IS FACE THE SAME AS LI?
57
sible. The fact is, the Chinese cultural superiority lies in the loyalty to li; and if I am right that li is not the same as face, and li is deeper than face, and the Chinese will shamefacedly admit the silliness of face but will be shocked to attack li, then the optimistic thesis of the authors is mistaken. It would be, moreover, amply clear that to argue the Chinese into relinquishing their sense of cultural superiority, we do not so much need a critical examination of face, as a critical examination of li
NOTES
1 Joseph Agassi and I. C. Jarvie, 'A Study in Westernization', in Hong Kong, A Society in Transition, edited by I. C. Jarvie in consultation with Joseph Agassi, Routledge, Praeger, London and New York, 1969, pp. 129-163.
2 There is of course no consensus among the Chinese about face or even Confucianism. There was a time when the concern for face was open and considered unquestionably proper even though nothing lofty; the more old-fashioned still think there is something to be said about face, though they do not say it. There was a generation, in the early 1900's, during which Confucianism was fiercely attacked as obstruction to progress. 'Revolutionary' China still keeps the practice. Meantime, face as an art or even an expression is quite lost to the present younger generation of Chinese in Hong Kong, and Confucianism is no longer mentioned one way or the other. But the feelings for face and li, the cultural superiority, are there just beneath the surface, and emerges at scratch.
3 I prefer the fuller expression of 'pride-shame' to just 'shame' culture, as pride is often as prominent as, if not more so than, shame in a so-called shame culture. This is originally suggested by Margaret Mead in 'Guilt, Ritual, and Culture', in Roger W. Smith (ed.), Guilt, Man and Society, A Doubleday Anchor Original, 1970, pp. 117-134. Correspondingly I use 'guilt-saintliness' rather than just 'guilt' culture.
4 Margaret Mead, Co-operation and Competition among Primitive Peoples, New York, McGraw Hill, 1937, pp. 493-494. Ruth Benedict believes, in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, London, Secker & Warburg, 1947, p.223, that shame is 'a reaction to other people's criticism'.
5 Analects, III, 3, Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement No. 16, A Concordance to the Analects of Confucius, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Peiping, 1940. Translations of quotations n. 5-19 are my own.
Ibid., III, 4. 林放問禮之本。子曰:大哉問,禮與其奢也,寧儉;喪,與其易也,寧戚。
Ibid., III, 8, 予夏問曰:巧笑倩兮,美目盼兮,素以為绱兮,何謂也?子曰:繪事後素。曰:禮後乎。子曰:起予者商也。始可與言詩已矣。
Ibid., XII, 1. 子曰:非禮勿視,非禮勿聽,非禮勿言,非禮勿動。
9 Ibid., XIV, 30.
10 Ibid., XIV, 7.
11 Ibid., XII, 23, 24. 子貢問友。子曰:忠告而善道之,不可則止,毋自辱焉。