The Viability of Confucian Transcendence: Grappling with Tu Weiming’s Interpretation of the Zhongyong

Abstract

This essay assesses Tu Weiming’s notion of transcendence in terms both of its legitimacy as an interpretation of Confucianism and of its viability as an answer to modern challenges. An examination of Tu’s hermeneutical assumptions in his Zhongyong commentary leads to a discussion of his locating transcendence in the subjectivity of the junzi, the profound person. Calling the self-cultivation “self-knowledge,” Tu makes explicit the religious character of the xin, the basis of self-cultivation, and its transcendent character, because it is endowed from heaven. However, because the xin is irreducibly human, this transcendence is also immanentized. From the xin a fiduciary community is formed, hence the “covenantal” nature of Confucian religiousness. The essay ends with the question: Because Tu does not elaborate on cultivating a community’s intersubjectivity, does it make the realization of the transcendent xin a “deferred potentiality,” without mooring in the actual formation of human community?