Dead philosophers’ ideas usually resurrect and strive in places that are far from their original land. When the French abandoned the political thoughts of Baron de Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville and Frédéric de Bastiat, the American patriots borrowed their theories and founded a republic in the new world. Recently in the United States’ top private institutions, ancient Chinese philosophy courses have garnered popularity among students—especially freshmen.
The Atlantic reported that Professor Michael Puett’s course of Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory has become the third most popular class at Harvard University, behind Computer Science and Introduction to Economics. Students at Harvard rush to the class not only because they are exposed to a counter-intuitive reasoning of philosophy but also because Puett promised that “this course will change your life.”
Students in the course are required to read the original texts such as Confucius’ Analects, the Mencius and Tao Te Ching—texts that even most Chinese students don’t read today. These philosophers explored the human natures, self-cultivation and the way of living a harmonious life with others in their writings. Unlike western philosophy, which starts off based on a list of assumptions, much of these ancient authors’ writings are prosaic rather than structural and logical. The way that the ancient Chinese viewed human nature was radically different from most western philosophers. Confucius and Mencius believed that humans were born to be only of good character, like the snow from the air without stains. They argued that people become malicious because of the bad influence from the society and their lack of self-cultivating influence. The concept of original sin never appeared in their dictionaries.
When it comes to personal cultivation and how to be a better person, conventional wisdom always recommends Confucius’ and Mencius’ teaching. Their ideas are truly good character traits that people who are self-motivated and ambitious already have. They describe a utopian society in which each person is well-educated and respectful to one another, giving special social status to teachers and the elderly, bowing your will to the emperors and parents.
Unfortunately, the Chinese society hasn’t turned out the way Confucius and his disciples had long been advocating for since a great emperor of Han Dynasty adopted Confucianism 2,000 years ago as the state doctrine that every student must learn in school. The core idea of its political thought is that the governing officials should adopt a list of doctrines of self-constraint that help keep them from being influenced by evil thoughts. This idea externalizes the bad side of human behavior and overestimates human nature to resist temptation. Countries that have been influenced greatly by these ancient thoughts had failed to forge a civilized nation. Ironically, countries such as Korea and Japan have become prosperous and civilized at the time when they adopted the western political philosophy.
Often the reason behind these obsessions with ancient Chinese philosophy is that American students in elite schools are looking for another path to succeed as efficiently as possible. Students turn from their traditional culture and look for foreign philosophies as a guideline to lead them to better life and a bright future. The exotic philosophy is a perfect model for them in a sense that it’s a set of doctrines claimed to be perfect for self-cultivation without a supernatural deity.
Yet doctrines are still doctrines—there is no way to get around it. The nature of the ancient Chinese philosophy is nothing more than a list of rules that teach you how to be a nice person from the standpoint of an honorable ancient Chinese scholar. With that said, ancient Chinese philosophy is not unique. Other philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle and Buddha, also teach ways of how to gain wisdom and become a good person.
There’s nothing wrong with the fact that students so desperately want to open their eyes to the world that they are willing to sit on the floor in Puett’s packed classroom. But to see taking this course as a means of becoming a better person heads the wrong way. The fact speaks for itself: If these doctrines were so great, why did they fail to turn people, who learned them day and night, into the first civilized citizens in the world?
