Confucianism and the Chinese Self: Re-examining Max Weber's China by Jack Barbalet (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 107© Max Weber Studies 2020. Jack Barbalet, Confucianism and the Chinese Self: Re-examining Max Weber’s China (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 213 pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-982-10-6288-9. €89.99. Jack Barbalet’s Confucianism and the Chinese Self is a fascinating contribution to the study of Max Weber, focusing on the latter’s book The Religion of China (RC). As a sequel to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), RC was first published in 1915, then in augmented form in 1920. Its English translation, by Hans Gerth, appeared in 1951.42 Since then, the book has been talked about mostly in China study circles. Barbalet’s is a recent effort by a sociologist who is an authority on Weber. Barbalet tells his readers in the Preface that the book is written ‘to Weber not Confucius’ (viii). ‘Much of what is written ’, Barbalet remarks at the book’s conclusion, is ‘in disagreement with Weber, and yet, the disagreement was in conversation with his rich, detailed, and extensive texts’ (203). In this book-length dialogue with Weber, Barbalet goes back to Weber’s texts, methods, and sources to demonstrate Weber’s insights, and more often, what Weber has missed, disregarded, and misinterpreted for his own purposes. Barbalet’s comments are rich, careful, measured, and consistent, reflecting impressive in-depth knowledge of both Weber and China. After a brief introductory chapter, the book starts with RC’s German context (Chapter 2). Here Barbalet sets the analytic framework for subsequent chapters on two basic points. First, Weber’s sources came primarily from Jesuit missionaries who were in China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (25, 61–64). Thus Weber’s ‘representation of Confucianism is in many ways an invention of European sinology and betrays the latter’s missionary roots’ (24). Second, the German colonial expansion and Weber’s endorsement of it (18-21) shaped Weber’s interpretation of Confucianism. In Barbalet’s words, ‘Weber’s image of China as backward and dominated by traditional or non-rational thought systems is consistent with the missionary and German imperialist mentality’ (43). This is followed by two substantive chapters devoted to Weber’s interpretation of the religions of China: Confucianism (Chapter 3) and Daoism (Chapter 4). Here Barbalet explains how the Jesuit construction of Confucianism led Weber to be focused exclusively on classical Confucianism, which blinded him from recognizing the significance 42. Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, trans. Hans Gerth (New York: Free Press, 1951). 108 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2020. of neo-Confucianism—a major development of Confucianist doctrines led by Zhu Xi (1130–1200 ce) in the Song Dynasty (64). As a consequence of this omission, Barbalet notes, Weber also ignored an ongoing revolutionary transformation in China. In Barbalet’s words, Weber totally failed to ‘appreciate the dynamic elements in Confucianism ’ (74). Similarly, Barbalet points out that Weber was mistaken in his interpretation of Daoism (Chapter 4). In the discussion of Chinese religions, Barbalet shows his witty sensibility by noting that the ‘New Culture Movement’ intellectuals, who were active in China between 1913 and 1917, actually shared Weber’s perspective in attributing China’s backwardness to Confucian traditionalism (54). Another two chapters are devoted to specific notions that Weber used in RC, self-interest (Chapter 5) and magic (Chapter 6). Barbalet notes that while Weber’s sociology of religion was based on individualism , i.e., the ‘lesser self’, in China, it was the ‘greater self’ (106) or ‘relational self’ (136) that provided the motivation in the Chinese economy . Thus, according to Barbalet, ‘It cannot reasonably be said, therefore , that the concept of self-interest is absent in traditional China’ (124). He also argues that Weber ‘exaggerate[d] the acceptance of magic in Chinese society’ (176) and mistakenly ascribed a ‘religious’ significance to those elements of magical practice he perceived. ‘Those things that Weber describes as Chinese magic […] have no meaningful religious connotation or value’ (175). The concluding chapter (Chapter 7) connects Weber’s RC and China ’s more recent history. As Barbalet observes, ‘at the time that Weber first published [RC] in 1915, and certainly by the time of the augmented...