You Nuo

Confucius, not computers, answers the big questions

By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-08-14 05:33

My previous columns on the value of Confucian moral teachings in modern business aroused varied and widespread feedback.

In many parts of the world, similar contradictory discussions, such as those about the lasting influence of the Christian moral tradition in the United States, would not be surprising. However, talking about the old moral tradition in a society still in the early stages of shaping its modern identity can be risky business.

Repeatedly I was reminded that Confucianism is too old and obsolete, not suitable for today's China. Modern business, in particular, was defined as an area of sheer competition, in which the best technologies win and the fattest opportunities are seized.

Yet the reality has never been as simple as this. Despite criticism that it is too old and irrelevant in the modern times, Confucianism is the only moral tradition that Chinese society has and no society can function on basically two or more diverse, let alone conflicting, moral traditions. Admittedly, there are Taoist and Buddhist influences in China. But in the area of people's secular achievement, it was Confucianism that served as the key guiding force.

It is useless to claim Confucianism useless and to argue whether it should be discarded or be replaced. The possibility simply does not exist, just as it is impossible to remove Christian tradition from US society.

It is hard to imagine that someday a new generation will be created out of sheer science, however the word is defined, and be able to work and live on complex programmes. So long as a sense of responsibility is still required, meaning that people have to make judgments on themselves, they will have to think about moral issues more or less in the language handed down by their older generations.

However our society changes, and however our economy develops, our moral philosophy has its own set of questions, which technology cannot answer.

Those questions provide meanings to life, such as how to be a good person and why a person should be good. They were basically the same questions asked by the thinkers in ancient China and ancient Greece, in roughly the same times.

Those questions will always remain valid and the answer has to come from each thinking individual through his or her lifetime effort, no matter what tools or technologies are readily available.

Science cannot replace moral concerns. And at times, if it is not guided by right values, science can be very bad as seen from the recent reports about fake medicines and the fatalities they had caused. So it is a fully justifiable cause to promote China's traditional moral teachings and the according practices among its business circles.

Having said all this, it is only on a technical level that this author agrees there will have to be changes not changes to abandon the tradition, but to spread its influence more effectively.

Dogmatic teaching methods and, even worse, requiring students to memorize the ancient books line by line, as proposed by some modern-day Confucian scholars, is unlikely to help students grasp the tradition's lasting value, even less to associate the classics with their daily lives.

Nor is it a proper thing for older people to treat those who have not spent as much time on the traditional teachings as morally defective and inferior. Being able to recite the old texts is quite different from being able to act righteously, whether as good citizen or as an understanding gentleman in Confucius' definition.

Email: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 08/14/2006 page4)