Dao Companion to the Analects by Amy Olberding

Author:Amy Olberding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

Is Wuwei 無為 Part of the Confucian Ideal in the Analects?

The idea that ren consists partly in what one does with other people brings us to the question of how one does it, and more specifically to the question of whether it involves wuwei 無為, variously translated as “non-action” or “effortless action.” The actual phrase is used only once in the Analects, where Shun is described as effecting proper order by simply assuming an air of deference and facing south (the ritual position of the king) (15.5). The other passage often cited in support of the idea that full moral excellence involves wuwei is the aforementioned 2.4, where Confucius describes himself at 70 as being able follow his heart’s desires without transgressing the (socio-ethical) boundaries. Edward Slingerland treats wuwei as fully a part of the Confucian ideal in the Analects as it is in a Daoist texts such as the Daodejing 道德經. He also argues that its presence in the Confucian ideal creates unresolvable tensions between the effortlessness and unselfconsciousness of wuwei on the one hand and the effortful arduousness of the Confucian path to that ideal. It therefore becomes quite important to address to what extent wuwei really is part of the Confucian ideal, and to the extent that it is, whether it really creates unresolvable tensions within the ideal.

Since there is just a single explicit mention of wuwei in the Analects, Slingerland makes his case on the grounds that the concept of wuwei functions as a metaphor for effortless action with several different but related dimensions that are expressed by “families” of metaphorical expressions (Slingerland 2003b: 59–62). These dimensions include “following” (as in Confucius being able at 70 to follow his heart’s desires without overstepping socio-ethical bounds), “being at ease” (here he cites, for example, 5.26, translating one of Confucius’ stated aspirations as “bringing ease (an 安) to the aged”), and “unselfconsciousness” (7.19 is cited, where Confucius describes himself as the type of person who becomes so absorbed in his studies that he forgets to eat, whose joy (le 樂) renders him free of worries, and who grows old without being aware of the passage of years), and “timeliness and flexibility” (9.3 is cited as indicating Confucius’ flexibility in practicing ritual as long as the crucial feeling is still expressed).

Slingerland is onto something when he points out that wuwei may correspond to several related “families” of metaphorical expressions. The thing about the kinds of metaphorical expressions cited, however, is that they blossom various meanings linked merely through association, not through logical implication. Hence they allow a speaker to attach a range of particular meanings to an expression belonging to a wuwei family without committing himself to the other meanings that have been or can be attached to that expression. For example, forgetting to eat or how old one is are fairly specific forms of self-forgetfulness. They do not logically imply that one forgets what one is doing in the sense of not being self-conscious about what one is doing.

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