What Can Americans Learn from Confucianism?
Jay McDaniel
1    America’s best hope is to adopt a more Confucian lifestyle: more focused on education, more respectful of old people, better able to subordinate private needs to public good, more responsible to the needs of family, more polite in our daily lives, and more hardworking. Of course, many Americans wouldn’t call this adopting a Confucian lifestyle. They would call it becoming a good and responsible person. These are among the virtues that Americans come to admire, when they begin to learn about Confucian-influenced cultures. Confucianism is a window into these and other virtues.
2    If Americans take time to study Confucianism, they may quickly realize that it is quite different from their own cultural beliefs. Its focus is on the world itself, as a place where ultimate meaning is found. If we equate ultimate meaning with what is truly sacred in life, then Confucianism finds the sacred in the secular, in the relationships of ordinary life.
3    The sacred is found in preparing and sharing meals with family and friends over a dinner table; in harmonious and respectful relations in the workplace; in being a gracious and hospitable host to guests who visit your home; in appreciating the gift of learning and taking “education” as one of life’s greatest gifts; in having a sense of inner self-discipline and restraint; in being polite and respectful to old people with rich life wisdom; in being willing to give yourself to the needs of your family even at the expense of personal sacrifice; in having the freedom to live simply and non-ostentatiously, in a humane and caring way, without needing to be famous.
4    These are among the primary values of a living Confucianism: a Confucianism for ordinary life. But the values at issue are best realized, not by reading about them in books, but rather by seeing them in action, as exemplified in the humane grace of another person: a grandfather, a grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, a teacher, a cousin, a friend. In the Confucian tradition, we learn to become virtuous by seeing others who are virtuous and by being inspired by their example.
5    Underlying these values is an even more fundamental value that permeates every one of them: a sense that harmony is the highest ideal in life. The harmony that is so important in East Asia has diverse expressions. It is a harmony that can be heard in music, seen in the variety of foods on a dinner table, felt in mutually respectful relations with other people and in the more general order of the natural world. This harmony is not sameness. It is not a collapse of everything into one thing. It is not the harmony of a statue that seems fixed in one place. It is a moving harmony, a changing harmony, a dynamic harmony.
6    In other words, Confucianism is, above all things, a leaning toward harmony as life’s highest ideal. The harmony at issue is dynamic not static, flexible not fixed, diversified not homogenized. It is a harmony that includes healthy disagreements and has a democratic spirit, respectful of the voices of individuals as well as groups.
7    Among Western philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead offers a similar vision. He sees harmonious intensity and intense harmony as the happiness — the satisfaction — which all living beings seek at every moment of their lives. Love, for Whitehead, is the ultimate form
of harmony. In Confucianism this is called human-heartedness or Ren (仁). The loving person is a person whose heart is attuned to harmony and who embodies harmony in his or her own life.
8    Finally here is a question: Is Confucianism enough? Can a person find its alternative way for a healthy and satisfying life? My own hope is that self-identified Christians and Buddhists, Jews and Muslims, will gradually learn more and more about the wisdom of Confucianism. Living Confucianism can enrich the practice of other cultures. There are also the large numbers of people in many parts of the world who do indeed want to be good people, who find themselves leaning toward harmony, and who find the various meanings of ordinary life — family, friendships, service — sufficient for a satisfying life. Some people speak of them as spiritual. This can simply be called being a good person.values翻译
9    The living Confucianism of China and other East Asian nations can help people all over the world grow in the arts of becoming good people. It can help people of all cultures. As Americans enter into the new age we can welcome, and indeed celebrate, the living Confu
cianism we find in East Asian friends. Every time we find ourselves living with respect for others; every time we help Heaven by sharing goodness with the world; every time we choose to live simply and humbly, without needing to be the center of attention, we are Confucian in our way. And there is something beautiful in it.
从儒学中，美国人能学到什么？
杰伊·麦克丹尼尔
1    美国人最大的愿望就是过上一种更儒家式的生活：更重视教育，更尊敬老人，个人需求能更好地服从集体利益，对家人更尽责，在日常生活中更有礼貌，在工作中更努力。当然，许多美国人并不将此称为儒家式的生活方式，而是称之为做一个更好且更有责任感的人。正是美国人开始学习儒家文化时，他们才开始赞美这些美德。儒家思想为学习这些和其他美德提供了一个窗口。
2    如果美国人花点功夫研究儒家思想的话，他们很快就会明白，与他们自己的文化信仰不同，儒家关注的是这个世界本身，并将之视为终极意义之所在。如果我们将这种终极意义等
同于生活中真正神圣的东西，那么儒家便能在世俗之中，在日常生活的种种关系之中到神圣。