If men are to live, they cannot get along without a social organization. If they form a social organization, but have no social distinction, they will quarrel; if they quarrel, there will be disorder; if there is disorder, they will disintegrate; disintegrating, they will become weak; and being weak, they will be unable to dominate other creatures. Hence they will no longer have palaces and homes for habitation. All of which means that people cannot abandon the rules of proper conduct (li礼) or standards of justice (yi义) . . . there is no way of human living which does not have its distinction (bian辨); no distinctions are greater than those of social distinctions (fen 分); no social distinctions are greater than the rules of proper conduct (li礼); there are no rules of proper conduct greater than the Sage kings.14 In this account of the coexistence of humankind, Xunzi (荀子) adopts a utilitarian approach to stress the importance of hierarchy and conduct (li礼). A disciple of Confucius (551–479 B.C.),15 Xunzi (荀子) was a realist philosopher who revived and applied Confucian teachings to the critique of state institutions. The most important concept borrowed from Confucius was li (礼). The meaning of li (礼) in ancient China was very wide, signifying present-day “politeness” and “courtesy” as well as “proper conduct,” “good manners,” and “customs” to be followed by individuals, institutions, and the state. The teaching of Confucius stresses uprightness through the practice of li (礼) as the basis for a harmonious society. It flourished after
a period of social disorder and political mismanagement because it advocated the law, ethics, and morality that were sorely needed, from the period of the Zhou Dynasty, the Warring Period (c. 475–221 B.C.), to the Qin Dynasty (221–206 B.C.).16 Unsurprisingly, the teaching urges loyalty to a central authority—the emperor—to avoid civil war. It advocates that the state should be guided by compassion and benevolence and should set an example of virtue, as a father does for his family. Confucius believed that moral standards should not be imposed through force but imitated out of respect and admiration. Therefore, the practice of li (礼) for every individual—in his or her relation to others, within the family, community, and state— is imperative for the formation of a harmonious society. A philosophy that urges self-commitment to the community, Confucianism is also a system of secular humanism and ethics that promotes social cohesion and harmony through social responsibility, not religious beliefs. In Confucianism, the family unit is inherently harmonious, since it is the natural training ground for morality, and it serves as the bridge between individuals and their society; the family is therefore the model for the state. This differs significantly from the viewpoint of Aristotle, who made a clear distinction between the space and interests of the household and those of the polis. The former is bound by blood relations; the latter by the common good that must be derived through politics. Besides Confucianism, the architecture of the Chinese city is greatly influenced by Daoism and its core concept of yin yang (阴阳). Like Confucianism, Daoism arose in response to the collapse of prefeudal society during the Eastern Zhou Period (770–475 B.C.), an era characterized by moral decay and political and economic chaos. Unlike Confucianism, Daoism is a philosophy of non-interference (wu wei 无为). It was promulgated by Laozi (老子), a librarian of the Zhou Dynasty imperial court, and emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge via reasoning, sequential thought, and logic. Its core concepts, yin yang (阴阳) and qi (气), relate to cosmic harmony. The preservation of harmony—maintaining an equilibrium between binary opposites in all aspects and categories of environmental, social, governmental, and aesthetic production—is fundamental. The duality of yin yang (阴阳) translates to female-male, cold-hot, mountain-water, and so on, and finds its harmonious relations in the conduct that
18
Common Frameworks, Part 1
conceived as a whole; its limits are predetermined conceptually and demarcated physically by city walls. Therefore, in China the act of planning is inseparable from the very first act of city making, and both are explicitly guided by written documents. The decision to found a city was decreed by the emperor, exemplifying the expectation that the state would take moral leadership in all aspects of life on earth. It is my argument that to accommodate in advance the multiplicities of life, the city must be conceived as a pliable, adaptive, and aggregative structure. This is the city conceived and reified as a common framework. The closest Chinese counterpart to Aristotle, Xunzi (荀子) (Wade-Giles: Hsün Tzu, ca. 312– 230 B.C.), accounts for the origins of society and the state: