Humility and two kinds of self-concern

One thing we see expressed throughout the Analects and other early Confucian literature is the view that humility, like virtues such as humanity (ren 4—), is difficult to attain and thus it is also rare.

The difficulty of cultivating humility lies in the natural predispositions of humans. Given that attaining humility is a matter of undermining one aspect of self-concern (self-adornment) while augmenting another (self-utilization), it becomes clearer why the early Confucians found this balancing task so difficult. Though there are two aspects of self-concern, it is difficult to practically disconnect the two, and one often comes along with the other. The person who gains an understanding of their own importance in terms of assisting society can also become imperious and arrogant. Presumably this is why the term ‘self-importance’ in English has negative connotations connected with such arrogance. The Confucian aim is to create a sense of self-importance shorn of its antisocial aspects. According to Analects 12.1, we are often unable to attain humility because of the strength of our sense of self (ji) in this antisocial sense. The stronger this sense of self, the further we will necessarily be from humility. The proper response, then, if we aim to cultivate humility (and the broader trait of ren that relies on it) is to undermine the strength of this sense of self and, ideally, to eliminate it altogether.²⁵

How does this negative sense of self (which I call ‘self-adornment’) contribute to lack of humility, according to the Confucians? This negative sense of self is associated with selfishness, grandiosity, pride, stubbornness, and unwillingness to change—a sense of self rooted in the notion of self-visibility and self-adornment as central to thriving. According to the early Confucians, such a trait is a mark of a ‘petty person’ (xiao ren ΦA).The reason these traits and the sense of self of the petty person can be taken as vicious is that they manifestly cut against the interest and development of harmonious community.

The petty person aims to benefit themselves alone, and the self-concern of the petty person is other-exclusive, a selfabsorption that requires the exclusion of others as valuable and worthy of care to retain a view of oneself as valuable and worthy of care. Numerous discussions of the petty person in the Analects point to the other-excluding nature of such a person’s character, where the main aim is individual comfort, enjoyment, and thriving, to the exclusion of communal concern. In numerous passages of the Analects, Confucius contrasts the petty person with the exemplary person (junzi ⅛^), and in almost every comparison we find the petty person associated with other-exclusive self-concern, while the exemplary person manifests other concern. Consider the following passages:

The master said: ‘the exemplary person is focused on virtue, while the petty person is focused on material goods.The exemplary person is concerned with law, while the petty person is concerned with their own benefit’.²⁶

The master said: ‘the exemplary person is concerned with righteousness, while the petty person is concerned with profit’.²⁷

The benefit (hui Ж) and profit (li ^J) discussed here are self-directed.²⁸ The focus of the exemplary person is on moral concepts such as virtue (de ⅛) and righteousness (yi ⅛), both of which are ultimately socially directed.The concept of de, while most often translated ‘virtue’ in English (though occasionally other translations such as ‘moral potency’ are used), is primarily social in nature.The de of the exemplary person is the charismatic and persuasive power such a person has to both facilitate moral development in others, and move the community closer to the harmonious ideal at the center of the Confucian worldview.This is only possible when one’s motivations are communally directed—when one attains the moral property of ren ^(humanity), itself an irreducibly social property,²⁹ understood most simply as a commitment and responsiveness to others in one's community or communities.³⁰

In Analects 13.23, Confucius attributes the exemplary person with the ability to harmonize (he ⅛), a central aim of the overall Confucian project.

This harmonization is contrasted with “partisanship” (tong ∣^), a trait associated with the petty person.The communal interaction of the exemplary person and others is one aimed at promoting the wellbeing of the community as a whole, rather than with advancing the interests of those from whom one individually stands to gain.We can see again that this entails a certain conception of corrosive and selfish self-concern on the part of the petty person, a self-concern that ultimately undermines harmonious community. It is the ji (self) in this sense that the Confucians recommend one turn away from in Analects 12.1.The exemplary person has a commitment to the elimination of this self-concern, and has presumably made some progress on the task, but Confucius points out that not all exemplary persons are ren (Analects 14.6).While attaining ren is a particularly difficult task, one cannot do it without being an exemplary person—the petty person's self-concern is inconsistent with ren, and thus Confucius in the second part of this passage says that while an exemplary person is not necessarily ren, there has never been a petty person who is ren.

The self (ji), as noted above, is not altogether rejected by the Confucians. There are a number of passages in which the exemplary person is said to be concerned with the self in a way the petty person is not. In addition to the above-mentioned 14.24, we find this claim in Analects 15.21:

The master said, ‘the exemplary person seeks it in themselves, while the petty person seeks it in others'.³¹

Here, the self-concern and self-directedness of the exemplary person is ultimately a self-direct- edness that has the construction of virtue and communal concern as its aim. The exemplary person is motivated to develop his or her own character, despite how this might be viewed by others.That is, the reward the exemplary person seeks for their effort in moral cultivation does not come via recognition by others, nor does it come from the sense of importance of superiority one might gain through adulation of or attention from others.

Rather, the exemplary person seeks the reward of development of virtue in the self, contributing to a harmonious and thriving society. The petty person, on the other hand, behaves as they do in order to win the recognition, praise of others.The petty person's self-concern is such that their motivation is primarily a bolstering of that sense of self-importance through the adulation of others.

Does this mean that the exemplary person, who is also the humble person, will lack a sense of self-importance? After all, if one is focused on development of virtue in order to assist in bringing about a harmonious society, it seems to follow that one will place a great deal of emphasis on the importance of oneself, in terms of ji—perhaps even more so than the petty person who only seeks attention and adulation, rather than any lofty goal like the moral transformation of society.The self-concern of the exemplary person, according to the Confucians, is an elevation of the value of purpose. Part of the reason it is so difficult to attain a sense of self-concern in the self-utilization sense is the seemingly natural human gravitation toward a concern with selfadornment. Attaining the proper kind of self-concern is neither automatic nor is it the kind of thing very many people have naturally and without effort. It takes enormous and consistent effort to develop it.

The deleterious self-adornment concern takes the self as valuable in itself and focuses on the self as the end of activity. The virtuous self-utilization concern, on the other hand, takes the self as primarily instrumental, a means to the development of the harmonious and thriving society, which also then provides one with individual thriving.While this individual thriving is not the primary aim of the activity of the person with self-utilization concern, it is additional positive effect.

In the text bearing his name, the Xunzi,The Confucian philosopher Xun Kuang³² discussed the relationship between the social and personal effects of moral development (via ritual).

In his discussion of ritual,³³ Xunzi argued that ritual activity has both interpersonal and intrapersonal effects.³⁴ Its primary aim is to facilitate social interaction and make possible social harmony. But it has a secondary effect of making it possible for individuals to satisfy their own desires. We discern these two effects of ritual, Xunzi argues, when we recognize that ritual's primary function is to limit our desires, in order to impede them from growing into vices. Desires become vices when they become so enormous that their satisfaction requires harm to the community. At the same time, such unwieldy desires will become impossible to satisfy. All such desires begin as unproblematic natural desires, but left without the limitation ritual imposes on them, all will naturally grow into vice. An example of this is the desire for material goods.This desire is part of human nature, and it is a feature of such natural human desires to augment and strengthen on their own.The desire for sufficient material goods to survive naturally grows into a desire for surplus material goods, which naturally grows eventually to an overwhelming desire for continuous material goods.This desire creates interpersonal conflict, because if one needs continuous material goods, one will require the goods held by others (or disallow others to claim open goods), such that one's own interests will necessarily clash with those of other people.The clever move Xunzi makes next, though, is partly a response to the ‘why be moral?' question. Even if one does not care about social harmony (though one has plenty of reasons to care, which I won't get into here), it turns out that, without the limitations of desire imposed by ritual, the desires that become vicious are no longer capable of being satisfied. In the material goods case—if the desire has developed to the point that one requires infinite material goods, then the desire cannot be satisfied, no matter how plentiful the material goods one attains.

Limiting the desire for material goods using ritual, then, enables us to not only avoid the social disharmony that comes from conflict over goods, but also enables us to satisfy desire for material goods, sufficiently limited that it can be satisfied.

The Confucian conception of humility, following this insight of Xunzi, can be seen as involving two aspects, connected to the two senses of self-concern outlined above.The humble person is one who both lacks the concern for self-adornment (the ji of Analects 12.1) and possesses the concern for self-utilization.The primary means to develop such traits is adherence to ritual conduct. While the operation of ritual is outside of the scope of this paper, the general idea is that the constraints on behavior involved in ritual will ultimately bring about self-constraint in terms of desires and motivations, such that the concern for self-adornment subsides with ritual adherence.

What will a person who has ‘turned away from the self', in terms of abandonment of concern with self-adornment, look like? According to the Confucians, such a person will be able to develop a host of virtues that the person stuck within concern for self-adornment cannot.These include the rang and gong discussed earlier in this paper, as well as the virtues involving other concerns which, for the Confucians, are most of them. Filiality, reflectiveness, honesty—these all require humility, in the sense of an undermining of the concern with self-adornment. Such humility allows one to learn from others, as one is not only unconcerned about appearing to be the most knowledgeable or able, but is also concerned about gaining knowledge or ability in a positive sense because of their commitment to self-utilization.The virtue of humility, then, is not only the lack of concern with self-adornment, but also requires the commitment to self- utilization.This latter kind of self-concern turns out to itself be part of humility, rather than a necessary additional virtue. If humility is ultimately a transitional virtue facilitating social harmony involving the proper kind of self-concern, then both negative and positive self-concern play a role.

To return to contemporary psychological accounts of the role of humility, the Confucian conception of virtue seems to fit the picture of humility as facilitating social interaction. Humility is particularly important in relationships between superiors and subordinates in society, according to Confucians, not primarily to reassure the superior that the subordinate will not rebel or undermine them, but to ensure that the subordinate gains the ability to be guided by the superior.That is, humility on the Confucian view is important in such relations mainly for the benefit of the subordinate, as well as for the mutual development of the self and the community. Part of the proper self-concern of the humble person, the concern for self-utilization rather than self-adornment, insures the focus on benefit to the bearer of humility, insofar as they become able to play a crucial role in social harmonization and self-development.Thus, though the Confucian conception of humility is aimed ultimately at creating harmonious communities, it does this through the means of enhancing aspects of the self that enable a person to both be more effective at creating communal harmony and more effective at achieving individual thriving.

Notes

1 Rujia more correctly translated as ‘Classicist School', is more commonly known in the West as ‘Confucianism', because of its strong association with the teachings of Confucius (Kongzi 7L^), one of its most influential early proponents.

2 Kongzi translates to ‘Master Kong'—the Latinized name ‘Confucius' derives from a lesser used analogue

Kong Fuzi, also translating to ‘Master Kong'.The full and given name of Confucius, according

to tradition was Kong Qiu.

3 There have been numerous debates over the dating of the text of the Analects. Most scholars recognize it as a composite text, with parts potentially spanning from the mid-5th century bce to the 1st century bce. See Brooks and Brooks, The Original Analects. Some recent scholars argue for a later date of construction of the text, in the early Han Dynasty. See Michael Hunter,‘The Lunyu as a Western Han Text', as well as other papers in Hunter and Kern, eds. Confucius and the Analects Revisited.

4 Analects 1.10.

5 Analects 3.7.

6 Ritual, in this sense, facilitates social interaction. Chenyang Li understands ritual as what he calls a ‘cultural grammar' that allows for the expression of particular virtues within the communal context associated with particular rituals. See Li, ‘Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation Between Li and Ren in Confucius'Analects'.

7 Jiyi 18.

8 Analects 5.16.

9 Davis, et al.‘Relational Humility: Conceptualizing and Measuring Humility as a Personality Judgment', Farrell et al.,‘Humility and Relationship Outcomes in Couples:The Mediating Role of Commitment'

10 Li, ‘Humility in Learning: A Confucian Perspective', 149.

11 A number of scholars, most prominently Roger Ames, take Confucianism to offer what they describe as a ‘role ethics.' See Ames, Confucian Role Ethics, Rosemont, ‘Rights-Bearing Individuals and RoleBearing Persons', Mattice, ‘Confucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming, Translation, and Interpretation'

12 The well-known debate between the later Confucians Mengzi and Xunzi on the issue of ‘human nature' or ‘inborn characteristics' (xing 'f⅛) concerned this issue.

13 Analects 9.1 goes so far as to say that Confucius rarely spoke about ren—even though it is one of the most discussed concepts in the Analects.

14 See John Kieschnick, ‘Analects 12.1 and the Commentarial Tradition' for a number of the early interpretations ofWestern sinologists.

15 Analects 15.20.

16 Analects 15.19. ^ІЗ:Г®ЖЙЖІиЖ,ЖЙЛАЖВЖЙ-^

17 Some attempt to square the passages by arguing that Confucius' teachings were tailored to particular individuals who required different instruction.Amy Olberding argues that such apparent contradictions may also be resolved by considering certain of Confucius' statements ‘reflective, general remarks' and others ‘less studied reactions'. OlberdingdConfucius' Complaints and the Analects^y Account of the Good Life', 437. Some attempt to interpret 15.20 in such a way that it does not suggest that Confucius held that one should seek a reputation. This is the Han scholar Xu Gan's approach to the apparent contradiction. See John Makeham,‘Notes and Communications', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 56 (3).

18 Shen ⅜ and ji U are among the terms used.

19 Analects 1.16. ≠^Γ^?Λ±^BM?^⅛∏Λ⅛oJ

20 Analects 4.14:

21 Analects 14.24 ⅛Γ⅞±W⅜B,÷±⅛⅛⅜ΛoJ

22 Roberts and Cleveland, 'Humility from a Philosophical Point of View' in Routledge Handbook of Humility.

23 Nadelhoffer and Wright,“The Twin Dimensions of theVirtue of Humility: Low Self-Focus and High Other-Focus”.

24 Wu-wei activity (literally,‘non-action'), understood most commonly as ‘non-forced' or ‘non-intentional' activity, is linked to this elimination of self, whether as a result or a contributing cause. Interpretations differ on this, but for early Confucians, is appears to be a result rather than a cause. One undermines the strength of a certain kind of sense of self through moderation of desires via ritual (Analects 12.1).

25 Analects 4.11 ≠0!Γg^W,'hΛ⅛±i⅛^?,'hΛ⅛?oJ

26 Analects 4.16

27 This is also likely a shot at the Mohists, a rival philosophical school who held that the primary aim of human activity should be generation of profit (li) for all, in terms of material benefit.

28 Irreducibly social in the sense that it cannot be understood in terms of the individual possession of properties distinct from communal interaction, but is primarily a property of the community itself, facilitated by its members, that belongs to individuals in a secondary sense.

29 See McLeod, ‘Ren as a Communal Property in the Analects'.

30 f0rfgftaa,^Λt^Λoj

31 Xunzi (‘Master Xun') lived about 200 years after Confucius, toward the end of the Warring States Period (453-221 bce).

32 Xunzi ch. 19.

33 David Wong coins this way discussing the ‘functions of morality'in his book Natural Moralities (p. 43), a distinction he also attributes to Xunzi.

References

Ames, Roger. Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2010.

Brooks, Bruce and Taeko Brooks. The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Davis, Don, Joshua Hook, Everett Worthington, Daryl Van Tongeren,Aubrey Gartner, David Jennings and Robert Emmons. ‘Relational Humility: Conceptualizing and Measuring Humility as a Personality Judgment'. Journal of Personality Assessment 93(3), 2011., 225-234.

Farrell, Jennifer, Joshua Hook, Marciana Ramos, Don Davis, DarylVan Tongeren and John Ruiz. ‘Humility and Relationship Outcomes in Couples: The Mediating Role of Commitment'. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice 4(1), 2015., 14-26.

Hunter, Michael. ‘The Lunyu as a Western Han Text'. In: M. Hunter and M. Kern, eds. Confucius and the Analects Revisited: New Perspectives on Composition, Dating, and Authorship. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Kieschnick, John. ‘Analects 12.1 and the Commentarial Tradition'. Journal of the American Oriental Society 112(4), 1992., 567-576.

Li, Chenyang. ‘Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation Between Li and Ren in Confucius' Analects'. Philosophy East and West 57(3), 2007., 311-329.

Li, Jin. ‘Humility in Learning: A Confucian Perspective'. Journal of Moral Education 45(2), 2016., 147-165.

Makeham, John.‘Notes and Communications’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 56(3), 1993., 582-586.

Mattice, SarahZConfucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming,Translation, and Interpretation’. In:A. McLeod, ed. Bloomsbury Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

McLeod, Alexus. ‘Ren as a Communal Property in the Analects’ Philosophy East and West 62(4), 2012., 505-528.

Nadelhoffer,Thomas and Jennifer Cole Wright. ‘The Twin Dimensions of the Virtue of Humility: Low Self-Focus and High Other-Focus’. In:W Sinnott-Armstrong and C.B. Miller, eds. Moral Psychology, Vol. 5: Virtue and Character. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017.

Olberding,Amy.‘Confucius’ Complaints and the Analects’ Account of the Good Life’. Dao: AJournal of Comparative Philosophy 12(4), 2013., 417-440.

Roberts, Robert and W. Scott Cleveland. ‘Humility from a Philosophical Point of View’. In: E.L. Worthington, D.E. Davis and J.N. Hook, eds. Routledge Handbook of Humility.

Rosemont, Henry. ‘Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role-Bearing Persons’. In: M. Bockover, ed. Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility: Essays Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette. Chicago: Open Court, 1991.

Wong, David. Natural Moralities:A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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Source: Alfano Mark, Lynch Michael P.. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility. Routledge,2020. — 514 p.. 2020

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