China and the West

Irving Babbitt and China : general.
1960
Harry Levin (Professor of Comparative Literature Harvard University) : Babbitt was keenly interested in Christianity, utterly fascinated by Buddhism, and probably most sympathetic to secular creeds of Confucius.

1965
Chang Hsin-hai : Early in his academic career, Babbitt demonstrated the fallacy in the fashionable 'scientific' approach to literature, pointing out that the aim in studying literature was not facts but a well-rounded and meaningful view of life. For this reason, Babbitt had extended his study in India and China, where, he felt sure, the great thinkers must have faced the same perennial questions that have baffled the Western world. He studied Buddhism and Confucianism not from idle curiosity but to find out what answers they had to offer in comparison with Western literature. He found the synthesis he preached and taught at Harvard for the rest of his life. If the young people from the Orient were attracted to Babbitt, Babbitt was certainly also attracted to the Orient. In working out his humanistic view, he felt that he was reinforced at every turn by the basic thoughts of two towering men : Buddha and Confucius.
When more than ever a true understanding between East and West can well mean the survival of the human race, Babbitt's approach is tremendously important for three reasons : 1. It considers the romantic attitude towards the East, fashionable in Western scholarship from the beginning of the nineteenth century, as not only false, but also misleading and dangerous. 2. Babbitt was not interested in regarding the East and West merely as two different spheres of human experience, and, because different, incapable of mutual assistance. He realized the disparity in circumstance under which each had developed, but he found that, in the search for human values, the two sections of mankind had come to much the same conclusions. He believed that basically Christianity and Aristotelianism, on the one side, and Buddhism and Confucianism, on the other, are mutually illuminating and thus indispensable to each other. 3. In his insistence on values, Babbitt showed unusual powers of critical discrimination.
Babbitt knew that the East has known as many different types of thought as the West, and he believed that the modern scholar should develop a sense of critical appraisal, and know the areas of argument for formulating a sound view of life. He found a whole trend of Rousseauistic thought in the naturalistic views of Lao-tse and Chuang-tse, which he wholly rejected. In looking at the Eastern landscape, Babbitt did not enjoy the nebulous vision of a Schopenhauer or even of an Emerson. He saw its clear, bold outlines, its mountains as well as its valleys. His fine sense of discrimination is nowhere expressed more clearly.
Babbitt did not perhaps feel as much at home in Confucianism as he did in early Biddhism for the simple reason that, while he knew Pali at first hand, his knowledge of Chinese thought was derived from translations that did not adequately convey the original flavor. The patient labours of James Legge are praiseworthy, but the must have often made Babbitt and others, wonder how so apparently uninspired a doctrine could have held any people for any length of time.
Why is it that, for so long a period, people not only in China, but also in Japan, in Korea, in Vietnam, and in the lands neighbouring China, willingly, without coercion have taken to the so-called 'mundane' ideas of Confucius as ducks to water ? Babbitt tried hard to answer this question. Why is it that the people who believe in Confucianism are so widely tolerant ? Hinduism, too, is tolerant, and so, for that matter, is Buddhism. But the fact that Buddhism barely enjoyed a history of 1000 years in the land of its birth, was very disturbing. If weakened by alien ideas, how is that Confucianism managed to remain unassailable through the millennia ? Buddhism itself made a mighty assault, only to find that all it succeeded in doing was to produce a Chu Hsi (died 1200), who brought Buddhism within the crucible of Confucianism. If Hegel was right, Babbitt argued, that Western man could find nothing in Confucius that had not been said. The fact was, that Confucius gave central place to an idea 'which is almost entirely absent, not only from Cicero, but also from Aristotle, who may be considered as the most important of occidental humanists – the idea, namely, of humility or of submission to the will of Heaven. For this reason, Babbitt placed Confucius in the same category as Christ, even though 'his kingdom is very much of this world'. Confucius was humble not only to the will of Heaven, Babbitt added, but also in his attitude towards the sages of old. Babbitt relied on the considered judgment of Edouard Chavannes.
Babbitt felt he understood the secret of Confucius. For him, as for Confucius, the ultimate test of any sound scholarship or leadership is the character that it produces, and the strength of that character cannot be achieved without rigid self-discipline, rooted in humility and the law of measure. Babbitt understood the Confucian spirit, unfalteringly, and basically.
In Buddhism, he found the answer to his deeper yearnings, combining it with Confucianism to produce the humanism he taught and lived with intellectual fervor and spiritual calm.

1974
Hou Chien : Not being a professional sinologist, Babbitt culled the Chinese only for what he could use to support his general philosophical position claimed to be founded upon universal human experience. Practically all the Chinese students who came into contact with Babbitt admired him for his scholarship and moral earnestness. This they did so no doubt also because of his championship of Confucianism.
What Babbitt has to say about China and the Chinese shows that he has read more widely than the references can indicate. In both sweep of treatment and the insights into Chinese history and thinking he remains impressive. His discussion of Chinese history ranged from the time of Confucius down to the twentieth century of a China abject with confusion and subject to imminent peril. He said little about the centuries in between. He is quite correct in thinking that Confucianism is humanistic, that the Taoists are naturalistic, and that Confucianism forms the basic, orthodoxical tradition in China. Babbitt also overlooks the role these naturalists played in shaping the Chinese character. He approvingly quotes Mengzi attack on Mozi and Yang Zhu as 'leading wild beasts to devour men' in their excessive altruism and egotism. His failure to mention the yin-yang and five-element schools and others, which converged into latter-day Confucian philosophy, may be winked at as irrelevant to his argument, but the omission of Xunzi and the legalists growing out of this master, has implications that must be investigated. Since Babbitt usually behaves like an orthodox Confucian while Xunzi is often taken as a heretic, the omission should perhaps be looked upon as the result of preconceived ideas rather than ignorance.
List of Chinese names in Babbitt's writings : The personages named are roughly divisible into those Babbitt approves, those he censures, and those who, as his students, have been able to advise the teacher. Of the first category are besides Confucius, Shun, Mengzi, Zhu Xi and Zeng Guofan Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mozi, Yang Zhu and Li Bo are found in the second group. In the third are Mei Guangdi, Zhang Xinhai and Guo Binhe. Shi Huangdi of Qin and Sima Qian are mentioned without much comment. Two persons are referred to without being names : Yen Hui, Confucius' favorite disciple and Han Yu, who was cited for accusing Buddha to be a barbarian. With Aristotle, Jesus, and Buddha, Confucius forms the fourth column to Babbitt's humanistic edifice.
The legendary Shun is talked of once as an exemplary non-meddler. Mengzi is quoted, in addition to the charges against Mozi and Yang Zhu, on the distinction between mental and manual labor, the relationship between property and civilization, and, with concession, the great man being one who has not lost the heart of a child. Zeng Guofan is reduced to a footnote. Laozi and Zhuangzi are held up as primitivists who could have been forerunners to Rousseau and Wordsworth. The Taoists are considered 'a part of a great stream of naturalistic and primitivistic tendency' that included the pacifist altruism of Mozi and the self-love of Yang Zhu. Li Bo is consigned to the Taoist limbo of Bohemian poets.
Babbitt believes the world has been plunged in confusion with the rise of naturalism. The old world is dead while the new is powerless to be born. For his humanism Babbitt posits two things : the end of all human endeavors and activities is happiness, and the only means to achieve it is character. He does not think much of human nature. Without taking recourse either to the concept of original sin or of the divine in man, but solely as a matter of experience, he sees that human nature is a mixture of the good and the evil.
Babbitt's ideas are the end of life, which is happiness, the importance of character the fulfillment of that end, and the nature of human nature, which necessitates character and its formation.

1993
Aldridge, A. Owen : Irving Babbitt was celebrated for his insistence on the necessity of adhering to philosophical rigor and upholding ethical standards in national culture. Along with his personal quest for knowledge of the most positive statements of these ideals in the history of mankind, he acquired a substantial acquaintance with the religion of Buddha and the morality of Confucius. As a pioneer in the discipline of comparative literature, moreover, he sought and revealed resemblances between the great writings of the West and those of the East. Babbitt's personal connections with Chinese culture fully equaled his purely literary ones. In China, Babbitt's adherence to absolute standards counterbalanced Dewey's pragmatism, essentially the same relationship between the two personalities that was widely recognized in the United States.
Babbitt's vogue among Chinese intellectuals does not fit the pattern of later imitations of Western theory, for it did not derive from a contemporary passing fad but from a personal philosophy in which Chinese students found resemblances to their own cultural traditions and which they felt might serve as a point of reference to their own cultural traditions and which they felt might serve as a point of reference in planning their nation's future. This feeling of an identity of national ideas and aspirations is the basis of Babbitt's appeal rather than any particular intellectual concept or activist program. Babbitt during one of his class sessions drew out from one of his Chinese students an awareness of this ethical-cultural bond or predisposition.
Although Babbitt never visited China, he recognized a cultural bond existing between himself and Chinese civilization. During the early years of Babbitt's marriage, his wife, who had been reared in China, used 'to think him conceited because he professed to understand that country as she did not'. Probably because of his wife's influence, Babbitt's home was adorned with a good deal of Chinoiserie, including dragon designs on lampshades and on various fabrics, and landscape paintings, which he explained were 'not representative of the mountains and the rivers, but of states of mind and feelings'. The recollection of Babbitt's acquaintances are not always reliable. One affirmed that he delighted in the Chinese scrolls on his own walls, but was not known to have visited the treasures of Far Eastern paintings at the Museum of Fine-Arts Boston.
Buddhism was the first aspect of Oriental civilization to attract Babbitt's attention. Although the roots of Buddhism are in India and Babbitt's devotion to this philosophy may, therefore, seem somewhat irrelevant to his association with China. Babbitt revealed that he studied both Sanskrit and Pali. He took up these languages at the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes in Paris in 1891.
The influence of Confucius on Babbitt's thought came relatively late in his career. He referred in print to the Chinese sage for the first time in Rousseau and Romanticism in 1919, and subsequently in all of his writings.
Besides Confucius, Babbitt referred in his works to a number of great names of Chinese tradition. Those he approved of were nearly all Confucians and those on the other side Taoists.
Babbitt was still advocating a rapprochement between East and West in one of the latest of his essays, calling for some properly qualified scholar, preferably a Chinese, to compare 'Confucian humanism with Occidental humanism'.
Babbitt gave Confucius a place of eminence in his thought because of the resemblance between the Chinese sage and Aristotle, and also because the former represented an ancient spiritual tradition bordering on religion, but completely devoid of the supernatural.

2004
Bai Liping : Liang Shiqiu saw Babbitt as providing a response to problems in his own country. Among the particular ways in which Babbitt influenced Liang was changing his reading habits. Previously, while studying at Qinghua College, Liang had read widely but unselectively, devoting his attention for the most part to whatever new books, whether original works or translations, happened to come his way and strike his fancy. Later he came to realize that reading should be guided in large part by discriminating judgment and purpose. Not only Liang's reading habits but also the nature of his own writing was influenced by Babbitt. Liang wrote poems and short stories that betrayed a strong attachment to sentimental romanticism. After returning to China from America, he nearly stopped composing poems and short stories. Moreover, his writing from thence forward conveyed a more balanced and historically accurate view of human nature than was characteristic of his earlier writing.
Though Babbitt profoundly affected Liang's standards, it cannot be assumed that Liang's literary tastes coincided in all particulars with Babbitt's or that his understanding of Babbitt's ideas was always or in all respects accurate.
Many Chinese scholars are today exploring Babbitt's work, which is becoming more widely accessible because of prominently published new translations of his books.

2004
Wu Xuezhao : One of the reasons why Babbitt showed great interest in the Orient as well as the Occident was that he looked for the constants of human nature in general as opposed to the peculiarities of time and place. He did not want to have his doctrine called the new humanism. For him, there was no new humanism. There was only the age-old opposition between naturalism (or the monistic merging of God, man, and nature, with its consequent denial of a higher law) and humanism. According to the latter, man has a distinct and unique nature. He is a mysterious being in whom the material and spiritual meet, who is responsible to a law superior to his 'ordinary' self, a law which he must discover, a higher will to which he must learn to attune his inclinations. Babbitt did not quarrel with established religion for interpreting this higher will in special doctrinal ways derived from revelation. On the contrary, he looked to religion for support of humanism. And if, as a philosopher, he felt he could interpret the higher will only as known in actual human experience, as a veto power and sense of higher purpose, he pointed to it as proof of a dualism within the human self without which there can be no genuine religion.

2004
Zhu Shoutong : Babbitt's humanism has great spiritual, moral, and philosophical depth. If properly reintroduced into China, it could have an immense positive impact on the development of Chinese life. Partly because of the misfortunes, Babbitt's humanism has not gained the niche in the temple of Chinese culture that it deserves and may yet achieve. Fortunately, there are substantial signs that a revival of interest in Babbitt is now well underway in China. Writings by and about Babbitt or related to his ideas are appearing widely. A number of prominent Chinese cholars, working in some cases in cooperation with Western counterparts, are preparing the ground for a major and systematic reexamination of Babbitt's work.
Liang Shiqiu's efforts marked the end of the relative obscurity of Babbitt's ideas in China among intellectuals of modernist leanings. But Liang's use of Babbitt's ideas and reputation in his widely followed tit-for-tat struggle with Lu Xun, brought for Babbitt something worse than obscurity – namely, widespread demonization. Xue heng's use of classical Chinese in elucidating Babbitt had impeded the spread of his ideas, and it had also protected Babbitt from criticism. By drawing Babbitt into his own quarrels, Liang, who had been quick to blame the Xu cheng conservatives, inflicted on Babbitt's reputation in China a damage that would prove substantial and enduring. Although Lu Xun criticized Babbitt with biting sarcasm, he was seldom concerned with the latter's actual ideas. Lu Xun complained, that the ideas of Western thinkers such as Babbitt and John Dewey were being filtered through the interpretations of their Chinese advocates and possibly distorted rather than being allowed to stand for themselves in accurate Chinese translation.