianism as insiders and practitioners of their own tradition.

This workshop will solicit contributions to examine the religious dimension of modern Confucianism. To this end, the workshop will invite twelve scholars from Asia, Europe, and the U.S., over three days at the University of Leiden, with the languages of discussion in English and Chinese, though it is preferable that participants can function in both.

More information and registration:
Please contact the IIAS:
International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)
Martina van den Haak
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
m.van.den.haak@let.leidenuniv.nl

Participation is free of charge (lunch will not be provided), but registration is required by e-mail including name, title and organisation to m.van.den.haak@let.leidenuniv.nl. Please note that attendance is limited.