Some Concluding Observations in Response to Prof. Metzger

I would like to take this opportunity to present some very brief observations regarding Professor Metzger’s reply to my remarks responding to his original article. I fully agree, as he states in the response, that our interchange-for which I am very grateful-has really narrowed the difference between our views. There may, however, still be some important differences which I would like briefly to sum up in terms of my current understanding of them. The first and rather crucial one refers to the definition of other-worldliness. My conception of other-worldliness does not refer to the basic conception of the tension between transcendentalism and the mundane areas (a tension which, we all agree, did develop in a forceful way in China), but to the way in which the bridging of this tension was conceptualized. The crucial point here, to my mind, is that the overall Confucian and certainly Confucian-Legalist approach minimized other-worldly spheres as arenas for such bridging or”salvation,” and that these were left to the more popular religions. The major such arena according to the Confucian ideology was the mundane order, especially the political and familial one. I fully agree that Confucianism did not accept the existing order as such.