Why did Confucian thinkers rarely ask whether the will is free?
I teach ethics in a Seoul secondary school, mostly through the Korean Neo-Confucian tradition. A colleague who teaches European philosophy asked me what the Confucians said about free will versus determinism. I realised I had nothing to give him.
The tradition talks constantly about effort and cultivation. Xunzi says goodness is the product of deliberate effort. The Great Learning asks us to make our intentions sincere. Toegye and Yulgok argued in detail about the mind and its feelings. All of this assumes we can change ourselves. But I can't think of a classical Confucian text that asks, "Are our choices really free, or determined?"
There is talk of ming, usually translated fate or decree. The Analects closes by saying that one who does not understand ming cannot become a gentleman, and Mencius says that someone who understands ming does not stand under a wall about to fall. But that seems to be about accepting what is outside our control, not about whether our choices themselves are caused.
So my open question: why was the question not pressed? Some possibilities:
- no all-powerful creator whose foreknowledge had to be reconciled with responsibility;
- no deterministic physics;
- a practical focus that found the question idle;
- or perhaps the question as Europe asks it rests on assumptions the tradition did not share.
Which of these, if any, is right? And is the silence a gap or a kind of wisdom?