A Comparison between New Confucian and Modern Western Notions of Individuality - 中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

A Comparison between New Confucian and Modern Western Notions of Individuality

from the Perspective of Niklas Luhmann’s Social Systems Theory

Hans-Georg Moeller

In the first part of this presentation, I will describe how the notion of the “individual” was developed and transformed within New Confucianism, i.e. contemporary Confucian philosophy from the early 20th century to the present. Major Confucian philosophers of the first half of the 20th century, such as the first generation New Confucian thinkers Xiong Shili and Feng Youlan, did not yet focus very much on the issue of individuality. They were mainly concerned with establishing a new Confucian metaphysics as an alternative to the “great systems” that had been developed in modern Western philosophy. At the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, leading second generation New Confucian intellectuals, such as Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Zhang Junmai, while partly continuing the metaphysical efforts of their predecessors, wrote to a greater extent about more concrete social, political, and moral issues. Interestingly enough, they maintained that Confucian philosophy had always been more concerned with the “individual” and the “subject” than the allegedly too rationalistic, too scientific, and too “objective” philosophy of the West. Currently, third generation New Confucians, such as Du Weiming and Henry Rosemont Jr., contradict this claim and point out that rather than being concerned with the “single individual,” Confucianism advocates a model of socially integrated or inclusive selfhood.

The second part of the paper will discuss the modern Western conception of the autonomous individual as introduced, for instance, by Locke and Kant, from the perspective of Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. Luhmann describes the historical transition to modernity as a structural shift from “stratified” to “functional differentiation” which has been accompanied by major “semantic” shifts. In this way, the development of the modern Western notion of individuality can be understood as a semantic reaction to social change. The transition towards modernity was accompanied by a transition from ideals of socially inclusive individuality to those of a unique and exclusive individuality. This semantic transition, however, did not succeed in developing an altogether convincing concept of individuality as is evidenced by the many theoretical criticisms by authors such as Nietzsche, Freud, or the Postmodernists.

The third and final part of the paper will point out how the New Confucian model of socially inclusive selfhood resembles (in part) pre-modern Western conceptions of individuality and thus may be at odds with a society based on “functional differentiation.” It will be argued that perhaps neither the New Confucian model nor the early modern Western concept of the single individual provide adequate descriptions of personhood in the globalized world of the 21st century. In contemporary society, it seems, personhood is constructed through various often incompatible, but simultaneous “careers” in multiple contexts and relationships.