Mark Lilla’s article in last Sunday’s NYT Magazine has been circling through my mind all week.  While he does a great job explicating the ways in which modernization does not fully eradicate our tendency toward religion, which he refers to as "theotropism," the overall analysis of what I will call here the problem of religion would be stronger if it included some reference to ancient Chinese philosophical perspectives.

     First, let me say what I mean by the "problem of religion."  I do not mean to suggest that religion is only or always simply a problem.  Obviously, many, many people find meaning and solace in one or another form of religion.  The problem comes when religious ideas, especially the notion of an omniscient and singular God figure as an ultimate source of truth and meaning, inspire absolutist and fundamentalist ideologies, just as Lilla suggests.  He describes the problem right at the start of his piece:

The twilight of the idols has been postponed. For more than two
centuries, from the American and French Revolutions to the collapse of
Soviet Communism, world politics revolved around eminently political
problems. War and revolution, class and social justice, race and
national identity — these were the questions that divided us. Today, we
have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of
the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over
competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West
are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we
find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic
passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer
possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions
from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.

     The big problem arises when fundamentalist religious thinking impels people to kill one another – and we have seen too much of that historically.  It should be said that religion is not the only instigator of mass violence; rather, Lilla focuses only on the problem as it relates to religion.

       Perhaps the best part of the article is his point that, counter to the expectations of "Modernization Theory" (which I was force fed in graduate school), religion does not simply disappear as industrialization and social mobilization and urbanization and scientific rationalization proceed.  Yes, religion may become more constrained in its intellectuals claims but it continues to fill a significant portion of the human imagination.  In this regard, the highly religious US is not an exception to some historical rule, but, rather, less religious Europe may be.

     In any event, the problem becomes one of managing the absolutist claims of religious thinking with the diversity and need for compromise in open, modern, liberal societies.  The threat comes from both without, in the form of Islamic and other fundamentalisms, and from within, in the form of rigid, anti-science, religion-inspired extremism in US society.  Again, I am not saying all believers are extremists, but that that forms of religious extremism do pose problems for liberal society.

      So what is the answer?  Lilla doesn’t really have one.  He knows what won’t work: continued blind faith(!) in the ultimate power of modernization to undermine religious belief.  Ignoring the problem, and hoping for some grand historical transformation, just doesn’t get the job done.  He hopes for reformation from within religious communities in the direction of greater openness; and for a greater tolerance among secularists toward their religious brethren.  And all of this is nested in a well informed explication of Western political theory. 

      But where are the Chinese?  When we introduce ancient Chinese thought into this conversation, things start to take on a different look.   Consider Lilla’s brief paragraph on the origins of religion:

Imagine human beings who first become aware of themselves in a world
not of their own making. Their world has unknown origins and behaves in
a regular fashion, so they wonder why that is. They know that the
things they themselves fashion behave in a predictable manner because
they conceive and construct them with some end in mind. They stretch
the bow, the arrow flies; that is why they were made. So, by analogy,
it is not difficult for them to assume that the cosmic order was
constructed for a purpose, reflecting its maker’s will. By following
this analogy, they begin to have ideas about that maker, about his
intentions and therefore about his personality.

         In the Shang dynasty something like a singular God figure, Shangdi, was worshiped and understood as a creator or sorts.  But this image was abandoned during the Zhou (Chou) dynasty, largely for political reasons: a new regime could not claim descent from the father-god of the previous regime and needed a new basis of legitimation; and so was born a more diffuse and fatalistic notion of tian, "heaven."  This was a long and complex process but it ultimately yielded a cosmology that did not rely upon a centralized, absolute, singular source of truth and meaning in the form of a monotheistic God.   Here is Mote’s description (which I tend to call upon too much, I know):

The basic point which outsiders have found so hard to detect is that the Chinese, among all peoples ancient and recent, primitive and modern, are apparently unique in having no creation myth, that is, they have regarded the world and humans as uncreated, as constituting the central features of a spontaneously self-generating cosmos having no creator, god, ultimate cause or will external to itself. (13)

     I cannot vouch for the historical uniqueness of this orientation, but its significance to Lilla’s discussion is obvious: the Chinese, or at least some Chinese, did not seize upon religion, as conventionally defined, as the answer to the big existential questions they faced.

       Pre-Qin Confucians just did not go there. The famous "silences" of Confucius included the afterlife and metaphysics.  He did not want to engage in such issues because he obviously felt that there was enough in the human realm that needed fixing.  For him, patterns in nature and questions of origins were best understood as they were mediated by immediate social networks and relationships.  Our place in the world, and by extension the cosmos, was determined by our more direct connections to families and friends and communities.  Improving ourselves in those contexts demanded a great deal of effort, and that is where our attention should be focused.

Adept Kung said: "When the Master talks about civility and cultivation, you can hear what he says.  But when he talks about the nature of things and the Way of Heaven, you can’t hear a word." (5.12)      

     If early Confucians (and I say "early" because later neo-Confucian variations might change things) wanted to get all cosmological, they could always talk with the Taoists.

      In a way, Taoists are the precise opposite of Confucians on cosmology: instead of narrowing things down to immediate and tangible human concern, they broaden things out to a vast and incomprehensible Way.  Chaung Tzu tells us that Way is beyond us, yet right in front of us:

The Tao [Way] has its own nature and its own reliability: it does nothing and it has
no form. It can be passed on, but never
received and held. You can master it,
but you can’t see it. Its own source, its own root – it was there before heaven
and earth, firm and constant from ancient times. It makes gods and demons sacred, gives birth
to heaven and earth. It’s above the
absolute pole, but is not high. It’s
below the six directions, but is not deep. It predates the birth of heaven and earth, but is not ancient. It precedes high antiquity, but is not old. (87)

     Instead of the certainty of a singular source of truth, Taoism asks us to open ourselves to the multiplicity and vastness of Way.   There may be a kind of "order" to Way, but it is not an order that we can define concretely or apprehend completely.  Instead of searching for neat answers, we just have to accept our inability to comprehend Way.  Surrender as opposed to mastery is called for.

      Now, a couple of things might follow from this Chinese difference.  I offer these ideas as suggestions, and look forward to responses:

   1) Ancient Chinese cosmology (and I do not mean to suggest that this has carried over without change into modern Chinese thinking) might inspire more human humility than hubris.  There are big, cosmic forces beyond our control and understanding, so we should always understand ourselves as small and weak elements in a larger Way (I think this is still consonant with Confucian sensibilities).  And, if that is true, then, perhaps, this orientation  offers a unique solution to the problem Lilla outlines.  The point is not to give up religion, but, rather, to expand our religious horizons beyond absolutist monotheism.   Maybe there is room for a God-like figure in ancient Chinese cosmology: but he would not take up all the room at the top.  He, too, is surrounded by the vastness of Way and his powers might not rise to the level of omnipotent: only Way, which cannot be reduced to a God figure, is that.   Our spiritualism, in other words, could be more open-ended and less anthropomorphic.

   2)  It must be noted that, even if it is true that ancient Chinese cosmology  encourages more humility than hubris (and maybe that is why we do not find many modern Chinese terrorists today!), this did not prevent mass violence from happening in ancient China.  It was, after all, the Warring States period.  And this reminds us that the problems of brutality and intolerance  are not peculiar to religion.   These phenomena may take certain religious forms, but religion is not their only source or avenue.