The Useless Tree

Vamping for the Venerable Sage

    OK, I guess I have to comment on this (from Danwei):

The movement to revitalize traditional learning is well on its way to success now that it has a pin-up girl.

Bai Luming, a 19-year-old student at the National Academy of Chinese
Theatre Arts, claims to be a 53rd-generation descendant of the poet Bai
Juyi.

"I’ve asked people, do you know what my greatest talent is? Their
reply: I don’t know. My greatest talent is seduction, and not even
Confucius is out of the question. Confucius said "Appetite for food and
sex is human nature"; If I go to relieve his thousands of years of
loneliness, he’ll definitely be pleased."

      Guoxue – "national learning" – is the term used for traditional education, which would include poetry as well as philosophy and history and ethics.  But do we really need a "guoxue spice girl? (another Danwei post; scroll down a bit)

     I must admit, she is a fetching young woman:

Guxuebabe2

       







      Now, I try not to be too stuffy and conservative, but this is not quite what I have in mind when I think of making ancient Chinese thought applicable to contemporary times. It is, however, what inevitably happens when modern global markets meet traditional Chinese culture.  Wackiness ensues.  Is she a bad thing for the reinterpretation of ancient thought?  Perhaps a bit, since it is hard to be taken seriously when nubile young things are prancing about in all their splendor.  I can’t really say: "yeah, I’m trying to modernize Confucian thought, just like Bai Luming is…"

     But there is no need to get all huffy and moralistic on her.  Let the girl have her fun.  If she wants to be an exhibitionist, fine.  I don’t think she will hurt the project of those of us thinking through ancient thought in new ways.  She will have her fifteen minutes of way more fame than I will ever gain.  And then she will fade, as celebrity always does, and we can continue asking: what would Chuang Tzu do? (I think he would just laugh at it all…..so, I’ll follow his lead.)

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8 responses to “Vamping for the Venerable Sage”

  1. David Li Avatar
    David Li

    Weirdo and wackiness run the Internet. We all remember JennyCam, don’t we? 😉
    However, what’s wrong with her approach that warns the concern of polluting “serious” Guoxue? She’s clearly a product of modernization of China. If she’s going to stir up debate of ancient thought through the interpretation of the hip-hop listening and Britney Spears watching 19 years old teen brain, more power to her. Just hope she’s going to make better quote then “Trust our president in every decision.”

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  2. Alexus McLeod Avatar
    Alexus McLeod

    The problem with this is that it seems to be not irrelevant to ancient (Confucian) ideals, but antagonistic to them. Remember, Confucius often complained that part of the reason we are unable to focus on “humanity” (ren) is that we are bogged down in our concerns for pleasure, and he considered sex one of the worst offenders. As far as motivation is concerned, consider Analects 1.14 (I use Slingerland’s translation here): “The gentleman is not motivated by the desire for a full belly or a comfortable abode.” Also, 2.16: “working from the wrong starting point will lead to nothing but harm.”
    Given these (and many other passages like them), how can anyone who is motivated to “guoxue” through such hankering after pleasure possess the kind of motivation Confucius says we ought to have? Moral motivation is a major concern of the Analects. It is not enough that we perform certain actions, we should also have the right motivations. It is the lack of right motivation in the populace that led Confucius to make the (eerily relevant) complaint in Analects 9.18: “I have yet to meet a man who loves Virtue as much as he loves female beauty.” Thus for Bai Luming to claim that she is somehow grasping the spirit of Confucius is quite ridiculous.

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  3. David Li Avatar
    David Li

    The quotation “I have yet to meet a man who loves Virtue as much as he loves female beauty” could be argued has been wrongly translated. In the original “De” could have been translated into “Rationality” while “Se” been translated into “Instinct.” The teaching is to overcome the instinct with rationality.
    Confucius never considered sex an offender. In fact, he acknowledged it to be a human nature and simply advise young hormone filled males to restrain from it. And modern medicine has just shown that teen males think about sex in the frequency of every 5 minutes! It’s also unlikely for Confucius to be negative about sexuality as he has expression of his admiration of Yellow Emperor and his way of healthy life. One of Yellow Emperor’s legacy his book on the important of sex in a healthy life, especially in his older age. This has also be verified by modern medicine that regular sex reduce the risk of heart attack in middle age men.
    In the Analects, he said “pleasure of food, sexuality are main desires of human nature” as well as “teenage should restrain from the sexual desire, young man should restrain from desire to fight, old man should restrain from greed.” Sorry about my own translation. Will provide the citation and quote in original Chinese if necessary.
    Analects is really an Q&A between Confucius and his students that’s open for interpretation by its readers. Most of the his statement has been an observations of humanity and his advise on the way of life. He’s no Moses and Analects is no Ten Commandments.
    As Bai Luming’s indecent proposal to Confucius? I think depending what age of Confucius she’s attempting. The older Confucius may just say “Bring it on, go girl!” 😉 Judging from her blog, she’s confusing Confucius’s teaching and the conservative, sexual prohibited society built up by the government in the name of Confucius. One more word, China isn’t historically conservative about sex. I suspect Qing dynasty has done much to promote the restriction on sexuality as a foreigner minority ruler over majority Han. Ming dynasty has quite extensive publications on sexuality. Jin Ping Mei to be one of its best seller.

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  4. Casey Kochmer Avatar
    Casey Kochmer

    what would Chuang Tzu do? (I think he would just laugh at it all…..so, I’ll follow his lead.)
    Yes he would laugh
    and he would smile at the beauty in life 🙂 for she does have beauty.

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  5. Alexus McLeod Avatar
    Alexus McLeod

    Hi David–
    thanks for your comments on my comments to Sam’s post. Whew..!
    I don’t think Confucius recommended sanctions against sexual behavior, but at the same time I disagree that he didn’t think it was one of the worst offenders against Ren. Things which get in the way of Ren, for Confucius, ought to be suspected.
    I think 9.18 shows at least that Confucius took se (whatever that is–although I think something like “beauty” is right) to stand in the way of de. What he’s not seen are hao de ru hao se zhe–ones whose appreciation for de compares with their appreciation for se.
    I don’t think your translation of se as “instinct” is correct–first because it is unclear how we can have an appreciation (hao) for instinct, and how this would stand in the way of rationality. Also, translating “de” as rationality is to, I think, paste a Platonic concept on Confucian thought where such did not exist. Confucius was concerned with Ren, not with rationality. The ideal for Confucius was the junzi or the sheng ren, and these were supposed to be people who possessed virtuous character. I’m not sure the Platonic requirement of reason (with its subsidiary concepts of consistency, argumentation, etc.) would have entered into this at all. This is why contemporary philosophers often get on Confucius’s case–for not stressing the virtue of Reason. However, Confucius is not Plato, and not in the “rationalist” tradition. This is not to say that Confucius’s teachings are not reasonable or rigorous, but that Confucius did not have (or take to be so important) the robust conception of “Reason” we see in the ancient Greeks and throughout the western philosophical tradition. Personally, I think this is a virtue of ancient Chinese ethics.
    Anyway–9.18 has Confucius holding that attachment to one thing stands in the way of attachment to another. Since the se is what stands in the way of de, the suggestion here is that we should pay greater attention to de than to se. And if se implies things like sex, than this means that we should pay greater attention to de than to sex, because we’re always on about sex. Sure, this isn’t an express condemnation of sex, but it does show that we should give sex a relatively smaller role in our lives than we do, instead emphasizing de.
    I think Confucius’s response to Bai Luming would be that she is acting as part of the problem. We don’t need to think more about sex–as you say, most young boys (and most of us adult males as well) think about sex non-stop. But how many of us regularly take time to think about virtue, about Ren? How much of our time do we spend wrapped up in sex, and how much wrapped up in Ren? Confucius seems to claim, and I agree, that it is not even comparable. Thus, while sex might not be prima facie a bad thing, it it bad to be so wrapped up in it that we pay attention to it when we should be paying attention to virtue. Does our society really cry out for more attention to sex–is that what we need? Confucius, I think, would say no (think of how much sex saturates our daily lives already–bombarding us on every side). It is Ren that the society needs, and lacks (no one is bombarding us with Ren, trying to make us think about it all the time!). Thus what Bai Luming is doing is simply a distraction–she’s trying to get us to think about sex, rather than virtue. Sadly, many women these days are doing this kind of thing, because they see beauty as being a major part of their self-worth. This seems to me the result of many years of patriarchal sexism. Women like Bai Luming would serve society much better by cultivating virtue, and the worth of this would be incomparably greater than the worth of emphasizing sex or even physical beauty (I think Confucius would also agree with this). But Bai Luming insists on emphasizing se instead of de, both to her own detriment and those who become even further mired in se as a result of her actions. She is thus standing in the way of virtue.

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  6. Allan Lian Avatar
    Allan Lian

    The quotation “I have yet to meet a man who loves Virtue as much as he loves female beauty” could be argued has been wrongly translated. In the original “De” could have been translated into “Rationality” while “Se” been translated into “Instinct.” The teaching is to overcome the instinct with rationality.
    You know, David, one has to be circumspect in the presence of top class scholars of Confucian studies like Professor Sam Crane and knowledgeable readers. It can be embarrassing if what one posts is all that one knows. And it may even be possible that all one knows is rather shallow to discerning readers.
    One has suggested earlier that you reread the Tao Te Ching it may help if you also reread the four Confucian Books too. Meanwhile Zhuangzi would be able to tell you why Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) was healthy in his old age. And if you do not disbelieve tales of Daoist immortals, his good health had nothing to do with sex. While doing further studies, perhaps you could also familiarize yourself with the five Classics, without which students like us could be out of their depths in discerning the thoughts of the ancients.
    It sounds a bit arrogant to disparage renowned Western translators such as James Legge by saying their translations are wrong, since by what you have written, you do not even know the reason why and when Confucius made the remarks: “I have yet to see the man who loves virtue as much as he loves beauty.”
    If you have taken the time to check around, Legge had left a brief footnote to tell about the event where it was uttered. The note did not describe the event in its entirety, but the Shiji (Records of the Historian) did:
    Nan – tzu, a beauty, was the wife of Duke Ling of Uei. Confucius had been over a month in Uei when Duke Ling drove out in a carriage with his lady (Nan – tzu) escorted by the eunuch Yung Chu and with Confucius an assistant escort. In this fashion they drove openly through the streets. After Confucius made those remarks, he left Uei in disgust for Tsao.
    Do remember that ancients like Laozi, Confucius, Zhuangzi and Mencius also learned from their ancients. Confucius’s remark highlighted the same mistakes of Chou Hsin the last emperor of Shang and that of Emperor You, the last ruler of Western Zhou. But even those who came later never learned – the last Chinese emperor who made a similar mistake lost the Ming dynasty.
    It is human nature to admire beauty, but to get enamored with beauty and neglect kingly duties (performed with virtue) causes a disservice to both the people and country.

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  7. Alexus McLeod Avatar
    Alexus McLeod

    Also, as far as I know, this quote about food and sex being human nature is from Gaozi in the Mencius (6A4), not from Confucius in the Analects. And Mencius is arguing against this view of Gaozi’s.
    Also, even if Confucius were to agree with Gaozi’s claim (which I don’t think he would), it is far from obvious that we should think human nature ought to be followed. This depends on one’s view of what makes one virtuous. Remember that Xunzi interpreted Confucius as claiming that we ought to fight against human nature through li (ritual), because he held human nature to be morally repulsive.

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  8. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    Allan is being too polite: I do not consider myself a scholar of Confucius or of ancient thought in general. I am merely a popularizer, taking reasonable translations of the old books and applying them to contemporary circumstances. Thus, I would never enter into a debate on literal translation. But I would say that I find Alexus’ consideration of “de” to be persuasive. It has always struck me (and I tend to gravitate toward the term “integrity” as an English equivalent) as being about a thing realizing the full potential of its innate character. Everything has its own “de” (integrity) and a summation of all de’s is Dao. Thus, it is not really a matter of rationality. That does not mean it may not be analyzed rationally. But, even at this level, we must recognize the there is a type of understanding beyond rationality. I am thinking here of Chuang Tzu: “those who divide things cannot see.”
    And I tend also to agree that, while Confucius was not a prude, he would probably look at our modern cultual obssessions with sex as overwrought. So, I think a modern Confucian would find Bai Luming to be a diversion, perhaps an inevitable one, but a diversion all the same. Just another pretty girl heating up the qi of young men.

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