Published In

Western Jewish Studies Association Meeting

Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

5-5-2019

Subjects

Musar movement, Judaism, Confucianism, Self actualization, Spirituality

Abstract

This paper briefly explores similarities between two traditions of ethical practice: Jewish Mussar and Confucian self-cultivation. There are of course also significant differences. Judaism is God-centric while Confucianism is human-centric, but Mussar’s psychological orientation makes it a relatively humanistic aspect of Judaism. Also, Confucianism has a notion of Heaven and sees human moral behavior as reflecting heavenly virtues; Ching describes Confucianism as “lay spirituality.” Both traditions take as an ideal type someone who is both a moral person and a scholar. In their views on human nature neither posited a blank slate. In Judaism, there is a “good yetser” and a “bad yetser,” the latter really a lower nature that should help the higher. We are born with the bad yetser, while the good yetser emerges in puberty, but Judaism also asserts that the human being is created in the image of God and that the highest level of soul is pure. A comparable duality exists in Confucian thought: Mencius regarded human nature as good, while Xunzi asserted that it was bad. Xunzi had a notion similar to the Mussar idea that both good and bad natures should serve Heaven. Both Mussar and Confucianism offer a spiritual psychology in which emotion is as central as intellect, and in which it is a moral obligation to train one’s heart to have emotions of generosity. The followers of both traditions kept moral diaries. Another interesting parallel is that Confucianism also recognized the importance of the dual aims referred to in Mussar as tikkun ha-yetser and kibbush ha-yetser. Both traditions valued humility, not only as a sign of moral development, but as a spiritual exercise that facilitates such development.

Rights

This is the author's accepted manuscript presented at the Western Jewish Studies Association Meeting, held in Palm Desert, California May 5-3 2019.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42737

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