SELECTED DOCUMENTS FROM THE
TÜBINGEN INTERFAITH DIALOGUE

“World Religions as a Factor in World Politics”

7-8 May 2007, Tübingen, Germany


The Three Abrahamic Religions
Historical Upheavals – Present Challenges

Speech by Professor Hans Küng
Professor Emeritus, Tübingen University 

Ⅰ.　The abiding centre and foundation
Ⅱ.　Epoch-making upheavals
Ⅲ.　Present-day challenges
Ⅳ.　The three religions contribute to a global ethic 

Introduction 

We face the threat of a general suspicion - this time not of Jews but of Muslims. It is as if they were all incited up by their religion, and were all potentially violent. Whereas conversely, Christians, because they are taught by their religion, are all seen as non-violent, peaceful and loving... That would be a fine thing!
  Of course there are many problems, especially in Europe with its big Muslim minorities, but Let’s be fair: of course we citizens of a democratic constitutional state reject forced marriages, the oppression of women, honour killings and other archaic inhumanities in the name of human dignity. But most Muslims join us in doing so. They suffer from the fact that the condemnations made are sweepingly of the “Muslims” and the “Islam”, without differentiation. They do not recognise themselves in our picture of Islam, because they want to be loyal citizens of the Islamic religion. 
  Let’s be fair: those who make “Islam” responsible for kidnappings, suicide attacks, car bombs and beheadings carried out by a few blind extremists ought at the same time to condemn “Christianity” or “Judaism” for the barbarous maltreatment of prisoners, the air strikes and tank attacks (several 10,000 civilians have been murdered in Iraq alone) carried out by the US Army, and the terrorism of the Israeli army of occupation in Palestine. After three years of war also a majority of Americans realise that those who pretend that the battle for oil and hegemony in the Middle East and elsewhere is a “battle for democracy” and a “war against terror” are trying to deceive the world - though without success.
  In the 3rd Global Ethic Lecture in Tübingen in 2003 the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan emphasised: “No religion or ethical system should ever be condemned because of the moral lapses of some of its adherents. If I, as a Christian, for instance, would not wish my faith to be judged by the actions of the Crusaders or the Inquisition, I should be very careful to judge anyone else’s faith by the actions that a few terrorists may commit in its name”.
  So I am asking you: Should we go on with a tit-for-tat reckoning which leads only deeper into misery?
No, another basic attitude to violence and war is called for. And basically people everywhere want it, unless - in the Arab countries and sometimes also in the USA - they are being led astray by power- obsessed and blind governments and are having their minds dulled by ideologues and demagogues in the media. 
Violence has been practiced in the sign of the crescent, but also in the sign of the cross, by mediaeval and contemporary “crusaders”, who perverted the sign of reconciliation, the cross, so that it became a sign of war against Muslims and Jews (Spain). Both religions Christianity and Islam have expanded their spheres of influence aggressively in history and defended their power with violence. In their sphere they have propagated an ideology, not of peace, but of war. So the problem is a complicated one. 
  We are all in danger of being inundated by the gigantic floods of information and thus losing our bearings. And one can sometimes hear even scholars of religion expressing the opinion that, in their own discipline, it is hardly possible to see the woods for the trees. So some of them - as for example in sociology - concentrate on micro-studies and are no longer prepared to think in wider contexts; or they are no longer capable of it. Here, I believe, new categories are necessary to embrace the changes.
  So I shall attempt to offer you in a little more than one hour a certain basic orientation on Islam the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. To get straight to the point: I want to address three complexes of questions: I. The abiding centre and foundation, what must unconditionally be preserved: II. Epoch-making upheavals: what can change; III. Present-day challenges: the tasks that press in on us. 

I. The abiding centre and foundation
This is a very practical question: What should be preserved, what should be unconditionally preserved, in each of our religions? In all three prophetic religions there are extreme positions: some say “Nothing just this should be preserved”, while others say “Everything, really everything should be preserved”: 

– Completely secularised Christians say that “nothing” should be preserved: they often do not believe either in God or in a Son of God, they ignore the church and dispense with preaching and sacraments.
  At best they treasure the cultural heritage of Christianity: the European cathedrals or Johann Sebastian Bach; the aesthetics of the Orthodox liturgy or also paradoxically the Pope, the pope as a pillar of the established order, though of course they reject his sexual morality and authoritarianism and sometimes are agnostics or atheists.

–  But completely secularised Jews also say that “Nothing should be preserved”: they think nothing of the God of Abraham and the patriarchs, they do not believe in his promises, they ignore synagogue prayers and rites and ridicule the ultra-Orthodox.
  They have often found a modern substitute religion for their Judaism which has been evacuated of religion: the state of Israel and an appeal to the Holocaust. This also creates a Jewish identity and solidarity for secularised Jews, but often at the same time seems to justify a state terrorism against Arabs which is contemptuous of human rights. 

–  And completely secularised Muslims also say that “Nothing should be preserved”. They do not believe in one God, they do not read the Qur’an, Muhammad is not a prophet for them and they roundly reject the Shariah; the five pillars of Islam play no role for them.
  At best Islam, of course emptied of its religious content, is to be used as an instrument for a political Islamism, Arabism and nationalism. 

You certainly understand now that as a counter-reaction to this “Preserve nothing” the opposite cry can be heard: “Preserve everything”. Everything is to remain as it is and allegedly always was.
  “Not a stone of the great edifice of Catholic dogma may be torn down; the whole structure would totter” trumpet Roman integralists [and traditionalists].
  “Not a word of the halakhah may be neglected; the will of the Lord (Adonai) stands behind every word”, protest ultra-Orthodox Jews.
  “Not a word of the Qur’an may be ignored, each is in the same way directly the word of God”, insist many Islamist Muslims.
 
You see: Here conflicts are pre-programmed everywhere, not just between the three religions, but above all in them, wherever these positions are advocated militantly or aggressively: often the extreme positions goad each other on.
  But be sure, reality doesn’t look quite so gloomy. For in most countries, if they are not loaded with political, economic and social factors, the extreme positions do not form the majority. There are always a considerable number of Jews, Christians and Muslims - of different magnitudes of course depending on the country and the time
  - who although often indifferent, lazy or ignorant in their religion, by no means want to give up everything in their Jewish, Christian or Muslim faith and life. On the other hand, though, they are not prepared to keep everything: many Catholics do not swallow all the dogmas and moral teachings of Rome and many Protestants do not take every statement in the Bible literally; many Jews do not observe the Halakhah in all things; and many Muslims do not observe all the commandments of the Shariah strictly. 
  Be this as it may: if we don’t look at some later historical forms and manifestations, but reflect on the foundation documents, the original testimonies, I mean the “holy scriptures” of each religion - if we look at the Hebrew Bible, New Testament and Qur’an - there can be no doubt that the “abiding” (that which must abide) in the religion concerned is not simply identical with the “existing” (what exists at the time); and that what makes up the “nucleus”, the “substance”, the  “essence” of this religion can be defined by its  “holy scriptures”.So the question here is quite a practical one: what should be the abidingly valid and constantly binding element in each of our own religions? It should be clear that not everything need be preserved, but what must be preserved is the substance of faith, the centre and foundation of the religion concerned, its holy scripture, its faith! As John XXⅢ formulated in his famous opening speech to the 2nd Vatican Council, in which I participated as theological Adviser, together with my dear  colleague Josephe Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, as the two teenager theologians! But you ask me some more concrete questions, and I give you very brief but basic answers: 

You may ask me
1.What must be preserved in Christianity if it is not to lose 
its “soul”? My answer: no matter what historical, literary or sociological biblical criticism may criticize, interpret and reduce: [in the light of the Christian foundation documents of faith which have become normative and influential in histroy;] in the light of the New Testament (seen in the context of the Hebrew Bible), the central content of faith is Jesus Christ: as the Messiah and Son of the one God of Abraham who is also at work today through the same Spirit of God. There can be no Christian faith, no Christian religion, without the confession “Jesus is the Messiah, Lord and Son of God!” [1.Kor:Iltous kyrios]. The name Jesus Christ denotes the dynamic “centre of the New Testament” (which is by no means to be understood in a static way). 

You ask me
2.What must be preserved in Judaism if it is not to lose its “essence”?
My answer: no matter what historical, literary or sociological criticism may criticise, interpret and reduce: [in the light of the foundation documents of faith which have become normative and historically influential,] in the light of the Hebrew Bible, the central content of faith is the one God and the one people of Israel. There can be no Israelite faith, no Hebrew Bible, no Jewish religion without the confession: “Yahweh (Adonai) is the God of Israel, and Israel is his people!”


And you ask me
3.And what finally must be preserved in Islam, if it is still to remain

“Islam” in the literal sense of “submission to God”? My answer: no matter how wearisome the process of collecting, ordering and editing the different surah of the Qur’an was, for all believing Muslims it is clear that the Qur’an is God’s word and book. And even if Muslims see a difference between the Mecca surah and those of Medina and take the background of the revelation into account for interpretation, the central message of the Qur’an is completely clear: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet”. It is the special relationship of the people of Israel to its God (that is the essence of Judaism). And it is the special relationship of Jesus Christ to his God and Father (that is the starting point of Christianity). And it is the special relationship of the Qur’an to God that is the nucleus of Islam, which constitutes it and around which it crystallises. And despite the goings back and forth in the history of the Islamic people, this will remain the basic notion of Islamic religion which will never be given up.
  The distinctive feature of the three monotheistic religions which is to be preserved is something that they have in common and at the same time something that distinguishes them.

• –  What have Judaism, Christianity and Islam in common?
  Faith in the one and only God of Abraham, the gracious and merciful Creator, Preserver and Judge of all human beings. Not a cyclical view of world history and individual life, but oriented towards an end; the importance of prophetic figures, a normative scripture and common ethical standards.

• –  And what distinguishes them?
• For Judaism: Israel as God’s people and land (essential for Israel). For Christianity: Jesus Christ as God’s Messiah and Son.
  For Islam: the Qur’an as God’s word and book.

• In the constant centre of the three religions, of Judaism as of
• Christianity and finally of Islam, is grounded:
• –  Originality from earliest times,
• –  Continuity in its long history down the centuries,
• –  Identity despite all the difference of languages, peoples, cultures
• and nations.

  However, this centre, this foundation, this substance of faith never existed in abstract isolation, but in history: it has time and again been reinterpreted and realised in practice in the changing demands of time. Toynbee: challenge and response! For theologians, historians and others it is important to combine a systematic-theological with a historical-chronological description, without which the former cannot be given a convincing foundation. 


II. Epoch-making upheavals
Again and again new epoch-making constellations of the time - society generally, the faith community, the proclamation of the faith, and reflection on the faith came up in the history of the three religions and reinterpreted and concretised this one and the same centre. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam this history is extraordinarily dramatic: In response to ever new and great challenges in world history the community of faith, at first small but then - particularly in the case of Christianity and Islam - growing quickly, has undergone a whole series of religious changes, indeed in the longer term revolutionary paradigm shifts. This concept I learned from a historian of sciences, Thomas S. Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962): What changed in the Copernican Revolution? The sun, the moon, the stars remained the same, but we changed: our way to look at them, our world view - the paradigm: The entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on, shared by a given community”. I applied the paradigm theory to the history first of the church then of the different religions. What changed e.g. in the Reformation? God, Christ, the Spirit for Christians remained the same. But the view of the believers changed: the paradigm, the models. 
  The historical analysis of the paradigms of a religion, those macro- paradigms or epoch-making overall constellations, serves to orientate knowledge. Paradigm analysis makes it possible to work out the great historical structures and transformations: by concentrating on both the fundamental constants and the decisive variables at the same time. In this way, it is possible to describe those breaks in world history and the epoch-making basic models of a particular religion which emerged from them.

  So against the background of such a considerable history, a historical- systematic analysis of its epoch-making overall constellations must be attempted. In my book, Christianity I worked out the macro-paradigms in the history of
A. Christianity (cf. diagram): I am now referring to the diagram you have in your hands, especially to the outline:

• I:  the Jewish apocalyptic paradigm of earliest Christianity;
• II:  the ecumenical Hellenistic paradigm of Christian antiquity;
• III:  the medieval Roman Catholic paradigm;
• IV:  the Protestant paradigm of the Reformation;
• V:  the paradigm of modernity oriented on reason and progress;
• VI:  the ecumenical paradigm of post-modernity? 

First insight: Every religion does not appear as a static entity, in which allegedly everything always was as it is now. Rather, every religion appears as a living and developing reality which has undergone different epoch-making overall constellations. Here a first decisive insight is that paradigms can last down to the present, and this is valuable also for Judaism and Islam. This is represented on the diagram by continued lines. This is in contrast to the “exact” natural sciences: the old paradigm (e.g. that of Ptolemy) can be empirically verified or falsified with the help of mathematics and experiment: the decisions in favour of the new paradigm (that of Copernicus) can in the longer term be “compelled” by evidence. But you see in the sphere of religion [(and also art), however,] things are different: in questions of faith, morals and rites (e.g. between Rome and the Eastern Church or between Rome and Luther) nothing can be decided by mathematics or experiment. And so in the religions old paradigms by no means necessarily disappear. Rather, they can continue to exist for centuries alongside new paradigms: the new (the Reformation or modernity) alongside the old (of the early church or of the Middle Ages).


B. Likewise, in Judaism I worked out the macro-paradigms in the history of Judaism (cf. diagram):

• I:  the tribal paradigm before the formation of the state;
• II:  the paradigm of the kingdom: the monarchical period;
• III:  the paradigm of theocracy: post-exilic Judaism;
• IV:  the medieval paradigm: the rabbis and the synagogue;
• V:  the modern paradigm: assimilation;
• VI:  the ecumenical paradigm of post-modernity? 

Second insight: The persistence and rivalry of different paradigms is of utmost importance in assessing the situation of religions. This is a second important insight. Why? To the present day people of the same religion live in different paradigms. They are shaped by ongoing basic conditions and subject to particular historical mechanisms. Thus for example there are still Catholics in Christianity today who are

living spiritually in the thirteenth century (contemporaneously with Thomas Aquinas, the mediaeval popes and an absolutist church order). There are some representatives of Eastern Orthodoxy who have remained spiritually in the fourth/fifth century (contemporaneously with the Greek Church fathers). And for some Protestants the pre- Copernican constellation of the sixteenth century (with the Reformers before Copernicus, before Darwin) is still normative.
  This persistence is confirmed if we look now at the paradigm changes of Judaism and Islam, also in Judaism and Islam people live in different paradigms.
  In a similar way some Arabs still dream of the great Arab empire and wish for the union of the Arab peoples in a single Arab nation (Pan-Arabism). Others prefer to see what binds the peoples together not in Arabism but in Islam, and prefer a “Pan-Islamism.” Some Ultra- Orthodox Jews see their ideal in mediaeval Judaism and reject [even] a modern state of Israel. Conversely many Zionists strive for a state within the frontiers of the empire of David and Solomon which lasted however only a few decades.

C. Finally in my book on Islam, which will be published in October 2006 by Oneworld, Oxford, I also demonstrate the macro- paradigms in the history of Islam (cf. diagram):

• I:  the paradigm of the original Islamic community;
• II:  the paradigm of the Arab empire;
• III:  the classic paradigm of Islam as a world religion;
• IV:  the paradigm of the Ulama and Sufis;
• V:  the Islamic paradigm of modernisation;
• VI:  the ecumenical paradigm of post-modernity? 

Third insight: It is precisely this lasting quality, this persistence and rivalry of former religious paradigms today, that must be one of the main causes of conflicts within the religions and between the religions, the main cause of the different trends and parties, the tensions, disputes and wars. The third important insight that emerges is that for Judaism, 

Christianity and Islam the central question proves to be: how does this religion react to its own Middle Ages (at least in Christianity and Islam seen as the “great time”), and how does it react to modernity, where one sees all three religions forced onto the defensive? After the Reformation, Christianity had to undergo another paradigm shift, that of the Enlightenment. Judaism after the French Revolution and Napoleon experienced the Enlightenment first, and as a consequence, at least in Reform Judaism, it experienced also a religious reformation. Islam, however, has not undergone any religious reformation and so to the present day has quite special problems also with modernity and its core components, freedom of conscience and religion, human rights, tolerance, democracy.

III. Present-daychallenges
You may have experienced it yourselves:
Many Jews, Christians and Muslims who affirm the modern paradigm get on better with one another than with their fellow-believers who live in other paradigms. Conversely Roman Catholicism [e.g.], imprisoned in the Middle Ages, can ally itself better for example in questions of sexual morality with the “mediaeval” element in Islam and in Judaism (as at the UN population conference in Cairo in 1994).
  Those who want reconciliation and peace will not be able to avoid a critical and self-critical paradigm analysis. Only thus is it possible to answer questions like these: Where in the history of Christianity (and of course also of the other religions) are the constants and where the variables, where is continuity and where discontinuity, where is agreement and where resistance? This is a fourth insight. What has to be preserved is, above all the essence, the foundation, the nucleus of a religion, and from that the constants given by its origin. Constant belief in Christian spirit, law of celibacy: variable. What need not necessarily be preserved is everything that is not essential in the light of the beginning, what is shell and not kernel, what is structure and not foundation. All the different variables can be given up (or conversely developed) if that proves necessary.
  Thus in the face of all the religious confusion, particularly in the age of globalisation, a paradigm analysis helps towards a global orientation. Beyond question we find ourselves in a tricky closing phase for the reshaping of international relations, the relationship between the West and Islam, and also the relationships between the three Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The options have become clear: either rivalry of the religions, clash of civilisations, war of the nations - or dialogue of civilisations and peace between the nations as a presupposition for peace between the nations. In the face of the deadly threat to all humankind, instead of building new dams of hatred, revenge and enmity, we shouldn’t be tearing down the walls of prejudice stone by stone and thus be building bridges of dialogue, bridges particularly towards Islam.

IV. The three religions contribute to a global ethic
It is vitally important for this bridge-building that different though the three religions are, and different again the various paradigms which shift in the course of centuries and millennia, at the ethical level there are constants which make such bridge-building possible.
  Since human beings have developed from the animal kingdom and become human, they have also learned to behave humanely and not inhumanely. But despite the use of reason which has now developed, because of the drives in human beings the beast in them has remained a reality. And time and again human beings have had to strive to be humane and not inhumane.
  Thus in all religious, philosophical and ideological traditions there are some simple ethical imperatives of humanity which have remained of the utmost importance to the present day:

• –  “You shall not kill - or torture, injure, rape”, or in positive terms:
•     “Have respect for life”. This is       commitment to a culture of non-
•      violence and respect for all life.

• –  “You shall not steal - or exploit, bribe”, corrupt, or in positive terms:
•     “Deal honestly and fairly”. This is commitment to a culture of
•      solidarity and a just economic order.

• –  “You shall not lie - or deceive, forge, manipulate”, or in positive
•       terms: “Speak and act truthfully”. This is commitment to a culture
•      of tolerance and a life of truthfulness.

• –  And finally, “You shall not commit sexual immorality - or abuse,
•     humiliate or devalue your partner” or in positive terms: “Respect
•     and love one another”. This is a commitment to a culture of equal
•    rights and partnership between men and women.

These four ethical imperatives, which are to be found in Patanjali, the founder of Yoga, as in the Buddhist canon, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an, are based on two ethical basic principles: 

• –  First of all there is the Golden Rule, framed many centuries before
•     Christ by Confucius and known in all the great religious and
•     philosophical traditions, though it is by no means a matter of course:
•    “Do not do unto others that which you do not wish be done unto
•     yourself”. Elementary though this rule is, it is helpful for deciding
•     in many difficult situations.
• –  The Golden Rule is supported by the rule of humanity, which is
•     not at all tautological: “Every human being, whether young or old,
•     man or woman, disabled or not- disabled, Christian, Jew or Muslim
•     should be treated humanely and not inhumanely”. Humanity, the
•     humanum, is indivisible. 

From all this it become clear that a common human ethic or global ethic is not meant to be an ethical system like those of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas or Kant (“ethics”) but some elementary ethical values, criteria and attitudes which are to form the personal moral conviction of the human person and society (“ethic”).
  Of course, this ethic goes against the facts: its imperative of humanity will not be fulfilled a priori, but must be called to mind and realised time and again. However, As Kofi Annan said in his Global Ethic Lecture in Tübingen in 2003: “But if it is wrong to condemn a particular faith or set of values because of the actions or statements of some of its adherents, it must also be wrong to abandon the idea that certain values are universal just because some human beings do not appear to accept them”.
  Let me conclude with the very words which the General Secretary of the United Nations also concluded his speech: “Do we still have universal values? Yes, we do, but we should not take them for granted. 

• They need to be carefully thought through.
• They need to be defended.
  They need to be strengthened”. 

And we need to find within ourselves the will to live by the values we proclaim - in our private lives, in our local and national societies, and in the world.

Christianity as a Factor in Global Politics

Paper Presented by Professor Hans Küng
Emeritus Professor, Tübingen University, May 2007

There is more than one Christianity, just as there is more than one Judaism and more than one Islam. Different ‘Christianity’ have emerged from different historical constellations which have very different forms and also very different political effects: Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Reformation Christianity, to mention only the main forms. But Christianity in particular must also be seen in the context of the other religions, since there are some principles which apply to them all. 


I. Preliminary remarks on the religions as a factor in global politics

1. A distinction must be made between religion and superstition:
throughout, the Marxist critique of religion identified religion with superstition. However, religion does not recognise as an absolute authority anything relative, conditional and human but only the Absolute itself, which in our tradition since time immemorial we have called ‘God’. By God I mean that hidden Reality, first of all and last of all, which is worshipped not only by Jews and Christians but also by Muslims, and which Hindus seek in Brahman, Buddhists in the Absolute and, of course, also traditional Chinese in Heaven or in Dao. Indeed, the adherents of all religions express it, each in their own concepts and ideas.

  By contrast, superstition recognises as an absolute authority something that is relative and not absolute (and requires blind obedience to it). Superstition divinises either material realities (money, power, sex) or a human person (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, the Supreme Head of State and the Pope) or a human organisation (Party, Church). In this respect, for example any cult of persons also shows itself to be a kind of superstition! Consequently not all superstition is religion; there are also un-religious, very modern forms of superstition. Conversely, not all religion is superstition; there is true religion. But any religion can become superstition wherever it makes a non-essential essential, turns a relative into an absolute.


2. Freedom of religion holds for both believers and non-believers: no one may be physically or morally compelled to accept a particular religion or a particular ideology. Everyone must be allowed to leave or change their religion. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has stated this in a binding way. There was not always freedom for atheists: but atheists must be given freedom of thought, speech and propaganda even in countries whose constitution has a religious orientation. And there was also not always freedom for religious people: but believers of all religions must be given freedom of thought, speech and propaganda in all countries, whether these are secular, socialist, Islamic or of any other orientation.

3. Any religion can be exploited and misused politically: in our day the religions are again appearing as agents in global politics. It is true that the religions have far too often shown their destructive side in the course of history. They have stimulated and legitimated hatred, enmity, violence, indeed wars. But in many cases the religions have stimulated and legitimated understanding, reconciliation, collaboration and peace. In his big book on the potential of the religions for peace, Dr. Markus Weingardt of the Global Ethic Foundation has investigated six central case studies and more than 30 examples of mediations in conflicts with a religious basis. And in a book published in the 1990s Dr. Günther Gebhardt emphasised the potential for education towards peace in religious peace movements. In recent decades, all over the world heightened initiatives of inter-religious dialogue and collaboration between religions have developed. In this dialogue the religions of the world discovered that their own basic ethical statements support and deepen those secular ethical values which are contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, more than 200 representatives from all the world religions for the first time in history declared their consensus on some shared ethical values, standards and attitudes as the basis for a global ethic.

4. The three monotheistic religions are particularly exposed to the temptation of engaging in violence: all three prophetic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - see themselves today confronted with the accusation that as ‘monotheistic’ religions they are more exposed to the temptation to engage in violence than ‘polytheistic’ and “non-theistic” (Buddhism) religions. Could it be that while every religion as such already contains aspects of violence, because of their tie to a single God, monotheistic religions are especially intolerant, un-peaceful and ready for violence?
  But we have to note soberly that ever since there have been human beings there has been religion, and ever since there have been human beings there has also been violence: a non-violent paradisal society has never existed in this human world, which grew by evolution out of the animal world. Down the generations human beings had to try out and test elementary ethical norms to prove them - these included having reverence for the life of others, not killing other people with base intent, in other words not murdering.
  However, time and again religions have legitimated and waged wars, indeed even declared ‘holy wars.’ By ‘holy wars’ I mean offensive wars which are waged with a missionary claim on behalf of a deity. Whether this is in the name of one God or several gods is of secondary importance. Of course, it would be wrong to say that all the wars waged by ‘Christians’ in recent centuries have religious motivations. When white colonialists in South and North America and in Australia killed countless Indians and Aborigines, when German colonial masters in Namibia killed tens of thousands of Hereros, when British soldiers shot Indian protesters in large numbers, the Israeli army in Lebanon or Palestine killed hundreds of civilians, or Turkish soldiers hundreds of thousands of Armenians, that truly should not be foisted on belief in one God - not to mention the two World Wars.

5. Every religion must reflect critically on its own religious tradition: in a time when, unlike in antiquity and the Middle Ages, humanity can destroy itself by novel technological means, all religions, and in particular the three prophetic religions which are often so aggressive, must be concerned to avoid wars and promote peace. A differentiated re-reading of one’s own religious traditions is unavoidable here. Two pointers stand out:
  First: the warlike words and events in one’s own tradition should be interpreted historically, on the basis of the situation at the time, but without excusing them. That applies to all three religions:

• - The cruel ‘wars of Yahweh’ and the inexorable psalms of vengeancein in
•    the Hebrew Bible can be understood from the situation of the
•    settlement and from later situations of defence against far superior enemies.

• -  The Christian missionary wars and the ‘crusades’ are grounded in
•    the situation of the church ideology of the Early and High Middle Ages.
  

• -  The calls for war in the Qur’an reflect the concrete situation of
•    the Prophet Muhammad in the Medinan period and the special
•    character of the surahs revealed in Medina. The calls to fight against
•    the polytheistic Meccans cannot be transferred to the present time to
•    justify the use of violence in principle.

Secondly: the words and actions which make peace in each tradition should be taken seriously as impulses for the present. The following ethical principles in the question of war and peace should be noted in respect of a better world order:

• -  In the twenty-first century, too, wars are neither holy nor just nor
•    clean. Given the immense sacrifice of human lives, the immense
•    destruction of the infrastructure and cultural treasures and the
•    ecological damage, even modern ‘wars of Yahweh’ (Sharon),
•    ‘crusades’ (Bush) and ‘jihad’ (al-Qaida) are irresponsible.

• -  Wars are not a priori unavoidable: better co-ordinated diplomacy
•    supported by efficient arms control could have prevented both the
•    wars in Yugoslavia and the two Gulf Wars.

• -  An unethical policy of national interests - say over the oil reserves
•    or for hegemony in the Middle East - amounts to complicity in the war.

• -  Absolute pacifism, for which peace is the highest good, to which
•    everything must be sacrificed, cannot be realised politically and
•    can even be irresponsible as a political principle. The right to self-
•    defence is explicitly affirmed in Article 51 of the UN Charter. Peace
•    at any price, if say a new Holocaust or genocide threatens, is therefore
•    irresponsible. Megalomaniac dictators and mass murderers (Stalin,
•    Hitler) must be resisted.

• -  Crimes against humanity belong before the International Court of
•    Justice, which hopefully the American administration following
•    that of George W. Bush will finally support in the best American tradition. 

In what follows I now want to look more specifically at the roles of the Roman Catholic Church, then the Eastern Orthodox Church and finally the Protestant churches in politics.


II. The Roman Catholic Church as a political factor
The Roman view of Christianity (which is fond of claiming to be the Catholic view) was prepared for in the fourth/fifth centuries, theologically by Augustine and politically by the Roman Popes after the imperial residence was transferred to Constantinople. Only in the eleventh century was it implemented by the Popes of the Gregorian Reform (Paradigm III) with the help of the Pseudo-Isidoran forgeries. At the centre of the Roman vision stands the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, who with an appeal to God and Jesus Christ claims absolute universal rule over the church (and for a time claimed rule over society as a whole): both a normative competence in interpreting doctrine and also a legislative, executive and judicial authority in the life of the church.

  As early as the eleventh century this absolutist claim to power (of course together with other factors) led to conflict (the ‘Investiture Controversy’) with the German emperors and a split between a Latin church in the West and a Byzantine-Orthodox church in the East; then in the sixteenth century to the splitting of the church in the West into the churches of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation Roman Church; and finally, in the nineteenth/twentieth centuries, to the polarisation, to the alienation, indeed to the conflicts between the hierarchy orientated on Rome and the Catholic people and clergy, all of which is also reflected in theology.
  In the second half of the twentieth century, the Second Vatican Council in practice adopted many of the central concerns both of the Reformation (P IV) and of modernity (P V), but as a result of the compromises and half-measures extorted by the Roman Curia in many respects failed to realise a consistent Catholic vision of the church for the twentieth century. The collegiality of the Pope with the bishops resolved on in 1965 as a counterbalance to the definition of primacy by the First Vatican Council (1870) was ignored by the Roman Curia after the Second Vatican Council, and papal absolutism was restored and staged in grand style with the help of the mass media.
  Almost all over the world the Catholic Church remained a spiritual power, indeed a great power, which neither Nazism nor Stalinism nor Maoism could annihilate. Quite apart from its great organisation, on all the fronts of this world it also has a basis which is unique in its breadth, of communities, hospitals, schools and social institutions, in which an infinite amount of good is done despite all the difficulties, in which many pastors wear themselves out serving their fellow men and women, in which countless women and men devote themselves to young and old, the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged and the failures. This is a worldwide community of believers and committed people. Such commitment is time and again effective politically: in many situations of oppression and injustice it is the commitment of Christians grounded in faith - sometimes even at the cost of their lives - that brings about changes. Catholic groups and individuals played an important role in overthrowing dictatorships in South America and the Philippines.

  However, the history of the Catholic Church, like that of other institutions, is also ambivalent. We all know that behind efficient organisation is often an apparatus of power and finance operating with extremely worldly means. Behind imposing statistics, great occasions and liturgies involving vast crowds of Catholics there is all too often a superficial traditional Christianity which is poor in substance. Often a set of clerical functionaries who always have an eye on Rome, who are servile to those ‘above’ and high-handed to those ‘below’, manifests itself in the disciplined hierarchy. A long- outdated authoritarian, unbiblical scholastic theology is often there in the closed dogmatic doctrinal system. And the highly-praised Western cultural achievement is accompanied by all too much secularisation and deviation from the real spiritual tasks.

  A pastoral ministry of the Bishop of Rome to the whole church, following the example of the apostle Peter, can be meaningful if it is exercised selflessly in the spirit of the gospel. Nor can it be disputed that the Papacy has done great service in maintaining the cohesion, unity and freedom of at least the Western churches. And the Roman system has often proved itself to be more efficient than the somewhat loose church alliance of the Eastern churches. To the present day, wherever the Pope has credibility, he can address the conscience of the whole world as a moral authority. But the dual spiritual-political role of the Vatican as church government and sovereign state is highly ambivalent. A baneful mixture of the two becomes visible when the Vatican attempts to impose its moral ideas as policy, for example in problems like AIDS or birth control. The 1994 World Population Conference in Cairo is one example of this.

  So the weaknesses and defects of the Roman system are manifest, and considerably limit the influence of the Pope, even in his own “sphere of rule”. Many Catholics, too, criticise the Roman claim to power, pointing out that the Roman system has time and again developed away from the original Christian message and church order. Since the High Middle Ages the negative sides have been evident. Since this time there have been complaints about:

• -  the authoritarian-infallible behaviour in dogma and morality;
• -  the impositions on laity, clergy and local churches, down to the
•    smallest detail;
• -  the whole fossilised absolutist system of power, which is orientated
•    more on the Roman emperors than on Peter, the modest fisherman
•    from Galilee. 

The opportunities for the Catholic Church: from the Roman perspective it is not denied that often a crumbling church is hidden behind the brilliant Catholic façade. The tremendous crowds which gather on church occasions give an impression, which can easily be deceptive, of an inner power of faith which holds together the Catholic Church as the most significant religious multinational in the world. In Rome it is thought that the reforms within the church called for by many would not advance the Catholic Church further than the Protestant churches, all of which have met these demands for reform and are no better off as a result. Rather, the church grows where it draws on its own positive sources of life, where its great impulses are experienced as a present power derived from looking towards God and encountering Jesus Christ.
  From an ecumenical perspective it is a matter of course to affirm the need to concentrate on the essentials of Christianity - God and Jesus Christ. But because the evangelisation campaign initiated by John Paul II decades ago was bound up with long-outdated dogmatic positions and moral demands and was in practice a campaign of re-Catholicisation, it has failed: despite an immense number of documents, speeches and trips and a vast amount of media propaganda the Pope did not succeed in convincing a majority of Catholics of the Roman positions on any of the disputed questions, especially those of sexual morality (contraception, sexual intercourse before marriage, abortion).
  So there should also be a warning against false hopes: the crowds present at great church events should not disguise the fact that here there are not only many who are curious and are looking for meaning, but above all people from traditional folk Catholicism. The young people come above all from those conservative ‘movimenti’ native to Spain, Italy and Poland which stand out above all for their veneration of the Pope, not for following his moral commandments and for their greater commitment in their home communities. Despite decades of indoctrination, only a small minority even of them observe the prohibition of pills and condoms. The abortion figures are alarming, particularly in countries where the church has banned the pill.
  The traditional Greek-Hellenistic dogmas of the fourth/fifth centuries, like those of the Counter-Reformation dogmatist of the sixteenth century, are virtually unknown to the average Catholic. Moreover the four new Vatican dogmas – the Immaculate Conception (1854) and Assumption (1870) of Mary, the primacy of papal jurisdiction and infallibility (1870), are also largely ignored, if not put in question, in the Catholic Church. Thus a great external and internal emigration from the Catholic Church has taken place, particularly in the traditionally Catholic countries. Moreover because of the rejection of marriage for priests and the ordination of women priests and because of the authoritarian Roman system, soon half of all parishes world-wide will be without a pastor, and the pastoral care built up over centuries will collapse. In Latin America, countless millions of Catholics have immigrated into Pentecostal churches (not all of which can be dismissed as ‘sects’) because they have found inspiring preachers and living communities ready to help there.
  In particular the fundamental deficiencies in the Roman system, which is to be distinguished from the Catholic Church as such, make a reconciliation with the Orthodox Churches of the East and those of the Reformation seem difficult.


III. The Orthodox Church of the East as a political factor

The Orthodox Church of the East is beyond doubt closer to earliest Christianity in many respects. The foundations of the Greek- Hellenistic paradigm of the old Roman imperial church (II) were already laid by the apostle Paul after the Jewish Christian paradigm (I). This early church still has no centralist government like that of the later Roman Catholic Church of the West (III). It allows at least priests to marry, though not bishops, so that the latter are mostly taken from the monastic orders. In the Orthodox Church the faithful also receive the Eucharist in two forms, bread and wine. And the Orthodox Church has held out under all political systems, in Russia even during the last persecution under the Communist regime which lasted for seventy years, with thousands of martyrs. That is above all because of its splendid liturgy and its hymns. All this strikes even someone from the West.
  However, we also cannot overlook the fact that on the other hand the distance from earliest Christianity is enormous. The average believer has difficulties in recognising Jesus’ last supper in the Byzantine and Russian court liturgy. One particular danger of the Orthodox Church, though, lies in the fact that it is a state church, in which under emperors, tsars and general secretaries the church could become a pliant instrument of the state or the party. The symphony model of state and church which came into being in Byzantium shows clearly that the dependence of the Russian Orthodox Church on the political regime of the time, a dependence which still exists today, has a particularly long and hallowed tradition. It is not only in line with the Muscovite state church which formed in the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries but also has deep roots in the Byzantine tradition, indeed already in Emperor Constantine after the change to Christianity in the fourth century. The Byzantine-Slavonic state-church tradition also explains why most Orthodox churches proved mistrustful of the ideas of 1789, the ideas of democracy, the separation of church and state, freedom of conscience and religion, and so on.
  This danger is accentuated in modern nationalism. Granted, for the people under Ottoman rule, for centuries the church formed the last stronghold for the memory of their own identity and independence, so the church had the function of constituting and legitimising the nation. But in the more recent history of Orthodoxy the nationalistic ideology which emerged from that served often enough to inflame ethnic rivalries rather than to dampen them down and keep them under control. Developments in former Yugoslavia assumed such fanatical dimensions not least because for centuries the churches had encouraged nationalism instead of taming it: the Catholic Church encouraged the nationalism of the Croats, the Orthodox Church that of the Serbs. Certainly there is also nationalism in Poland, Ireland and certain Protestant countries. But if there is a special temptation and danger in the world of Orthodoxy, it is less authoritarianism (Roman Catholic) or subjectivism (modern Protestant), as in the West, than nationalism! 
  The opportunities for the Eastern Orthodox Church: from a Roman perspective the Eastern churches stand relatively close to the Roman Catholic Church. Because of their common past in the first millennium, both have a common structure: episcopal churches which are founded on the apostolic succession, an uninterrupted chain of laying on of hands in the ordination of bishops and priests. Then because of its strong dogmatic and liturgical identity, Orthodoxy is relatively peaceful, though it too is affected by the pressure of secularisation, for example in the former Soviet empire, which alienated more and more people from it. On top of this there is the classic problem of all autocephalous churches (churches with their own supreme head): they are always in danger of political dependence and identification with the nation, whether the Greek, Russian, Serbian nation or any other. Precisely for that reason a reunion with the great Catholic Church - of course under Roman supremacy - would be very useful for the Orthodox churches and is a goal to be striven for by churches on both sides. That is how people think in Rome. 
  However, from an ecumenical perspective an abolition of the mutual excommunication and a restoration of communion in the Eucharist - already expressed in theory after Vatican II but not realised in practice - would be a task of the first order. Given the necessary respect for frontiers and the Orthodox self-awareness, a course shared with the Catholic Church would avoid the dangers of a national or an ethnic religion. Moreover the anthropological foundations of human dignity, human rights and human responsibilities would be more recognisable from a shared Christian faith and would thus present to the world a shared ethic with universal validity.
  Here too it is necessary to warn against false hopes: all the features of dogma, liturgy and church law that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have in common cannot disguise the fact that Rome’s claim to primacy over the East which has been made since the eleventh century is the central insuperable obstacle to a reunion between the church of the West and the church of the East, supported by an infallibility in doctrine defined in the nineteenth century. Broad areas of Orthodoxy see these new dogmas as the real heresy of the Roman Church, which conflict with the New Testament and the joint Christian tradition of the first millennium. And the arbitrary appointment of Roman Catholic bishops on Russian territory after the political change, in Siberia and even in Moscow, and thus the establishment of a Roman hierarchy in parallel to the Orthodox hierarchy, has confirmed all the East’s fears of Roman imperialism.
  So a papal visit to Moscow has so far not been wanted (there has been no invitation from Putin). And Benedict XVI’s visit to the Patriarch of Constantinople did not bring any real progress apart from fine ecumenical speeches and gestures. For this Pope, too, did not give any indication that one could replace the mediaeval primacy of jurisdiction - which in any case exists only in Roman theory - with an unpretentious practical pastoral primacy.

  Of course, all this does not exclude the possibility that for opportunistic reasons there could be a political alliance between the first Rome and the second (Constantinople), and above all with the third (Moscow). But this would not represent real ecumenical unity, which would presuppose the reciprocal recognitions of ministries and Eucharistic fellowship. Such an alliance would even be ‘unholy’ if it were directed against democracy, freedom of religion and conscience, and the dignity of women (the rejection of the ordination of women); against Protestantism or the World Council of Churches. Such a political alliance would even more reinforce the impression that the Orthodox Church primarily represents a hierarchy which appears through its liturgy, in which in practice the proclamation of the gospel is neglected, as is pastoral work in the community and criticism of society.


IV. The churches of the Reformation as a political factor

The great strength of Protestantism lies in its constantly renewed confrontation with the gospel, with the original Christian message. Concentration on the gospel is the true core of ‘Protestantism’, and this is quite indispensable for Christianity.
  Particularly in the twentieth century, people have had the surprising experience that with the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church, apparently completely fossilised in the Counter-Reformation and anti- modernism, has made a move towards the other Christian churches: it has finally undergone the paradigm change of Protestant Christianity from the Middle Ages to the Reformation in fundamental dimensions, and without giving up catholicity has been concerned to concentrate on the gospel and thus integrate the Protestant paradigm of the Reformation (P IV). A whole series of central Protestant concerns have been taken up by the Catholic Church, at least in principle but often quite practically: a new regard for the Bible, genuine popular worship in the vernacular, the revaluation of the laity, the assimilation of the church to the different cultures and a reform of popular piety. Finally, Martin Luther’s central concern, the justification of sinful men and women on the basis of faith alone, is today as much affirmed by Catholic theologians as is the need for works or acts of love by Protestant theology.


The opportunities for the church of the Reformation: from a Roman perspective, world Protestantism is engaged in a process of rapid change which, to many people seems a disturbing process of decay. The classic confessional churches are rapidly contracting. They have somehow been able to preserve their significance as vehicles of culture, but they are losing importance as religious homes. Often attempts are made to lead the churches out of the crisis with methods of modern management and marketing. But the real forces by which the church lives and on which their being or non-being depends are barely visible. And the more churches continue as mere factors in culture and society, the more they submit themselves to a radicalised enlightenment, the more they dissolve. That is how people think in Rome.

  From an ecumenical perspective it is welcome if the Protestant churches sharpen their profile and present their substance more clearly. Every church should preserve its identity and remain a religious home. It should not subject itself to the dictates of a radicalised enlightenment and even adapt itself to and fit in with a process of fusion with modern society. However, the great mistake is not that Protestantism has carried through urgent reforms (the marriage of priests, a more understanding sexual morality, more democratic structures), but that at the same time it has not tackled its poverty of substance and lack of profile decisively enough.
  Here too, Rome has false hopes: a church should not chain itself to its own tradition; it should not put either mediaeval or Reformation theology and church law above the confession of Jesus Christ and the discipleship of Christ. For centuries Rome has reckoned with the constant progress of the splitting up, the spiritual emptying and finally the dissolution of Protestantism – in vain. A comparison of Catholic and Protestant theology alone shows how often Catholic theology and the Catholic Church have lagged behind; all the decisive advances in exegesis were first made in Protestant theology. Protestantism is by no means dead even in Europe and North America; there are living communities in both areas.

V. The threat from modernity and fundamentalism
Within the framework of the Protestant paradigm of the Reformation, the fundamentalist movement formed in the nineteenth/twentieth centuries in reaction to modernity (P V). A fundamentalist is someone who confesses the verbal inspiration and therefore the unconditional inerrancy of the Bible at the present time. Someone who in pre-critical times understood the Bible in an uncritical and naïve, literal way is not a fundamentalist.

  Fundamentalism took shape in the face of a twofold threat to the traditional understanding of faith: on the one hand there was the world-view of modern science and philosophy, parts of which (especially Darwin’s theory of evolution) were opposed to the picture of the world presented in the Bible. On the other hand, modern biblical criticism, working since the Enlightenment with historical-critical methods, investigated the history of the origin of the books of Genesis and the five books of Moses generally, and also the complex history of the origin of the three synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John, which is very different from them. So fundamentalism in the authentic sense is a product of a defence and an offensive against modern science, philosophy and exegesis, aimed at rescuing the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible from the threat posed by modernity.
  In the nineteenth century Roman theology, too, with the usual time lag, largely appropriated the doctrine of the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of scripture (which had already been systematised by Protestant orthodoxy). But just as the Roman Inquisition discredited itself with processes against Galileo and others, so American fundamentalism failed when it wanted to prescribe its theory of ‘creationism’ (the creation of human beings directly by God) in state schools. 
  Most recently, the term fundamentalism has also been extended to other religions, above all Islam and Judaism. Muslims themselves today call exclusivist, literalistic Islam ‘Islamism’, and Jews call exclusivist, literalistic Judaism ‘Ultra-Orthodoxy’. But if one wants to characterise negatively a rigid literalistic faith and a legalistic observance of the law, which are often combined with political aggressiveness, then one speaks of Muslim and Jewish fundamentalism as one speaks of Christian fundamentalism. Of course geopolitical strategies are developed only by Christianity (‘Crusade for Christ’, ‘Re-evangelizing Europe’) and Islam (‘Re- Islamizing the Arab world’). Here the thought-patterns of evangelical hardliners in the USA and Islamic radicals are similar: the political opponent is the embodiment of evil. And the battle of good against evil legitimises even military attacks and invasions. Nor should one forget the religions of Indian and Chinese origin. Hinduism (against Muslims, Christians or Sikhs) or Confucianism (against non-Han Chinese), too, can behave in an exclusivist, authoritarian, repressive, fundamentalist way. In other words: fundamentalism is a universal problem, a global problem.


The opportunities for fundamentalism: what is the source of the enormous effectiveness and thrust of the different fundamentalisms? Three factors are heightened and work together:

• - Consistency: a basic religious value or a basic idea is constructed
•    consistently and protected in a perfectionist way for fear of a
•    debilitating compromise.
  - Simplicity: ways of thinking, attitude and system are simple and
•    transparent; more sophisticated perspectives are largely excluded
  - Clarity: the interpretation and doctrinal structure are unambiguously
•    set out: any subtle interpretation is rejected as a deviation from pure
•    doctrine, indeed as heresy. 

But here too we should have no illusions; is there any future in putting forward the doctrine of the verbal inerrancy or infallibility of holy scripture, whether this is the Hebrew Bible (halakhah), the Qur’an or the New Testament (or under certain conditions even the infallibility of the Pope, the Reformers of the Council) as the dogma of dogmas, the formal central dogma on which all other truths of faith depend? Like Judaism and Islam, Christianity seeks to communicate a basic orientation for human life in an age which is poor in orientation. But how can a fundamentalist Christianity offer in the long term an interpretation of existence and the world which embraces all aspects of living in a time which is stamped throughout by modern science, echnology and culture if it is tied to a literal understanding of the account of the creation and the last judgment, fall and redemption? 
  This reactionary religious view of the world has proved particularly baneful where it has been combined with a reactionary foreign policy. Anyone who admires the America of Lincoln, Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps, the Peace and Civil Rights Movements and the Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jimmy Carter - all representatives of a democratic and humanitarian America lasting over so many centuries - was and is dismayed at the revolutionary reorientation of American foreign policy which was the work of a neoconservative clique of journalists and power politicians (orchestrated by the power of the media). These allied themselves not only with the powerful Israel lobby (AIPAC), but increasingly with the Protestant fundamentalists of the southern states, who under the leadership of the neoconservative intellectuals became George W. Bush’s important power base, with masses of foot soldiers. However, since the last congressional elections and in view of the hopeless Iraq war, with its thousands of victims and debts amounting to billions, the day is again beginning to dawn in the USA. 
  Hidden religious structures have provided the points of reference in these remarkable new alliances: secularist Jewish neoconservatives (‘neocons’) could thus ally themselves with fundamentalist Protestants (‘theocons’) who, for their part, like George W. Bush, regard the war against terrorism as an apocalyptic fight against ‘evil’ generally, and on the basis of a literalistic understanding of the Bible see the whole of Palestine as the ‘holy land’ given by God to the Jews; for them, however, the state of Israel is merely the presupposition for the return of Christ announced by the New Testament, with the subsequent total conversion of all Jews! The Jewish side often tacitly accepts this anti- Jewish ideology as long as it is of political benefit to the state of Israel and its policy. 
  But this fundamentalist religious world-view also combined with certain positions of American domestic policy: against abortion, stem cell research and same-sex marriage. Since the election of President Reagan, the ‘religious right’ - i.e. those politically active evangelical Christians - has played a major role in the Republican Party and helped Bush Junior to be elected twice. But recently a backlash can also be noted in domestic politics. Individual leaders of the religious right are showing more understanding for the problems of AIDS, euthanasia (the Terri Schiavo case) and the threat to the environment from climate change.

On a Politician’s Ethics

Speech by H.E. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt
at Tübingen University, 8 May 2007 

First, I would like to thank you, dear Hans Küng. I was very pleased to accept this invitation, as I have followed the Global Ethic Project most positively since the start of the 1990s. The words “Global Ethic” may seem too ambitious to some, but the goal, the task to be solved, is truly and, by necessity, very ambitious. Perhaps at this point I can mention that an array of former heads of state and government from all five continents have set themselves a common goal very similar to this one since 1987 as the InterAction Council; however, as yet our work has only had relatively little success. In contrast, the achievements of Hans Küng and his friends are outstanding.
  I myself can thank a devout Muslim for first inspiring me to consider the moral laws common to the great religions. More than a quarter of a century has gone by since Anwar Al Sadat, then the President of Egypt, explained the common roots of the three Abrahamic religions to me, as well as their many resemblances, and in particular their corresponding moral laws. He knew of their shared law on peace, for example in the psalms of the Jewish Old Testament, in the Christian Sermon on the Mount or in the fourth sura of the Moslem Qur’an. If only the people were also aware of this convergence, he believed; if only the people’s political leaders, at least, were aware of this ethic correspondence between their religions, then long-lasting peace would be possible. He was firmly convinced of this. Some years later, as the President of Egypt, he took political steps to match his conviction and visited the capital and parliament of the State of Israel, which had previously been his enemy in four wars, to offer and conclude peace.
  At my advanced age one has experienced the deaths of one’s own parents, siblings and many friends, but Sadat’s assassination by religious fanatics shook me more severely than other losses. My friend Sadat was killed because he obeyed the law of peace.
  I will return to the law of peace in a moment, but first a proviso: a single speech, especially one restricted in length to less than one hour, cannot come close to exhausting the topic of a politician’s ethics. For this reason, today I have to concentrate on a number of comments, namely the relationship between politics and religion, then the role of reason and conscience in politics, and finally the need to compromise, and the loss of stringency and consistency this inevitably entails.

I. 

Now let us return to the law on peace. The maxim of peace is an essential element of the ethics or morals which must be required of a politician. It applies equally to domestic policy within a country and its society, and to foreign policy. Along with this, there are other laws and maxims. This naturally includes the “Golden Rule” taught and demanded in all world religions. Immanuel Kant merely reformulated it in his Categorical Imperative; it is popularly reduced to the phrase: “Do as you would be done by”. This golden rule applies to everyone. I do not believe that different basic moral rules apply to politicians than to anybody else.
  However, at a level below the key rules of universal morality, there are many special adaptations for specific occupations or situations. Just think of doctors’ respected Hippocratic Oath of doctors, for example, or a judge’s professional ethics; or think of the special ethic rules required of business people, of moneylenders or bankers, of employers or of soldiers at war.
  As I am neither a philosopher nor a theologian, I will not make any attempt to present you with a compendium or codex for the specific political ethic, and thus compete with Plato, Aristotle or Confucius.
  For more than two and a half millennia, great writers have brought together all kinds of elements or components of the political ethic, sometimes with highly controversial results. In modern Europe this extends from Machiavelli or Carl Schmitt to Hugo Grotius, Max Weber or Karl Popper. I, on the other hand, must restrict myself to presenting you with some of the insights I have gained myself during my life as a politician and a political publicist - for the most part in my home country, and, for the rest, in dealing with our neighbouring countries, both nearby and further away.
  At this juncture I would also like to point to my experience that, whereas talk of God and Christianity has been far from rare in German domestic affairs, the same is not true in discussion or negotiation with other countries and their politicians. Recently, when referendums were held in France and the Netherlands on the draft European Union constitution, for many people there the lack of reference to God in the text of the constitution was a decisive motive for their rejection. A majority of politicians had chosen to refrain from invoking God in the text of the constitution. In the German constitution, the Basic Law, God does appear in the preamble: “Conscious of their responsibility before God ...” and later a second time in the wording of the oath of office in Article 56, where it finishes: “So help me God”. However, immediately after, the Basic Law says: “The oath may also be taken without religious affirmation”. In both places it is left up to the individual citizen to decide whether he means the God of the Catholics or of the Protestants, the God of the Jews or the Muslims.
  In the case of the Basic Law, it was also a majority of politicians who formulated this text in 1948/49. In a democratic order, under the rule of law, politicians and their reason play the decisive role in constitutional policy, rather than any specific religious confession or its scribes. 
  We recently experienced how, after centuries, the Holy See finally reversed the verdict against Galileo’s reason, once rendered by power politics. Today, we experience every day how religious and political forces in the Middle East are locked in bloody battles for power over people’s souls - and how reason, the rationality we all possess, repeatedly falls by the wayside. When, in 2001, some religious zealots took their own lives and those of three thousand people in New York, convinced they were serving their God; Socrates’ death sentence - for godlessness! - was already two and a half thousand years in the past. Obviously, the perennial conflict between religion and politics and reason is a lasting element of the human condition.

II. 

Perhaps I can add a personal experience here. I grew up during the Nazi period; at the start of 1933 I had only just turned fourteen. During my eight years of compulsory military service I had placed my hopes in the Christian churches for the time after the expected catastrophe. However, after 1945, I experienced how the churches were able neither to re-establish morality nor to re-establish democracy and a constitutional state. My own church was still struggling over Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “Be subject unto the higher powers”.
  Instead, at first some experienced politicians from the Weimar period played a significant part in the new beginning; Adenauer, Schumacher, Heuss and others. However, at the start of the Federal Republic it was less the old Weimarians, and far more the incredible economic success of Ludwig Erhard and the American Marshall aid which swung the Germans towards freedom and democracy and in favour of the constitutional state. There is no shame in this truth: after all, since Karl Marx we have known that economic reality influences political convictions. This conclusion may only comprise a half- truth, but the fact remains that every democracy is endangered if its governing authorities cannot keep industry and labour in adequate order. 
As a result, I remained disappointed by the churches’ sphere of influence, not only morally, but also politically and economically. In the quarter of a century since I was Chancellor, I have learned a lot of new things and have read a lot. In this process, I have learned a little more about other religions and a little more about philosophies I was previously not familiar with. This enrichment has strengthened my religious tolerance; at the same time, it has put me at a greater distance from Christianity. Nonetheless, I call myself a Christian and remain in the Church, as it counterbalances moral decline and offers many people support.

III. 

To this day, what continues to disturb me about references to the Christian God - both among some church people and some politicians - is the tendency towards excluding others which we come across in Christianity - and equally in other religious confessions, too: “You are wrong but I am enlightened; my convictions and aims are godly”. It has long been clear to me that our different religions and ideologies must not be allowed to stop us from working for the good of all; after all, our moral values actually resemble one another closely. It is possible for there to be peace among us, but we always need to recreate this peace and “establish” it, as Kant said. 
  It does not serve the aims of peace if a religion’s believers and priests try to convert the believers of another religion and to proselytise to them. For this reason, my attitude towards the basic idea behind missions of faith is one of deep scepticism. My knowledge of history plays a special role in this - I am referring to the fact that, for centuries, both Christianity and Islam were spread by the sword, by conquest and subjugation, but not by commitment, conviction and understanding. The politicians of the Middle Ages; that is, the dukes and kings, the caliphs and the popes, appropriated religious missionary thoughts and turned them into an instrument to expand their might - and hundreds of thousands of believers willingly let themselves be used in this way.
  In my eyes, for example, the Crusades in the name of Christ, where soldiers held their Bibles in their left hand and their swords in their right, were really wars of conquest. In the modern age, the Spanish and the Portuguese, the English, the Dutch and French, and finally also the Germans used violence to take over most of the Americas, Africa and Asia. These foreign continents may have been colonised with a conviction of moral and religious superiority, but the establishment of the colonial empires had very little to do with Christianity. Instead, it was all about power and egocentric interest.Or take the Reconquista on the Iberian Peninsula: it was not only about the victory of Christianity, but, at its heart, concerned the power of the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. When Hindus and Muslims fight today on Indian soil, or when Sunni and Shiite Muslims battle in the Middle East, time after time the crux of the matter is power and control - the religions and their priests are used to this end, as they can influence the masses.
  Today it greatly concerns me that at the start of the 21st century a real danger has developed of a worldwide “clash of civilisations”, religiously motivated or in religious guise. In some parts of the modern world, motives of power, under the guise of religion, are mixed with righteous anger about poverty and with envy at others’ prosperity. Religious missionary motives are mixed with excessive motives of power. In this context it is hard for the balanced, restrained voices of reason to gain attention. In ecstatic, excited crowds, an appeal to individuals’ reason cannot be heard at all. The same is true today in places where Western ideologies and teachings on democracy and human rights, which are perfectly respectable, are forced with military might and almost religious fervour upon cultures which have developed in a totally different manner.

IV.

I myself have drawn a clear conclusion from all these experiences: mistrust any politician, any head of government or state, who turns his religion into the instrument of his quest for power. Stay clear of politicians who mingle their religion, oriented towards the next world, with their politics in this world.
  This caution applies equally to politics at home and abroad. It applies equally to the citizens of a country and to its politicians. We must demand that politicians respect and tolerate believers from other religions. Anyone who is not capable of this as a political leader must be seen as a risk to peace - to peace within our country as well as to peace with others.
  It is a tragedy that, on all sides, the rabbis, the priests and pastors, the mullahs and ayatollahs have, to a great degree, kept all knowledge of other religions from us. Instead they have variously taught us to think of other religions disapprovingly and even to look down upon them. However, anyone who wants peace among the religions should preach religious tolerance and respect. Respect towards others requires a minimum amount of knowledge about them. I have long been convinced that - in addition to the three Abrahamic religions - Hinduism, Buddhism and Shintoism rightly demand equal respect and equal tolerance.
  Because of this conviction, I welcomed the Chicago Declaration “Toward a Global Ethic” by the Parliament of the World’s Religions, seeing it not only as desirable but also as urgently necessary. Based on the same fundamental position, ten years ago today the InterAction Council of former heads of state and government sent the Secretary- General of the United Nations a draft entitled “Universal Declaration of Humans Responsibilities” which we had developed on the initiative of Takeo Fukuda from Japan. Our text, written with help from representatives of all the great religions, contains the fundamental principles of humanity. At this point, I would particularly like to thank Hans Küng for his assistance. At the same time, I gratefully recall the contributions made by the late Franz Cardinal König of Vienna.

V. 

However, I have also come to understand that, two and a half thousand years ago, some of humanity’s seminal teachers, Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius and Mencius, had no need for religion, even though they paid lip service to it, as they were expected to, more on the margins of their work. Everything we know about them tells us that Socrates based his philosophy, and Confucius his ethics, on the application of reason alone; none of their teachings had religion as a basis. Yet both have come to lead the way, even today, for millions upon millions of people. Without Socrates there would have been no Plato - perhaps even no Immanuel Kant and no Karl Popper. Without Confucius and Confucianism, it is hard to imagine that the Chinese culture and the “Kingdom of Silk”, whose lifespan and vitality are unique in world history, would have existed.
  Here, one experience is important to me: clearly, it is also perfectly possible to produce outstanding insights, scientific achievements, and thus also ethical and political teachings even if their originator does not consider himself bound to a God, to a prophet, to a Holy Scripture or to a certain religion, but only feels bound by his reason. This applies equally to socio-economic and political achievements. However, it cost the American and European Enlightenment many centuries of struggle and battle before it was possible for this experience to make its breakthrough in our part of the world. Here the word “breakthrough” is justified with respect to science, technology and industry.
  With respect to politics, on the other hand, the word “breakthrough” unfortunately only applies to the Enlightenment to a limited extent. Whether it is the example of Wilhelm II seeing himself as a monarch “by the grace of God”, whether it is an American president invoking God or politicians today invoking Christian values with their politics: they consider themselves bound religiously as Christians. Some plainly and clearly feel they have a position of Christian religious responsibility; others only perceive this responsibility relatively vaguely - just as most Germans probably also do today. Many Germans have, after all, now broken away from Christianity, many have left their church; some have also broken away from God - and yet are good people and good neighbours. 

VI. 

Today, the vast majority of Germans share some important, fundamental, binding political convictions. Above all, I mean they are bound to inalienable human rights and the principle of democracy. This inner commitment is evidently independent of their own belief or lack of belief, and also independent of the fact that neither principle is included in the Christian denomination.
  Not only Christianity, but also the other world religions and their holy books, have mainly imposed laws and duties upon their believers, whereas the rights of the individual are hardly ever found in the holy books. On the other hand, in its first twenty articles, our Basic Law speaks almost entirely of the constitutional rights of individual citizens, whereas their responsibilities and duties are hardly mentioned. Our list of civil rights was a healthy reaction to the extreme suppression of the freedom of the individual under Nazi rule. It is not built upon Christian or other religious teachings, but entirely upon the only basic value expressed plainly and clearly in our constitution: “inviolable human dignity”.
  In the same breath, in the same Article 1, the legislature, the executive and the judiciary are bound by the basic rights as directly applicable law; this also means that all politicians are bound, whether they are law-makers, governing authorities or administrators; whether in the Federal Government, in the Länder or the municipalities. At the same time, politicians have a wide scope for action, as the Basic Law allows good or successful politics just as it does poor or unsuccessful politics. For this reason, we need not only the law-makers’ and ruling parties’ compliance with the constitution; not only, secondly, their regulation by the Constitutional Court, but also, thirdly and most importantly, the regulation of politics by the voters and their public opinion. 
  Of course, politicians succumb to error; of course they make mistakes. After all, they are subject to the same human weaknesses as any other citizen, the same weaknesses as public opinion. From time to time, politicians are forced to make spontaneous decisions; mostly, however, they have enough time and sufficient opportunity to get advice from several sources, to weigh up the available options and their foreseeable consequences before they come to a decision. The more a politician allows himself to be led by a fixed theory or ideology, by his party’s interests in power, the less he will weigh up all the discernible factors and all consequences of his decision in each individual case; the greater the danger of error, of mistakes and failure. This risk is particularly high when a decision has to be made spontaneously. In each case he is responsible for the consequences - and more often than not this responsibility can be a real burden. In many cases politicians do not find any help in making their decisions in the constitution, in their religion, in any philosophy or theory, but have to rely upon their reason and judgement alone.
  This is why Max Weber was being rather too general when he spoke in his still readable speech of 1919 on “Politics as a Vocation” of a politician’s “sense of proportion”. He added that a politician must “give an account of the results of his action”. In fact, I believe, not only the results in general, but also specifically the unintended or tolerated side effects must be justified; the aims of his actions must be morally justified, and his ways and means must, equally, be ethically justified. The “sense of proportion” must, then again, suffice for any unavoidable, necessary spontaneous decision. Yet if there is enough time to weigh things up, there must be careful analysis and deliberation. This maxim does not only apply to decisions made in extreme, dramatic cases, but also to normal, everyday legislation, such as in tax or labour policy; it applies just as much to decisions about new power stations or new motorways. It applies without constraint. 
  In other words: politicians cannot square their actions and the consequences of those actions with their conscience unless they have applied their reason. Good intentions or honourable convictions alone cannot relieve the burden of their responsibility. For this reason I have always seen Max Weber’s words on the necessity of an ethic of responsibility, in contrast to an ethic of ultimate ends, as valid. 
  At the same time, however, we know that many people who enter politics are motivated by their convictions, not by reason. Equally, we must concede that some decisions, both on domestic and foreign affairs, are born of people’s convictions - and not of rational deliberation. And hopefully we have no illusions about the fact that a large proportion of voters principally base their choices on who to vote for in politics on their convictions - and are stirred by their current mood. 
  Nonetheless, I have expressed the fundamental importance of the two elements of political decision-making - reason and conscience - in speech and in writing for many decades. 

VII. 

I must add something, however: as simple and unambiguous as this conclusion sounds or reads, it is not that simple in democratic reality. In a democratic system of government, it is actually the exception if one person alone makes a political decision. In the great majority of cases, it is not an individual who decides, but far more a majority of people. This is true for all legislation, for example, without exception. 
  In order to attain a legislative majority in parliament, several hundred people have to agree on a common text. A relatively unimportant matter can, at the same time, be complicated or hard to approach. In this kind of case, it is easy to rely upon the recognised experts or recognised leaders in one’s own parliamentary party, but there are many cases, and there are important matters, where some members of parliament start off with different, well-founded opinions on one or several points. For them to agree, one has to accommodate them. 
  In other words: legislation and decision-making by parliamentary majority means all these individuals must have the ability and the will to compromise! Without compromise, a majority consensus cannot be formed. Anyone who, as a matter of principle, cannot or does not want to compromise is of no use to democratic legislation. Admittedly, compromise often goes hand in hand with a loss of stringency and consistency in political actions, but a democratic member of parliament must be willing to accept losses of this kind. 

VIII. 

Compromises are likewise always necessary in foreign policy to keep peace between countries. A national sacro egoismo, such as that currently cultivated by the government of the USA, cannot work peacefully in the long term.
  It is true that across thousands of years - from Alexander or Caesar, from Genghis Khan, Pizarro or Napoleon, all the way to Hitler and Stalin - the ideal of peace has only rarely played a decisive role in the implementation of foreign policy. It has equally rarely played a role in theoretical governmental ethics or the integration of philosophy into politics. On the contrary: for thousands of years, and even from Machiavelli to Clausewitz, war was almost taken for granted as an element of politics. 
  It was not until the European Enlightenment that a small number of writers - such as the Dutchman, Hugo Grotius, or the German, Immanuel Kant - elevated peace to its position as a desirable political ideal. Yet even throughout the entire nineteenth century, for the major European states, war remained a continuation of politics by different means - and so it went on in the twentieth century. The people had long seen war as one of humanity’s cardinal evils, to be avoided; it was not until the appalling misery of the two World Wars that this view was also passed on to leading politicians in the West and the East. This can be seen from the attempt to create a League of Nations, and later the founding of the United Nations, still in force today; it can also be seen from the arms limitation treaties aimed at achieving a balance between the USA and the Soviet Union, as well as from the establishment of European integration since the 1950s, and from German Ostpolitik since the start of the 1970s.
  Incidentally, Bonn’s Ostpolitik towards Moscow, Warsaw and Prague was a notable example of a crucial element of any peace policy: a statesman wanting to act in the interests of peace must speak to the statesman on the other side (that is, the potential enemy!) and must listen to him! Speak, listen and, if possible, come to a compromise. Another example was the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Declaration) in 1975, which was a compromise in the interests of peace. The Soviet Union gained the Western statesmen’s signatures under a declaration of the inviolability of Eastern European frontiers, and the West gained the Communist heads of state’s signatures under the point on human rights (which was later to become famous as Basket Three of the Accords). The collapse of the Soviet Union one and a half decades later was, then, not the result of military force from outside - thank God! - but instead the internal implosion of a system which had far overstretched its power. 
  A converse, negative example is the wars and acts of violence perpetrated for decades between the State of Israel and its Palestine and Arabic neighbours. If neither side talks to the other, compromise and peace remain only an illusory hope.
 
Since 1945, international law, in the shape of the United Nations Charter, has forbidden any external interference in a state’s affairs by means of force; only the Security Council may decide upon exceptions to this basic rule. It appears urgently necessary to me today to remind politicians of this basic rule. For example, the military intervention in Iraq, one based, moreover, on falsehoods, is unambiguously a violation of the principle of non-interference, a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter. Politicians of many nations share the blame for this violation. Equally, politicians of many nations (including Germans) share the responsibility for interventions contradicting international law on humanitarian grounds. For example, for more than a decade, violent conflicts of interest in the Balkans have been disguised behind the cloak of humanitarianism on the part of the West (including the bombing of Belgrade). 

IX. 

However, I would like to leave this digression towards foreign policy and return to parliamentary compromise. The mass media, which, in our open society, shape public opinion to a great extent, sometimes speak of political compromise as “horse trading” or as “lazy” compromises, sometimes they are incensed by supposedly immoral party discipline. Although, on the one hand, it is good and useful if the media continue to critically examine the opinion-forming process, at the same time the theorem of the democratic necessity of compromise remains true. After all, a legislative body where the individual members all stuck unyieldingly to their individual opinions would throw the state into chaos. Similarly, a government would become unable to rule if the individual members all stuck unyieldingly to their individual judgements. Every governmental minister and every member of a parliamentary party knows this. All democratic politicians know they must compromise. Without the principle of compromise, there can be no principle of democracy. 
  In reality, however, there are also bad compromises - for example at the expense of third parties or at the expense of generations to come. There are inadequate compromises, which do not solve the problem at hand, but only give the impression that they solve it. In this way, then, the necessary virtue of compromise faces the temptation of mere opportunism. The temptation of opportunistic compromise with public opinion, or elements of public opinion, recurs daily! For this reason, politicians who are willing to compromise must rely on their personal conscience. 
  There are compromises a politician should not enter into, as it goes against his conscience. In this type of case, the only thing left open to him is public dissent; in some cases all that remains is resignation or the loss of his seat. Going against one’s own conscience undermines one’s honour and morals - and others’ trust in one’s personal integrity. 
  But then there is also the error of conscience. One’s own reasoning can fail, and so can one’s own conscience. In cases like this, moral reproach is not justified, yet terrible damage can be done. If, in cases like this, the politician later recognises his error, he faces the question of whether he should admit his error and tell the truth. In this kind of situation, politicians usually act in only too human a manner, just as all of us in this room: it is hard for any of us to admit our own errors of conscience and the truth about ourselves in public. 

X.

The question of truth can sometimes contrast with the passion Max Weber identified as one of the three pre-eminent qualities of a politician. The question of truth can also contrast with the required rhetorical ability already seen as one of the most important arts two and a half thousand years ago in democratic Athens - and which, if anything, has become even more important in today’s television society. Those wanting to be elected have to present voters with their intentions, their manifesto. In doing so they are in danger of promising more than they can later fulfil, especially if they want to appeal to a television audience. Every campaigner is vulnerable to the temptation of exaggeration. The competition for prestige, and above all to appeal to a television audience, has further intensified this temptation compared with the old newspaper-reading society. 
  Our modern mass democracy is, rather like Winston Churchill once said, truly by far the best form of government for us - compared with all those other forms we have tried from time to time - but it is by no means ideal. It is inevitably afflicted with great temptations, with errors and with deficiencies. What remains decisive is the positive fact that the electorate can change governments without violence or bloodshed, and that, for this reason, those elected and the parliamentary majority behind them must answer for their actions before the electorate. 

XI. 

As well as passion and a sense of proportion, Max Weber believed the third characteristic quality for a politician was a feeling of responsibility. The question remains: responsibility towards whom? For me, the electorate is not the final authority a politician has to answer to; voters often make only a very general, trend-following decision, often making a choice based on their feelings and whims. Nonetheless, their majority decision must command the politicians’ obedience. 
  For me, the final authority remains my own conscience, although I realise that there are many theological and philosophical opinions about the conscience. The word was already used in the time of the Greeks and Romans. Later, Paul and other theologians used it to mean our awareness of God and God’s ordained order, and, at the same time, our awareness that every violation of this order is a sin. Some Christians speak of the “voice of God in us”. In the writings of my friend Richard Schröder I have read that our understanding of the conscience emerged from Biblical thought coming into contact with the world of Hellenism. On the other hand, his whole life long, Immanuel Kant never gave thought to the basic values of his conscience without religion playing a role in it. Kant described the conscience as “the awareness of an inner court of justice in man.”
  Whether one believes the conscience comes from people’s reason or from God - whatever the case, there is little doubt in the existence of the human conscience. Whether a person is a Christian, a Muslim or a Jew, an agnostic or a freethinker, an adult human being has a conscience. I shall add rather quietly: all of us have gone against our own conscience more than once: we have all had to live “with a guilty conscience”. Of course, this all too human weakness is shared by politicians, too. 

XII. 

I have tried to describe to you a few insights gained during three decades of experience acquired by a professional politician. Of course, these were only very limited extracts from a multifaceted reality. One final, double insight is very important to me. Firstly, that is, that our open society and our democracy suffer from many imperfections and deficiencies, and that all politicians still have all- too-human weaknesses. It would be a dangerous error to think of our real, existing democracy as a pure ideal. But, secondly, we Germans - due to our catastrophic history - nonetheless have every reason in the world to cling on to democracy with all our might, constantly revitalising it and constantly standing up bravely to its enemies. Only when we agree upon this will our national anthem, with its “Unity and Justice and Freedom”, be justifiable. 

The Analects of Confucius

Paper by Dr. Tu Weiming
Harvard University and Peking University 

The Analects is, I believe, the distillation of what must have been a series of rich, varied, spontaneous, timely, dynamic, memorable, and thought-provoking interchanges between Confucius (551-479 BCE) and his disciples over the stretch of several decades. It may have taken two generations of Confucius’ most intimate and knowledgeable followers to compile the “book.” It seems that they did not intend it to be a finished product. Rather, they may have deliberately chosen to make it open and receptive to new contributions, but it is obvious that they were cautious and judicious in choosing each entry. The reason for this strategy is not difficult to imagine. Assuming that the purpose for the compilation was to keep a memory of their Master, the paradigmatic personality, whom they missed, adored, respected, and loved. There were several possibilities to complete such a task. They could have chronicled the master’s most important activities, jointly authored an appreciative biography, or systematically recorded his core ideas. Instead, they opted for a highly personal style, recording authentically how he talked, acted, thought, and, most vividly, responded to specific questions. It worked brilliantly.
  As a classic, the Analects is open-ended. It lends itself to new additions as well as divergent glosses, different commentaries, and novel interpretations. Its text, by nature, is receptive to an ever- expanding network of contributors. It seems to be a vast public space with ample room to accommodate a variety of insights attributable to the Master. There are at least three versions recorded in historical bibliographies. Since there is a vast amount of statements beginning with “the Master said” scattered in many pre-Qin (third century BCE) texts, critical scholars are wary about the reliability of any of them. The cautious ones, under the influence of the school of “Doubting Antiquity,” even regard statements in the Analects suspicious. The impression that all of Master’s recorded statements are derivative and that we cannot be sure that any of them truly reflected the Master’s thought is pervasive among Sinologists. As Confucius was silenced, at least in the scholarly circles, the search for the original Confucius has become a Sinological preoccupation.


The situation dramatically changed with the Guodian discoveries since 1992. For the first time, archaeologists and textual scholars are presented with bamboo strips before the 4th century BCE containing primary sources of Confucius’ first-generation disciples and, most surprisingly records of the Master’s comments on the classics. The reliability of the Analects was greatly enhanced. Some of the other attributions to Confucius, such as those in the Book of Rites, seem also ring true as authentic “voice” of the Master. The contour of the transmission of Confucian teaching from the Master via his immediate disciples to the generation of his grandson, the presumed author of the Doctrine of the Mean, has become visible and the climate of opinions in which the Analects are supposed to have been compiled is no longer a mystery. We are far from being absolutely certain about the images of Confucius emerging from the perceptions of his followers, but we are relatively sure that we are not dealing with invented recollections. 
  The current version of the Analects, enriched by centuries of scholarship, is sediment with layers of linguistic, philological, literary, and textual traditions, allowing for numerous praises and blames, uses and abuses, appreciations and disapprovals, understandings and misunderstandings. To be sure, there are multiple ways to approach the Analects, but the possibility is not unlimited. The suggestion that there are as many legitimate interpretations as they are interested interpreters is, at best, an impracticable exaggeration. In fact, only a few significant commentaries have survived in centuries of commentarial traditions. Although there is plurality in interpretive strategies, relativism does not work either in theory or in practice. Nevertheless, undeniably, the Analects is fluid enough a text to encourage divergent, even radically different readings.
 
Like the New Testaments and the Socratic dialogues, the Analects is a source of inspiration for those who cherished the experience of seeing and hearing the master’s teaching directly. As several scholars have pointed out, Chapter X offers a subtle and nuanced depiction of Confucius’ manners of dressing, walking, approaching superiors, meeting strangers, and receiving friends. Indeed, his facial expressions, his body language, and above all his ritual performance are vividly portrayed. The contextualized daily routine discloses his appropriateness in a specific situation. In the eyes of his students, what he did evoked an aesthetic sense of elegance. He comes alive in lived concreteness rather than in abstract universalism. Even, with the lapse of more than twenty five centuries, an attuned ear can still hear his inner voice and sense of his presence. Confucius’ vibrant personality, indeed his humanness is vividly revealed.

As digested conversations and condensed discourses, the dialogical mode pervades the Analects. On the surface, Confucius, as the teacher, simply provided answers. Students looked up to him for guidance, insight and wisdom. There was little room for negotiation. Two-way communication seems totally absent. Rarely do we find a student challenging the Master’s presupposition. Even in the case of Zilu who displayed visible displeasure at the Master’s decision to visit a disputable noble woman, there was no explanation except a protestation that he did not do anything wrong [6:28]. Perhaps students were so much in awe of Confucius’ presence that they just listened attentively for guidance. The case of Yan Hui is pertinent here. “The Master said: ‘I can talk all day to Yan Hui - he never raises any objection, he looks stupid. Yet, observe him when he is on his own: his actions fully reflect what he learned. Oh no, Hui is not stupid!’” [2:9]. In response, Yan Hui, widely acknowledged as Confucius’ most esteemed student, was full of admiration for Confucius as a teacher: 
  Yan Hui said with a sigh: “The more I contemplate it, the higher it is; the deeper I dig into it, the more it resists; I saw it in front of me, and then suddenly it was behind me. Step by step our Master really knows how to entrap people. He stimulates me with literature, he restrains me with ritual. Even if I wanted to stop, I could not. Just as all my resources are exhausted, the goal is towering right above me; I long to embrace it, but cannot find the way” [9:11]. 
  Underlying these two statements is the assumptive reason that exemplary teaching, rather than teaching by words, enables students to find their own paths of self-realization. Contention is discouraged, for “cleaver words” are seldom a sign of goodness [1:3]. “What is the use of eloquence? An agile tongue creates many enemies” [5:5; Simon Leys, trans., The Analects of Confucius (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), p. 19]. Indeed, “glib talk,” like “affectation and obsequiousness,” should be avoided [5:25]. The art of listening, essential for personal knowledge, must be cultivated as a precondition for elegance in verbal expression. The Confucian style of teaching, contrasted with the Socratic Method, underscores experiential understanding and silent appreciation.
 
Learning (xue), which features prominently in the Analects, involves practice as well as cognition. It is a spiritual exercise. One learns not only with heart-and-mind (xin) but also with the body (shen). Zengzi’s reflection on his self-cultivation is pertinent here: “I examine myself three times a day. When dealing on behalf of others, have I been trustworthy? In intercourse with my friends, have I been faithful? Have I practiced what I was taught?” [1:4]. Learning so conceived entails transforming the body as well as enlightening the mind. As the practice of the “six arts” (ritual, music, archery, horsemanship, calligraphy, and arithmetic) clearly indicates that both physical and mental disciplines are required and that learning and thinking (si) ought to complement each other [2:15]. 
  Implicit in this style of education is the existence of a fiduciary community, a community of trust. The fellowship of the like-minded that Confucius formed with his disciples was a voluntary association dedicated to improving the human condition through education. Modern historians interpret the traditional description of Confucius as the “First Teacher” (xianshi) in terms of his social role, namely he was the first scholar to establish private schools in China. While government-sponsored institutes of learning had existed centuries before, Confucius was the innovator of self-financed schooling. There is a single reference to a modest payment (tuition) in the Analects [7:7], but the students gathered around Confucius, like Jesus’ disciples, were not children but adults who were truth seekers, passionately engaged in the quest for meaning of life. They were attracted to him by his great vision and profound sense of mission. His radiant and yet unassuming personality must have been a source of inspiration for them: “To store up knowledge in silence, to remain forever hungry for learning, to teach others without tiring - all this comes to me naturally” [7:2; Leys, p. 29].
 

Confucius may not have had a set curriculum, but the Analects offers sufficient evidence to support the claim that his educational purpose was no less than learning to be human. It is not surprising that, under the influence of the “foremost teacher,” the primary aim of education is character building in East Asia. What does this mean? Neo- Confucian thinkers interpreted this to mean “learning for the sake of the self,” “learning of the body and the heart-and-mind,” “learning of the heart-and-mind and human nature,” “learning of human nature and destiny,” “learning of the sages,” and “learning of the gentleman (junzi, ‘nobleman,’ ‘superior man,’ or ‘profound person’).” Confucius made quite a few references to the idea of the gentleman. At first glance, learning to be a gentleman does not seem to be particularly arduous: A gentleman eats without stuffing his belly; chooses a dwelling without demanding comfort; is diligent in his office and prudent in his speech; seeks the company of the virtuous in order to straighten his own ways. Of such a man, one may truly say that he is fond of learning [1:14; Leys, p. 5].
  By depicting the gentleman in the way he conducts himself as a responsible person, Confucius made it clear that the defining characteristic of being a gentleman is a state of being as much as a manner of acting. “A gentleman should be slow to speak and prompt to act” [4: 24, Leys, p 17] and “he preaches only what he practices” [2:13, Leys, p. 7.]. He seeks virtue and justice [4:11] and in his dealing with the world he always takes the side of rightness [4:10]. 
  However, Confucius cautioned, “a gentleman who lacks gravity has no authority and his learning will remain shallow. A gentleman puts loyalty and faithfulness foremost; he does not befriend his moral inferiors. When he commits a fault, he is not afraid to amend his ways.” Learning for the sake of the self [14:24] is relevant here. A gentleman broadens his learning through literature and restrains himself with ritual [12:15]. He is at ease without being arrogant [13:26]. He can bring out the good that is in people [12:16]. It is easy to work for him, but difficult to please him; for, although he never demands anything that is beyond our capacity, he will not be pleased if we do not follow the Way [13:25]. When Zilu asked: “What must a man be like before he deserves to be called a Gentleman?” The Master said, “One who is, on the one hand, earnest and keen and, on the other, genial deserves to be called a Gentleman - earnest and keen amongst friends and genial amongst brothers.” [13:28, D. C. Lau, trans., Confucius - The Analects, Penguin Classics, 1979), p. 123].
  Edward Shils notes that Confucius may have been the originator of the modern idea of “civility.” The Confucian gentleman is civilized and civil. Although Confucius, an accomplished archer and an expert at handling horses, was fond of hunting and fishing, he deliberately chose to cultivate fine arts as expressions of his cherished personality ideal. As a sportsman, he preferred archery: “A gentleman avoids competition. Still, if he must compete let it be at archery. There, as he bows and exchanges civilities both before the contest and over drinks afterward, he remains a gentleman, even in competition. [3:7, Leys, p. 11]. As a tireless traveller, Confucius demonstrated a great deal of courage in his arduous and hazardous adventures, but, under normal circumstances, he was always “warm, kind, respectful, temperate, and differential” [1:10]. 
  Confucius lived in a period of political disorder and social disintegration. The elaborate ritual tradition (fengjian, feudal system), refined by the Duke of Zhou, one of the most influential statesmen, became dysfunctional. Internecine warfare flared up between rivalling states. Several hermits tempted Confucius to withdraw from the world to enjoy a peaceful and tranquil life in communion with nature. The Master, though respectful of such an existential preference, determined to pursue his own course of action: “I cannot associate birds and beasts. Am I not a member of this human race? Who, then, is there for me to associate with? If the world were following the Way, I would not have to reform it” [18:6]. It is not surprising that among the historical religions (Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Christianity, and Islam), Confucianism is unique in refusing to make the difference between the sacred and the secular.
 
Strictly speaking, Herbert Fingarette’s seminal book in characterizing Confucius as regarding the secular as sacred is misdirected. Confucius did not posit a spiritual sanctuary (church, temple, synagogue, monastery, or ashram) as a sacred place for contemplation, meditation, prayer, and worship. Nor did he envisage a holy land or the other shore as ultimately real and radically different from our life-world here and now. By committing himself to transforming the human condition from within, he was inevitably intertwined with political affairs of the time. However, it is misleading to propose that Confucius’ true vocation was politics rather than teaching. 
  In the eye of his disciples, the Master was occasionally preoccupied with matters of governance and apprehensive about lack of access to political authority. He was definitely confident in his ability to bring about a new ritual order, had he been employed by a ruler to do so [13:10; 17:5]. Yet, he had a clear sense of what the gentleman, as a scholar-official, ought to behave and was contemptuous of his contemporary politicians: 
  Zigong asked: “How does one deserve to be called a gentleman?” The Master said: “He who behaves with honour, and, being sent on a mission to the four corners of the world, does not bring disgrace to his lord, deserves to be called a gentleman.” “And next to that, if I may ask?” “His relatives praise his filial piety and the people of his village praise the way he respects the elders.” “And next to that, if I may ask?” “His word can be trusted: Whatever he undertakes, he brings to completion. In this, he may merely show the obstinacy of a vulgar man; still, he should probably be qualified as a gentleman of lower category.” “In this respect, how would you rate our present politicians?” “Alas! These puny creatures are not even worth mentioning!” [13:20; Leys, p. 63-64].
 
Even if we contend that Confucius’ real calling was not teaching but politics, we must acknowledge that since he assumed that politics is an extension of ethics, to him, cultivation of personal morality is a precondition for participation in politics. Politics, in this sense, does not mean the capacity to manipulate power, authority, or influence. Nor does it mean the use of tactics and strategy to gain power. Rather, it is just and efficient governance achieved through the art of moral leadership: “The rule of virtue can be compared to the Pole Star which commands the homage of the multitude of stars without leaving its place” [2:1, Lau, p. 63]. 
  Emulating this ideal of rulership, the proper way of government requires neither force nor coercion: “The moral power of the gentleman is wind; the moral power of the common man is grass. Under the wind, the grass must bend” [5:8; Leys, p. 58]. The image of the natural sway of the grass under the gentle wind is not the exercise of coercive power, but a ritual dance attuned to the same rhythm. In this context, although government service is the most effective means of articulating moral leadership, it is not the only arena that matters. 
  A salient feature of the Confucian style of governance is the centrality of the political significance of family ethics: “Someone said to Confucius: ‘Master, why don’t you join the government?’ The Master said: ‘In the Documents it is said: ‘Only cultivate filial piety and be kind to your brothers and you will be contributing to the body politic.’ This is also a form of political action; one need not necessarily join the government” [2: 21; Leys, p. 8]. 
  Furthermore, Confucius’ theory and practice of humane government was so fundamentally different from the politicking of those “puny creatures,” He simply did not want to demean himself to play their games. His purpose of conducting political activity was to ensure that the Way would prevail. His preferred method was to address the fundamental issues of the body politic as a precondition for governance and management. He believed that if these fundamental issues were relegated to the background, there would be no politics worth the name. What is politics then? Using a homonym, he defined politics (zheng) as “rectification” (zheng), which means that politics is primarily about leadership. If leaders do not rectify themselves as public servants, the quality of government would be eroded and the performance of governance would be compromised, even if we have adequate institutions. 
  His celebrated theory of the “rectification of names” is deceptively simple: Duke Jing of Qi asked Confucius about government, Confucius replied: “Let the lord be a lord; the subject be a subject; the father be a father; the son be a son.” The Duke said: “Excellent! If indeed the lord is not a lord; the subject is not a subject; the father is not a father, the son is not a son, I could be sure of nothing anymore - not even of my daily food” [12:11, Leys, 57]. Implicit in this assertion is the belief that although sufficient food, sufficient weapons, and the trust of the people are vitally important for the peace and prosperity of the state, trust of the people is the most essential. Lest we think that Confucius’ moralization of politics is an untenable ideal, a measure of realism guided his approach to the power structure of his time. 
  In short, he did not have any illusions about Realpolitik. He continuously assessed the overall situation and tried strenuously to seize opportunities for political appointments. He was well prepared to deal with the complexity of the political circumstances and hoped that, with the help of his able students, he could take an active part in improving the livelihood of the people. It was not an accident that among his students, there was great expertise in managing the state: ritual, music, finance, diplomacy and military affairs. However, he would never sacrifice his principle for expediency and he always adhered to his commitment that the well-being of the people was the principal justification for humane government (renzheng). 
  It seems apparent that Confucius was a failed politician; despite his initial courteous and respectful receptions at the courts of powerful lords, he did not find a secured position to exercise his influence and was eventually forced to leave. His abortive attempts to steer rulers away from cabals who were mainly interested in wealth and power seems to indicate that he was not particularly adept in political intrigue. He may have been a tragic hero in the eyes of sympathetic historians who believed, as he did himself, that he could have partly restored the political order of the glorious Zhou dynasty, had he been given an opportunity to demonstrate his statecraft [17:5]. Nevertheless, to characterize his self-understanding only in present-day political terms is misleading. For one thing, his perception of “politics” as “rectification” involves knowledge, culture, morality, and taste. It is vision of community laden with epistemological, ethical and aesthetic implications. 
  We have already quoted Confucius’ observation that dutifully discharging one’s familial obligations is a bona fide case of political engagement. In his view, the political process begins at home. It is inseparable from one’s way of living. Implicit in this style of Confucian praxis is the creation of a discourse community through self-understanding and mutual learning. Confucian disciples were grown-up men, who, fully aware of their capacity to positively engage in worldly affairs, decided to join a common course to improve the human condition. Their group solidarity was not imposed upon them by the Master according to a preconceived pedagogical model. Nor was it forged, like the Maoists, by a firm resolve to perform a clearly defined political and ethical function. 
  Rather, they gathered around Confucius for developing their own potential as knowledgeable, cultured, ethical and tasteful contributors to the public good. This constructive mode enabled them to practice their own paths of self-cultivation through reciprocal respect and mutual appreciation. Confucius encouraged them not to become utensils defined in terms of their functional utility [2:12], but all-round junzi (gentlemen, noblemen, or authoritative and profound persons) capable of political action at different levels under all circumstances. 
  The pattern of interaction between Confucius and his disciples indicates that the joint venture they embarked on was unprecedented in Chinese history and unique among major historical religions. Confucius was not the founder of the scholarly tradition that he identified with and urged his students to adhere to. It was not out of modesty that he described himself as a “transmitter” rather than an “inventor” [7:1]. Nor was he the highest manifestation of the human virtue that his students were taught to aspire to. Again, it was not out of modesty that he declined to be characterized as “sagely” or “humane” (ren) [7:34]. Yet, his self-effacing personal portrayal did not at all diminish his awesome presence among his students. His source of inspiration came from a richly textured form of life which was concretely situated in a specific moment and place and yet the content embodied in it was a shared commonality that is universally significant.
 

Since Confucius regarded himself as the guardian of the Way of human survival and flourishing, he appealed to the sages and worthies who were architects of the cumulative tradition rather than a transcendent reality beyond human comprehension or a natural evolution without human participation. The Duke of Zhou, instrumental in sustaining the political order of the Zhou dynasty by constructing an elaborate system of rites and music, was Confucius’ paradigmatic personality. His lifelong dream was to revive Duke Zhou’s grand design and usher in a new era of world peace based on the ethics of self-cultivation, sympathy, justice, and responsibility. Despite the Duke’s magnificent accomplishments, he was, like Confucius, a transmitter rather an inventor, for he had inherited the great enterprise from the sage- kings: Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen and Wu. Confucius’ historical consciousness was shaped by his awareness of the cultural norm that could still be maintained and an intense sense of mission that he was “chosen” to perform such a task. 
  As he wandered from state to state in search for a ruler who would offer him an opportunity to realize his dream, he, perhaps inadvertently, formed a group of the likeminded, earlier referred to as the discourse community. In retrospect, although he was never entrusted with a territory to put his idea of the model government in practice, the social reality that he actually constructed turned out to be profoundly meaningful. The fellowship, as the result of a collaborative effort he and his disciples made, was open, flexible, communicative, interactive, inclusive, and mutually beneficial. He engaged his students not as a philosopher who methodically led them to see the essence of things step by step. There is nothing in the Analects that resembles the elaborate reasoning in the Socratic dialogue. Indeed, Confucius distrusted mere verbal persuasiveness, despised glibness and resented clever expressions. Although he valued highly eloquence in diplomacy, lucidity in thought and articulateness in literature, he preferred silent appreciation, as in the case of Yan Hui, to effective argumentation. The latter reminded him of the trickery in legal disputes, even litigiousness. In civil cases, he favoured negotiation, mediation or out of court settlement, rather than formalistic, arbitrary and coercive mechanism of control. 

The ideal society Confucius envisioned and the discourse community he created through exemplary teaching was a voluntary association. The primary purpose of such an association is to help facilitate the self- realization of each of its members. The polity based on such a social vision involves a reflectivity of both the political and intellectual elite and an effective procedure by which humane government is set in motion. Unsurprisingly, Confucius insisted that the ruler through his vigilant self-cultivation that the supervisory power of the officialdom became the embodiment of such a two-way process: responsible self- consciousness on the one hand and conscientious implementation of policies that will impinge on the livelihood of the people on the other. The grave matters of the state, such as agriculture, famine relief, and material affairs, must be conducted with utter seriousness bearing, first of all, the welfare of the people in mind. Contrary to Hegel’s misconception, the sovereignty rests with the people rather than the ruler. Indeed, sovereignty is bestowed to the people by the Mandate of Heaven. The ruler entrusted with the Heavenly charge is duty-bound to act morally, in the sense, responsively to the demands of the people. 
  People, so conceived, are neither ignorant nor helpless. The great tradition preceding Confucius made it explicit that the cultivation of virtue (de) is the very reason that the ruler legitimizes his role as the “father and mother” of the multitude. As Mencius, following Confucius’ lead, insisted, if ruler fails to discharge his duty (“the ruler should act like a ruler”), his ministers should remonstrate with him. They should resign in protest, if he fails to heed their complaints. Under extraordinary circumstances, regicide is permissible and, according to the principle of the “rectification of names,” the irresponsible ruler is no more than a mere loner without power, authority, and legitimacy. He can be banished or killed for the sake of the people. The people are like the water; they can support the boat, they can also make it capsized. “Heaven sees as the people see and Heaven hears as the people hear,” is not an abstract notion but a practical and, not infrequently, practiced idea.

Confucius’ determination to transform politics by moral strength, cultural values, social cohesiveness and historical consciousness, often misunderstood as his naïve enthusiasm in the primacy of the political order, was predicated on the perception that the ultimate purpose of politics is human flourishing. Surely, politics is intertwined with power, influence and authority, but, as already mentioned, the purpose of politics is ethics through education. The maintenance of security and the sustenance of livelihood are not ends in themselves but conditions for human flourishing. The Confucian instruction that “from the ruler to the commoner all should regard self-cultivation as the root” is supposed to provide the basis for a fiduciary community, rather than to inculcate a mechanism of social control. To use Emile Durkheim’s terminology, Confucius, through mutual understanding and corporate self-consciousness, brought about an organic solidarity. Among Confucius’ disciples there were literati, farmers, artisans, soldiers, merchants and practitioners of a variety of other occupations. The division of labour enriched Confucian fellowship by its diversity of backgrounds and plurality of life-orientations. 
  The implicit democratic spirit inspired H. G. Creel, the Chicago professor and the dean of Sinology in the 1950s, to characterize Confucius as a liberal democrat and a rational humanist at that. It is an exaggeration, if not anachronistic, to label Confucius in such terms. The idea of a liberal democrat was probably not even a rejected possibility in the Confucian world of ideas. However, it is important to note that what Confucius envisioned as the proper way of human interaction transcends modern political categories no matter how broadly they are conceived. In our fragmented notion of the spheres of interest and disaggregated scheme of professional disciplines, the idea of “organic,” rather than “mechanic,” unity, like universal brotherhood, appears to be merely an imagined possibility. Modern academic theoreticians, under the influence of specialization and professionalization, have difficulties recognizing that a sense of wholeness is a perennial human quest. The camaraderie that Confucius and his disciples realized was no more than the concretization of a common human aspiration.


Confucius’ charisma lay in his magnetic power to draw a divergent group of energetic men to share his vision and mission to transform the world from within by tapping the mental and physical resources of each one of them through the art of self-cultivation. Confucian self-cultivation, far more complex than the personal quest for inner spirituality, is multi-dimensional. It involves not only the body and mind but also the total environment of one’s existence. Confucius’ own depiction of his spiritual journey is a case in point: 

• At fifteen, I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I took my stand.
• At forty, had no delusions. At fifty, I knew the Mandate of Heaven.
• At sixty, my ear was attuned. At seventy, I could follow the desires
• of my heart without transgressing any rule [2:4]. 

This pithy autobiographic note has inspired numerous interpretations. Obviously, Confucius lived up to his self-understanding that he was primarily a learner: “In a hamlet of ten houses, you will certainly find people as loyal and faithful as I, but you will not find one man who loves learning as much as I do” [5:28; Leys, p. 23]. 
  Throughout his life Confucius persistently tried to improve himself. He fully acknowledged that sage-hood or moral perfection was beyond his reach and that he learned without flagging and taught without growing weary [7:34]. Indeed, he sought every opportunity to learn: “Put me in the company of any two people at random - they will invariably have something to teach me. I can take their qualities as a model and their defects as a warning” [7:22; Leys, p. 31]. He frankly admitted that he had to acquire the cumulative wisdom of the past to make him wise: “I was not born of knowledge, but, being fond of antiquity, I am quick to seek it” [7:20, Lau, p. 88]. Furthermore, he was deeply concerned that he lapsed in his self-cultivation: “Failure to cultivate moral power, failure to explore what I have learned, incapacity to stand by what I know to be right and incapacity to reform what is not good - these are my worries” [7:3; Leys, p. 29]. In short, he was the sort of learner “who, in his enthusiasm, forgets to eat, in his joy forgets to worry, and who ignores the approach of old age” [7:19; Leys, p.31].
 

The content of Confucian learning is rich and varied. In the Analects, some of Confucius’ disciples are said to excel in virtue, eloquence, government and culture [11:3]. These are apparently not subjects of Confucian teaching but dimensions of human flourishing that are particularly valued in Confucian education. Presumably, Confucius wished that all his students are virtuous, cultured, eloquent, and committed to public service, but, among them, only the most outstanding demonstrated exceptional attainments in one of them. As a rule, Confucius made use of four things in his teaching: literature, conduct, loyalty, and trust [7:25]. Correct behaviour is important in Confucian pedagogy, but the emphasis is on attitude and belief. Behavioural exactness without being buttressed by the right attitude and belief is only a corruptible formalism. Surely, how one looks, listens, talks and acts in all circumstances is the proper way of self- cultivation [16:10], but only through “firmness, resolution, simplicity, silence” [13:27; Leys, p. 65] can we hope to realize our full humanity. Indeed, “courtesy, tolerance, trust, diligence, generosity” [17:6], the five practices that can put humanity in the service of social intercourse, are attitudinal as well as behavioural.
  In a broader context, Confucian education is not confined to ethical instructions alone. As a comprehensive and integrated program of learning to be fully human, it covers the whole range of what we refer to as the liberal arts education today. The Six Classics symbolize an all-embracing humanistic vision, a vision that encompasses the poetic, musical, political, social, historical, and metaphysical aspects of human existence. In the Analects, Confucius instructed his son as well his students to begin his study with Poetry and Rites in order to learn the basic language and practice of the Confucian Way. He made references to the three sage-kings - Yao, Shun, and Yu in the Documents to show his admiration for their humane governance. He also mentioned that continuous reading of the Change could liberate himself from committing major mistakes in life. Furthermore, his personal experience with music and his “tacit appreciation” of the Mandate of Heaven enabled him to convey a sense of human flourishing rooted in the art of listening and the respect for the transcendent. 
  Thus, underlying Confucian education is the firm conviction that human beings are multivalent and multidimensional. The reductionist mode of thinking is not only simplistic but also misleading. We are not merely rational animals, tool users, or linguistic beings because we are aesthetic, social, ethical and spiritual. We can fully realize ourselves only if we care for our body, heart, mind, soul and spirit. As we move from the centre of our existence to meet ever- expanding and increasingly complex relationships, we embody home, community, nation, world, earth and the cosmos in our sensitivity and consciousness. This is why true humanity is relational and dialogical as well as psychological and spiritual. Education must take as its point of departure the concrete, living person here and now, a person embedded in primordial ties, especially the affective bond between parent and child. 
  By implications, in a modernist perspective, those ties, such as race, language, gender, status, age and faith, are also relevant here. In a way, each of us is fated to be that unique person, situated in a particular time and space, which has never existed before and will never appear again. Indeed, we are as different as our faces. Yet, Confucians also believe that the commonality and communicability of our heart-and-mind is such that our nature, in essence, is the same and that we can share our sight, sound, emotion, will, sense, taste and experience. This confluence of difference and similarity enables us to become what we ought to be not by severing our primordial ties that have made possible for us to be concrete and living persons. Rather, we transform them into vehicles for self-realization. That is the reason that, as learners, our life is enriched by our encountering a variety of humans who are individually unique and communally share a great deal of information, knowledge and wisdom together. Furthermore, our feelings, desires, motivations and aspirations are personal but not necessarily private. We often reveal our intensely personal concerns to relatives, friends, colleagues, associates and even strangers. Their sympathetic understanding of our inner worlds is profoundly meaningful to us.
 

Human life is multidimensional. Any attempt to reduce the variety of living experience to merely the physical, mental or spiritual is counter-productive. Human beings are by nature psychological, economic, social, political, historical, aesthetic, linguistic, cultural and metaphysical animals. The full realization of human potential is never one-sided. Confucius believed that the enabling environment for human flourishing is “harmony without uniformity” [13:23]. The respect for difference is vitally important for the development of a wholesome community. 
  The Confucian ethic implicit in this line of thinking is an ethic of ultimate ends, pure motivation, situational appropriateness, political engagement, social responsibility and joy. It covers the whole range of our lived world. It presupposes a complex form of life. The core value in the Analects is ren which is variously rendered as benevolence, goodness, human-heartedness, and love. I find Wing- tsit Chan’s straightforward translation as “humanity” most suggestive and compelling. For Confucius, humanity is the cardinal virtue that embraces all other virtues, such as rightness, civility, loyalty, trust, wisdom, considerateness and filial piety. Humanity is also the comprehensive virtue that can be enriched by all manifestations of human excellence. For years, scholars of Confucian studies assume that ren is inevitably social, for etymologically the character combines the ideograph of the human and the sign for two. Understandably, in a seminal essay, the eminent Sinologist, Peter Boodberg, argues that the proper way of deciphering ren is “co-humanity.” [“The Semasiology of Some Primary Confucian Concepts,” Philosophy East and West 2, no. 4 (1953), 317-332]. 
  In the Analects, humanity is sometimes associated with and sometimes differentiated from wisdom (zhi) and ritual propriety (li, civility). It seems to suggest an inner quality defining the truth and reality of a concrete, living person. This may have been the reason that Confucius characterized authentic learning as “learning for the sake of the self,” only through self-reliance, self-cultivation and self- realization, can we become fully human. Since, in the Confucian tradition, a person is a centre of relationships, it is both personal and social. In the bamboo strips unearthed in Guodian, the character ren (humanity) is depicted by two graphs: body (shen) on top and mind- and-heart (xin) below. It vividly symbolizes humanity is not merely social, it is also profoundly personal.


Economic globalization is characterized by instrumental rationality, science, technology (especially information and communication technologies), technocratic management, professionalism, materialism, liberalization and legitimization of desires, and individual choice. The “economic man” is a rational animal conscious of his self-interest, motivated by increasing his wealth, power and influence, committed by maximizing his profit in the free market adjudicated by law. He embodies of a host of modernistic values, such as freedom, rationality, rights consciousness, work ethic, knowledge, technical competence, cognitive intelligence, legality and motivation. Yet, other essential values requisite for social solidarity are either relegated the back or totally ignored notably justice, sympathy, responsibility, civility and ethical intelligence. 
  In a world characterized by materialistic and egocentric tendencies, the thirst for spiritual gratification often takes the form of fundamental extremism and exclusive particularism. Confucian humanism, as expressed in the Analects, is a balance and open approach to the purpose of life. It offers a spiritual exercise essential for self-knowledge and it is a primordial wisdom and a source of inspiration forever meaningful to human self-understanding.