The Anti Neo-Democracy Theorist

Something I wrote……

Confucius, Virtue, and Participation in Wei Yuan’s discourse

Wei Yuan (魏源) was an important New Text scholar who advocated greater participation of elites in the national affairs of the Qing dynasty in China. I will argue that Wei Yuan’s stresses on Confucius’s virtue and Confucius’s inability to influence policies of his time helped to justify his theory of broadening political participation in Qing times. Through stressing these elements of Confucius, Wei Yuan argued that broadening political participation was naturally inevitable so as to enhance the virtue and authority of the emperor.

Wei Yuan believed strongly in broadening political participation of national affairs by elites in his essay “On Governance.” By instrumentally using three poems from the past, “Deer Call”, “Woodcutters” and “Brilliant Are the Flowers”, Wei Yuan argues that greater participation by elites in governance was important and natural:

The deer cry out to one another while foraging for food……the birds call in chorus to seek their companions……The first stanza [of “Brilliant Are the Flowers] has “everywhere asking for counsel,” the second has “everywhere asking for instructions,” the third has “everywhere asking for good plans,” and the fourth has “everywhere asking for advice.”[1]

Just as the deer and birds sought companionship, the emperor should naturally seek out like minded elites to help run the nation. In addition, the emperor should sought advice from such elites repeatedly and consistently from all quarters of the country in order to govern effectively. In addition, Wei Yuan’s premise for broadening participation among the elites rested on the anvil of virtue. The strong emphasis on virtue for rulers was shown when Wei Yuan remarked in his essay on “The Pursuit of Profit”:

Is his wisdom sufficient to prevent the rise of the villainous and his strength [sufficient to suppress] covetous scheme? The sage rules over the superior men of all-under-Heaven by virtue of the teaching of moral norms (名教mingjiao), yet he rules over the common people by providing sources of handsome profit.[2]

Without virtue, it was impossible for the emperor to rule the empire justly. By questioning the corrupt nature of some rulers from the past who failed to augment their wisdom with sufficient consultation with elites, Wei Yuan was thus arguing that consultation of elites was of utmost important for the emperor so that he or she could maintain high levels of virtue.

What was even more significant was that Wei Yuan extended the concept of virtue, traditionally associated only with the emperor and his immediate advisors, to the broader base of elites by stressing certain aspects of Confucius. Confucius was one of the key figures in Chinese history that emphasized virtue in governance. Confucius argued in the Analects that, “he who governs by means of his virtue is, to use an analogy, like the pole-star: it remains in its place while all the lesser stars do homage to it. (为政以德，譬如北辰，居其所而众星共之)” (Analects 论语Lunyu 2.1) Wei Yuan’s reference to Confucius in “On Institutional Progress in History” was thus significant:

If Confucius had gained an influential position and had been enable to carry out the way, he would have carried out great systematic reforms (dabian qifa) long ago and replaced aristocratic familism with [officials] trained in the Four Curricula. [3]

Wei Yuan’s explicit dual focus on Confucius’s inability to influence policies of his times and Confucius’s potential nature for virtuous, just and effective leadership seemed to be just a call for the emperor to consult widely. By emphasizing Confucius as a man who did not realize his potential during his times, Wei Yuan was also saying that many elites like him were not consulted despite them share the same forms of virtue as the emperor. The intellectual logic thus goes like this: Just as Confucius was an “outsider” in his times, Wei Yuan and his fellow intellectuals were “outsiders” in the nineteenth century Chinese bureaucracy. Just as Confucius embodied virtue, Wei Yuan and his fellow intellectuals were virtuous men too. It is thus unnatural for the emperor not to consult Wei Yuan and his fellow elites widely. It would mean that the emperor’s own virtue would be diminished.

To conclude, the Confucian utopianism as advocated by Wei Yuan required a collective vision by the elites of society. This collective vision meant a more inclusive form of governance that would enhanced the “virtuous” authority of the emperor by incorporating the likes of Wei Yuan into the bureaucracy. By enunciating the separation of Confucius as a virtuous philosophy for governance and Confucius as a person who did not achieve his potential, Wei Yuan made two convincing points for broadening political participation. Not only would broadened elite participation helped to maintain the emperor’s power through enhancing virtue, it would also create a better bureaucratic system in China where it would be natural for similar men of similar virtue and wisdom to work together for the betterment of society.

[1] Wei Yuan, “On Governance,” Guweitang neiji 3:1-5b, trans., by Philip Kuhn, in Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia, 2000), 189.

[2] Wei Yuan, “The Pursuit of Profit,” Mogu xia, sec.3 in Wei Yuan ji 1:43-45, trans., by K.C. Liu, in Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia, 2000), 193.

[3] Wei Yuan, “On Institutional Progress in History,” Mogu Zhipian, 5,9, in Wei Yuan ji 1:48-49, 60-61 trans., by K.C. Liu, in Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia, 2000), 195.