are you really think that Confucius and his Analects is right?

[uoadgx2]

you can see ,my english is real shit.
i am a real chinese .
when BETWEEN the 2008 olympics game.our chinese news will say something
like 5000 years history so great ,Confucius and his Analects.

but it is really dark in recently 500 years in china. it is hardly relate this

Confucius's Analects .in fact his analects always bring society go to corruption

I Swear TO YOUR GOD .i'm saying the truth.

are you western hemisphere people really think Confucius is a SAGE OR SAINT?


if you really think he is a saint ,Forget I even spoke.

i still want to tell you , belive his RU is dangerous.

it connote many dark things,in the chinese original text .not translation version.

it really did very dark history with china.

It's over

[jjimm]

From my limited understanding of Confucianism, its precepts of blind obedience to one's elders and superiors are good for societal order, and ridiculously bad for innovation. So personally I think he was a sage of his time but in no means a saint.

[Balance]

It is my understanding that Confucius praised and advocated an extremely rigid feudalistic social structure, in which the serf majority should (as jjimm says) blindly obey their elders and anyone else higher up in society.

In other words, he was basically a Republican, so you probably won't find many people arguing in his favor in this forum. (What? It's in Elections, so I have to needle at least one of the current political parties. ;) )

[Oy!]

I don't think anyone here views Confuscius as a saint.

There are people here who view him as a sage, but that can be said about almost anyone who has ever made public statements. There is a wide assortments of opinion among Americans, and many, many of us are stupid. Even more of us are poorly informed.

I don't know much about Chinese history. What little I do know suggests that historically Chinese governments have viewed stability and order as the most important things to pursue. This does not necessarily mean things are good for any given individual, but considering what terrible things can happen when there is instability and disorder, it is not a completely ridiculous viewpoint.

[Oy!]

It is my understanding that Confucius praised and advocated an extremely rigid feudalistic social structure, in which the serf majority should (as jjimm says) blindly obey their elders and anyone else higher up in society.

In other words, he was basically a Republican, so you probably won't find many people arguing in his favor in this forum. (What? It's in Elections, so I have to needle at least one of the current political parties. ;) )

This is true, even though it is said jokingly. There are many people who value maintaining the established order far more than the welfare of any particular individual. Here in the U.S., it is almost a rule that the more a politician claims to value freedom, the more he really wants to wants to prevent the freedom of anyone who doesn't share his viewpoints.

Throughout the entire world, you will find that most governments have been maintained on behalf of the governors, not the people governed. People who have power want to keep it. They will find justifications for doing so. Sometimes it's religion, sometimes it's ideology, sometimes it's something else.

BUT that doesn't mean that stability is worthless. People in countries with little or no effective government are generally not better off than people in countries with lots of government. The very wealthy people may be better off, because they can buy most of what governments provide for themselves, but the poor can suffer terribly.

Corruption happens. It didn't start because of Confucius, and it won't end after Confucius is forgotten. All we can do is try to prevent it from happening, and expose and punish it when it does.

[Chronos]

Unless this has some relevance to elections, this probably belongs in our Great Debates forum, not here. I'll ask the moderators to move it for you.

[Merneith]

are you western hemisphere people really think Confucius is a SAGE OR SAINT?

In all honesty - most people in the Western Hemisphere don't think about Confucius at all. If you asked everyone you met on the street, most people would say he was the man who said the cute sayings in fortune cookies.

I personally wouldn't say he was unimportant. But his philosophy is so different than western ideas that it's not taught or even really discussed much here.

As for corruption ... well, it seems like every system becomes corrupt over time. People start out with good plans for a system and then corrupt people discover ways to break the system for their own benefit. Confucianism doesn't seem more corrupt than other systems. But it was developed to address problems in a feudal society. Today we live in a different society, with different problems. We need new systems to address our new current problems.

[Qin Shi Huangdi]

He was wise, a genuine idealist and a believer in order but Mo-Tze was better.

[smiling bandit]

He was wise, a genuine idealist and a believer in order but Mo-Tze was better.

I agree.

However, I'm annoyed by the notions presented here. It's obvious that most responders didn't, err, have any idea what Confucius said.

The short version is that Confucius* was very much a teacher emphasizing personal moral correctness and harmony, and did not really say much about political tradition. T the extent it impacted his philosophy, he ared about loyalty to correct bodies. And in fact, in nature he seems to have been an optimist, implying that humans would tend towards good if the governemnt was good. Therefore, the government's highest priority was to be morally upright itself.

*Well, Kong Fu-Tze, more or less.

[Little Nemo]

Confucius didn't emphasize blind obedience. His philosophy was based on the idea of relationships between people. He felt that there was a relationship between every pair of people based on their relative status and there were principles for how the relationship should work. But it was a two-way obligation. Both people in the relationship had duties to the other.

His overall philosophy could best be described as "everyone benefits when we all do what we're supposed to do."

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Most Americans know very little about him, as his views have not taken root here.

[Monty]

{Never mind. The cruddy fall-out of his philosophy doesn't have anything to do with this thread.}

[Koxinga]

our chinese news will say something
like 5000 years history so great

IS. IS so great. Say your goddamn transitive verbs!


Sorry, couldn't resist.

[smiling bandit]

uoadgx2, to explain:

Confucius isn't very well known in the west, and his philosophy isnt' very well respected, either. Westerners look to Plato or Aristotle, and the great Christian leaders, not Confucius. In fact, he is mostly known for a series of jokes.

People who know much about him have usually studied East Asian history, or lots of world philosophers.

[athelas]

Confucius didn't emphasize blind obedience. His philosophy was based on the idea of relationships between people. He felt that there was a relationship between every pair of people based on their relative status and there were principles for how the relationship should work. But it was a two-way obligation. Both people in the relationship had duties to the other.

His overall philosophy could best be described as "everyone benefits when we all do what we're supposed to do."By contrast, in the modern West the trend is to pretend that everyone's the same status (an example would be Silicon Valley companies where the CEO doesn't have his own office, or superiors and inferiors being on a first-name basis). At the same time, of course, everyone is subtly status jockeying, and there's no longer a sense of moral obligation from the winners to the losers - precisely because we got rid of lots of obvious signs of status. So even though we look more egalitarian, there aren't as many social limitations on what rich, powerful, or popular folks can get away with.

Contrast this to Confucianism, which says of course there's status inequality in the world, now let's codify it and link it to obligations towards your inferiors. As a way to restrict the caprice of the powerful it has a lot in common with the old Western idea of noblesse oblige - the personal obligations of the powerful to the weak.

[Reno Nevada]

He was wise, a genuine idealist and a believer in order but Mo-Tze was better.

No love for Han Fei Tzu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Fei_Tzu), Qin?

To echo what a lot of other people said, Confucius is not well known in the West, he had a lot of pretty good ideas, and the society that people based on his writings (centuries after his own time) had a pretty good track record when compared to other societies of the same time.

[John Mace]

Confucius say: Americans have very superficial understanding of Chinese history (in bed).

[The Other Waldo Pepper]

He was wise, a genuine idealist and a believer in order but Mo-Tze was better.

No love for Han Fei Tzu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Fei_Tzu), Qin?

Something tells me I'm the only Xun Zi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xun_Zi) fan hereabouts...

[njtt]

Nah, Zhuangzi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi) was the man!

uoadgx2, I think Confucius is respected in the West only inasmuch as he is known to have been a very important, perhaps the most important, intellectual influence on Chinese culture, thought and history. As such, his thought certainly deserves to be taken seriously in the West, even though it has had very little direct influence on Western culture, thought or history. As to whether his influence has ultimately been for good or ill (on China or on the rest of the world), that can probably be judged much better by Chinese people such as yourself than it can be by almost any Westerner. Clearly you think his influence has mainly been bad, but I am sure (and I am sure you know) that very many Chinese people would think otherwise. I doubt whether the debate in China over whether his influence is good or bad is much affected (or should be much affected) by what Westerners think (and, most Westerners, in fact do not have much opinion on the matter).

I am rather inclined to think that you are right, but I am very aware that I have very little basis for that feeling. I simply do not know enough about China to have a valid opinion.

[BrainGlutton]

Confucius's Analects .in fact his analects always bring society go to corruption

It is true that the Confucian government of the late-Ching-Dynasty China of the 19th Century was broadly and deeply corrupt. I don't know about earlier examples, nor whether the situation was in any way related to Confucian doctrine. As I understand it, the point of the Imperial Examination system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination) was to produce a bureaucracy of men who had completely internalized the Confucian values and ethics, including public service and virtue and stuff. Though there were other purposes:

In late imperial China, the examination system and associated methods of recruitment to the central bureaucracy were major mechanisms by which the central government captured and held the loyalty of local-level elites. Their loyalty, in turn, ensured the integration of the Chinese state, and countered tendencies toward regional autonomy and the breakup of the centralized system. The examination system distributed its prizes according to provincial and prefectural quotas, which meant that imperial officials were recruited from the whole country, in numbers roughly proportional to each province's population. Elite individuals all over China, even in the disadvantaged peripheral regions, had a chance at succeeding in the examinations and achieving the rewards and emoluments office brought.

The examination system also served to maintain cultural unity and consensus on basic values. The uniformity of the content of the examinations meant that the local elites and ambitious would-be members of those elites across the whole of China were taught with the same values. Even though only a small fraction (about 5 percent) of those who attempted the examinations passed them and received titles, the studying and the hope of eventual success on a subsequent examination served to sustain the interest of those who took them. Those who failed to pass—most of the candidates at any single examination—did not lose wealth or local social standing; as dedicated believers in Confucian orthodoxy, they served, without the benefit of state appointments, as teachers, patrons of the arts, and managers of local projects, such as irrigation works, schools, or charitable foundations.

In late traditional China, education was valued in part because of its possible pay-off in the examination system. The overall result of the examination system and its associated study was cultural uniformity—identification of the educated with national rather than regional goals and values. This self-conscious national identity still underlies the nationalism that has been so important in China's politics in the 20th and 21st centuries,[citation needed] though it is based on different criteria.

Recently I read the whole series of Judge Dee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Dee) novels (set in the Tang Dynasty, purportedly-by-internal-narrative written as historical novels during the Ming which accounts for certain anachronisms) by Robert van Gulik. Dee is the ideal of what the system is supposed to produce.

[CalMeacham]

I've read the Analects in several translations, and several other Confucian texts (many of them translated in the 19th century by Legge, who is not the most disinterested translator, by any means) My impressions:

reading the Anlects makes me feel as if I came into a movie partway through. There are an awful lot of references to things I know nothing about, but which the text asumes I'[m perfectly familiar with. (It's a lot like reading the Koran, in that respect). A lot of it seems concerned with things that dopn't seem to be of any importance. A succinct guide to The Way to Live Properly it is not.

from all accounts, Confucius was incredibly conservative and obsessed with Proper Formulas. I can't say that I think his philosophy dark, but I think I would have found it too inflexible and hidebound.


I've read the Judge Dee novels many times over. They are written from the point of view of a Confucianist (as was the 18th century anonymous author of The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, which Van Gulik translated before writing his own fictional cases), so it's not surprising that his hero exemplifies the best qualities of the Confucianist, and that there are many cases iof corrupt Buddhists and Taoists. But that doesn't mean that the situation depicted corresponds with reality.

[Khadaji]

you can see ,my english is real shit.
i am a real chinese .
<SNIP>Your English is better than my Chinese!

[Sage Rat]

I read the Analects when I was young. It seemed clear to me, at the time, that Confucius was a very smart man who stated things in ways that provoked a lot of thought, but that his conclusions to his own questions were generally moronic. I suspect that he was very much like an apologist, not really trying to use his intelligence to come up with something new, just to take the society and way of living that he was comfortable with and use whatever complex switchbacks and loop-de-loops to demonstrate that the way things were being done is the way things should always be done.

And if you're the guy in charge of that society, it makes sense why you would hold up Confucius as an enlightened philosopher.

[sundog66]

IS. IS so great. Say your goddamn transitive verbs!


Sorry, couldn't resist."is" is not a transitive verb; it takes a predicative complement, not a direct object. (Sorry, I couldn't resist either.)

[BrainGlutton]

N.B.: Confucius never invented nor claimed to have invented anything new. He was a systematizer. He simply took the already-ancient traditions and values of Chinese society, or at least of the Chinese gentry -- patriarchy, hierarchy, courtesy, benevolence -- and made them into a complete, systematic set of doctrines purporting to hold the correct guidance to every social situation or ethical problem.

The whole thing is entirely culture-bound. Confucius never even would have considered the question of whether his doctrines could be of value to non-Chinese barbarians.

[BrainGlutton]

if you really think he is a saint ,Forget I even spoke.

i still want to tell you , belive his RU is dangerous.

it connote many dark things,in the chinese original text .not translation version.

it really did very dark history with china.

It's over

And now China has a completely different official value-and-belief-system, one based (ultimately) on Mao's interpretation of Marxism.

Is this an improvement, do you think?

[BrainGlutton]

In fact, he is mostly known for a series of jokes.

Mostly on the level of, "Confucius say: Man who go to bed with itchy butt wake up with smelly finger." That sort of thing.

IMO, the existence of a genre of American jokes attributing vulgar and infantile fortune-cookie-length aphorisms, told in stereotypical Chinglish, to Master K'ung, can be read as a sort of sublime and poetic posthumous vengeance on the stuck-up, tightassed, bigoted old prick. Ya shoulda listened to them barbarous Buddhists when they talked about karma, dude! :D

[BrainGlutton]

Once in a whimsy I wrote on a men's room wall: "Confucius say: A superior man is Chen Li! When good men prevail in the state, he is to be found in office; when bad men prevail, he can roll up his principles and keep them in his breast."

[Captain Amazing]

I suspect that he was very much like an apologist, not really trying to use his intelligence to come up with something new, just to take the society and way of living that he was comfortable with and use whatever complex switchbacks and loop-de-loops to demonstrate that the way things were being done is the way things should always be done.


Except a lot of what Confucius was advocating wasn't the way things were done. He was advocating for states to base their actions on a moral footing and that they had moral obligations to their subjects.

[Koxinga]

My biggest complaint with Confucius and (what little I've read of) Mencius is (IIRC) their habitual thought pattern of "If ____ is done, how could ____ not result?" e.g., if a ruler adopts a policy of belevolance, how could the people not support him, and so on. Some obvious pitfalls to this approach.

On the other hand, Confucius himself seems to have been a fascinating, inspiring, and humorous guy, hardly the stodgy dour faced moralist later commentators made him out to be.

[BrainGlutton]

My biggest complaint with Confucius and (what little I've read of) Mencius is (IIRC) their habitual thought pattern of "If ____ is done, how could ____ not result?" e.g., if a ruler adopts a policy of belevolance, how could the people not support him, and so on. Some obvious pitfalls to this approach.

Confucius is sometimes classed as a "philosopher," but, in the Western sense of the term, he was not much of one. No structured logical arguments, no concept of formal logic or its antecedents, no delving into basic concepts or first things. Nor is his system a "religion" in any spiritual or metaphysical sense. About the gods, the afterlife, creation, it has nothing to say. Confucius' interests were limited to ethical, social and political matters, and he regarded all first principles in those fields as settled before he began, and he did not think about them as an abstract philosopher would, nor did he think about them so practically as a Machiavellian philosopher would.

Still, it is something of great value that he founded a system that gained wide acceptance and that, for all its faults and limitations, really, really encouraged Chinese with any kind of power to use it benevolently and fairly. That has had deep influence, for better or for worse and probably better, in Japanese and Korean culture to this day. And in Taiwan, I suppose. OTOH, I do wonder if Confucianism has any living influence at all in China today.

[The Second Stone]

It's mostly a US board, and we are taught a lot more about Europe. What I have heard about Confucius is that he lived a very long time ago and advised people to respect their elders and don't rock the boat.

Perhaps you can tell us more about the Big C.

[BrainGlutton]

Confucius say: "Ignorance immortal. Ignorance enduring. Man who fight ignorance better not try no rope-a-dope."