Emotions across Cultures

Ancient China and Greece

David Konstan, David Konstan

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9783110784343
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

It is now recognized that emotions have a history. In this book, eleven scholars examine a variety of emotions in ancient China and classical Greece, in their historical and social context. A general introduction presents the major issues in the analysis of emotions across cultures and over time in a given tradition. Subsequent chapters consider how specific emotions evolve and change. For example, whereas for early Chinese thinkers, worry was a moral defect, it was later celebrated as a sign that one took responsibility for things. In ancient Greece, hope did not always focus on a positive outcome, and in this respect differed from what we call "hope." Daring not to do, or "undaring, " was itself an emotional value in early China. While Aristotle regarded the inability to feel anger as servile, the Roman Stoic Seneca rejected anger entirely. Hatred and revenge were encouraged at one moment in China and repressed at another. Ancient Greek responses to tragedy do not map directly onto modern emotional registers, and yet are similar to classical Chinese and Indian descriptions. There are differences in the very way emotions are conceived. This book will speak to anyone interested in the many ways that human beings feel.

A Brief History of Daring

Michael Nylan

Trenton Wilson

The person who speaks with understanding (xun noōi) must insist upon what is shared (xunōi) by all, as a city insists upon its laws and customs. – Heraclitus fr. 114 Diels-Kranz

The institutions and policies of the former kings are the tools the ruler uses to share with (gong 共) the crowd. His orders are the tools he, a single person (du 獨), uses to rule others. 先王之政所以與眾共也, 己之命所以獨制人也. – Wang Fu, Qianfu lun

(“Shuai zhi” 衰制 chap.).

In early China, the idea of superior knowledge, so essential to the conception of sage rule, ran counter to the value placed on shared experience and understanding. For insofar as any claim to know was a claim to special insight and personal authority, it defied conventions of sharing and ran the risk of appearing imperious and inciting resentment. Therefore, common courtesy virtually required people to say of themselves that they “did not dare [claim to] know” (bu gan zhi 不敢知); this self-deprecating formula in essence signaled, “I dare not claim to command any special knowledge that you yourself may not know.” Indeed, the ubiquitous phrase “not daring,” while appearing in many disparate contexts, most often was intended to convey the polite speaker’s reluctance to claim any monopoly on knowledge, understanding, or insight. The more powerful the well-educated person, the more incumbent it was for him or her to experience and duly perform a sense of trepidation when venturing to speak. To mitigate the threat, cultural norms provided highly ritualized ways to avoid seeming to act so as “to monopolize” discussions and decision-making (zhuan 專); taking action “alone,” i.e., “on one’s own authority” (du 獨), or acting “selfishly” (si 私), on privileged information or insights was taboo. Part and parcel of high cultural learning was an extraordinary sophistication in confronting psychological and sociopolitical dilemmas whose parameters we trace in this essay.¹

Always, as the Wang Fu epigram suggests, impulses to share authority had to be squared with the requirements of hierarchy, undergirded by ritual propriety. After all, there was but one ruler and a small circle of advisors at court, but the administration of a vast empire depended on many activities besides sharing ideas, sometimes in messy and protracted deliberations. As Sheldon Wolin has observed, the central problematic of governing has always been “how to render politics compatible with the requirements of order, so as to reconcile the conflicts created by competition under conditions of scarcity with the demands of public tranquility” [aka “harmony,” “concord,” or security].² The administration also needed institutions designed to ensure efficient order, so that, in the best of all possible worlds, “not a single person in the crowds of officials and functionaries would ever dare to follow the ruler’s commands less than wholeheartedly” 群臣百吏莫敢不悉心從己令矣.³ This profound tension between shared (gong) deliberations and singular (du) powers and privileges reserved for the highest-ranking members of court⁴ created a dynamic arena for negotiation within early Chinese politics. The motif of “undaring” was crucial to that structure, which, in theory, allowed the experienced person to strike a careful balance between claiming knowledge and authority, on the one hand, and alleviating suspicions that the claims were self-aggrandizing in any way.

This essay consists of four parts. The first examines the rhetoric of “undaring” in the Documents classic (Shangshu 尚書), undoubtedly the most influential repository of political theor...