Creativity in the Analects : how to break the rules in the right way
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Creativity in the Analects: how to break the rules in the right way Dimitra Amarantidou1
Received: 22 September 2019 / Revised: 3 February 2020 / Accepted: 5 August 2020 / Published online: 14 August 2020 © Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture 2020
Abstract The tension between creativity and conformity or innovation and tradition is evident in various passages of the Confucian Analects and has received significant scholarly attention. Among portrayals of Confucius as an outright conservative and traditionalist or as a social critic and reformer, a number of scholars have preferred to picture the Master as a moderate thinker who, above all, propounded becoming a “good person” (a ren ren 仁人), while balancing a commitment to tested social values and practices (li 禮) and creativity. The purpose of this paper is to explore the tension between the demands of abiding by and personalizing rules according to changing circumstances. This tension will be taken to be a core feature of the text, a valuable interpretative tool, and an indispensable element in the Confucian moral project. Focusing on the interpretations of two expressed demands in the Analects— “following one’s late father’s way for three years” and “bringing three corners for one”—offered by two Chinese commentators, I will attempt to see whether and how they recognize and address the tension between the requirements of conformity and the demand of creativity in the process of self-becoming. Keywords The Analects · Confucius · Rules · Conformity · Creativity Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains. G. Flaubert, Madame Bovary. In 1857, Gustave Flaubert was put to trial for publishing an obscene book. Madame Bovary told the story of a scandalous woman who defied Christian morality * Dimitra Amarantidou [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China
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and social propriety. As it happened, life imitated art and the book itself became a scandal. The tension between conformity and self-expression led the main heroine to suicide, the writer to court, and literature to Realism. There is something “at once vile and agreeable” about change (Baudelaire 1956, p. 177). Most people may not have to make grand choices or may not end up paying for doing things “their way” in the grandiose manner of an Antigone, a Bovary, a Karenina, or a Nora Helmer. Still, they will most probably experience this tension on a smaller scale; in the everyday business of abiding by rules about how to dress, talk, date, celebrate, mourn, or call the waiter. A similar tension exists within rules themselves. Although defined by and defining of the community, rules are doomed to a precarious existence or subject to an evolutionary law: to survive, they must change. Confucius was one of those who noticed and embodied this simple fact. However, we might wonder how he wo
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