The First and the Last: Concluding Thoughts (NK)

 What if, in our attempt to assess a work as a whole, we were to give special attention to the very beginning and the very end of that work?  What if, after having finished the work we went back to read closely and carefully how the work was introduced to us, its first word, and to the way in which we left it, its last word?  That moment of transition from the ordinary experience of our everyday life to the life of the book we have committed our attention to would mark a significant shift in our consciousness.  Once we take up the story we are in the story, but when we open the book and read its opening scene and when we close it after having heard its final phrase we move from one world to another.  It is in this spirit that I want to look closely at analects 1.1 and 20.3 as way of taking stock of the whole.

1.1 The Master said, "Is it not a pleasure to learn [xue] and, when it is timely, to practice what you have learned?  Is it not a joy to have friends coming from afar?  Is it not gentlemanly not to become resentful if no one takes notice of your learning?"

We have come into a space, perhaps a room or perhaps out in the open air, where a conversation is taking place.  We have joined this conversation, it would seem, in medias res, amongst "friends", and we are asked to reflect upon what the activity of learning produces in us emotionally (joy) and cultivates in our character (gentlemanly).  It is striking to realize how much of the Analects as a whole is in this first saying of Confucius.  First, there is learning (xue).  Learning is a fundamental aspect of the Confucian emphasis on cultivation.  Through careful study and observation of rites and rituals, of the important texts and historical figures of the past, and perhaps most importantly, of the words and behaviors of the people around us we begin to cultivate understanding and this in turn cultivates our character.  Secondly, speaking of character, we have in this first analect the mention of the gentleman (junzi), that all important figure of noble sentiment and possessor of Goodness (ren).  Here it is reflected in another feature of the Analects as a whole, that of the frustration born out of not being understood or noticed for one’s learning.  The junzi doesn’t become “resentful” in the face of this.  Confucius of course will get increasingly frustrated and occasionally melancholy that he has not been able to fully realize the way by being employed in a position that would allow him to do so.  But, he never becomes resentful.  Interestingly, this hint of a melancholy to come is preceded by (perhaps surprisingly) an invocation of pleasure and joy; pleasure in learning, and joy in the company of friends.  The Analects does not first strike one as text that values pleasure.  But, it is there.  Particularly in the context of learning and of music.  The joy in the company friends highlights another very important aspect of the Confucian Way, that the character of a human being is cultivated in and inseparable from its social context.  Whether this manifests in filial piety (xiao), dutifulness (zhong), ritual propriety (li), or Goodness (ren) itself it is always a product of intentional and considered activity within a cultural or social world.  Lastly, I would note that this analect also connects “timeliness” (shi), a term often used to describe Confucius himself, and “practice” (xi), the way in which one conducts oneself outwardly.  Xi can also mean something like “to flap one’s wings”, so to connect it with the notion of Confucius’s “timeliness” reminds us of the episode in which Confucius and Zilu come upon the bird who flys away and returns and Confucius dubs it “timely”.

20.3 The Master said, “A person will have no way to become a gentleman if he does not understand destiny. He will have no way to find balance if he does not know the rites.  He will have no way to assess people’s character if he does not have insight into words.”

It is fitting and provocative that the last word of the Analects is the word “words”.  Confucius was always concerned with words.  But, he was concerned about them in a way that wasn’t overly abstract such as dwelling on the insufficiency of words to signify things.  He was concerned with glib speech, with matching one’s words to one’s activity, and to the truth in the words of ancient texts such as The Odes.  Above all, he used words and his disciples thought it wise to record them for posterity.  To end a book with “words” is to leave the reader with “words” on his mind.  It entices us to consider what we have just experienced in the course of tour through The Analects as words.  The imperative to have “insight” into words encourages us to read closer and more carefully.  This is especially prescient in light of the fact that so many of the analects are short on words.  Some are only a sentence or two and so we must take our time and devote more care in the assessment of their meaning.

Destiny is also a fitting topic to raise at the end of a story.  But, it is a strange and surprising one to encounter in The Analects because Confucius has mostly eschewed talk of heaven (tian), spirits, and other things that tend toward the metaphysical or supernatural side of human experience.  He is much more concerned with the earthly realm of everyday life, the things we have ready at hand, the things that we can control and cultivate in ourselves and in our world.  Destiny is out of our hands, and so, not much use to the Confucian way.  Yet, perhaps there is another way to understand destiny that is more in line with what we have come to expect from The Analects, perhaps the injunction to have “insight into words” might even be provoking us to reconsider what we think we understand when we talk about destiny.  The Master tells us that we must “understand destiny”, he does not necessarily tell us that we must understand our destiny.  This makes it less a matter of figuring out what our individual destiny is and then following it, and more about understanding, in the abstract, all of the elements the converge overtime to produce what we might call “a human life”.  To view things this way is like a telescoping out, a broad imagining of the possibilities of life in a way that adds context and meaning to the pursuit of becoming a junzi.  If one reaches that elusive goal of becoming a junzi one could say “it was my destiny” not because it was written down from the beginning that you would become a junzi but because your understanding of destiny was part of what made it possible to realize.

Nicholas Kaelesch