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The concept of shyness and Confucian “meaning”
Shame and the Confucian Idea of Yi (Righteousness)
Author: Lu Yinghua (Authorized by Huadong Teachers’ Famous Sinian Advanced Humanities Research Institute)
Source: Author Author Author Authorized by Confucian Network, Original ArticlesInternational Philosophical Quarterly 2018 Issue 1
ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes the relation between shame and a Confucian notion of yi (righteousness, rightness), especially through discussions from Confucius and Mencius. Section one clarifies Mencius’s position that righteousness is both external and internal. Although this idea include rules, it is primarily something intended by our innate moral feelings. Section two illustrates the point that if one’s action is not right (yi), the feeling of shame spontaneously arises and motivates a self-correction. This section also clarifies the difference between the idea of shame in Max Scheler and in Confucian thought. Section three compares absolute yi with general li (ritual propriety) as well as the roles that shame and duty play in relation to ren (primarily humane love).
Abstract:
This article is a sister chapter of another article “Shame and Eyes”. The article settled in Confucian tradition and wrote a specific description of the connection between shame and “meaning”. The first part clarifies Mencius’s standing: meaning is both internal and internal. As long as the meaning of rules has a regular meaning, it is originally intended by our inner moral feelings. The second part explains the following points: If a person’s wishes or behavior is inappropriate (unrighteous), the self-experienced feeling of shame will arise and promote self-correction. This department also understands the difference between Max Scheller and Confucian shyness. At the end of the article, the absolute meaning and ordinary gifts, as well as the influences caused by benevolence and shame-the power.
Secret:
It is both internal and internal. As long as the meaning has a regular meaning, it is originally intended by our inner shameful feelings. Shame reminds the conflict between higher values and lower values. In the eyes of Confucianism, this conflict shows respect and righteousness (see the distinction between ideas and profit; those who are skillful in the transformation are useless. If they are not as good as others, how can they be?). If people are doing something wrong now or will be doing, shame will appear on their own and exert force to make people better. For people with a weak sense of original shame, the inner apparent shame developed by others can prompt the parties to correct their own ideas and behaviors.
Shame and contempt can both point to themselves and others. Even though shy is originally personal, contempt is pointing to others. “Shame for others” and “despise”. To be ashamed of being a human is a kind of excitement, where there can still be respect, pointing to positive improvement, while despised is a kind of punishment and light-heartedness, which means that one can’t save the medicine by himself. In collective civilization, when a person’s behavior is not only good, he not only puts himself to a state of shame, but also dishonors those who are related to him, such as his teachers, family members, companions, and even insults his ancestors. Although Confucianism is regarded as a collective civilization based on its basic principles, respect for personality is undoubtedly also protruding. The right person should follow his original intention and not regard misconduct (even the widely accepted shame) as real shame, and try to avoid it.
Shyness reminds you of the right way. Even though it can bring great benefits to the rules, the author will feel ashamed of it. Gifts represent ordinary regulations to make people’s relationships appropriate and harmonious. For the gift, there is room for occasional violations, and even large-scale corrections can be made to ordinary regulations to better realize benevolence and morality. In contrast, meaning is the absolute principle, or the order of absolute value, it does notAllowing the odds. Benevolence represents a higher and active desire of moral behaviorists. Compared with the meaning, meaning the request of the bottom line and the responsibility that never hinders. In Scheller’s love ethics, the ethics of responsiveness were severely criticized. Confucianism also emphasizes the two aspects of benevolence, love and morality, and seeks to ensure the initiative and self-development of love at the same time, as well as the forcefulness and fundamental requirements of morality.
THIS PAPER IS AN EXTENSION of my article “The Phenomenology of Shame: A Clarification in Light of Max Scheler and Confucianism.” [1] In that essay I clarified the phenomenological experience of shame in light of the thought of Max Scheler as well as such Confucian philosophers as Confucius and Mencius. This paper will undertake a more specific description of shame and its connection with yi according to the Confucian tradition. It may be helpful to review the conclusions in that earlier work.
Shame is an unpleasant feeling in which we experience self-reproach and reproach by others. We tend to regard ourselves as unworthy. Shame implies that there is a hierarchy of value. It occurs when there is a conflict among different values and when the agent tries to sacrifice the higher value for a lower one. Shame can also take place when one is treated by other merely as an object or as a sensuous being rather than as a spiritual being with personal dignity. Among other points, I there disguised destructive shame from humiliation. While genuine shame is indis- able for proper living, wrongly felt shame is destructive to the cultivation of virtue. There are three kinds of destructive shame: (1) the shame as vanity, (2) the shame of producing cowardice, and (3) the shame as indecision. A humiliated person is in the situation of being manipulated in an intense manner through a violation of his or her will, or of being rendered radically powerless by action or by language. The argument in this paper is based on these positions.
1. YI: OBLIGATION AND INTERNAL FEELING
The Chinese term yi is sometimes translated as “appropriateness,” [2] but the specific context will make clear whether this an accurate translation. For instance, wearing red clothes at a funeral ceremony is certainly not appropriate, but normally doing so is not regarded as “not-yi,” whereas an officer’s embezzling public funds is certainly not yi since to do so would be to violate his duty. His action is not right. Generally, a more proper translation of yi would be “duty” or “rightness.” I will argue in support of Mencius’s claim that, like ren (humaneness or humane love), yi is internal to us. It is precisely what is intended in the feeling of shame, a feeling that reveals something deep about what it means to be a person. In order to make sense of the relation of shame and yi, let me consider a famous discussion bet mencius. Gaozi begins with the claim:
He is elderly, and I treat him in the manner suitable for treating an elderly person (I treat him with respectful behavior). It is not because I previously respected him in my heart. Similarly, that thing is white, and I treat it as white, according to its being white externaly to us. Hence, I say yi is external. . . . I love my younger brother; the younger brother of a person from Qin I do not love. I take the explanation for this to be in me. Hence, I say that ren is internal. I treat as elderly Supply one month’s pricean elderly person from Chu, but I also treat as elderly my own elders. I take the explanation for this to lie in the elderly person. Hence, I say that yi is external.”【3】
According to Gaozi, as a form of love, ren is a feeling and hence is inside oneself. If someone does not love another person, no one can force him to do so. We love our brothers but might not love the younger brother of a person from Qin. This difference come about because love is determined by one’s own feelings. In this sense ren is internal. By contrast, yi is an objective regulation that we need to obey no matter how we feel. This duty (and thus our righteousness) is determined by the rule that applies to the actual situation. Regardless of whether we happen to love the elderly person from Chu or not, we have to treat him in the manner in which we should treat any elderly person. Therefore, yi is external to us.
Confucians, we should note, also admit that ren is primarily a feeling of love and yi a matter of a regulation. Mencius affirms one aspect of ren when he says that “noble people preserve their hearts with ren and li (ritual propriety). People with ren love others, and those who have li respect others.”[4] He also says that that “between a father and his children there is affection; between a ruler and his ministers there is righteousness.”[5] Both rules and miners must obey certain regulations. For Mencius, however, Gaozi makes two mistakes. First, despite the undeniable fact that that ren is a feeling, it is notjust arbitrary and not merely subjective. There is also thing thing thing thing is a priori and orderly. Truly humane love is not a matter of partiality.7 Second, althing yi is an obligation,it is not something imposed on us from the outside, but something that arises from our own moral tendencies. Mencius says:
Elderlines is different from whiteness. The
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