Confucius and East Asian modernity ethic
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But despite the prominence of the Enlightenment mentality among the Chinese scholarly discourse, the need for broadening its intellectual scope and deepening its ethical basis is obvious. As feminists, ecologists, communitarians and comparative religionists have said, the Enlightenment mentality is seriously flawed. Premised on anthropocentrism, instrumental rationality, Euro-centrism, male orientation and egoism, it is inadequate in providing symbolic resources for understanding religion, nature, community and cultural diversity.
There is an urgent need for a comprehensive and integrated humanistic vision, which is musical to religious voices and sensitive to ecological concerns. Can we broaden the intellectual scope and deepen the ethical basis of the Enlightenment mentality so that it can serve as a source of inspiration for the human community in dealing with the grave issues of poverty, unemployment, social disintegration and environmental degradation?
Admittedly, economic globalization is so overwhelming in shaping the discourse in international politics that cultural diversity pales in comparison in terms of power, wealth and influence. Yet culture matters.
The idea of the economic man who, as a rational animal, understands his self-interest and tries to maximize his profit in the free market adjudicated by law appears to be impoverished (and cannot be a source of inspiration) for leadership training in institutes of higher learning in North America.
The economic man certainly exhibits values such as rationality, liberty, legality and rights-consciousness. Yet values such as responsibility, civility, decency, sympathy, empathy, compassion and social solidarity are absent. It is no longer persuasive or adequate to characterize liberty, rationality, rule of law, and human rights and dignity of the individual as "universal" values. And justice, righteousness, sympathy, civility, responsibility and social solidarity have always been "Asian" values.
The time is ripe for a dialogue among civilizations that focuses on the core values necessary for human survival and progress. The philosophical enterprise to identify the "universal ethic" must be augmented by thick descriptions of paths of learning to be human. Civilizations do not clash. Only ignorance does. The danger of shared vulnerability as well as the hope of shared aspiration impels us to move beyond unilateralism in order to work toward a dialogical civilization.
In the age of reason, when the Enlightenment movement began to shape the Western mindset, leading thinkers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), Voltaire (1694-1778) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), took China as an important referent country and Confucianism as a significant referent culture. With an eye on the future, it is likely that the spirit of East Asian modernity imbued with Confucian characteristics will serve as a reference for public intellectuals in North America and Western Europe as well as for intellectuals elsewhere in the world.
The author is director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University, research professor at Harvard University and a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Science. This is an excerpt of his speech at the recent Nishan Forum on World Civilization, held in Shandong province.
