A nice little piece in today’s NYT Sunday Magazine by Annping Chin, describing the revival of ancient Chinese thought in contemporary China, told from the perspective of a Chinese philosophy student.  She mentions a fairly common view of Confucius:

They [certain Chinese students] understand why Confucius described himself as a transmitter and
not a creator and why he said that he “had faith in antiquity.”

 This image of Confucius is drawn from passage 7.1 of the Analects:

The Master said: "Transmitting insight, but never creating insight, standing by my words and devoted to the ancients: perhaps I’m a little like that old sage, P’eng.

       That is Hinton’s translation (he says the reference to "P’eng" is obscure)  Here, for contrast is Ames and Rosemont:

The Master said: "Following the proper way, I do not forge new paths; with confidence I cherish the ancients – in these respects I am comparable to our venerable Old Peng.

    Some interesting differences there, but the underlying theme is the same: Confucius here is rejecting the idea that he is an innovator; rather, he is presenting himself as a person who is true to historical traditions, simply transmitting ideas and values from the past to the present without creatively altering that intellectual flow.

      While that is certainly an image Confucius wanted us to have of him, it is also certainly not true.  Confucius was an innovator.

      Various people have made this point before. I remember first encountering it in Simon Leys’s translation of the Analects and, then, as I was drawn more deeply into Confucianism, in Hall and Ames’s marvelous Thinking Through Confucius. 

     I will not attempt here to recreate all facets of this counterargument, which holds that Confucius was very much creating a new way of looking at the world and challenging the settled practices of his own time, but only mention one important idea.

     Confucius works against the dominant political formation of ancient China: aristocracy.  Or, at least, he rejects the idea of political legitimation based upon hereditary claim to a kingly family line.  Rather, the wise and virtuous should rule.  Analects 2.19 says it rather directly:

Duke Ai asked: "What must I do to make the people willing subjects?"

"If you raise up the straight and cast out the crooked," replied Confucius, "the people will honor you.  If you raise up the crooked and cast out the straight , they’ll never honor you."

     This idea is repeated in passage 12.22.  Notice how it is not qualified.  It does not say raise up the straightest son of the current king or the straightest brother of the favorite duke, or whatever.  It strives for a cleaner, more general criteria of meritocracy.  Now, that is a fraught word, meritocracy, I know.  But I think (like Leys) that it suits a Confucian sensibility.  "Merit," of course, would be defined in terms of progress toward Humanity.  And, as Mencius makes very clear, the humane should rule.  If the son of the current ruler is "crooked" or inhumane, he should be cast aside, not be given power over others.

      That is a fairly radical idea, for 500 BCE China.  Now, we can debate just how much of a break with contemporary practice it was, but it seems fairly straightforward that Confucius, and Mencius, were doing more than merely "transmitting insights."  They were innovatively creating the philosophical foundations for meritocracy.  They were forging a "new path," even as they extracted it from their reading of history.

    Whether one sees Confucius as a transmitter or as an innovator matters for contemporary politics.  Chin, in her article, reports:

…History does not just provide actual lessons from the past, but, more
important for the students, history gives them the chance to consider
the right and wrong of human judgment even though the deeds were done
long ago. And for this reason, they are taking the long view of their
country’s future and are reluctant to put their hope in any sort of
quick fix or in any ideal, even one that is as appealing as democracy.
They want change but are not ready to consider drastic corrections, not
until they have absorbed what is stored in their history and cultural
tradition. They are not utopians. They want reforms but, for now, only
as measures to check the totalizing tendencies of their state. And,
some of them ask, was this not the intent of the founding fathers when
they wrote the American Constitution?

 If the Chinese students overemphasize the "transmitter" image of Confucius, one that emphasizes continuity with the past and a rejection of new practices and ideas, then their thoughtful hesitancy to press for political change might grow into something more like reactionary conservatism.  If they see that Confucius was creatively using the past to change his present, they might be more willing to press ahead with reform.  Democracy need not be utopian in a Chinese context; it might be quite possible with a Mencian twist or two.