Confucianism gets a bad rap in the West for, in my opinion, largely Orientalist reasons. When I was a TA for an East Asian history course, I always took the time to point out that, in the West, Buddhism is the "good" Asian philosophy/religion while Confucianism is the "bad" Asian philosophy/religion. But, throughout Asian history Confucians advocated for the emancipation of slaves while Buddhists did not. Of course, the reasons are not for Western ideals around individual rights. Confucians saw throughout history that aristocratic access to slave labour meant they could quickly amass wealth because it's very easy to get rich when you don't have to pay your workers, and this could threaten the supremacy and thus stability of the State (and this indeed often happened). Buddhists believed slaves were working off bad karma from their past lives and so never challenged the system. But, as we can see, Confucianism is more complex than Western philosophy often cares to admit.
This isn't to say that Confucianism isn't without its flaws; especially by the time what is called in the West Neo-Confucianism rolls around it is deeply misogynistic -- but, then again, Western philosophy is not beating its own misogyny charges anytime soon. As someone who was inadvertently raised to be Confucian despite my parents' insistence that this was not the case (as even in East Asia Confucianism is seen as regressive and anti-modern due to, well, gestures at the entire history of Western imperialism and colonialism in East Asia), I find it useful to grapple with Confucianism, to pick out some of the core elements I find interesting and useful and jettison the rest. Despite what Confucius might have insisted, I can respect the Ancients through critical dialogue rather than reverence.
One aspect of Confucianism I've found particularly interesting is its insistence that there are, in some relationships, power inequities built into the very nature of the relationship. Confucius argued that all human relationships could be put into one of several kinds: leader - follower (Confucius conceptualized this relationship as ruler - subject because he was keenly interested in state governance, but this is applicable in any setting where someone might have some kind of leadership role such as a boss - worker), partner - partner (Confucius gendered it as husband - wife but we're going to de-genderize this framework for the purposes of this post), older sibling - younger sibling (which often translates into age-based seniority as it was common to see everyone in your local community as somehow part of a larger extended family), parent - child, and friend - friend. In all of these, Confucius argued there were power imbalances in each one except for the friend - friend relationship, in which you were peers and thus equals.
Some of these relationship power imbalances are certainly culturally constructed and therefore quite malleable as there is nothing "inherent" in the "nature" of the relationship to create an imbalance. For example, the leader - follower relationship is contingent on a belief that some kind of social hierarchy must exist. If you don't believe that such a social hierarchy must exist, then the unequal power within a leader - follower is not one that must exist. Similarly, Confucius envisioned the partner - partner relationship as inherently unequal because in his time marriage was gendered and heterosexual; however, if we de-gender and queer up this relationship to be the more generic partner - partner relationship, we can easily envision a kind of relationship that is closer to a friend - friend relationship. Similarly, there is nothing inherent about age that creates a power imbalance unless it is socially enforced. While older people have the potentiality to have more life experience and wisdom, it is not intrinsically linked, and so something like an older sibling - younger sibling hierarchy can be re-conceived to reduce or even outright eliminate power imbalances within that relationship. Certainly, I do not feel I have any kind of inherent right to more power over my younger siblings as an older sibling.
However, there are a few relationships I've found in my life that do feel like inequality is inescapable, and those are the ones I find interesting. The two I've experienced personally are that of teacher - student (which could fit in the broader umbrella of leader - follower) and parent - child. I think it would be very difficult in practical terms to square away the fact that a teacher has a significant amount of power and influence over a student, and similarly a parent over a child. In the parent - child relationship, especially in the child's younger years, the child is dependent on the parent for their physical survival as they often do not have the strength nor knowledge nor skill to provide for themselves. It is difficult to conceptualize a social situation where a child is not in some way inherently dependent on the parent for survival. Even if we were to transfer the responsibility of helping a child survive to the community as a whole rather than an individual parent, what has only changed is who is responsible for the child, not the dependence of the child itself.
The idea that there are some relationships that are simply inherently unequal tends to rub against contemporary Western liberalism that insists that all people are created equal, and that a good society works towards equalizing all individuals so that they have either equal circumstances, equal opportunities, equal chances, equal somethings and that inequality ought to be banished or rectified. This is, I realize, a gross generalization, but Western thought does tend to focus specifically on rights-based discourse, achieving equality as a value, and the individual as the basic unit of morality (and, of course, "Eastern" thought set up as the polar opposite). Even if contemporary Western liberalism admits there are some relationships with a clear power imbalance (such as a parent - child relationship) or a person finds themselves in a power imbalance, it is up to the person to eventually liberate themselves from that relationship, or to fight for or negotiate within that relationship towards a more equal status of power. This might be a bit of a stretch but I would venture to guess this is why in US culture teenage rebellion is seen as a rite of passage into adulthood; it is seen as natural for a teenager to rebel against their parents to establish their own independence, even if that rebellion is seen as self-destructive. The point is for the teenager to assert their own freedom and to eventually establish them as adult equals to their parents. In Asian culture, no such expectation exists, and for Westerners they see this as oppressive and stifling.
Confucianism instead takes the approach of looking at fundamental human relationships and saying, "Well, if certain relationships are inherently unequal, what do we need to do to make sure everyone is taken care of all the same?" Most Westerners probably know that Confucianism argues that it is a subject's obligation and duty to follow a ruler; a child is obligated to obey the parent; one partner must place themselves in subservience to another partner, and so on and so on. But what most Westerners do not know (I have been mildly surprised to discover in the last decade of my life) is that those in power have significant obligations for those underneath them. A ruler is obligated to rule by virtuous example and at the very least ensure that everyone's needs are met, that everyone has opportunities to flourish. A parent must provide not just basic needs for their children but the opportunities to grow into a fully developed and well rounded person. A partner is expected to provide not just material comfort but emotional care and affection and love. When those expectations are broken, the relationship is also broken. And, perhaps most importantly, Confucius (and many of his followers after him) understood that the one in power is under the most responsibility to fulfill their obligations precisely because they have the most power. The nature of a power imbalance makes it difficult for those without power to change abusive relationships or circumstances of neglect. Most Confucian writings, especially in the earlier periods, are not addressed to those with the least amount of power; they are often addressed to those with power, urging them to understand that it is in their best interests to wield that power responsibly, and to warn them that disaster befalls an entire society when those in power will not acknowledge their power and channel it in ways that benefit everyone. If a ruler wields power abusively, if a parent is abusive to their child, if an older sibling is abusive to their younger sibling, and the vulnerable person in the relationship eventually rebels, acts out, or cuts the other person off entirely, Confucius would simply say, "well, what the fuck did you expect was going to happen?"
In that sense, I think Confucius would look at the current cultural zeitgeist where millennial and gen z children are going no contact with their boomer and gen x parents and respond to the parents' confusion and anger with, "Well, you fucked around and now you're gonna find out." Confucius understood that if you deprive people then they will not respect you and in turn emulate that destructive behaviour to whoever happens to be under them in the social hierarchy. Or, in today's parlance, that's how you get generational trauma. When Confucius saw social disorder, he didn't blame those on the bottom; he immediately turned to those at the top and asked, "What are you doing wrong?" And while there are, I'm sure, many of those who claim the Confucian banner and reflexively assume that it must be the children that are wrong (because that is how power works, unfortunately), Confucius would, in my opinion, vehemently disagree with this approach. If you have power over someone, you must own up to it and take responsibility for it.
I find this framework very interesting because contemporary Western liberalism tends to approach social problems from an opposite vector. Social disorder is not seen necessarily as a social disorder at all but rather seen as individualized behaviour; social disorder on a collective scale is seen as failure on an individual scale. Liberalism is obsessed with individual solutions to collective problems, and, like a company that emphasizes a "horizontal hierarchy" where each individual employee is "equal" but refuses to ditch the hierarchy entirely in the first place, its insistence that one can and should eliminate inequality (and when that fails at the very least hide it) often reproduces inequality without calling it as such which often exacerbates the problem. If there is one failing of Western liberalism, it is that it has a poor understanding of how power works within social situations, and this is often why it either cannibalizes itself or fails to understand how it is being subverted by other ideologies that understand what power is and how to wield it.
These are, at least, the philosophical vibes that I am currently exploring at the moment. I'm now going to teach a class so everyone be good and nice to each other and me and if you got this far in my Confucian shitpost, thanks for reading.