Self-Cultivation: Confucian Roots

Abstract

The model of sublimation proposed by technocrats and medical authorities was based on a ‘technology of the self’ developed by Mao’s alter ego within the Chinese Communist Party: Liu Shaoqi. Liu’s immensely influential lectures ‘How to Be a Good Communist’ provided a blueprint for self-cultivation, reflecting a long and intertwined line of Confucian and Neo-Confucian philosophies of the self, while being in dialogue with the radical, anti-Confucian modernism of the New Culture Movement. Liu’s self-cultivation model was based on notions and interpretations of self-watchfulness, filial piety and virtue, giving them new meaning and practical scope from a dynamic Marxist-Leninist perspective. By bringing the Confucian ideal of the ‘superior man’ in relation to the Marxist notion of the New Man, and bridging personal transformation with social change, Liu Shaoqi’s self-cultivation model became a unique way of defining how Communists could, at the same and one time, be ethical selves, imbued with traditional values of moral excellence, and political selves, imbued with modern values of agency and revolutionary will.