How to Approach the Confucian Concept of Humaneness (ren/jen)
In our previous reading of the Analects, a collection of dialogues between Confucius and his students, the most recurring theme was the importance of humaneness (spelled as ren or jen in English). As many of you may have detected though, there was no definition of what humaneness was. Confucius was explaining it in different ways to different disciples (the names we encountered in the de Bary selection were all famous disciples of Confucius who recurred frequently in the Analects). This observation is confirmed in many writings, including an essay by Tu Wei-ming, one of the leading Confucian scholars in the U.S. and the world today. In his "Jen as a living metaphor in the Confucian Analects," Tu argues that humaneness/jen essentially described practices related to interactions within a human community (Tu, p.46). The Chinese character for humaneness 仁 literally stands for "two people." One central component of the concept of humaneness, as Tu points out, is the "self as a center of relationships rather than as an isolatable individual." (Tu, p.47) This human individual self was responsible for communicating the different views of the Way while maintaining a pool of communally shared values. Humaneness, in other words, was essentially about how individuals were to deal with the myriad relationships with others to maintain the common good. It affirms a sense of individualism--allowing the individual a degree of freedom to best link individuals to communal values in an authentic way while keeping a certain degree of individuality, e.g. based on an interpretation of these values according to one's temperament and habits.
Ultimately, humaneness was a social value, hence its close association with love and altruism (Tu, 47-8). But humaneness is also a value that incorporated many specific virtues, including love, intelligence/wisdom, courtesy, diligence, respectfulness, kindness, and courage.(Tu, 48-9) A humane person, in other words, acts "right" on all occasions: he is brave when the occasion calls for bravery, sincere when sincerity is needed, loving and kind when these two qualities are called for, and of course, he does all these with complete truthfulness.
Tu also discusses the relationship between humaneness/jen with chih/wisdom. A humane man may possess wisdom, but a man of wisdom may not have humaneness, and, without humaneness, he is not able to sustain his wisdom. (Tu, 49-50) Humaneness is a state of being, a "holistic manifestation of humanity in its commonest and highest state of perfection." (Tu 50)
Compared with humaneness, rituals/li, another important aspect to Confucian learning, is interpreted by Tu as a means to help the realization of jen/humaneness, a process of humanization.(51-52) Obviously secondary to ren/humaneness, li was to help strengthen the character traits of humaneness, just as weight lifting, for instance, is used to strengthen the muscles.
There are many different approaches to the Confucian concept of rituals. Overwhelmingly, though, the concensus is that rituals are secondary to humaneness. In his recent article, Chenyang Li compares li to grammar, and ren to language: just as grammar constitutes language, yet cannot be equated with language, and just as language cannot be defined with just a few words, so humaneness/ren/jen cannot be defined with a few words. On the other hand, a person of humaneness must know rituals/li. This, the author implies, is even more important when one studies a second language--mastering the grammar is crucial when the language is not one's native tongue. (Chenyang Li, "Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation Between Li and Ren in Confucius' Analects," Philosophy East and West, 57:3(July 2007): 311-329)
Much of the content of the Analects that Tu covers is covered in the de Bary reading. It will be useful to compare the Confucian definition of humaneness to our idea of humanism, or humanity. Humaneness is one of the greatest contributions Confucius made to Chinese culture. Humaneness as the highest ideal for a human being gradually replaced birth as the criteria for selecting leaders of China. Meritocracy was born in China by the 8th century, at a time when feudalism, or hereditary rule by nobles, was beginning to take root in much of Europe.