You can read this article as a continuation of this earlier one: Freedom vs. Equality—I Am a Right-Wing Socialist
In that essay I expressed a certain resistance to “equality”: equality in the sense of a condition for freedom, or equality as the rules that must be observed for the game of competition to unfold—those senses of equality I certainly support. But equality for equality’s sake, taking equality as a principle, is not something I agree with.
So if one does not champion equality, must one necessarily tolerate “inequality”? Not necessarily. One reason for opposing “equality” is that it is an overly abstract concept; in fact, equality always requires a standard of measurement, and standards of measurement are plural. Therefore, opposing equality does not necessarily mean supporting inequality, because “inequality” too always has to be understood with respect to some particular standard. So I certainly would not support “inequality” in general either; specific questions must be analyzed specifically.
On the other hand, the notion of equality is linked to “minimum ethics.” If we ask what each person should “at least” be like—what they should do, what they should obtain—we are more inclined to seek an equal answer. That is not wrong, but the problem is that modern people’s thought often lingers excessively on the question of the “minimum.” What I support in virtue ethics is not the person at the minimum, but the ideal person. Ethics should be concerned not with “norms” but with “the good,” that is, “the good,” and the “minimum” is only the starting point toward goodness.
Therefore, virtue ethics is concerned not with ordinary people, but with the highest people. “Good person” is like “good thing”: it means something admired or desired by people, whereas the ordinary is merely the minimum and thus not something worth desiring. The ideal person is excellent—for example, heroes, sages, kings: those extraordinary people, those outstanding people.
Therefore, virtue ethics must also be a kind of study of “royal doctrine.” The question of “how to be human” does not appear as “how to be an ordinary human,” but as “how to be a king,” how to become a sage, or at least how to be a “gentleman”; as for the “small man,” he does not speak of virtue at all. This is not because ancient thinkers looked down on everyone and wrote only for emperors and generals, but because even when writing for the common people—indeed, precisely when writing for the common people—virtue theory had no choice but to appear as a study of sage-kings, or, in other words, as “royal doctrine.”
Royal doctrine is about how to be a king, but this concept by no means equals the category of “power tactics.” Ancient emperors often held supreme power, and therefore they exercised rule. But exercising rule and royal doctrine are two different questions. Confucius was called the uncrowned king precisely because he had royal doctrine without kingship. In Plato’s Republic, the king is not responsible for the implementation of laws and decrees; the concrete business of governing is not the king’s affair. So what, exactly, does the king do? Plato is very clear: the king distinguishes what is “good” (goodness).
And to distinguish the “good” is not to issue a standard procedural code for making distinctions; the one who issues procedures is the “imitator,” who stands two or three levels below the king. The king directly intuits truth, just as a musician judges the quality of a performance. A mere imitator who knows nothing about music may still be able to make a good instrument according to a blueprint, but the reason this is possible still ultimately lies in the musician’s judgment—even if that musician cannot make head or tail of the maker’s blueprint. The relation between royal doctrine and rule is similar: the king is the source of rule, but the king himself need not understand concrete governance. Ancient imperial systems too often loaded the responsibility for governance onto the king’s shoulders, frequently causing a mismatch and abuse of power. In fact, just as an ideal pianist need not be, and often is not, an ideal piano maker, an ideal sage-king need not be an ideal administrator. Confusing royal doctrine with rule is analogous to confusing politics with management (please still see Arendt). If “politics” is a public activity aimed at “pursuing excellence,” then royal doctrine is precisely about showing everyone what excellence is: the king is the victor in politics.
I often recommend One Piece as an introductory text for philosophy. My path in philosophy is the adventure path of becoming the King of the Pirates. And the “king” in King of the Pirates is precisely what I mean by royal doctrine. When Rayleigh asks Luffy whether he has confidence in ruling this sea, Luffy replies: “I’m not going to rule this sea. The freest person on this sea is the King of the Pirates!” (manga 507, anime 400) But the freedom of the King of the Pirates is different from the carefree free life of an ordinary fisherman. The King of the Pirates has to be achieved through a path of conquest: defeating one opponent after another, not in order to dominate, but in order to display. Display strength, display desire, display friendship, display a life that inspires longing and deeds that evoke admiration, so as to awaken yearning in others, to stir them into motion, to tempt dream-bearing people toward the great route……
My elaboration on One Piece is one of my signature pieces, and I have promised that after the serialization of One Piece ends I will begin a series of commentaries. But a more recent anime directly stimulated me, and I can’t help bringing up royal doctrine first. Fate/zero—this is the prequel novel that the Japanese writer Urobuchi Gen created for Fate/stay night, and it was adapted into TV anime at the end of last year. Roughly speaking, the setting is that certain heroic spirits of antiquity are summoned into the modern world to fight. These include Arthur King, portrayed as a少女, the blond youth Gilgamesh, and Alexander, portrayed as a burly middle-aged man, and so on. Among them, Alexander’s image especially amazed me, to the point that, unusually, after watching the anime I even went and read the novel.
What moved me most was the episode “The Holy Grail Inquiry”, in which Alexander takes the lead in interrogating the kingly qualifications of Arthur and Gilgamesh. In the end Alexander recognizes Gilgamesh’s qualifications as a king, but does not submit to him, and therefore decides to settle matters by force later. Arthur, however, is treated with contempt and judged as not even worthy of being considered a king.
The relation between king and ordinary people is always one of some distance. But the king’s position can roughly be divided into four kinds: above (Gilgamesh), below (Arthur), in front (Alexander), and behind—respectively summable as overriding, bearing, leading, and driving. The king who stands high above, though admired by all, has no path by which one can approach him; this is the divinized king, and the god-king and the people are in a relation of mutual spectacle. The god-king issues laws, assigns roles and scripts to the people, and takes pleasure in looking down upon the masses; this is precisely the role the author created for Gilgamesh. As for the ruler who sits in the rear, driving the people, whose personal image does not even enter the people’s field of vision, but who only indirectly makes them feel his power through authority—although this may be the role of most emperors in history, it can hardly become that of a “hero” to be sung by later generations. As for the leader who is in front and the bearer who is below, these are what I want to discuss in detail below.
Although the several figures I am discussing are fictional creations, they still bear a certain resemblance to historical personages. Arthur King is of humble birth, and does not rely on his own exalted status to look down from above; the “Round Table Knights” reflect the ideal of “equality.” In the novel, Arthur’s wish is to negate (rewrite) the history she herself created and save her kingdom. This is an image that rejects private desire, is utterly selfless, and wants only to save the people.
The ideal king in the Chinese imagination is probably also such a figure, but in “Alexander’s” eyes, this sort of servant of the people, this slave of correctness, is not even worthy of the name king. Yet when Arthur countered Alexander’s greed and self-interest, Alexander roared in anger: “A king without desire is not even as good as a vase.” He said: “Who would ever be inspired by a path of thorns called martyrdom…… It can only soothe the people, not guide them. Only by displaying desire and praising the utmost splendor and glory can one lead the state and the people onto the right path…… A king should desire more intensely than anyone else, laugh more heartily, rage more fiercely, reach the summit of excellence in both purity and impurity, and be more real a human being than anyone else. Only then will the subjects feel admiration and be won over by the king. In the hearts of all under heaven, kindle the light of longing: ‘I too wish to be king.’” “You blindly ‘save’ your subjects, yet you have never guided them; they do not know what ‘the king’s desire’ is. You abandoned your lost subjects, yet you alone, in a sacred pose, intoxicate yourself with your own petty ideal.”
Indeed, a king who is perfect, utterly selfless, busy with a thousand affairs from dawn to dusk, enduring every hardship, and devoting everything to the people, is a perfect idol. That is to say, the people will worship him, praise him, call out to him—but who would truly want to become him? We can see that China and North Korea have long been fashioning exactly such idols—suffering, overworked, martyred, enduring all hardships—letting the masses gaze up at such people. And what is the result? As “Alexander” predicted, the people become lost; they will yearn for the next idol, but they never know what they should actually desire.
Therefore, such states always need enemies, need suffering, need an eternal “most dangerous moment,” need a prolonged “state of emergency”—because only thus does their kingly ideal become meaningful. Once there is no enemy to fight, no suffering to overcome, no danger to face, people lose their direction. Of course, suffering can never be eliminated in this human world, can it? Therefore, the “state of emergency” can never be lifted, and so bearing suffering always remains the first priority, does it not? There are still people who do not have enough to eat—what right do you have to talk about enjoyment and taste? One must always struggle for tomorrow’s survival—what right do you have to speak of ease and freedom?
“Always ready to confront the most dangerous moment” — that is the logic of the laborer.
My father always says that he suffered from childhood so that I would not have to suffer in the future. He said he worked hard to earn money so that I could live better than he did, but he hoped that I too would earn more money, so as to ensure that the next generation would live even better. Of course I respect my father, but I still retorted: having more money does not necessarily mean living better. He certainly agreed with that, but what he emphasized was this: in the final analysis, without money you certainly cannot live. Therefore, earning money is always right; for our own sake in the future so that we may have food to eat, and for the sake of our descendants so that they may have food to eat, money is of course better in larger amounts. Because the future is always uncertain, there will always be the danger of not having enough to eat, and therefore the need to make money is endless. Then if money were no longer an issue, how should life be lived? If the meaning of the road to making money is to create better living conditions for the next generation, then when those “conditions” have been satisfied, how is such a life to unfold? People always pin the hope for a better life on their descendants, and a better life is understood as suffering less; but if there is no suffering, what then is the meaning of struggle?
I thank my father, but I must say sorry to my descendants: I do not hope that you will live better than I do, because what I want to show you is the best life—I will use my experience, my whole life, to explain to later generations: what is the life of supreme good (the best)? How wise must one be, how brave, how just, how temperate; within the limits allowed by the conditions of life into which I have been thrown, how can I love, how can I take risks, how can I enjoy myself, how can I laugh heartily, how can I be moved to tenderness, how can I enjoy things with propriety and measure, how can I indulge myself in accordance with righteousness…… Beyond laying the foundation for my descendants’ departure, I want to tell them even more: all of the world, the life of supreme good (the best), is there—“the Grand Line”—I have returned in triumph; go find it!
If I had been born in the late Qing, I would have been a monarchist, supporting a “monarch with no real power, republic in form.” Under such a constitutional monarchy, the monarch sheds all substantive power. He does not participate at all in the governing of the state. So what, then, is the meaning of such a king? In my view, aside from respecting history, the powerless monarch is precisely the pure king: he strips away all the extraneous burdens attached to ancient monarchs, but the king’s mission is not deprived of even the slightest bit, namely, to show the people the best life—under the condition that one is completely relieved of anxieties about overcoming the crisis of survival, and while strictly observing ritual and human relationships, what kind of life is most worth desiring.
Of course, a king can at most display one kind of traditional, or rather “classical,” life. For the people, at least there is always a patch of light. But what do we now see as “good people”? Those who, in order to sing red songs, disregard their old mothers, wives, and children; those who, in order to do disaster relief, disregard their own children; those who, in order to stay busy with a thousand affairs from dawn to dusk, never come home for the New Year…… From where can the people see a truly enviable, yet still proper, dignified and effortless life? No wonder the masses flock to celebrities and admire the rich. Aside from empty fame and opportunism, what else do you expect the people to look at? What more desirable and worthy thing has the chance to be displayed to the people? Could it be that what should be desired is merely the supposedly noble quality of “having no desires and no pursuits”?
The way of philosophy is similar to the way of kings, but compared with kings, the philosopher’s journey is lonelier; yet it can be free from the constraints of orthodoxy and the mainstream, freely pursuing the supreme good. The way of philosophy is the way of becoming king.
I am a man who is going to become the King of the Pirates.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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