§112. The Empiricism of a Sage

Empiricism is the home of arts of generalization, extrapolation, and analogy, feeling out continuity step by step. Generality will never cease to be a problem for empiricism, and that’s a good thing.

Confucian sagacity is neither mystical nor rationalistic but empirical through and through. Sages are good at arts of continuity, discerning res­onance, orchestrating interpenetration, following subtle lines of analogy that reunite abstractly separate forms and recover their consistency, which is what Confucians call “extending knowledge,” and Bergson called thinking in duration, thinking not “thing” or “form,” but continuity and interpenetra­tion. Extend knowledge beyond the mere form merely present, to the past it recalls, the becoming it expresses, and the change it foretells. Such knowledge is hyper-empirical, requiring not merely normal senses and normal compre­hension but the sagacity to surmise and artfully deploy the obscure and in­cipient in action of effortless efficacy.

Principle is abstruse, indeterminate, tending only, emergent, not extant. To investigate this virtuality we need all the hints we can get, and the most precious ones are in the classics. That is where the investigation of principle begins and never quits but only extends. The harmony of the future is hidden in the past, and does not require experimentation. The idea of testing the classics is a sacrilege. The sacred value of these works is a point of Confucian philosophy that resists globalization. Modern people may balk at the study of this material with the diligence Confucians traditionally required, and not only because they are not Chinese.

The privilege Confucian tradition accords to the past presupposes that the present began in a past qualified by unity. The key to problems of life and gov­ernment lies in the oldest relics of that unity, which are the words and deeds of the ancient sage kings. Not all of China's thinkers take this line. The adminis­trative philosophy made a point of rejecting it; for instance, Hanfeizi: “There is no constant method for the government of men............................................................. Therefore the sage

in governing people makes laws move with time and prohibitions change with abilities.” Confucians do not seem to regard their evaluation of the past as optional, even if it is. If, as radical empiricists say, multiplicity is an orig­inal condition, then no past unity substantiates the promise of future har­mony. Bergson puts the question: “Who knows if the world is actually one? Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle.” Nature evolves and does not unfold by timeless principles known to ancient sages. There is too much contingency in the world for that, too much difference due to the passage of time. Principle itself evolves, as do all things. Harmony is a new problem for every generation, and the ancients, being no closer to a primordial unity, were no better at it than we are.

The Confucian “investigation of things” differs from empirical research in not seeking to advance a given problem by an empirical finding. Instead, “investigation” is a personal challenge to become good at reading the classics in everything you perceive and choose. Intelligence is disciplined by expe­rience, but the telos is virtue, not knowledge, as it has been for European empiricism. To be a good father, a good son, a good official, or minister is a problem not for science and its knowledge, but for virtue and its cultivation. Two millennia of Confucian investigation did not enlarge a shared body of empirical knowledge about anything. Instead, it reliably bore the fruit that was expected, which was the men whose minds this “investigation” formed for service. Training the next generation for government was valued more than the technological innovations someone like Roger Bacon expected from experimental natural philosophy.

The problems of Confucian thought are problems of ethics and govern­ment rather than theoretical problems of disinterested knowledge. Dewey tried to press American philosophy in this direction too, with no success. The redoubtable premise of philosophy is that problems such as the Confucians want to confront wisely are essentially problems of knowledge. The more we know, the better our ethics, education, government—everything. That was the promise of Socrates, of Plato, and philosophy in their tradition down to Nietzsche, who considered it delusive to expect so much from theoretical insight.

Confucian tradition sought a more balanced competence. Knowledge is good, but not a panacea, and turns vicious without virtue. Learning is more about virtue than about knowledge, and any knowledge that learning develops is significant only for its continuity with virtue. The Socratic says, make knowledge right and virtue will take care of itself. Confucians say, virtue is multiple, and many virtues are cross-checks against many vices. For Platonists, virtue has an essence, something always the same. For Confucians, virtue implies diplomacy, adroitly avoiding all one-sidedness. There may be conditions we cannot live with, but the obligation is on us to determine that sagaciously, for which long devotion to the classics and the investigation of principle are the preparation. Where European rationalism irrationally invokes reason to overcome dissent, Confucians tactfully eschew the expectation that any single value could ever settle a dispute. Their value of ren, benevolent humanity, requires them to search for unity diplomatically, empirically, case by case, and not expect it all at once from reason.