414. Confucian Moral Philosophy and America's Best Hope

The founders would be very happy to read what a contemporary writer’s following statement,   “America's best hope is to adopt a more Confucian lifestyle: (1) more focused on education, (2) more respectful of old people, (3) better able to subordinate private needs to public goods, (4) more responsible to the needs of family, (5) more polite in our daily lives, and (6) more hardworking.” (What Can Americans Learn from Confucianism? A Whiteheadian Appreciation of the Confucian Lifestyle.)

The United States has developed from a small nation composed of the 13 colonies into the world power since 1776. Indeed, over the 240 years, situation changed a lot. Many things disappeared or lost in the history. However, the efforts improving American virtues through Confucian moral philosophy has remained the same as the founders’ in the founding era. The virtues Jay McDaniel listed are mainly what the founders hoped and requested the new Americans to possess.

Jay has also noticed that, “The likelihood that Americans will be learning from Confucianism increases every day. … As Hillary Clinton observes in a recent article in Foreign Affairs: "It is becoming increasingly clear that the world's strategic and economic center of gravity will be the Asia-Pacific, from the Indian subcontinent to western shores of the Americas.”

413. Confucius and the Origin of Communal Tradition in the United States

The communal tradition of the United States was started by the founders in the founding era of the United States. It was nurtured by Confucian moral philosophy the founders promoted in the new nation. 

Most people would not think ancient Chinese thought was relevant for the American founding, but Confucian moral philosophy had answers for the moral reconstruction in the wake of the independence. In his famous work The Analects, Confucius taught a life long process of moral advancement. One of my friends was puzzled by Dr. Dave Wang's paper, Confucius in American Founding. For him, Confucianism favored a hierarchical political system culminated in the emperor. How Confucianism made contribution to the cause of the founders, who fought against the monarchical society. It was also unthinkable that Confucius would support the founders radical ideals, --commitment to liberty, equality, government of the people and rule of law. 

Here we need to understand Confucianism fully. No doubt, in Confucius era, the monarchical society with an enlightened ruler was an ideal social system. Confucius taught rulers to be virtuous and formulated a series of ethic principles for leaders of state. Therefore, a very important part of Confucianism is personal virtual cultivation. Confucius requested leaders to be  gentlemen who should always claim moral leadership to exercise proper influences in order to put society in good order. Following Confucius moral principles, gentlemen with good virtue always serve the community with their talents and resources. They should devote attention to local welfare institutions, such as promoting education.

Clearly, the founders who realized the value of Confucian personal virtual cultivation, adopted his individual moral improvement in their efforts to reconstruct a new virtue for the new nation. That explains why the founders promoted the Confucian moral philosophy in the founding era. As for how they used Confucian moral philosophy, please read Confucius in the American Founding.

One of the legacies from the founding fathers efforts is that their efforts had produced the phenomenon as discovered by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1803 "that Americans were very good at associating with one another and subordinating their individualism to voluntary groups of one type or another."(Francis Fukuyama, Confucianism and Democracy).

412. Why Confucius, not Socrates in American Moral Revolution

Dr. Dave Wang's article, Confucius in American Founding, examines the efforts of the founders who used Confucian moral philosophy to help created a new virtue for the fledgling new nation. One question is that why Socrates virtue was not adopted by the founding fathers. In the following readers will find why Confucius moral principles, not Socrates were chosen in the moral reconstruction during the founding era. For the founders, Socrates's real moral principles were corrupted by Plato, Thomas Jefferson pointed out that "So again, the superlative wisdom of Socrates is testified by all antiquity, and placed on ground not to be questioned. When, therefore, Plato puts into his mouth such paralogisms, such quibbles on words, and sophisms, as a school boy would be ashamed of, we conclude they were the whimsies of Plato's own foggy brain, and acquit Socrates of puerilities so unlike his character." ( Thomas Jefferson’s Letter to William Short from Monticello August 4,1820.)

In one of his federal papers, James Madison, told his fellow Americans, "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." (The Total Number of the House of Representatives, Independent Journal, Wednesday, February 13, 1788)

Finally, in the eyes of  John Adams, Confucius comes in the first place in terms of virtue. Adams declares, “Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Mahomet, not to mention authorities really sacred, have agreed in this” goal of happiness through virtue. ( John Adams - “Thoughts on Government”April 1776) 

Confucian moral philosophy made available in the eighteenth century to wider and deeper strata of the colonists. For example, Benjamin Franklin worked hard to spread Confucius moral teachings in North America as early as 1737. Confucius moral teachings had been studied and discussed in the colonies about half century before the founding of the United States.