The Confucian Notion of <i>Ren</i>

Abstract This guest column replies to an article, “If That's Not Love, What Is It?” by Daniel Boyarin, published in Common Knowledge 26, no. 3. Boyarin examines an “unknown affect” related to love that is observable in the Babylonian Talmud, and Lu responds by examining a Chinese affect, ren (仁), that is a type of love but never translated as love per se. Although ren initially manifests as sympathy in the Confucian tradition, it is essentially an experience of love—a kind of love that is humane and universal. What the tradition calls “pure knowing” is the ground of “one-body humaneness,” in which every person shares one body as qi with earth, heaven, and the “myriad things.” Pure knowing is thus also the ground of the universal humane love that the tradition knows as ren. This piece concludes by calling (with the editors’ support) for further articles in Common Knowledge on the intricacies of what is meant by love—language by language, discourse by discourse, culture by culture, and era by era.