“Heaven is the father; Earth is the mother. And I, this tiny thing, dwell enfolded in Them. Hence, what fills Heaven and Earth is my body, and what rules Heaven and Earth is my Nature. The people are my siblings, and all living things are my companions......
All under Heaven who are tired, crippled, exhausted, sick, brotherless, childless, widows or widowers – all are my siblings who are helpless and have no-one else to appeal to. To care for them at such times is the practice of a good son. To be delighted and without care, because trusting Them (Heaven and Earth) is the purest filial piety”
(translated by Bryan W. Van Norden[1]
These are extracts from the so called “Western Inscription” written by Confucian philosopher, Zhang Zai (1020-1077) and pinned on the wall of his study. It's a simple enough statement of benevolent intent, and in being simple is of universal salience. Zhang Zai apparently had it displayed thus as a daily reminder to himself of his self-assumed philosophical and ethical mission. Here is philosophy with relevant and concrete meaning, as a practice of living and not mere intellectual quibbling.
Furthermore, here is an open and benevolent intellectual vista or horizon, a universalist attitude very much in contrast to the particularism, tribalism, identitarianism, racism, nationalism, and general sectarianism inculcated by our capitalist system, which it both generates and feeds off of- ( and with ever increasing intensity).
Sometimes I encounter, even in the thinkers and social/political leaders I greatly admire, a certain dismissal of very basic moral sentiment. I think possibly the conflation of morality with issues of personal/sexual/gender nature in the past (and still now) probably lies behind the antipathy to moralising. That is greatly unfortunate, because morality at root is simply an awareness of commonality and subsequent, an intention to benefit rather than harm. In other words, a dedication to benevolence.
The false conflation of morality with particular issues of a very personal nature has more to do with the co-option (long ago in the west) of spirituality and religious institutions by the ruling class and established authorities. These elites could certainly not allow for real, living moral dedication to flourish and thus challenge the very nature of the system that maintained them in power. Instead of the ever-relevant, always-urgent questions of social justice in all things, including just distribution and redistribution of resources, morality was intentionally confused and wrapped up in matters of personal behaviour, having nothing really at all to do with the common good.
The language of universal benevolence may be criticised as being too vague, and is certainly out of step with the zeitgeist of this age of the celebration of controversy and contrarianism, of tribalism and identitarianism, of the valorisation of viciousness and shallowness, of the burgeoning of cults of division and disinformation, all of which reflect the artificial ethos of capitalist advertising – where anything and everything can be made true or false by simply stating it loudly and boldly.
But I maintain that unless a basic dedication to such simple universal benevolence as exampled in the above “Western Inscription” is there at the foundation of any and all our thinking and acting in the realm of the socio-political, then there really is no point to any of it. Without a dedication to at least always intend for our activities in this realm to be beneficial, to counter harm and suffering and to enrich and edify all the people- as well as profoundly interrelated benevolence towards all life on Earth- without these, political and social action is worse than useless.
[1] “Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, Han Dynasty to the 20th Century” , Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2014