All
over the world there are people like me who teach basic logic, critical
thinking, introduction to reasoning, and beginning kinds of math, philosophy
and science classes that help students get some practice in the fundamentals of
objective reasoning.
After
my travels to China last year, it occurred to me to stick with the question a
while and look deeper into the relation between culture and criticism. How is teaching critical thinking handled in
different cultural contexts? -- How is critical thinking taught in China, for
example?
A
recent column by Steven Pinker has a beautiful quote on this subject from Anton
Chekhov: “there is no national multiplication table.” This is my yardstick -- reason has to have
the same significance in all cultures -- and researching the question I have
found the Pythagorean theorem, for example, in ancient Chinese, Indian, and
Egyptian texts.
Mathematics
is pure reason whereas philosophy has to contend with culture and express
itself in cultural, not mathematical, variables. Philosophy looks somewhat different in
Germany, France, England, Greece, Argentina, Japan, and New York City.
Criticism
really only makes sense culturally if it emerges in a cultural context and then
responds: like the critique of slavery in a slave society; like the critique of
masculinity in a sexist society. So it
needs a cultural context as a starting point, as Peter Bodunrin has
argued. Going on with the argument, I
came to the idea that philosophy can be many things, but philosophy ceases to
be philosophy without criticism. Thus even in a culture in which the
tradition is not to outdo the master or add to the sum of knowledge or to
attack argument in order to test it -- for example, in a culture like that of
ancient China, in which the tradition is to cherish
the ancestors rather than attacking them -- even in a culture like this, there
must be criticism -- otherwise, this is not philosophy. Let us say that this is the hypothesis --then
let us take a look at this in the case of ancient China.
So
I want to argue with myself whether e.g. Confucian philosophy is critical philosophy -- just to see what
I am able to see -- to keep thinking by sticking with this problem. In effect, I am testing the idea of universal reason and researching whether
we can discover any “empirical” element instead (as Kant would say) -- in
effect this would rule out this or that culture, this or that standard, this or
that cultural icon -- which would leave us with the new hypothesis that we
cannot count on every people to have developed
criticism -- so philosophy only emerges in some cultures -- not in all.
Ø What
is the place of a truly critical
perspective in traditional Confucian thinking?
I
am trying to ask the question, whether learning Confucianism will help a student
become a critical thinker -- thinking
of this merely as an example (and not as a universal proposition about cultural
influence on pure abstract rationality -- supposing. there is one -- supposing
that local influence outweighs very strict mathematical
reasoning).
Let
us argue the negative -- then there are fundamentally different patterns of
thinking at work in the West and in ancient China -- so that any (supposed) absence
of logic and criticism in Chinese philosophy need not be thought of as problematic
in itself -- it is merely cultural prejudice and a power-wielding privileging
of one system over another that makes this kind of judgment seem right -- and
this amounts to a kind of intellectual colonialism and arrogation -- thus no
longer argument but merely a dominant imprint.
But
-- if we are arguing for more similarity between traditions rather than
differences -- Confucian “ritual propriety” (礼, li) seems very close to the Western idea
of correct judgment (and good judgment, discriminating taste, sensitivity,
rendering justice, demonstrating wise judgment). Aristotle’s discussion
of equity (επιείκεια, epieikeia)
from NE 5 seems to call on the same personal kind of characteristics and a
sense of the balance of all of one’s faculties -- reaching beyond mere adherence
to basic routines and laws -- that Confucius hopes to instill.
Confucianism
defines archetypes, first originating in the distant past, that are spelled out
in classic writings, and in the biographies of renowned sages. Thus the
attitude that we are looking for — critical thinking — is described (as it
were) from the outside.
The
process involves looking at acts, feelings, at a person’s mindset, and his
overall bearing in life. This mindset is not really private but instead communal
-- it shows itself in adhering to cultural forms and making them work -- also carrying
forward, treasuring and extending the great inheritance from the past.
There is the sense of having noble ancestors to whom one returns —
setting standards of aspiration — the project is to try not to shame them, to
try to equal them, to try to extend their vision to the present.
Perhaps
the Greeks too felt this way about their Homeric ancestors and about the
generation who defeated the Persians.
Question:
can we teach criticism by teaching ‘bearing’? (A related question might be: How does one teach aspiration?) (Note: Plato says, begin to love learning a bit, and then you will begin learning.)
The
humanistic Confucian worldview, deeply felt and applied, can never be
mechanical but must be adapted creatively in action (again, like Aristotle’s
idea of equity).
I
wonder if the Confucian worldview can help with the enormous problem of
resisting falling into a mechanical way of thinking and living -- via deeply
felt ritual propriety -- as a parallel with Aristotle’s conception of equity?
-- In effect Aristotle represents the West in saying that there is something
higher than the dull application of the law -- there is the possibility of
making an exception of the law when the case demands it -- rather than applying
a mechanism without any consideration
of the particular case (at the opposite pole from Kant’s insistence on strictly
universally exceptionless rule-following).
It
seems unlikely that a people who developed a secular and observational view of
the world in very ancient times, who constructed enormous building projects, who
adjudicated social disputes within ideas about rational investigation and
fairness, whose society made huge jumps forward in science, engineering,
medicine and the arts -- a society which also did normal things -- farmed and
fished and hunted -- could be deficient at reasoning. Basic facts of history
seem to argue a baseline of rationality and causal thinking underlying all
these achievements -- but what of probing criticism?
Fung
Yu-Lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy,
p. 1-3, argues that the logical theme is underdeveloped in ancient Chinese
thinking, which is why we do not see explicit criticism in Confucian
sources.
The
distinction seems too binary and caught up in cultural rivalry.
Consider, as counterarguments, these passages
from the Analects, which suggest a critical consciousness in Confucius’
thinking:
“The
Master said, That I have not cultivated virtue, that I have learned but not explained, that I have heard what is
right but failed to align with it, that what is not good in me I have been
unable to change – these are my worries.” 7.3
“How dare I claim to be a sage or a benevolent
man? At best it may be said of me that I learn without flagging and teach without growing weary.” 7.34
“Zilu
appointed Zigao to be the steward of Bi. The Master said, “You are stealing
another man’s son!” Zilu said, “There are people there; there are altars of
state there – why must one first read texts and only then be considered
learned?” The Master said, “This is why I detest glib talkers!” 11.25
“The exemplary person seeks harmony but not
conformity.” 13.23
“If
you love ren, but you do not love learning, the
flaw is ignorance.” 17.8
“Things being investigated, knowledge became
complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere.” The Great Learning
Note use of the terms dun 惇 (deeply sincere)
and chun 淳
(simple and honest).
I
think Confucius would be confused by the modern idea that young people should
learn ‘critical thinking’ – he held that learning happens in stages and that
rote learning is important at the beginning, to get a grasp of what great
thinkers have said in former ages; when we have a good grasp of what our
ancestors have said, we can begin to think critically and evaluate ideas from
times past. Thus there is a baseline of learning that precedes the critical
process. This does not mean that there is no critical process. It just means that there is something like a
qualification of age or experience. In
effect we have to learn our culture before we can take it apart -- thus:
fluency before critique.
Note the term Heart/Mind (xin 心) -- a single word
to refer both to the function of our minds as a cognitive, reasoning organ and
a function of an affective, or emotionally responsive, organ. The word, xin,
was originally represented in written form by a sketch of the heart. The
heart/mind thinks rationally, feels emotionally, passes value judgments on all
objects of thought and feeling, and initiates active responses in line with
these judgments. Sometimes, the heart/mind is contrasted with “unthinking”
aspects of people, such as basic desires and instinctual responses, but other
times, these are pictured as part of the heart/mind. There is something in us to get over and
master -- this takes time -- this is something one develops -- the picture here
(arguably) is something like critical thinking as a long form of
self-cultivation.
Ritual
righteousness (义, yi)
was initially about the family, then the larger political unit, finally the
Empire. This is roughly the pattern for
Greece also. The focus on logic comes after the breakup of the defining
political state (Zhou, Athens) -- it merges in a context of lessened political
influence on the part of the individual.
The later Mohists and the Stoics run parallel as investigators of logic
after the norm-defining political unit fell apart. Confucian metaphysics from later times seems
to take the universe as the basic unit and thus makes progress on purely
abstract questions such as inference.
Does
it make sense to teach critical thinking from Confucius? -- yes and no.
If
Confucius, who was bent on learning, had a modern textbook of logic available, he
would use it. On the face of it, it
seems counterintuitive to try to teach someone to think without actually
working through explicit arguments -- yet reports of Confucian conversations
from the Analects and other
traditions appear to show principles like identity, non-contradiction and
inference, without calling specific attention to them.
To
me it seems wrong to associate logic with one people (the Greeks) and to
relegate all other historical peoples to some backwater where people reasoned
poorly. It is truer to say that the
Greeks explicitly called this out as
a subject and made great progress with it.
Other peoples followed the patterns that the Greeks investigated in
their daily routines,
but
may not have made the subject so explicit or thought about thinking with the
same abstract universalism -- or with the same success. Roughly: all peoples have blood types, but
not all people developed the idea of a blood type -- or have categorized blood
types in modern terms. But we should not
abandon blood typing for an alternative view of blood that associates it with
less definable qualities or which disputes the point of view and the political
reality behind the history that creates this scientific advance. Rivalry doesn’t make sense in a context like
this -- we are simply seeing what is the case.
Critical
thinking is (in a word) skepticism. The
issue is Confucian skepticism -- as see
e.g. in the Tokugawa era Japanese philosopher and Confucian scholar Kaibara
Ekken (1630-1715), in his work Tigiroku
(Record of Major Doubts), dated 1713:
“The
gentleman-scholar of novice learning cannot immediately get to the heart of
things. The way of learning must include
doubt, for when one has doubt, advancement is sure to follow. Major doubts
bring major progress, minor doubts bring minor progress; and when there is no
doubt, then there is no progress. This
is how the way of inquisitive learning or scholarship (学問, gakumon) comes to be.”
Readings in Tokugawa
Thought,
third edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago, Center for East Asian
Studies, Select Papers No. 9, 1998), pp. 69-71.
--
-- --
The importance of ritual. When offered a first cup of tea, the guest
should assume a grave attitude; when offered a second, an air of respectful
contentment. “Sacrifice implies
presence; sacrifice to the gods as if they were right in front of you.” “If you
do not sacrifice with your whole heart, it is better not to sacrifice at
all.” “Humaneness is, to subdue oneself
and return to ritual.” But ritual can
degrade and become mere ceremoniousness – mere words with no meaning and no
heart – “If a man is not humane, he no longer hears any music” (I, 3).
Over relying on ritual. Confucian
thinking degrades over time into an arch-conservatism. Family relationships and existing power
hierarchies are endowed with magical qualities and transcendental significance
– thus to oppose the father or the ruler is to fight Heaven and make oneself an
outcast. Confucianism has too often been
the apologist for the existing order and thus has seemed the enemy of
progressive thinking – despite Confucius’ emphasis on education, breaking down
class distinctions, and progressive social agenda.
Confucius’ ideas did not catch on until nearly 500
years after his death. This fact may
help to explain why his recommendations are so different than the actual
policies adopted in his name centuries later.
Harmony requires differences – as with music that explores
various contrasting sonic ingredients, any of which might in isolation seem
flat or out of tune, but together resound; as with opposite traits in the
personality, that help to offset one another; as with different regions of the
nation -- so that wind can correct water, north can correct south, and each
tendency can be matched and steadied by its counterpart.
The progressive attitude veers towards conservatism
when people lose the confidence that they can respond to change and find new
ways to create harmony; instead, they try to preserve harmony by opposing virtually
everything that happens. We cannot find
harmony with or properly react to a new thing, if we do not allow ourselves to
see it.
