1. Who am I, and how should I act in the world?
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1.2 Confucius on Notions of the Self
MICHAEL PUETT: So let us now turn to Confucius's definition of rituals, a,
as we will see, very counterintuitive vision.
And to do so, let me begin with a rare moment in our lives,
where we tend to do what Confucius is talking about,
at an extremely mundane level.
And then use that to draw out his philosophy.
So let me begin with a rare example, where Confucius
would say we're doing something good.
I'm sitting at a dinner table with my nephew.
I won't give you his real name.
Let's call him Sammy.
So little Sammy is sitting across from me at the dinner table.
And Sammy does what little children will often do.
He looks at me and says, give me the salt, Michael!
Now, we would all do some equivalent of what I'm about to mention.
I, of course, would then look at Sammy and say, Yes, Sammy.
But what do you say?
And he kind of rolls his eyes because he's
had to go through this so many times.
And goes, just give me the salt, Michael.
And I say, yes, Sammy, but what do you say?
And I keep doing it until poor Sammy finally has to say,
Please give me the salt, Michael.
Now, he's using a tone of voice, a roll of eyes,
to make it clear he thinks this is ridiculous.
I do it anyway.
And then what do I do?
I give him the salt. And I say, now what do you say?
And we go through the same rigmarole until poor Sammy finally
has to say, Thank you for giving me the salt, Michael.
And then I say, you're welcome.
Now, Confucius would actually agree with what we're doing.
And let's, now using Confucius's way of speaking,
analyze what has just happened.
What has happened from a Confucian point of view
is I have created a ritual space in which I
am helping to break Sammy from his habitual ways of acting in the world.
And I am helping him train himself to become a better person.
In this ritual space that I have de facto created,
it is as if Sammy and I are equal people.
And Sammy is asking something of his equal.
Now, I say "as if" because note that's not at all true.
And he knows it's not true.
And I know it's not true.
Sammy has no choice but to play the please and thank you game.
He knows perfectly well I am hierarchically in a superior position.
I'm not his parents.
But I'm his uncle.
It's certainly sufficient enough.
He has no choice but to play it if he wants to get the salt.
I could even-- if I were mean, I would scold him, or send him to his room
without his dinner, if I wanted to be an evil, punishing uncle.
And he knows I could conceivably do that.
Well, he knows I wouldn't do that.
But he knows I could conceivably do something like that.
We're not equal.
But in this ritual space, we are.
And I am training him how to ask something
of another human being, an equal human being,
and how to express gratitude when something is given to him.
Note, also, that if Sammy learns the ritual so well that he simply
internalizes saying please and thank you all the time,
he has not learned the ritual.
Note, as he grows up, if he continues to all the time say please and thank
you, please and thank you every time he wants something,
and every time he expresses gratitude, he will be failing.
He will not be sensing the situation.
He will not be sensing how to ask something of another human being,
how to express gratitude, because usually please and think you
are going to be either way too formal for most situations, way too less
of a way of phrasing true gratitude because oftentimes your friends will
do things much more dramatic than a mere thank you could conceivably express.
So if Sammy learns the ritual, and, if I'm
a good uncle, will continue to work with him as he grows up,
he goes from that initial being sort of forced in this ritual situation, to say
please and thank you, rolling his eyes, gradually
he learns to do it without rolling his eyes.
Gradually, he learns to do it, smiling, please, thank you.
Gradually, he then begins to learn in different situations,
different tones of voice that would be more
appropriate to express these emotions.
He begins to have different emotions because he begins
to sense people around him better.
He begins to sense what it means to ask something of this person, what it means
to express gratitude, which it turns out for different people
in different situations will be very different.
He slowly gains a sense of the different ways tones of voices
affect people differently because they have different ruts and patterns too,
just like we do.
And he learns to sense those and sense when
to be more calm, when to be a little more laughing, when
to be more smiling, when to be a little more grave.
In other words, if he's learning the ritual, what he's doing--
being forced to do at a young age, and then doing as he grows up--
is he is learning in this ritual space to train his dispositions,
train his ability to see the world, train his ability
to interact with those around him.
And again, he can only do it, from this perspective, in that ritual space.
It requires him to enter that ritual space.
In this case, the dining room table, that I sort of create as a ritual space
by making these requests of him.
And in that ritual space, he's not the normal Sammy that he was before.
The normal Sammy was-- he's still a child.
A wonderful child, but grabbing things, wants things,
not sensing people around him.
I'm training him in that "as if" space to learn how to do this.
Confucius would say, that's the ritual.
A ritual, in other words, are not habits that we're
forced to do over and over again.
For Confucius, that's the danger.
The danger is we become these habitual creatures,
who just do the same thing over and over again, so much that they
become a part of us.
Rituals force us for a brief moment to be a different person,
in the space where we are acting differently, interacting with those
around us differently, and learning in that ritual space
how to break our normal modes of being.
For Confucius, a ritual, in other words, is not a habit.
It's what breaks us from our habits and begins the possibility for us
to become good.
Now, if that's a rare example, where we do something Confucius would appreciate
and agree with, next I would like to take you through one of his examples
from his own day.
And use that to describe in more detail what he really
means by this "as if" world and what the implications for us as human beings
would be if we truly learned to take ritual seriously.
Thank you.
- Friday 17 December 21
