Book Review

Asia

Generalizations. We can't live with them and we can't live without them. Easy to make, they are equally easy to dismantle. In fact, we know (at least proverbially) that "all generalizations are false, including this one." So how can anyone feel comfortable generalizing about something as large and complex as "Confucianism?"	1
The editors of the volume under review suggest a reasonable, if not particularly novel, strategy. Having decided that there is indeed something in China's cultural heritage that can be described as "Confucian," they encourage us first to take into consideration various "systematic interpretations" of the "Confucian tradition," recognizing that "a certain degree of determinism and reductionism is the besetting sin of all generalizations, no matter how tenable and valid they are" (p. 2). They then advocate tracing the "inexorable constant shifts and alternations, here and there in time and space," that have occurred within the "intellectual boundaries" of this particular tradition. Their ultimate aim is to show how the "boundaries between Confucian and other traditions were imagined, negotiated and shifted" (p. 2).	2
The problem with this strategy is that we are never told exactly what is "Confucian" about the "Confucian tradition." It is fine to resist essentialism, but how can one critically evaluate something in the absence of identifiable features? Were there not some beliefs shared by all of the thinkers whom the editors have subsumed under the rubric "Confucians?" Or do they have some other rationale for employing this slippery term?	3
The first essay, by Michael Nylan, titled "A Problematic Model: The Han 'Orthodox Synthesis,' Then and Now," suggests some of the interpretive difficulties. As she points out, even during the Han dynasty, the term Ju (usually translated "Confucian") had at least three distinct meanings, only one of which referred directly to what she describes as "Confucius' Way of jen [benevolence] and the Five Relations [i.e. ruler and minister, father and son, husband and wife, younger and older brother, friend and friend]." And we know that interpretations of even these two presumably "core" concepts varied significantly among those who considered themselves followers of Confucius (which is, of course, one way to define "Confucians").	4
In an attempt to sit more comfortably between the rock of generalization and the hard place of particularity, the editors tell us that their anthology "is not devoted to delineating a body of texts, doctrines, discourse, and practices in order to define what Confucianism is in any given period" (p. 3). Rather, they seek to show how Confucianism "was mapped along the grids of text and discourse, sometimes in relation to other traditions such as Taoism and Buddhism, [and] at other times with reference to internal sectarian interests" (p. 3).	. . .