Neo-Confucian Individualism and Holism

　　Neo-Confucian Individualism and Holism

　　in D.J. Munro (ed.), Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values

　　In this article, the author discusses Neo-Confucian ‘individualism’ – ‘Learning for the sake of one’s self’ – in the light of both the Confucian tradition Zhu Xi invoked, and the circumstances of his own age. He argues that the phrase ‘for the sake of one’s self’ should be taken as expressive, not of a radical individualism which asserts complete autonomy of the self or sees the individual as in opposition to society, but of a Confucian personalism which affirms the importance of the self or person as the dynamic center of a larger social whole, biological continuum, and moral/spiritual community. He further argues that, in the Sung, this Confucian view of the person became noticeably enlarged, in ways that reflect the expansive economic, social, and cultural trends of the times. Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian philosophy is seen as the practical synthesis of the methods for attaining sagehood or enlightenment discussed in his times. His philosophy rearticulated a perennial Confucian personalism, marked now by individualistic tendiencies typical of the Song period. That is, it expressed a more expansive view of the self responding to new opportunities and challenges. In the more complex society of the Song, the literatus had to articulate a new sense of himself vis-à-vis the demands these times made upon him – the demand for loyalty to a state grown increasingly autocratic and bureaucratic; the conflicting claims of partisan politics; the need for functional specialization in many areas of life; the relative priority of book learning and moral cultivation in the face of a daunting proliferation of scholarly literature; and the moral vaccum left by Chan Buddhism.