This review in the New Yorker of some books on Hannah Arendt and this post by Peony on Arendt got me to thinking (and that can be dangerous at times). And that thinking involved Confucius, since I noticed an idea in Arendt that seemed solidly Confucian, but another idea that was not. Now, I do not expect a twentieth century thinker like Arendt to be perfectly consonant with Confucianism. But the contrast of ideas here brought up some questions about what Confucianism can be in a modern context and what public life should be based upon.
First, here are a couple of lines about Arendt from Peony:
….She is, indeed, like many European philosophers concerned with our
POLITICAL condition (and that means, she is, like Aristotle, concerned
with our SHARED human experience). That is to say, really, that if
thought does not somehow inspire action, if one does not lead a life of
action (vita activa) then our thinking will remain impoverished (this is the great rejection of Plato).
This sounds Confucian to me. In order to work toward Humanity, we must perform our duties. Thought must inspire action. And although Confucian Duties start first in what Arendt might consider the personal realm, with our families, they radiate outward to society at large. Indeed, the idea of shared human experience is a major concern of Confucius. It is precisely because the shared experience of his own time, the dissolution of the central Zhou kingdom and the prevalence of inter-state warfare, was so violent and immoral that he worked to create a new social order. He was trying to improve, albeit from the inside our (i.e. working from family to community to "nation"), shared human experience. He believed that to make that improvement, thought must inspire action. And he held that those who were best at managing their closet loving relationships, the most virtuous among us, would be best to lead the rest of us as we created a shared human experience.
But love seems to separate Confucius and Arendt. Take this passage from the New Yorker piece:
Arendt’s experience at the Eichmann trial bolstered the belief that
defines her political philosophy: that there must be a rigorous
separation between love, which we can experience only privately, and
respect, which we earn in and require for our public lives. If it is
true that, as Arendt once observed, “in the works of a great writer we
can almost always find a consistent metaphor peculiar to him alone in
which his whole work seems to come to a focus,” then her thought is
certainly focussed on the image of distance or separation. A dignified
individual existence, she believes, requires distance from others, the
“interspace” that she described in the Hamburg speech. Compassion is
dangerous, in her view, because “not unlike love,” it “abolishes the
distance, the in-between which always exists in human intercourse.”
What preserves that distance, on the other hand, is pride—the pride of
equals that she finds exemplified in the political realm, the “public
space.”
I am not good enough on Arendt to be able to say if this characterization is problematic. But let's take it as accurate. I think it moves away from a Confucian sensibility, which would not require "a rigid separation between love…and respect." Of course, for Confucians, not all loves are the same: we will naturally feel a stronger love for our families than for strangers. That, in a sense, is the genius of Confucius. He recognizes the commonality (but not universality, I know: there will be some people who, for whatever reason, do not love their family; but that does not fundamentally undermine the larger Confucian presumption) of familial love, and he makes that the basis of his understanding of our primary duties. This should make the fulfillment of Duty rather easy. We will want to do the right thing for those that we love. And if we do that, we learn how to do the right thing more generally and that, then, gives us a moral orientation for going out into the world to do the right thing in social and political contexts. Furthermore, those who love best at home (i.e. manage their family duties properly) will gain the most respect publicly. Public respect is an extension of familial love.
Thus, what starts out as a recognition of differential love (we love our families more than strangers) ultimately leads to a theory of extensive social action. You can't really separate the personal love from the social and political action.
A Confucian might accept the idea of "distance" between individuals in the public space, a distance defined by respect. But that distance should not, for a Confucian, preclude social action inspired and modeled on familial love. Perhaps it is simply a matter of extent: Arendt wants more social distance than a Confucian would. And I think a Confucian might worry that too much distance might become an obstruction to extending the enactment of Duty from the family realm into the public space.
At the end of the day, I find myself drawn more toward the Confucian perspective. Too much distance could produce a barren and uncaring public space. I can understand how Arendt, personally, might not have wanted to have her closest loving relationships open to the public (which is something perhaps required by Confucianism: the public needs to know if a leader is properly performing his family duties). But the theorization of her personal complications may have produced an impoverished notion of public space.
The Useless Tree 
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