Confucian teaching subject: the dilemma of an old episteme

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Reconceputalizing the work of teaching

Proposal

This paper theoretically investigates the concept of the Confucian teacher as an ethical subject throughout the Foucauldian framework of subject. The analysis expands to the dilemma East Asian education researchers have faced regarding their traditional epistemology, Confucianism, in the leu of globalization and epistemic colonization.

Comparative and international educational studies have delved into promoting epistemological pluriversality to challenge the dominant Western epistemology, which has unrelentingly traveled the globe (Zhao et al., 2022). Confucianism has been conceived either as an old episteme to be abandoned or a traditional virtue to be revived. This paper intends to open up a new possibility of understanding Confucianism: neither abandonment nor revival.

Foucault suggests a framework for analyzing an ethical subject with four dimensions: substance (what), mode (why), regimen (how), and telos (purpose) (Fendler, 2010; Foucault, 1984). Applying the framework is intended to understand the Confucian teacher as an ethical subject that is complicated by way of ancient governmental technology, which is still pervasive in the East Asin education system in forms of culture, tradition, and curriculum (Kim, 2022; Lai et al., 2016).

I mainly focus on the Analects of Confucius, a central Confucian classic book, to analyze how a Confucian teaching subject is defined. While the book was written more than 2,000 years ago, it is still worth to be analyzed as such intellectuals have revisited and studied before and even after Western modernization (Hall & Ames, 1995; Makeham, 2008; Mou, 2015).

A Confucian teacher’s “substance” can be induced by Confucian principles, such as Ren (benevolence), Li (propriety), Xiao (filial piety), Yi (righteousness), and Zhi (wisdom). These principles are imperative for inculcating learners to adopt their socio-ethical role that is predefined prior to the conduct of education. This role-specific ethics operates as Confucian discourse’s “mode” reasoning the Confucian onto-epistemology. The “regimen” of Confucianism is sacred rituals, which define what a teaching subject ought/not to do in the binary and hierarchical relationship between a teaching and a learning subject. The “telos” of Confucianism is the datong (Great harmony) that can be achieved by practicing Confucian principles.
An issue of Confucianism is that it inherently assumes an unequal, patriarchic, and hierarchical society/kingdom resembling sovereign power in the Foucauldian sense. While there are many that the West can benefit ethically and epistemologically from, a Confucian teacher is under the accusation of serving a kingdom’s harmony, not an individual’s liberty in the Western sense. Thus, the pursuit of Confucianism as a possible cosmopolitan ethics has a risk of inadvertently promoting sovereign power in a modern nation and the beyond while re-discovering the Confucian technology of self-governing.

Confucianism is not eradicated; instead, it continues to be foundational in East Asia, whereas it could be seen as exotic in the comparative and international context. This complexity of Confucianism puts East Asian education researchers in a predicament, preventing them from simply endorsing or resisting it. To problematize Confucian teaching subjects, East Asian researchers stand in a liminal space between advocating Confucianism internationally and challenging it domestically.

Author

• Jonggeun Park, Teachers College, Columbia University