Abstract
As both Chinese philosophy and Indian philosophy have been largely marginalized on the world stage of philosophy in contemporary times, there is a pressing need to bring these voices into the discourse of world philosophy. This essay explores the value of taking into account the Confucian idea of harmony for postcolonial solitary and for a more equitable polycentric global academy. I explicate the concept and the value of harmony as exemplified in Confucian philosophy. I examine reasons of the disappearance of harmony in dominant Western philosophical discourse by comparing various conceptions of harmony in the West. Greek philosophers Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Plato presented competing conceptions of harmony; whereas Heraclitian processive harmony presupposes opposites, tension and conflict, Pythagorean harmony and Platonic harmony are founded on a pre-determined order. In the contemporary West, from Karl Popper to Martha Nussbaum, harmony has been treated with disdain while it is taken in a Platonic sense. In East Asia, both Confucianism and Daoism take harmony/harmonization as an effective way to accommodate diversity and difference. I will then focus on the Confucian dynamic notion of “harmony with difference” and argue that such a conception is far from naiveté and it has important implications if it is taken seriously in contemporary philosophical discourse.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I benefitted greatly from a month-long reading workshop on Chinese and Indian philosophy organized at the Institute for Social Justice (Delhi) in July–August 2017 and from discussing Indian philosophy with Patrick Olivelle, Donald Davis, Shail Mayaram, Ananya Vajpeyi, and Rajeev Bhargava.
For a discussion of Greek harmony in comparison with Confucian harmony, readers can see Li (2008).
I should note that Sandel cautions that he is not communitarian in the majoritarian sense that the majority is always right or in the view that “rights should rest on the values that predominate in any given community at any given time.” (Sandel 1998: x)
For a robust reading of this view, see Ames (2011).
For a critique of Sandel on this account, see Li (2017).
For systematic account of Confucian dynamic harmony, readers can see Li (2014).
For a full account of Asoka’s harmony philosophy of politics, see Bhargav (2019).
References
Ames, R. (2011). Confucian role ethics: a vocabulary. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Ames, R. (2019). “Confucian harmony (he 和) as an optimizing symbiosis,” paper presented at the international workshop on “harmony as a virtue” at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), 15–17 July 2019.
Bhargav, R. (2019). “Harmony as the first virtue of social norms and practices: the case of Asoka.” Paper presented at the international workshop on “harmony as a virtue” at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), 15–17 July 2019.
Freeman, K. (1983). Ancilla to the pre-Socratic philosophers: a complete translation of the fragments in diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of communicative action, volume two: lifeworld and system: a critique of functionalist reason (Book). Translated by Thomas A. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.
Jenco, L. (2016). Introduction: on the possibility of Chinese thought as global theory. In L. Jenco (Ed.), Chinese thought as global theory (pp. 1–25). Albany: The State University of New York Press.
Jin, K. 金. (1998). Reading the Great Learning 读大学. In 王. W. Yuanhua (Ed.), 《释中国》 Interpreting China (1998th ed., pp. 1337–1352). Shanghai: Shanghai Wenyi Chubanshe.
Lai, K. 来可弘(2000). The Guoyu interpreted《国语直解》. Shanghai: Fudan University Press.
Li, C. (2008). The ideal of harmony in ancient Chinese and Greek philosophy. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, VII.1, 81–98.
Li, C. (2014). In 2014 (Ed.), The Confucian philosophy of harmony. London: Routledge.
Li, C. (2017). Community without harmony? A Confucian critique of Michael Sandel. In M. Sandel & P. J. D’Ambrosio (Eds.), Encountering China: Michael Sandel and Chinese philosophy (pp. 3–18). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Nussbaum, M. (1986). The fragility of goodness. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Nussbaum, M. (1990). Love’s knowledge: essays of philosophy and literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Popper, K. (1945). The open society and its enemies (2 Vols). London: Routledge.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sandel, M. J. (1998). Liberalism and the limits of justice (second ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sen, A. (2006). The argumentative Indian: writings on Indian history, culture and identity. London: Picador.
Van Norden, B. W. (2017). Taking back philosophy: a multicultural manifesto. New York: Columbia University Press.
Acknowledgment
This author would like to thank David Lawrence for inviting me to participate in a conference on “Dharma and Anticolonial Solidarity with the Other” at the Dharma Academy of North America Annual Meeting in Denver, 16–17 November 2018, which prompted me to write this paper. My gratitude also goes to two reviewers of this journal for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Funding
Research for this essay was financially supported by a SSRC grant from Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE2016-SSRTG-0007).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Li, C. Bring Back Harmony in Philosophical Discourse: a Confucian Perspective. DHARM 2, 163–173 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-019-00047-w
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-019-00047-w