translating virtue

   

It was a hot, windless afternoon and the Master had led his students outside, to sit under the shade of the giant tree standing in the courtyard. As they gathered around him, the large group of young men grew so silent that they could just barely hear the sound of a myriad of birds taking flight over the Ganges River-- thousands upon thousands of miles to the west. The whole world grew very still and...

Drawing in his breath deeply; the Master slowly opened his mouth to speak:

吾未见好德如好色者也

"It is a rare man who would turn his mind to virtue when he could follow love instead" (Analects 15.13)

Nobody dared to say a word. And so the Master, with a smile on his face, spun on his heels and walked away. Really what more could be said? And the Master looked quite pleased with himself too (a fact to which everyone present later confirmed). 

Beijing, however, complains: "It's a rather innovative translation, don't you think?"

The problem being the word "love," of course. And, I realize that in our times so high do we hold Love （愛）that "love" （恋）for us must carry much more weight than it ever could possibly have for the ancients. In all fairness, the word is not really "love," but rather 色。Beijing thinks that it should probably be translated as

I've yet to meet anybody who is fonder of virtue than of sex

Fair enough, but I just don't think people talked that way back then. I mean, I cannot imagine them talking like that at least. And being in a stubborn mood, I try to persuade him:

"But what does the character 色 itself convey but the emotion felt when two people are embracing; in love." 

As a compromise, however, I here offer this:

"It is a rare man who would turn his mind to virtue when he could follow romance instead"  

Approximately 2500 years have passed since the time Kongzi was said to have uttered these words-- and in one sense, I guess it is partly comforting to think- how little has changed. A teacher wishes to gently urge his students to "keep their eye on the ball." We are all human-- and everyone loves romance-- but it's important to try and stay the course. On the other hand, I cannot possibly imagine that Kongzi is criticizing his students. They're not, afterall, monks-in- training.

To me, the interesting question is what do you think the Master would say to a bunch of students today? In one sense, it seems like romance and love affairs have really been banished to a place outside acceptable conversation ("family values" etc.)-- is it just me or do other people just find it impossible to imagine a teacher telling his students:

     It is a rare man who would choose study over romance

This is not religion and the students are not monks in training. Rather, this is philosophy concerned with how to live a good life. And, as I read the analects again after all these years, I am struck by the way in which something in the project feels somehow very similar to the project of poetry:

to never deny desire or emotion-- but to refine it like art

Saying this to Beijing, I wasn't necessarily saying that through the Rites or study that all desire or emotion should be civilized as to be no longer recognizable as such (sublimated in the form of archery, for example). But rather, more like poetry, that emotion is refined and moderated. 

**

Anyway, the readers of these pages will all be interested to learn that through my travels in this blog-- I have come to re-think my previously-held dark-and-gloomy conviction that people are no longer able to be swept away by things, or to be really moved by someone or something. 

Some of you will recall that the philosopher I work for in Hiroshima is very interested in a German thinker named Wolfgang Welsch (who teaches at Schiller University at Jena). I have written about his work in greater length here (or better here), but Welsch writes a lot about what he characterizes as our contemporary focus on "amusement and the virtual."

This from his Undoing Aesthetics:
 
In surface aestheticization the most superficial aesthetic aesthitic value dominates:  pleasure, amusement, enjoyment without consequence. This animatory trend today reaches far beyond the aesthetic enshroudment of individual everyday items-- beyond the styling of objects and experience-loaded ambiances. It is increasingly determining the form of our culture as a whole. Experience and entertainment have become the guidelines in recent years. A society of leisure and experience is served by an expanding culture of festivals and fun. And whilst some of the all too strident offshoots of aestheticization, or singular aspects of the cosmetics of reality, might raise a smile, with its extension to culture as a whole, this is no longer a laughing matter. 

What is interesting about this phenomena--beyond the obvious resulting anti-intellectualism and philistinism-- is that there is a "leveling;" whereby "experience" and "having fun" (entertainment) create what Welsch calls the Disneylandification of our emotional experiences-- that is to say: everything loses its depth.

To be emotionally carried away-- or moved-- by music; by beauty; by art; or to be carried away by another person (in love); to be carried away by landscape somehow seem to be retreating outside our ability to experience.

**

Travel back in time 1000 years.

There meet a young man who writes of falling so deeply in love that he is unable to function--indeed, he can barely breath. Maybe he would say falling in love with that woman was like a thermonuclear meltdown in his heart...

Totally impressed, I recall the words of a friend, who once wrote that

Our passions are like the sail”, a generic Hindu guru once said, “and our reason — like the rudder. Without the latter, the boat will founder; but without the first, it won’t go anywhere.”

This is very much how I think of the Master's advice. I mean, even the southern song landscapes that I love so much-- while they may have been called "untrammeled"-- in fact, they were moderated and refined expressions of emotion plus reasoned restraint (but remember the boat ain't going anywhere without the passion part).

Finally, over a bowl of noodles, I ask Adonis' father what he thinks about the passage. Immediately, he responds,

"Sex is the worst translation"

"Why?" I ask (though I already know exactly what he is going to say).

"Because 色　is not 遊び and in the end, it doesn't matter whether the person acts on their feelings or not-- it can all be inside his own mind and still be 色。” And then after another few slurps of noodles he says, 心の動き、それだけ。("it's all about being moved")

Amour

**

From Beijing, who says that this is probably the real context of 15.13: The Romance of Nan Zi 

And, for Beijing: A slide show here with some good shots of the 新光戲院

Photo above is one of Jim Gourley's Top 40 China Photos. This particular one is one of my personal favorites.

And speaking of photographers I like, here is Michael Wolf (I've been wanting to buy his book of hong Kong photographs for some time) Architecture of Density is HongKong and Transparent City is Chicago.

 

Comments

[Peony (as 楊貴妃)]

MW:

"And if this be but a dream, never may I wake"
Tamasaburo's Yokihi Part 2

[Manyul]

There's a lot here, as usual. Let me try to massage my own disparate thoughts about this Analects passage in a way so that they end up all in a similar trajectory at least.

First thought: 'love' is a bad translation for se 色, but so is 'sex.' Se seems like it's both "superficial" and "experiential" in the aesthetic way that your quote from Welsch suggests is problematic. I haven't read any Welsch, but I imagine one of the problematic things is that the kind of aestheticized experience to which he refers tends to diminish action, freedom, agency, or some other less passive exercise of existence. I wonder if Analects 15.13 expresses a similar worry--"I've yet to see someone who enjoys moving things more than being moved by them."

Second thought: de 德 and sexual attraction are certainly not exclusive. There's this wonderful bit of passage in the Dechongfu 德充符 (Completion of Virtue) section of Zhuangzi:

"There was an ugly man in Wei, called Ai-tai Tuo. His father-in-law, who lived with him, thought so much of him that he could not be away from him. His wife, when she saw him (ugly as he was), represented to her parents, saying, 'I had more than ten times rather be his concubine than the wife of any other man.'... he must have been different from other men. I called him, and saw him. Certainly he was ugly enough to scare the whole world. He had not lived with me, however, for many months, when I was drawn to the man..."

De is the power to move others, and you can do it sexually as well as morally.

Third thought: I could certainly see a social critic saying a similar thing today--"I have yet to see someone who enjoys being influential more than being influenced."

I think you and I are making the same points, but I'm not sure.

[Chris]

Peony:

You know we don't see eye to eye on this passage. In any case, you might find these sayings of interest, at least worthy of being tossed into the overall interpretative hopper:

16.7: Confucius said: "The gentleman guards against three things; when he is young, and the blood a vital essence are still unstable, he guards against the temptation of female beauty; when he reaches his prime, and his blood and vital essence have become unyielding, he guards against being contentious; when he reaches old age, and his blood and vital essence are on the decline, he guards against being acquisitive."

(Note: Rosemont and Ames translate the first in terms of "licentiousness")

4.11: The Master said: "The gentleman cherishes virtue, whereas the petty person cherishes physical possessions. The gentleman thinks about punishments, whereas the petty person thinks about exemptions."

4.16: The Master said: "The gentleman understands rightness, whereas the petty person understands profit."

1) I think there's a shared theme here, no?

2) Now in your passage above 15.13, the xiao ren are not explicitly mentioned, but I think it's not a jump in interpretation to assume that this is who he is talking about (the contrasting typology, anyway).

["A"]

Hi Chris,

No, I wasn't actually aware we disagreed on the passage. I thought we agreed on the passage but disagreed about something else. Regarding your examples, two brief comments:
1) I don't even need to see the Chinese to guess that "temptation" and "licentiousness" are 追加表現　added by the "enthusiastic" translators. And indeed, all translation is interpretation-- there is no way around it and as a translator I remain sympathetic to these translators. However, in this case, I would say the english says more about the translators than perhaps about the original text.... maybe?

A little victorian sensibility in pre-qin times?? hmmm.

2) The contrasting typology doesn't fit. The semantics are too different (in my opinion). 15.13 is about degree (I would argue) perhaps within all of us-- not typology. Even if this is a virtue versus beauty setup, it is not-- in my opinion-- a virtuous man versus aesthete setup (like in Kierkegaard). This point is not insignificant either I would argue.

I stand very close to Manyul on this one. And actually will upload a post on his example in a bit.

[Chris]

Maybe we did not disagree. Maybe we did? In any case, I'm sure after 6 or 7 rounds of posting, we'll figure it out!

In any case, I am with the other translators. Above I put out the Slingerland and Ames/Rosemont, and I'm guessing these three aren't shabby translators. Here is Lau, Brooks and Brooks, and Sturgeon, respectively, with respect to that key phrase:

(Lau): "...who is as fond of virtue as he is of beauty in women."

(B&B): "...who loves virtue has much as he loves beauty."

(Sturgeon): "...who loves virtue as he loves beauty."

That's 5 vs 1 (or 2, if Manyul is with you). I side with the interpretative majority, the crowd, the public, das Man, the Herd, the One, or whatever, on this one. :)

Whether it's a matter of degree or type can be a matter itself of degree. I mean we could all agree with in the LY there are no purely "virtuous" people. But that to the side, I think we're talking about typologies here, or degree differences great enough that they might as well be typologies.

Also, I should note that I do *not* think this is a "virtue vs. aestheticism" setup; it's a "virtuous life vs aesthetic life" setup. The difference is clear even in Kierkegaard: he doesn't doubt that the ethical life, or the religious life, contains aesthetic aspects. So for K (and for Confucius, I'd argue), ethics is not opposed to the aesthetic. But that said, the ethical *life* is opposed to the aesthetic *life*. In the former, ethics is the meaning of "the good life" and in the latter it is the pursuit of the aesthetic. This, IMO, is a central point in both K and C. For C, virtue has the higher position, and the aesthetic is subordinated to it.

I'd be open to thinking that the ethico-aesthetic in C is more closely conjoined in C than it is in K. But I'd still argue that there's a difference -- pushed in 15.13 -- between being driven by virtue and being driven by beauty.

[Peony]

That's 5 english-speaking men-- who in all probability based their translations closely on the previous translator's work. That said, I am not against "a beautiful woman" (That being the Japanese translation and I do *not* disagree with it).

I dislike beauty as a translation however.

I also disagree with the virtuous life versus the aesthetic life as I do not see these two concepts in any way as standing in contrast to each other-- except in terms of degree (In this passage). I am reading a very interesting paper right now by a man who both "know and love" and in it he discusses two different models: the perfectibility model versus the natural development model in virtue ethics. He is only discussing this in terms of Mencius, however, he complains of commentators (I assume he means anglophone) "foisting" the perfectibility model (based on Aristotle) on to their readings of mencius. I suppose I feel similar here in that this is not a path for enlightenment (or a leap of faith) but rather a path for balanced and moderated moral engagement through lifestyle choices and ritualized habits.

In any event, I am not sold on equating 色 with beauty (or the aesthetic) Hence, for that reason I cannot really go on to your next point about which is given priority because I still am not reading it that way (exemplerary model is beauty and beauty is exemplerary for example).

As always, I remain open to persuasion-- and I love purple grapes :)

[Chris]

On the rightness of translations: I can only go with the overall holistic feel of the work, of course. And on that score, "beauty" seems to fit just fine to me, but I take this to be a reference to the beauty of women, not beauty in general. So if that's our disagreement, then on that level we don't really disagree.

But this is, after all, aesthetic. So still my main point holds: Confucius thinks some people are motivated primarily by aesthetic considerations, and some are motivated primarily by virtue. This doesn't require that these "types" be perfectible in either sense. You surely don't need to be perfectly virtuous to be primarily motivated by virtue. That's all I need, and I think that's all the passage implies. There are some who are motivated by virtue as an end, and there are some who are motivated by (female) beauty.

Again, though, there's nothing *wrong* with female beauty, or being motivated by it, according to C (as far as I can see). It's when it becomes one's *primary* motivation that it is bothersome. It's like riches -- C isn't against that either. But riches that come in a buyi sense should be like "passing clouds" to the person. If riches are your *primary* motivation, however, then "yi" considerations will not defeat a motivation for money. That's bad. Similarly when (female) beauty plays that role.

[Peony]

Hi Chris,

I am against the aesthetic reading of this for the following 2 reasons (which I admit are themselves based on nothing but a very bad mood!)

Here are my reasons for your perusal (and I know my chess-playing friend, that you knew that I was going to make this move but for the benefit of the debate, I lay my reasons out here):

1) I think that 色 has less in common with beauty/aesthetics 美　as a mode-- being more having to do with 遊　（play/romance)
2) We talked about this with Sam Crane at your place but it is my reading that Kongxi's virtuous life is an aesthetic/moral sensiblity so that exemplerary model is beautiful and vice versa.

It would be different if the passage anywhere used the term Beauty or better if the passage said, small people like x while sages like y. But it says really that the Master has never met a man who would pursue virtue over romance.
That is, men like romance. That is, let's keep things in the proper ritualized perspective with this fact in mind.

Does that make any sense whatsoever? Actually I think we totally agree on this all-- but it's the Other issue that is standing between us, no? :)

How about a grape? And shouldn't you be packing?? (Don't forget Master & Margarita, ok?)

[Chris]

Peony,

I wonder sometimes whether we get lost in words and terms?

I completely agree with your (2). I think it's a pretty basic notion in Confucianism -- the ethico-aesthetic. The ethical model is beautiful (harmony is beautiful, isn't it?).

Still, I agree with (2) but feel as if we are not seeing eye to eye somewhere here. It might be here: the virtuous is always aesthetic, but it is clearly not the case that the aesthetic is always virtuous. As a consequence, when you keep "your eye on virtue" there is always an aesthetic component to this.

Confucius and Kierkegaard would agree with this, I think.

That said, the aesthetic is most certainly *not* always virtuous -- it does not always have an ethical component. I think C and K agree here as well.

If this is sound, then it makes sense -- at least with respect to the holistic message of the text -- to interpret 15.13 as a contrast once again; specifically, a contrast between virtue and the aesthetic, because one is always in the right and the other not. As a matter of fact, if one is "dragged about by the nose" by beauty all the time, without this being constrained by virtue, you'll have problems. Not the same worry with virtue. Follow it, and you'll have no problems, and at the same time embody all of the aesthetic sensibilities, performative acts, etc., that you find important here.

[Peony]

Chris, I re-read the above comment several times. And there is nothing I can disagree with. As long as you are only talking about Confucius.... and NOTHING else (ie, it isn't your opinion but rather you are interpreting the passage) is that fair?

And then how would you translate the passage?
(And I will never agree to Beauty)

And also, do you think, then that this is the biggest danger to a man of virtue today? romance? sex? female beauty? (Again, not aesthetic beauty-- no way)

here is a bridge we can walk over:
play versus virtue
romance versus virtue
(as a gentle reminder)...

[Peony]

PS

chris, if you are saying that 色 is one aspect of Kierkegaard's aestheic mode... I could be persuaded, but still as a translation I wouldn't like beauty-- just because, well because I would need to be persuaded that 色 was used in this way in those ancient times (since I don't think it is used that way in modern times.)

as a translation, I still like romance more than anything. as advice, I see it not as a stark contrast but as an encouragement toward keeping things in perspective-- not unlike my friend's boat analogy.

how does that sound to you?

[John Emerson]

How about "desire"? It's an essential aspect of sex, romance, and love.

色 also especially means visual attractions, which links with desire and beauty, but less so with love, romance, and sex (which however hover in the background).

The West since Plato's Symposium has been trapped in this weird dialectic between celibacy, idealization, and eros. Distinguishing China from that strikes me as necessary, though I have no real insight into what's different about China's eros / desire / love / sex complex.

[douglas]

excerpt from

The Way It Is
by Kunkyen Longchenpa Rabjam

By its not being, fools are deceived; like deer
Eagerly pursuing mirage water to quench their thirst
Hoping for deluded conventions, the meaning of words,
In all of their philosophies are tied up in objectifications

Especially me.... It's so hard to translate because every translation is simultaneously hermeneutical and anthropological and phenomenological and existential etc. etc. I ask myself, “how would I say what I have understood it to mean to a friend in a profound and poetic moment of real communication?” Not as philologist, but as if channelling the intentionality of the totality of all I know about both languages to let the words naturally leap out at me as if tapping into a current, a Vulcan mind meld with Longchenpa or whomever. Tuning in on the sense of it intuitively. The above is an illustration of my failure.

In my last psychedelic high school year I saw a therapist who was married to a professor of philosophy, Eugene Gendlin, (a famous therapist himself under Carl Rogers at the University of Chicago). Gendlin recalls Dryfus without the aesthetic juiciness. At any rate, his Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning helped elucidate the phenomenological relationship between word and felt meaning for me. When the felt dimension, the tacit, "the preverbally experienced meaning" is focused on, then when ones languaging comes into congruence with this, when they fit, when word and meaning meet, there’s an “ah ha”, “that's what I was trying to say” moment, Gendlin argues, and this is the moment of congruence between mind and preverble experience.

Classical Tibetan has been compared to Middle Chinese (by Beyers). When translating Longchenpa’s quantitative verse (like Li Po’s poetry only mystical without image, more philosophical and phenomenological)---I have to, on the one hand, struggle with the same kind of elliptically pregnant profundities that are found, I imagine from the little work I've done, in Chinese poetry with, on the other, the hermeneutic question of how to say “that” to the modern reader, to best convey the meaning I imagine it has to the original cognoscenti. At the same time, I try to forget how I have translated the term before, like a dancer whose language must move authentically to spring forth from that Rilkean beginning.

Wang Wei c. 700-761
Lù Zhaí

In the empty mountains
no one seen;
Yet echoed voices
were heard.
Receding beams entered
deep
the wood;
Returned upon the blue-green
moss.