The title is certainly not inverted. Those familiar with my consistent position, or those who have heard Yangzi’s history of Chinese philosophy, will not find this surprising.
The phrase “Rather be a true villain than a hypocritical gentleman” is quite fashionable now; many people even quote it with the formulas “as the saying goes” and “there is a common saying.” What does it mean? The fact that this phrase has been enshrined as “common sense” reveals certain features of current fashion.
“Hypocritical gentleman” is of course a pejorative term. If by hypocritical gentleman one means someone whose lips are honeyed but whose heart is a dagger, who acts one way in public and another in private, who is outwardly full of propriety while doing all sorts of dirty tricks behind the scenes… then of course such a “hypocritical gentleman” is not something one should be.
But how did “rather be a true villain” come about? If theft is a bad thing, does that make robbery a good thing? Rather be a robber than a thief? What country’s joke is that supposed to be?
If by “true villain” one means someone who speaks bluntly and frankly, who does not bottle up dissatisfaction but will certainly make it clear to you face to face, then that is at least rather endearing. But what does “true” mean in the way people understand it now?
Authentic, real, sincere… a “sincere villain”? Does such a combination exist? Modern people actually think such a combination can exist as a matter of course!
The truth is that modern people have long since retreated to the level of Gaozi, or even a more vulgar one—“food and sex are part of human nature”—and these four characters too have become self-evident. Isn’t food and sex precisely human nature? Isn’t that right?
Modern people think greed and desire are human nature! What country’s joke is that? Food and sex are animal pursuits, or at most one may say they are animal nature; of course human beings are animals too, so to say that food and sex are human nature is in a sense not wrong—under reductionist thinking—but then why not simply say that having universal gravitation is human nature? That is common to all physical objects, and compared with what is common to all animals, wouldn’t that be much more “essential”? “Mass and energy are part of nature” — what language is that supposed to be? To make sense, any claim about human nature of course has to be aimed at what is specific to human beings; otherwise, what is the point?
Human beings are moral beings; human beings understand shame. A sense of shame and a moral conscience are much better suited to being regarded as human nature, are they not?
The Zhongyong emphasizes “sincerity”; Daoism stresses “authenticity.” A gentleman is the most sincere of people, and striving to approach ultimate truth and sincerity is equivalent to striving toward the gentleman, the true person, the sage. How could one possibly become a villain precisely by being true and sincere? The term “true villain” is as absurd as “a round square”!
As for “hypocritical gentleman” — since the phrase carries the implication that there is also a “true gentleman,” some people, knowing they cannot become a “true gentleman,” simply decide to become true villains instead. What do people understand by “true gentleman”?
“Hypocritical” means “artificial,” indicating something opposed to letting things follow their natural course, and instead introducing man-made interference. From this understanding, is there not such a thing as an “artificially made” gentleman?
Some people think they cannot become so-called “true gentlemen,” and they will say: hey, I’m not that noble, not that detached; there are always evil thoughts and desires in my heart, and I can’t eliminate desire, so I might as well “sincerely” express my desires! What does that mean? They think a “gentleman” cannot have desires, that a “true” gentleman must be what he says he is, that he must have no evil thoughts or vulgar desires in his heart; if he appears proper in speech and conduct on the surface, but in his heart is always thinking about obscene and filthy things, then of course he cannot become a gentleman!
It seems as though the desires in a gentleman’s heart must be different from those of ordinary people, and must certainly not be tainted by even the slightest filth.
The one who truly “follows what his heart desires without overstepping the bounds” is the sage! Even for the sage, Confucius did not attain this state until he was seventy! Are we to say that apart from Confucius after the age of seventy, everyone else—including Confucius in his sixties—was not a gentleman? Then a gentleman would perhaps be even rarer than a sage.
A gentleman is also a human being, also an animal, and of course he too possesses animal nature—greed and lust. A gentleman certainly has spiritual desires different from those of ordinary people, but bodily desires are still the same as everyone else’s! The difference between a gentleman and a petty person lies in this: the gentleman consciously, “artificially,” uses reason to restrain animal nature!
I often mention that little-noticed metaphor in the Garden of Eden in the Bible’s Genesis: what was the first act by which human beings became human? It was realizing the shame of nakedness and the guilt of eating the forbidden fruit, then running off to hide in the bushes! For humankind, the “sense of shame” toward the desires of “food and sex” is so important that one might even say that this very sense of shame is the mark of becoming human!
A gentleman is aware of shame; not only a gentleman, but all civilized people understand shame. In public, if certain situations arise, “covering oneself” is almost an instinctive reaction of civilized people. For human beings, this kind of “instinct” is more worthy of emphasis than the “instincts” of greed and lust.
The difference between a gentleman and a petty person lies in this: his sense of shame is transformed into a conscious pursuit of the good and avoidance of the evil—the inward pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty is something everyone has, but a gentleman is more conscious and more effective in putting this pursuit into deliberate action.
With the exception of the very few saints, monks, and the like, no one can eliminate evil thoughts and filth from within, let alone eliminate normal appetite and sexual desire. But a gentleman does not allow those animal impulses to control his behavior; a gentleman uses the reason that belongs to human beings to govern his conduct. He lives like a human being rather than like a beast—that is, he lives a life of frequent rational “reflection” and “confirmation” regarding his own circumstances and actions. In the life of a petty person, however, there is no “artifice,” only “beastly action”; they live a beast’s life, and even call such a life “true”?
When a eunuch says that he is “completely unlustful,” there is nothing great about it at all. Precisely because our inner selves are filled with deeply rooted evil and filth do we have the chance to possess a good heart. Just as a philosopher is someone who “loves wisdom” and seeks wisdom, not someone who already possesses wisdom; so a gentleman is someone who “loves goodness” and seeks goodness, not someone who has already attained perfect goodness.
August 23, 2006
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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