Becoming human(e): Confucius’ Way to仁 and the Imitation of Christ in Yi Byeok’s Essence of Sacred Doctrine (聖敎要旨; Seonggyo yoji)

Abstract

As it is well known, 仁 (ren2) or ‘Humanity’ is composed of the combination of two characters, namely that of human being (人, ren2) and that of two (二, er4); hence it is expressive of the relationship between human beings. ‘Benevolence’ is a valid translation too, but ‘Humanity’ carries the ‘human’ element that strikes the Chinese audience just the way it does for a Westerner, immediately relating man with humanity. Humanity is not primarily a matter of inner conscience or internal virtue but is first and foremost a social virtue, hence the link between humanity and what we can translate as ‘empathy or ‘reciprocity’, 恕 (shu4) in Analects 15.24 about the ‘one rule’ that one can use and practice one’s whole life, and that is about not doing to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. The willingness to put oneself in the position of another to try and understand the world as another sees it is a closely related feature of reciprocity, and this is why Wing-tsit Chan, for example, translates the word as ‘altruism’. Analects 4.15 is headed in the same direction with the all-pervading unity and single thread of Confucius’ teaching as explained by Master Zeng:夫子之道,忠恕而已 矣。 “The Master’s way is all about being ‘principled’ (or ‘sincere’) and ‘benevolent’ (or ‘fair’)”. (忠恕; zhong1shu4). Confucius, to be sure, did not make up or coin the word仁, but he gave it a key position within his philosophy: before him, it was just one virtue among many; in Confucius’ thought, it became the very marker of virtue itself. Now, there’s nothing like a ‘systematic’ philosophy in Confucius; and, to be fair, the very idea of systematic philosophy is so perfectly alien to Confucius and even to the Classical Chinese language that one cannot even forge an apt way of conveying the idea of what a modern Westerner has in mind when it comes to ‘systematic philosophy’. And that is not because modern-day Westerners are smarter than the Chinese of old, but because we see things differently to begin with. As a result, one has to keep in mind that Confucius himself would rather think of himself as a political advisor, a pedagogue, a teacher, and a counselor who tries to address situations and events in context rather in the abstract. Confucius is quite the opposite of an idealist; he is a practical thinker keen to learn from