| Chapter 1: | The Rationale for Reading the Analects Existentially |
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metaphysical, social, and personal schemes.41 The Way is metaphysical in the sense that it is the largest context for the discussion of social and personal dimensions of life. Ethics, in turn, is social in that it emphasizes the person-to-person relationship. And finally, illness and poverty are personal experiences because usually the person involved feels strongly about those conditions and the need for self-cultivation to transcend himself or herself, as will be discussed in chapter 2. The three dimensions of the human condition are treated separately in this study, even though the social and personal and even metaphysical dimensions are sometimes hard to separate from one another in the text of the Analects.
The existential concerns referred to in the text prompt us to explore the answers Confucius provides to them. Throughout his career, Confucius for the most part remained calm and cheerful (the exceptions were the circumstances already mentioned, particularly the deaths of his son and of his favorite disciple, Yan Hui). How was he able to achieve that advanced spiritual state? What did he propose to his disciples (for that matter, what do his teachings offer modern readers) that could assist in living a life of fullness, a life without fragmentation? In the following chapters, I discuss these questions.
My existential reading of the Analects is in conformity with the great Confucian tradition of scholarship, especially that of the neo-Confucianist representatives Cheng Yi (
)42 and of the New Confucian scholars Mou Zongshan (
)43 and Liu Shuxian (
).44 This method of reading demands that a reader participate vicariously in the life of the figures or the people in the work. The purpose of this kind of reading is not merely to gain knowledge, though such knowledge is important, but to transform oneself through participatory knowledge and existential response.
The Relevance of Paul Tillich’s Existential Theology
Theology as it is understood in Western terminology is generally not adopted to interpret the Analects, for Confucianism itself is generally considered to have no theology. But as Professor Yong Huang pointed out