| Chapter 6: | New and Old Elements on the Centrality of Self |
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vary from time to time. Accordingly, the judgment of today cannot be the same as yesterday. Thus, if Confucius had been able to come back to the present, he would have not adopted the same parameters of his time; in other words, if some of his teachings did not apply to the present situation, they would have had to be changed or replaced. The tradition established on the Classics can only offer some wisdom that people must then develop and integrate with their own life experiences and creative intuition.
The judgment of right and wrong among men basically does not have a definitive character. This judgment depends on men, and there is not a definitive conclusion. The lack of a definitive judgment means that evaluations of right and wrong run parallel without being in contradiction with each other. Therefore, what today is right or wrong can be precisely what for me, Li Zhuowu, is right or wrong; it may also correspond to the common judgement of thousands of generations of sages and the great personages of history; but it may also correspond to the opposite opinion that I hold, hence overturning the one given in the past until today. I believe that my value judgment is valid. I do not talk about the Three Ancient Dynasties here. But, during the three successive dynasties, Han, Tang and Song, for over eleven centuries not a single judgment of the right and wrong has been formulated. Why nobody has been able to do so? Because all have [always] borrowed what they thought would have been the judgment of Confucius on what is right and wrong, and so nobody has ever exercised his judgment. So how do you rely on the judgment of others for the evaluation of right and wrong? Disputes over right and wrong are like the passing of years and seasons or the alternation of day and night; they cannot be pulled together. What was right yesterday is wrong today. What today is wrong will still be right tomorrow. If we could revive Confucius today, no one would know how he himself would judge right and wrong. Therefore, how can we arbitrarily condemn or appreciate everything on the basis of a supposed definitive criterion? [...].40