Does Xunzi's Ethics of Ritual Need a Metaphysics?

Ritual (li) is central to Confucian ethics and political philosophy. Does it also have fundamental metaphysical and ontological status because it is ＂the principle element by which human beings complete Heaven and Earth＂? Robert Neville believes that Chinese Philosophy has an important role to play in our times by bringing ritual theory to the analysis of global moral and political issues. In a recent work, Neville maintains that ritual ＂needs a contemporary metaphysical expression if its importance is to be seen.＂ This paper examines Neville's claim through a detailed study of the ＂ethics of ritual＂ in one of the early Confucian texts, the Xunzi. Does the text actually offer a clear and consistent metaphysical account? If what we can find are at best implicit metaphysical assumptions, do these assumptions cohere sufficiently for us to reconstruct a distinctive and specific metaphysics of ritual? I shall argue that Xunzi’s metaphysical assumptions were pragmatic in that Xunzi’s main concern was defending his ritual theory and metaphysical assumptions were implied only when needed for that defense. The paper presents some examples of scholarly attempts at reconstruction of the fragmentary textual evidence that might be touching on metaphysical issues to show that more than one and possibly mutually incompatible metaphysical theories could support Xunzi's ritual theory. It is difficult to claim that there is a specific metaphysics that is necessary to the ritual ethics, even if one agrees that some kind of metaphysics is needed; this gives rise to a kind of ＂metaphysical flexibility＂ that could work to the benefit of the ethics insofar as its contemporary viability is concerned, since this flexibility means that, if whatever metaphysical assumptions made by the text turn out to be unacceptable today in some way, it would then be possible to substitute a different acceptable or more defensible metaphysics to support the ethical claims, if one believes that any viable ethical claims require a coherent and viable metaphysics. Besides being able to choose among different metaphysical theories, given that the possibly metaphysical textual references are often vague and sometimes inconsistent, could we dispense with the metaphysics altogether and recover only Xunzi's ritual theory as an ethics still relevant to contemporary life? Is metaphysics required to make (better) sense of ritual ethics, or does it increase the viability or impact of ritual ethics? I shall conclude with some reflections on why there might be pragmatic reasons for Confucians today interested in the ethical significance of ritual to engage in metaphysical inquiry, and what kind of inquiry that might turn out to be. Contemporary philosophers working on Chinese Philosophy, Confucianism in particular, disagree about the status of metaphysics in early Confucianism. Some maintain that metaphysics are absent by pointing to the overwhelming emphasis on practical concerns- ethical and political- in the early Confucian texts. Others insist that even if there were no explicit metaphysical discussion or theorizing, metaphysical assumptions are inevitable. However do these assumptions point to one definite metaphysical system, or are they so vague and ambiguous that different mutually incompatible metaphysics could be constructed from them and attributed arbitrarily to the early Confucians? The latter situation would weaken the connection between ethics and metaphysics in early Confucianism but could work to its benefit insofar as contemporary viability is concerned, since ＂metaphysical flexibility＂ means that in case whatever metaphysical assumptions made by early Confucian thinkers turn out to be unacceptable today in some way, it would then be possible to substitute a different acceptable or more defensible metaphysics to support the ethical claims, if one believes that any viable ethical claims require a coherent and viable metaphysics.

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