A Summoned Life: Vocation in the Analects

Abstract

This article explores the concept of vocation in the Analects. While most treatments of vocation focus on the Christian tradition, and while Confucian thought is often viewed as categorically nontheistic, Robert Merrihew Adams's Finite and Infinite Goods (1999) presents an illuminating comparative framework for tracing out Kongzi's religious ethical vision of how persons think, act, and feel when grasped by a sense of divine calling. I argue that in the Analects a vocation is compositely conceived as: (1) a special divine imperative to an individual or a community (2) to love particular goods within one's actual circumstances (3) with nonconsequentialist, noncompetitive, and potentially counter-cultural commitment (4) such that one's mode of life participates in Heaven's intent for human flourishing. Although diverging on their approaches toward filial and sociopolitical engagement, both Adams and Kongzi envision self-transcending purpose, faithful devotion, and existential courage as marks of a vocationally attuned life.