Page 82 - 2022(1) International Confusion Studies

“Self-Cultivation as the Root of All” 75

Son of Heaven is indeed an individual following the “eight essential principles,”
but his sociopolitical identity is quite different from the ordinary people. Similarly,
though the people are also all individuals carrying out the “eight principles,” their
sociopolitical identity cannot compare in any way to that of the Son of Heaven. This
is the basic structural inequality within the equality of “all must consider the
cultivation of the person as the root of everything.”
Notwithstanding this, the subject of self-cultivation for all must be separate
individuals who are equal and have many features in common. Purely from the
goal of “renewing the people,” namely dealing with general sociopolitical affairs,
the “self” is the starting point, the recursive result is “self-cultivation, regulation of
family affairs, good state governance, and peace to all under heaven.” That is why
from this specific angle, Confucian ethics holds that the “self” lies at the root of all
collective entities, including families, states, and all under heaven.
There is a very widespread opinion these days that in Confucian thinking, the
individual is nested in a web of relationships and thus differs from the solitary
individual in Western thinking. So, in a strict sense, the concept of the individual is
the product of Western culture, while in Confucian terms, the individual reflects
the spirit of social groupings and therefore should fall into the collective category.
It naturally follows that the concepts of Confucian collectivism and Western
individualism become a basis for comparison between Chinese and Western cul-
tures. This argument calls for further analysis. Does the “individual” belonging to a
set of group relationships lose his/her individual value and social/political roles,
thus becoming a synonym for a collective entity? Or does he/she retain “in-
dividuality” even within the group? An “individual” existing within complicated
social relations should not change his/her inherent qualities because of the col-
lective environment in which he/she exists and plays a role in it.
By interpreting the elements of the “eight essential principles” separately, the
collective narrative of “regulation of family affairs, good state governance, and
ensuring peace to all under heaven” has become over time fixed, widespread, and
persistent. The absence of “self-cultivation” from these three elements can be
regarded as a failure of Confucian thinking which puts such a high value on
individual cultivation. The question then becomes how self-cultivation of the in-
dividual morphed into the groups as represented by family, state, and all under
heaven? Two factors came into play here. The first was internal: individuals who
focus on self-cultivation are by definition restrained and introspective. They differ
radically from the outgoing and ambitious individuals who play a decisive role in
creating the intertwining relationships that make up social structures. The second
factor was external: the concept of the ideal society as envisaged in the “eight
principles” based on the morality of equal individuals changed irreversibly after