What Can We Learn from the Dialogues of Confucius?

The Dialogues of Confucius (Kongzi jiayu 孔子家语; hereafter Dialogues) is a document dating to the Warring States period, or, rather, many documents collected together, all purported to originate in the ideas of Confucius (Kramers 1950; Yang 2016). In his preface to the Dialogues, Kong Anguo says that the Dialogues is made up of the leftovers after the “most authentic and sensible” documents were formed into the Analects. But some parts of the Dialogues, he says, “reflect the original thoughts of Confucius.”

What distinguishes the Dialogues on a formal level is the sustained theme of many of the passages. Whereas the longest thematic statement (11.26) in the Analectsis a mere 315 Chinese characters long, the longest thematic statement (all of chapter 32) in the Dialogues has 2,208 Chinese characters. And it is not unique in this respect. In fact, a large portion of the Dialogues is comprised of long thematic statements, which I will refer to going forward as essays, even though, precisely speaking, they belong to the dialogue genre. The briefest of these essays is 497 Chinese characters, and there are 13 further essays between the shortest and the longest, for a total of 15, most of them whole chapters in themselves. Of the 44 chapters of the book, 11 are unified statements around a single theme, or set of interrelated themes (Table 1).

The textual histories of the Analects and the Dialogues are both complicated and run parallel to each other. Neither text was known as a unified text prior to the Han dynasty, and yet both are said to be collections of pre-Han material (Loewe 1993). One reason that the Analects is widely known and the Dialogues is not is that the Analects circulated in various forms during the early Han, whereas the documents of the Dialogues remained housed in the imperial archives, uncollated (Kong Anguo, Preface to the Dialogues). But there is a second, and more important reason for the historical preeminence of the Analects over the Dialogues, which is that the contents of the Analects are largely found only in the Analects, while much of the content of the Dialogues is found in various other collections that date to the Han dynasty, and this overlap allowed for the Dialogues to be falsely branded a forgery, arresting its development (see Kramers 1950 and Yang 2016 for details). The relationship of the Dialogues and other texts with overlapping material (e.g., Shuoyuan, Liji, Dadai Liji, Xunzi) is like the relationship of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. Just as Luke and Matthew likely date back to an earlier manuscript, known as Q (in addition to the Gospel of Mark), so the contents of the Dialogues and other texts date back to common sources. It is not the case that one extant text is the basis of the other extant texts.

Dai De, Dadai Liji

Taken together, chapters 21 and 32 present a seamless theory of governing, from the moral psychology of the individual, to social organization, to society as grounded in natural processes, to the metaphysics of the natural processes themselves, thus adumbrating a metaphysics of morals from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic. Before we begin, however, let us first note one significant difference between chapter 32 and its companion version in the Liji.

After a description of li 礼(ritual propriety) that occurs in both versions, the Liji version says:

故谋用是作，而兵由此起。

It was at this point that [people] created and employed deceitful schemes; and military weapons came about. (Ing 2012, p. 107)

禹、汤、文、武、成王、周公，由此其选也。

The figures Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, King Cheng, and the Duke of Zhou arose in the midst of all this. (Ing 2021, p. 107)

The Dialogues version does not refer to scheming. Further, its reference to the former sage-kings reads as follows:

禹、汤、文、武、成王、周公由此而选，未有不谨于礼。

Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, King Cheng, and the Duke of Zhou obtained power this way, [but] they also earnestly performed li.

We do see a certain kind of theoretical tension in the Dialogues, but it has nothing to do with li, which is viewed as unequivocally good. The tension is between loyalty to the ruler as a person and loyalty to the ruler as a virtuous head of state. This tension gets fleshed out in Mencius, where the regicide of tyrannical rulers is condoned. According to chapter 32 of the Dialogues, tension arose with Yu’s passing the crown to his son and beginning the Xia dynasty, the first imperial dynasty— the origin of the hereditary system. Prior to that, as many early texts profess (and as Dialogues chapter 23, which is dedicated to describing the Five Chiefs, spells out), each of the Five Chiefs passed the crown to men of high capability, not to their own sons. The theoretical tension is resolved by the virtue of the ruler and his use of li. As long as the hereditary system produces rulers who are virtuous and follow li, the primary purpose of government—safeguarding the peace and prosperity of the populace—is achieved. And so, Confucius states that although his heroes (Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, King Cheng, and the Duke of Zhou) all perpetuated the dynastic system, they were also virtuous leaders, guiding the government and the people through their use of li.

To summarize, the Liji version of this chapter is problematic for its association of li with 1) the questionable practice of hereditary rulership (instead of meritocratic rulership) and 2) scheming. In what follows, I will outline the multi-level process of moral psychology and governing found in Dialogues chapters 21 and 32 and briefly demonstrate their distinction from more familiar theories from the West.

We saw in the above description of the theoretical tension in chapter 32 a worry over the method of selecting rulers. Confucianism is often blamed for perpetuating a fundamentally authoritarian style of government, preferring methods of amelioration over revolution. The Dialogues as a whole, however, while not going so far as openly advocating revolution, repeatedly stresses the popular foundation of government—in both positive terms of “valuing the people over all else” (e.g., in Dialogues 13.9, Confucius replies to a question from Lu Duke Ai about how to govern, saying: “As for the crucial aspects of good government, nothing is more important than helping the people live long and prosper.” 政之急者,莫大乎使民富且寿也), and in negative terms of “the dangers of not putting the people first” (e.g., Dialogues 7.2 says: “A sovereign is a boat, and the people are water. Water not only supports a boat, but it can also capsize it. You can come to understand danger by reflecting on this.” 夫君者，舟也；庶人者，水也。水所以载舟，亦所以覆舟。君以此思危，则危可知矣). Chapters 21 and 32 detail the complexities and subtleties of this multi-level, cyclic process.

Let us begin with the theme of the people as the foundation of the government. In contemporary Western economic and political theory, which is a combination of social contract theory and free market theory, the fundamental unit is the individual, who freely associates with others, and together they create the laws that allow for political and economic order. The individual under this scheme is presumed to be free and rational, with each individual pursuing their own ends and constrained by the regulations agreed on by majoritarian decision-making.

It is widely known that the free market system devised by Adam Smith stems from theories of the French physiocrats, and J. J. Clarke (1997) has shown that the physiocrats developed their theories from the Chinese notion of wuwei 无为, or nonaction. The similarities are not hard to see. In the so-called “invisible hand” of the marketplace, the decisions and actions of self-interested individuals produce goods for society overall. In Daoist wuwei, the ruler does nothing, and yet society is well-ordered.

Dialogues 11 is devoted to the story of Confucius visiting Laozi, but few details are given beyond the statement that Confucius studied liwith him and learned from a set of aphorisms inscribed on a statue. Other chapters, however, fill in the details, closing the purported gap between Daoist and Confucian theories. The Dialogues offers a theoretic roadmap for the unification of ideas that are often unfairly separated into Daoist and Confucian camps.

This self-governing (zizhi 自治) system, according to Dialogues 21, is more complex than just sitting back and allowing the people to pursue their own self-interest. It is not just the king that matters, but all leaders. Dialogues 21 stresses the need for a special kind of relationship between leaders and the people. First, a leader must lead with de 德, a moral authority that stems not from coercion but from virtue. De is the active manifestation of dao 道in the individual and is effected through emptying oneself of overt ambition and preconceived notions.

By witnessing virtue in their ruler, the people come to trust him, and this allows for a close (qin 亲) relationship to form. The people no longer feel the need to act out of self-protective fear of menacing law and oppressive edicts and become selfregulated. Self-regulation of the people, therefore, begins with the humility and virtue of the ruler, who demonstrates that he has their best interests at heart rather than his own. The close ties between the upper and lower echelons then become a self-reinforcing mechanism. But it is not so simple as just this. The people are motivated by their own desires and emotions. Leaders cannot be obtuse to, or even ambivalent about, the people’s wants and needs.

Whereas the Laozi focuses on the ruler in the apex position, Dialogues 21 focuses on the level of the civil service leadership. The leaders’ goal is not to govern but for the people to be self-governed. Both levels of society—the leaders and the people—need to internalize the model for proper behavior, which acts like a fresh spring, an endless constructive resource. The system laid out in Dialogues 21 begins with a humble, virtuous, and caring leader, who, through modeling his behavior, creates intimate bonds with the people and thereby brings out a similar kind of virtuous behavior in them, who, then, instead of needing to be governed, become self-governing. In Dialogues 32, we see three clarifications of this system of self-regulation: in the ruler, in moral psychology, and in metaphysics.

Dialogues 32 speaks to the position of the ruler, who “conceals” himself. The term “conceals” here is not just about hiding away but has the sense of storage for later use, as in a treasury that stores money to be distributed as needed. In this sense, it resonates with the image of the endless spring in chapter 21. The ruler is a resource for the people. In addition, this chapter points in the direction of both microcosmic moral psychology (the need for people’s amusement) and the macroscopic functioning of the cosmos (participating with heaven and earth). The crucial instrument that mediates these is li.

The division of the cosmos into yin 阴and yang 阳eventually becomes perceivable through human senses of sight, taste, and sound. As beings created by and living among the very same cosmic forces, human beings are motivated by and responsive to them. We live in a sea of perceptible cosmic resonance. But these forces must achieve balance and moderation internally and externally, and li is that moderating influence.

Li is not a tool wielded by an authoritarian ruler. On the contrary, it allows for the establishment of an intimate and trusting relationship between social levels of the governing and the governed, resulting in a populace that, through the wise and virtuous ministrations and modeling of the governing strata, is not so much governed as self-governed.

The skill episodes in Zhuangzi are often taken to be examples of wuwei, and a moment’s reflection on them reveals that the successful deployment of wuwei comes about through a long process of focused investment of attention. According to the overarching model in the Dialogues, a model that moves between macrocosmic and microcosmic levels, and that encompasses moral psychology, economics, politics, aesthetics, and metaphysics, the forces that account for the blowing of the wind and the motivation of human behavior are forces that flow when functioning properly and that otherwise stagnate. Maintaining that flow, that congeniality, is the long task of the leadership. Once that task is accomplished, and the flywheel spins on its own momentum, the people become self-governing.

In the Western democratic systems of self-interested economics and self-governing politics, there is an ever-present danger of the tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968), which is manifested so self-evidently in the seemingly intransigent case of climate change. The destruction already effected by climate change and its manifold threat that looms over our future should give pause to any sanguine satisfaction with our current system. Could it be that something was overlooked when the physiocrats and Adam Smith adopted the system of wuwei from the Chinese, and could the Dialogues of Confucius be the hidden key that unlocks this mystery and leads us to a more optimistic future?

There is an overlooked and very basic mechanism in the system depicted in the Dialogues that could be adapted and adopted into our current system. Although the Dialoguestheory depends on mysterious vocabulary like yin, yang, and taiyi 太一, we can easily interpret these today as metaphors for the balancing of opposites and the integration of multiple working components. Fundamentally, the forces that motivate human beings in the Dialogues are the same as the forces that create change and bring abundance in the cosmos, i.e., a familiar naturalism.

The Dialogues speculates that when people do not feel safe, and do not feel connected to those around them up and down the hierarchy, their self-interested actions in competition with others will lead to negative outcomes. There will be exaggerations of accumulation, extravagant demonstrations of wealth, the pursuit of personal pleasures at the expense of others, and a lack of concern for the welfare of others.

Self-regulation of the people , according to the Dialogues, depends first and foremost on the self-regulation of the leadership class. As long as they are unrestrained in their behavior, the people will also be unrestrained in their behavior. But something almost magical happens when members of the leadership class cultivate virtue, humility, and respect. They need not deploy these moral traits for the benefit of the people in a complex system of government. They need only deploy them to the extent that they build trusting relationships with the people.

It is worth speculating on the key causal mechanism that elicits self-regulating behavior in the people by dint of the self-regulating behavior of the leadership class. One causal mechanism is described with some clarity. If the rulers lead with good behavior, they will act as models for the behavior of the people, and the people will follow these models. With all of the recent cognitive and social scientific research on the topic of emulation, there is certainly some truth to this. Human beings tend to imitate the behavior of those around them, especially the behavior of role models.

But the Dialogues also suggests another mechanism. When the leadership class pursues unrestrained desires, it is not only that the populace follows this model of unrestrained behavior. The people are also effectively abandoned by their leaders and left to their own devices. When members of the leadership regulate themselves, they naturally forge caring ties with the people, and the levels become bound together in relationships, instead of just being independent parts pursuing their own individual ends. There are connections between individuals, and there are connections between levels of social organization. The close ties that are emphasized in both chapters 32 and 21, and throughout the Dialogues, turn us toward a society that is not made up of so many individually functioning agents but rather of agents living beyond their own narrow ends.

I am not suggesting that Confucius anticipated the tragedy of the commons and constructed a micro-macrocosmic theory to combat it. Instead, I am suggesting that in a society where the people feel tied to each other by bonds of intimacy, not only laterally and within families, but up and down the hierarchy, the full range of human desires, needs, and wants can be accounted for, and their moderate fulfillment will result in a life that is sufficiently rewarding, without putting communities, or the entire human population, at risk.

Recent Confucian solutions to the limitations of democracy and the tragedy of the commons reduce the influence of popular democracy in favor of a technocratic legislative body (Jiang 2018; Bai 2019), but what is to moderate this body? Without the moderating power of li facilitated by humility, virtue, and respect in the leadership, there will be nothing to moderate the forces of laissez-faire economics, and thus nothing with the power to avert a tragedy of the commons.

Brian Bruya is currently a professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University. In addition to his role at EMU, he has also held visiting positions at the Collaborative Innovation Center of Confucian Civilization of Shandong University and the Department of Philosophy at National Taiwan University. He received his BA, MA, and PhD degrees from the University of Washington and the University of Hawaii, respectively. His research interests include pre-Qin philosophy, philosophy of action, philosophical psychology, and aesthetics.

（本文刊载于《走进孔子（中英文）》2023年第2期。本刊出版版权所有，未经允许，不得转载本刊文字及图片。）