The Trouble with Confucianism (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values) by Wm. Theodore de Bary (PDF)

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In Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and other parts of East and Southeast Asia, as well as China, people are asking, “What does Confucianism have to offer today?” For some, Confucius is still the symbol of a reactionary and repressive past; for others, he is the humanist admired by generations of scholars and thinkers, East and West, for his ethical system and discipline. In the face of such complications, only a scholar of Theodore de Bary’s stature could venture broad answers to the question of the significance of Confucianism in today’s world.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Amazon.com Review As Confucian thinking makes a comeback in contemporary China, people are wondering if it will merely serve as a conservative tool for a despotic government as in imperial times, or if it could act instead as a liberalizing force. Wm. Theodore de Bary, depicting Confucius and certain later Confucians as Old Testament prophetlike figures, suggests that the true Confucian spirit is one of protesting and rectifying governmental injustices. This model of Confucianism, de Bary illustrates, is not a backward dogmatist intent on maintaining the status quo at all costs, but a whistle-blower, a moralizing evangelist responsible to the people and to heaven for speaking out against existing evils and abuses. Throughout, de Bary sympathizes with the scholar-official who feels trapped between the needs of the people and the will of an autocratic government, which reflects a parallel dilemma in today’s China. Review “It is a pleasure to read a book by a fine scholar who is not distracted from his discussion of the evolution of Confucianism from the time of Confucius himself (who drew on earlier traditions) by the trouble Confucianists had, and created, over the millennia. Gu Jiegang, who said we should study one Confucius at a time–he changed from a historical figure to a mythological one (even a magician) and a sage–would have liked this book.”―Asian Studies Review From the Back Cover In Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and other parts of East and Southeast Asia, as well as China, people are asking, ‘What does Confucianism have to offer today?’ For some, Confucius is still the symbol of a reactionary and repressive past. For others, he is the humanist admired by generations of scholars and thinkers, East and West, for his ethical system and discipline, among other qualities. About the Author William Theodore de Bary was John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University, Emeritus, and Provost Emeritus at Columbia University. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐It is a book that I will re-read when I am 78 years old.

⭐The common caricature of Confucianism as the stodgy stick-in-the-mud pawn of the powers that be may be unfair, but it somehow remains hard to shake. Still, it gets quite a rattling in “The Trouble with Confucianism,” an eloquent and thoughtful consideration of the Confucian tradition’s complicated and sometimes tense entangled relationship with the political authority of the day, whichever day that may be. Ranging from Confucius himself and other noted movers & shakers to lesser known figures like the Ming loyalist Lu Liu-lang (who snuck radical critiques into his commonly used study guides) or Fang Tung-shu (who insisted on public debate concerning the late Qing’s many woes), the several chapters of this book brilliantly highlight the Confucian gentleman’s self-imposed mission of moral advocacy on the part of the people and the common good vis-a-vis the ruler along with an often risky ethical imperative to speak truth to power.Not that we’re cheerleading here–due attention is given to potential pitfalls and blind spots in the Confucian approach and to the inevitable cases where they dropped the ball like the rest of us (not the only scholars to ever get co-opted, let’s be real), but by the end it’s hard to see Confucianism as a moribund and retrograde rubber-stamp ideology rather than an imperfect but noble–and extremely multivocal–intellectual endeavor that has plenty to say to us yet. Or, as Fang Tung-shu might add, “from the self to the state and nation, from a single item to the myriad kinds of affairs, what is there not subject to discussion?”

⭐This is a 100-page monograph expanded from a talk about the resurrection of Confucianism which is freely available online. De Bary takes a sympathetic but unsparing look at Confucian government and its downsides. Of course, he is not the first to do so; Confucius himself was the first to criticize the shortcomings of other scholars. Anyway, it’s an interesting attempt to navigate Confucian waters.

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