Great Thinkers in 60 minutes - Volume 3 E-Book

Walther Ziegler

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 411

Beschreibung

"Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes Volume 3" comprises the five books "Confucius in 60 Minutes", "Buddha in 60 Minutes", "Epicurus in 60 Minutes", "Descartes in 60 Minutes", and "Hobbes in 60 Minutes". Each short study sums up the key idea at the heart of each respective thinker and asks the question: "Of what use is this key idea to us today?" But above all the philosophers get to speak for themselves. Their most important statements are prominently presented, as direct quotations, in speech balloons with appropriate graphics, with exact indication of the source of each quote in the author's works. This light-hearted but nonetheless scholarly precise rendering of the ideas of each thinker makes it easy for the reader to acquaint him- or herself with the great questions of our lives. Because every philosopher who has achieved global fame has posed the "question of meaning": what is it that holds, at the most essential level, the world together? For Confucius it is the search for the Dao, for the right path that leads us human beings to one another. For the Buddha it is a radical liberation from our needs and the approach, through meditation, to Nirvana. For Epicurus, by contrast, the meaning of life consists in the letting-be of our pleasures and the imbeddedness of existence in our bodies. Descartes, for his part, considers thinking to be the decisive quality of Man, allowing him to explore and master the world. Hobbes, finally, sees the central element of meaning to consist in humans' peaceful coexistence thanks to the founding of states, i.e. in a political act. In other words, the meaning of the world and thus of our own lives remains, among philosophers, a topic of great controversy. One thing, though, is sure: each of these five thinkers struck, from his own perspective, one brilliant spark out of that complex crystal that is the truth.

Leseprobe

My thanks go to Rudolf Aichner for his tireless critical editing; Silke Ruthenberg for the fine graphics; Lydia Pointvogl, Eva Amberger, Christiane Hüttner, and Dr. Martin Engler for their excellent work as manuscript readers and sub-editors; Prof. Guntram Knapp, who first inspired me with enthusiasm for philosophy; and Angela Schumitz, who handled in the most professional manner, as chief editorial reader, the production of both the German and the English editions of this series of books.

My special thanks go to my translator

Dr Alexander Reynolds.

Himself a philosopher, he not only translated the original German text into English with great care and precision but also, in passages where this was required in order to ensure clear understanding, supplemented this text with certain formulations adapted specifically to the needs of English-language readers.

Great Thinkers

in 60 Minutes

Confucius in 60 Minutes

Buddha in 60 Minutes

Epicurus in 60 Minutes

Descartes in 60 Minutes

Hobbes in 60 Minutes

Walther Ziegler

Confucius

in 60 Minutes

Translated by Alexander Reynolds

Contents

Confucius’s Great Discovery

Confucius’s Central Idea

The Secret of Harmony: “Xiao” and “Li” – Respect, Rites and Rituals

Exemplary Thinking and Acting: The Five Virtues of the “Junzi”, or the True “Gentleman”

“In Education There Are No Differences in Kind”. Everything Presupposes Education But Education is Not Everything

.

Bringing “Ren”, or “True Humanity”, into Being

Find Your “Dao”, Your “Right Way”! The Confucian Philosophy of Self-Cultivation

Of What Use Is Confucius’s Discovery for Us Today?

A Backward-Looking Teaching or a Timeless Truth? Confucius’s Long Way

The Miracle of the Axial Age: The Reordering of the World by Confucius, Buddha and Socrates

Acquire Lightness with the Master: Self-Critique, Wit and Irony

Opposing is a Form of Esteeming

Confucius’s Legacy – the Lifelong Search for the Dao

Bibliographical References

Confucius’s Great Discovery

Confucius (551 – 479 BC) is without doubt the most important of all Chinese philosophers. The name “Confucius” was, in fact, originally an attempt by Latin-speaking Jesuit missionaries, who first translated Confucius’s works in 1687, to reproduce the Chinese Kong Fuzi, meaning “Master Kong”.2 This latinized form of the name has persisted in the West right up to the present day.

In the years after his death, Confucius’s ideas and his doctrine spread first throughout many countries in Asia and later throughout the entire world. Wherever anyone begins a sentence with the words “Confucius says…” the listener is bound to prick up his ears in expectation of hearing some timelessly valid truth about life on which they can model their own behaviour.

And Confucius’s thoughts, in fact, remain still today of astonishing contemporary relevance and psychological acuity. Confucius is not just a philosopher but a brilliant psychologist who knows every side of human beings, possessing an unerring eye for our human weaknesses, strengths and potentialities. This perhaps explains how his teachings have been able to survive and persist through two and a half millennia of stormy, convoluted history. Still today, the stamp of Confucius’s ideas is plainly visible in the educations, and indeed in the later life-orientations, of billions of human beings not just in China but in Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan and large parts of the Philippines. After the first translations of his works into European languages were made, by Jesuit missionaries, in the course of the 17th century, he began to gain growing attention and respect also in the Western world. The great 18th-century French philosopher, Voltaire, praised him as the first great rationalist and proponent of “Enlightenment”. Today, the main work bearing Confucius’s name, the famous Analects, exists in more than a hundred different translations. The Analects, however, are a compilation by the great sage’s pupils and disciples. Like Socrates, Confucius himself left us no written works. The Greek-derived word chosen, then, for the standard English translation signifies, appropriately, “selections”: short sayings and recounted deeds of the Master assembled into a book after his death. Confucius’s “masterpiece”, then, is not a systematic work of the sort we know from many of the other great philosophers but rather simply a collection of the views and opinions of Confucius expressed regarding various subjects and themes.3

These various dialogues and conversations with pupils contain, however, as Confucius himself insists, a clearly recognizable central idea around which everything turns:

What is more, this central idea has something radically new about it. For Confucius, all human beings are, by their very nature, equal. In contradiction to what had been the case in China for thousands of years before him, differences in social class and social origin play no role at all in Confucius’s philosophy. Every human being, whether aristocrat or peasant, rich or poor, is capable of finding his “dao”, that is to say, the “right way” for him. Every one of us, Confucius teaches, is in principle able, through a process of character-training, education and self-cultivation, to become a “junzi” – or a “gentleman” in Confucius’s special sense of this term.

Thanks to these ideas Confucius counts as one of the great thinkers of what has been called the “Axial Age”: the age in which, separately but simultaneously on the world’s different continents, mankind set off in radically new directions, just as if human thought, after millennia of stasis and “walking on the spot”, had suddenly turned on its own axis and passed from darkness out into light.

Thus, Confucius’s lifetime coincides almost exactly with that of the Buddha on the Indian sub-continent and that of the Greek philosopher Socrates in distant Europe. Moreover, just like these two other thinkers he gives to humanity, in a period of moral decline and of wars, an entirely new political and ethical orientation, the effects of which have stretched far beyond his lifetime. Like the Buddha and Socrates, Confucius went in search of a timeless truth which would be valid even for future generations. It is not enough, he says, simply to understand one’s own time:

If Confucius’s ideas have enjoyed such wide resonance, this is surely owed to his simple but brilliant core idea: the search for the “dao”, which is also a search for a threefold harmony: harmony between the individual and his family; harmony between oneself and society; and inner harmony between oneself and one’s principles, that is to say, between our real life and our ideal image.

What Confucius was aiming at here was not, however, as one might at first glance assume, the achievement of a total conformity of the individual to his family, his social environment or the state. Nor does he aim at the eventual achievement of a total equality between all individuals or a perfect coincidence between our lives and our ideal images of how human life should be. On the contrary, the striving for harmony means, for Confucius, something fundamentally distinct from the striving to conform or agree:

“Harmony” in Confucius is a rich and shifting concept that is difficult to grasp. But it is only once we have grasped it that we become really able to understand the key idea behind his philosophy. When he speaks of “harmony” Confucius is not using the term in its colloquial sense and referring to a relaxed state without tensions. On the contrary, he is referring to a tireless, lifelong striving. “Harmony”, for him, is nothing other than a persistent striving for a co-humanity that would be worthy of its name. When Confucius was asked by one of his pupils whether there was “one word that could serve as a guide for one’s entire life”, he replied:

Going on to elucidate the Chinese word “shu” that is rendered here as “understanding”, he reveals that it is in fact a matter of that basic moral principle, recurring in so many forms in so many cultures, which is called “the golden rule”8 and which runs:

But just this “understanding”, construed in just this sense, is far from being something obvious and self-evident. On the contrary. Putting oneself in a position such that one feels what others feel is the hardest thing in the world. Not a single one of us, Confucius argues, ever really succeeds in taking the needs of others into account in just the way we take our own. Normally, we place our own interests high above the wellbeing of others, so that injuries to this wellbeing often occur in daily life.

It is only the “junzi”, the true “gentleman” in Confucius’s sense, who succeeds in living his own life without impairing the lives of others. This “gentleman”, indeed, even consciously promotes the development of the other people around him. In principle, Confucius believes, any human being can rise, through training of his character and self-cultivation, to become such a “gentleman”. He concedes, however, that it is an extremely difficult thing to feel, think and act, in every situation, as a “junzi”. He himself, he admits, has not always been up to the task, since it demands the exercise of three virtues at the same time:

Confucius surely deserves respect for admitting that even he, the great philosopher and teacher, “had not yet been able to achieve” all three aspects of this threefold virtue, that is, to be at once understanding, wise and courageous. The key moral appeal that he makes, however, is the appeal never to leave off trying to be all these things. The great task, argues Confucius, is that of bringing the two forces of egoism and understanding for others, which so easily drift apart from one another, into harmony. Because it is only if we succeed in doing this that we have a chance of a fulfilled life. True happiness, Confucius argues, requires the development of “ren”, or “humanity”:

This key philosophical idea, the resolute search for harmony via understanding and humanity, may on first consideration appear to be something bland and obvious. But considered more closely, what Confucius has seized on here is an extremely vital and controversial topic. Harmony is in fact nothing that can be considered self-evident. On the contrary, it is always the exception. We all know how conflictual family relationships can be; we have all become enraged about the state, our own powerlessness in the face of it, and the whims of bureaucratic authorities; and we all know the painful feeling of failing to realize one’s own wishes and potentialities. How, though, are we to deal with our own dissatisfaction? Is it possible for us ever to attain the “threefold harmony”?

Confucius expresses the eternal fundamental conflict of human existence which each of us knows only too well from his or her own life: we are all born with needs, wishes and drives; but we are not alone in the world; our needs and wishes tend to clash with those of other human beings and cannot always be brought to reconciliation with them.

There is competition and struggle over scarce goods, attention, fame, recognition, affection and love. Feelings of envy, vanity or deeply-felt personal injury are as old as mankind itself. Confucius was the first to dare to throw some light on this field of tensions and to pose the all-decisive question: how can I develop myself, and bring my own wishes and ideas to realization, without thereby limiting or harming others? How can I follow the laws and customs of my community and my state without thereby denying my own self? In which situations must I insist on the expression and development of my own values and in which must I draw back and let other values prevail? When must I faithfully support my friends, family and government and when I must speak out against them and resist them?

It is precisely because Confucius poses questions which affect us all in our daily lives that his teachings are so helpful and practical. The practical applicability and psychological acuity of his ideas are also perhaps due to his own personal history and experiences. Confucius knew life both from the perspective of the poor man without resources and from that of the rich and powerful. He lost his father already at the age of three and saw his family sink into poverty. Almost an orphan, he grew up in very straitened circumstances:

Confucius worked early on as a cowherd and even in his later life knew periods of great privation and poverty. He succeeded, indeed, already at the age of twenty-two in founding a school of his own which had soon acquired more than three thousand pupils and even rose for a time, if the tradition is to be believed,13 to the high rank of an administrator bearing the title of minister. He was, however, if we are to continue to trust the tradition, very soon removed from this position by political disruptions. He then, we are told, lived as an itinerant teacher, moving from place to place with his students, for some fourteen years before returning to his home town and continuing to teach there until the end of his life.

Of what use could this ancient wisdom of Confucius possibly be to us today? Was he right in holding the search for the “dao”, the “right way”, through the realization of outer and inner harmony to be the most important thing in any human life? And if so, how are we to find this harmony? Does the highest happiness consist in fitting smoothly into the family and in showing an empathetic understanding of others? Or does the individual, by striving for this, fall into the trap of conformity? What precisely does Confucius mean by his demand that we resolutely and uncompromisingly bring into being “ren”, or true humanity? Confucius has been giving extremely concrete answers to these questions – and this already for the last two and a half thousand years.

Confucius’s Central Idea

The Secret of Harmony: “Xiao” and “Li” – Respect, Rites and Rituals

Harmony is, for Confucius, not just an ideal that we should strive for but above all a way of living our lives which we can apply and bring to full realization. There are, he argues, two roots, or two ancient models of behaviour, which can contribute to bringing harmony into our daily lives. These are “xiao” and “li”. We often apply these two things so naturally and unquestioningly that we are not even aware of the subtle, implicit effect that they are having.

“Xiao” means “respect for one another” and also, sometimes, “piety” or “sense of duty”. “Li” is the Chinese word for rites, rituals, customs, laws, rules, agreements and traditions. These two terms “xiao” and “li” are key concepts in Confucius’s philosophy. The meaning of “xiao” is, at bottom, a very simple one. It signifies respect for one’s parents and, by association with this, respect for one’s superior in one’s profession, one’s government or one’s state.

The original meaning of the word, however, remains recognizable in its written character:

This character consists of the sign for “age”, also meaning “old” or “parents”

combined with the sign for “child”.

The combination, however, is one, significantly, in which “old” is placed above “child”. The idea, then, is conveyed already by the very pictogram for “respect” that respect is something that places parents, and older people in general, above younger people and children, urging that the former should be revered and cared for by the latter. Care and reverence for parents, however, should not, argues Confucius, be misunderstood to mean simply seeing to it that one’s parents’ physical needs continue to be seen to once

their ability to earn their own living has declined:

“Xiao”, then, signifies much more than just seeing to someone’s physical needs. The notion comprises not only, for example, the child’s showing love to the parent and his presence at the latter’s deathbed, but also the revering of still older ancestors and obedience not only to the parents themselves but also to older siblings and to those placed above one in one’s profession. Each person must take on his role in a spirit of respect with regard to others:

Confucius warns against seeking conflict too easily and being too ready to put into question, by revolutions, revolts and uprisings, a hierarchy which has grown up organically over many years. He recommends that we remain, rather, moderate and circumspect:

Within the family, the respect of the son should be shown in the first instance to the father and secondly to the elder brothers. The position of women within this schema is not a topic that Confucius addresses, at least not here, but is certainly conceived of in terms that do not accord with our present-day ideas. Nevertheless, Confucius sees in the virtue of respect for parents and grandparents a basis for harmony within the family and thus, indirectly, within society as a whole:

With his use of the key term “li” Confucius is alluding to those customs, rules, rites and rituals which had grown up organically throughout hundreds of years of Chinese history. These change, indeed, over time but provide a means of orientation precisely because they are the products of such a long process of formation and have become finer and more subtle over the years. On being asked by one of his pupils whether it was possible for their generation to know what sort of rites and rituals would be observed ten generations on from then, Confucius replied:

One can confidently expect, then, that each generation, while making ever finer and better the rites and rituals that they inherit, will nevertheless continue to build on the rites and rituals of those who came before. In Confucius’s day there were no written laws or law-books, so that observing certain principles of law and certain customs and usages that had been handed down was an eminently important matter. The “li” form an important means of orientation for people in their everyday lives, inasmuch as they comprise rites and rituals, great and small, that serve to harmonize our co-existence with one another. Confucius uses the example of archery to illustrate this. His pupils did, in fact, learn such skills as archery and charioteering besides the more usual academic subjects such as writing, arithmetic, literature and traditional rites and music. Aiming and striking with the bow, Confucius believed, promoted the powers of concentration and self-discipline. But it also, and above all, served to promote mutual recognition and respect. Just as, today, boxers bump their boxing gloves before a fight or karate fighters bow to one another, so too did Confucius’s pupils bow to one another before a contest. The winner of the contest also always poured the defeated party a cup of wine:

Confucius placed great value on such rituals because he recognized how important they were for harmony among human beings. No matter how much competitiveness and rivalry there may be in sport, in daily life, in the family or in society, these gestures of mutual respect and recognition create at least a moment, even if no more than a moment, in which we recall to mind our shared humanity. The same applies to such rites as funerals, which are ritualized participations in collective mourning by those who survive a loved one, to the solemn inaugurations of monarchs, presidents and other rulers, to feasts and holidays which have their own rites and rituals, and even to the simple everyday rituals consisting in forms of greeting. Even today the shaking of hands, the singing of anthems and the exchanging of pennants form part of all international sporting events, such as football World Cups and other such competitions. Confucius understands why this is so important:

Although we barely notice it, people all over the world use what might be called “ritual actions” to greet one another, regardless of whether they are old or new acquaintances. In Asia this mostly takes the form of bows, in Europe or America the form of handshakes. The French kiss on the cheek. Indians have a more complex ritual: they greet each other with the word “namaste”, meaning “I bow before you”, while the palms of the hands are pressed together and raised to the height of the chest, the head being slightly lowered as this is done.

Through performing these simple gestures we inform the person we are greeting that he can feel safe and secure and that we will deal with him in a polite, respectful and trusting way within the framework of certain fixed forms of interaction. This is why Confucius placed great value on “xiao” and “li”, or on the respectful search for harmony in family and society and in the observance, to this end, of customs and rituals. What mattered to him above all was the maintenance of a functioning community in which the outer form supported the inward connection and cohesion. On the other hand, however, rituals and traditional rules were not, for Confucius, ends in themselves. They needed to be authentic:

When he was asked by a pupil whether it would not be better to deliberately exceed the prescribed measure of conformity to ethical behaviour, so as to be absolutely sure of not accidentally falling short of it, Confucius replied:

But the observance of “xiao” and “li”, respect and ritual, is limited, in Confucius’s thought, also by a second factor: the specifically human failing that consists in recognizing duties but not having the strength to perform them. Confucius seems even to accuse himself of this failing:

We might note here two especially interesting details. Firstly, that Confucius speaks almost in the same breath of the effort made “not to be overcome of wine” and of the effort to observe the duties of family piety and to fulfil all obligations both vis-à-vis the living and vis-à-vis the dead. Secondly, that he regretfully acknowledges that he has perhaps attained to none of these goals himself. We do in fact find Confucius expressing a certain humorous scepticism about his own complete moral maturity at several points in the Analects besides this one. Clearly, Confucius wants to convey to us the idea that no one is really able, in the last analysis, to comport himself as a flawless moral model for all:

In order to discover the “threefold harmony”, i.e. harmony with family and friends, harmony with society, and harmony with one’s own life, what is first needed is an education taking the character to higher levels and an opening-up of the character. We need to free ourselves of our petty egoism and our selfishness and become a “junzi”, or a “gentleman” in the fullest sense. “Junzi”, indeed, is an absolutely central concept in Confucius’s ethics.

Exemplary Thinking and Acting: The Five Virtues of the “Junzi”, or the True “Gentleman”

A “junzi” is a kind of knightly figure: a noble individual with fully developed virtues or, in modern terms, a fair and responsible citizen and human being. Ultimately, Confucius’s vision was one of creating an ideal society consisting entirely of such “junzi”s, who would acknowledge one another as such, each seeing to the self-development of the others.

At the time when Confucius took it up “junzi” was still a word used solely for born aristocrats and princes of actual noble blood. The Chinese character for “junzi” consists of the sign for “lord” combined with the sign for “son”. That is to say, it conveys the meaning: “son of the lord”, “son of the ruler” or “son of the prince”, expressing the idea of great power or status conferred by birth alone. Confucius, however, took this concept and completely re-defined it in terms of his own new system of thought. In Confucius’s work, “junzi” is no longer someone of noble birth but much rather someone who, regardless of his birth, proves to be of noble character. There is clearly something radically modern in this innovation. If it is no longer social origin, or “good blood”, that is the decisive factor, but rather nobility of character, then any one of us can, in principle, become a “true gentleman”, regardless of whether we are born in a slum or on one of the grand boulevards, of whether our parents are rich and cultured or poor and near-illiterate. Each one of us is capable forming and developing his character. The starting point is the same for us all. Because, argues Confucius, we all have very similar basic natural predispositions:

In essence, then, we are all the same and it is education that is the decisive factor. This means that even someone born very poor can rise to become a “noble man”, just as a prince or the son of a prince can be or become morally ignoble. If this occurs, says Confucius, he can no longer count as a “junzi”:

A truly “noble” person, then, is measured not by his blood or social origin but rather solely by his thoughts and actions:

But what is it exactly that distinguishes the “junzi”? How is he different from others? In the first place, Confucius tells of a whole series of specific styles of behaviour:

This, then, is Confucius’s revolutionary new contention: the virtues that characterize the true gentleman are not innate but can be learned. Although Confucius lived in what was still very much a class-divided, feudally stratified society, he himself made no distinction between classes and taught pupils from all social strata. His teaching consisted essentially in teaching them the five cardinal virtues and how to practice them:

The first of these virtues, reverence, consists in showing respect to others. An important role is played here by the concepts we have examined above: “xiao” and “li”, rituals and forms of human interaction. In all one’s contacts with others, from the polite form of greeting right through to friendly ways of taking leave, these forms and rituals show to the other person that one is making an effort to come to an understanding with him or her in a trusting, humane way within practices of social inter-relation that have grown up organically and proven themselves over time. These forms show, in other words, that interaction will go on, if it goes on at all, within the framework of codes of behaviour which assure both parties that their human dignity will be acknowledged.

The second virtue that needs to be learned if one is to become a true gentleman is magnanimity. Learning this virtue is a matter of getting one’s own vanity under control and of encouraging the self-development of others. It is especially important not to condemn people even if one feels that they are misunderstanding you or remaining unresponsive to you:

To keep one’s patience even when understanding and acknowledgment are refused one is indeed a noble quality. Most people would react with annoyance or take offence. Essential to the virtue of magnanimity, then, is the overcoming of one’s own vanity. This is so, moreover, not just in the case of insults perceived to have been received from others but also in the case of mistakes one has made oneself. When we have done something wrong, we tend not to want to admit it, to cover it up, or to stubbornly defend our position even after we have realized it is wrong. It is very rare that someone frankly admits that they were in error and draws all the conclusions that follow from this error. But the true gentleman must be able to do just this:

The third cardinal virtue is trustworthiness. By this is meant, above all, that the true gentleman brings his deeds into harmony with his words. He does not lie and does not promise what he cannot perform:

The careful and correct handling of words and concepts was, in fact, a matter to which Confucius ascribed great importance. When asked by one of his pupils what his first priority would be if he were entrusted with the government of the kingdom by the ruler of the state of Wei, Confucius replied:

Confucius was a great critic of the sloppy and inaccurate practices that had spread in China during this period with regard to the use of names and concepts. For example, the round pots and vases which had come into use by this time were still, he noted with disapproval, being designated by the same term as had been used to designate the square pots and vases that had been used in earlier epochs. Confucius’s primary concern, however, was the “rectification” of terms and concepts that were being used for political purposes. The pupil who had posed the question retorted, the Analects tell us, to his master’s answer with the words: “Can you, Master, really be so far off the mark? Why worry about rectifying names?” This provoked Confucius to further elucidate his view, saying:

The fourth cardinal virtue is diligence. The mention of this quality may at first seem odd; but Confucius considers that the ceaseless diligent effort to develop oneself to higher and higher levels is a very important precondition for all character-formation. Each one of us, indeed, has the basic natural equipment for rising to become a “true gentleman”. But we must want to do so:

The fifth and most important virtue that the “true gentleman” must develop is kindness. This term, in Confucius, does not bear just the usual, colloquial sense of “being kind” to people in the sense of doing them little favours and so on; it also connotes a much broader, higher sense of participation in a shared co-humanity, or what Classical Chinese calls “ren”:

To “intervene in favour of the Good” also means: not to place the achievement of one’s own wishes and goals, nor even the development of one’s own personality, above the wishes, goals and development of others. The “junzi” constantly has the good of others in mind and must, for this reason, always behave exemplarily, so as to inspire enthusiasm for such behaviour also in other people:

The “junzi” must, quite generally, be a model to others in both his thinking and his behaviour. Indeed, he must apply still stricter standards to himself than he does to those around him:

At one point during his years as an itinerant teacher, namely the year 489 BC, Confucius and his pupils found themselves in a region that had been laid waste by war and ran very short of food and supplies. When the pupils felt barely able to go on from lack of nourishment, they asked Confucius what they should do. He replied:

To sum up, then: there have, of course, been descriptions also in other countries and cultures than the Chinese of the sort of sets of “cardinal virtues” that make up, in Confucius, the character of the “true gentleman”. The samurai in Japan or the knight of medieval European history and legend are very similar ideal models for how to live one’s life “nobly”. The deeds of such knights and samurai are described in epics and fairy tales that those born in these cultures learn by heart from early childhood on. The especially provocative element in Confucius’s ethics, however, consists in the fact that the virtues of Confucius’s “true gentleman” are virtues that can be learned or, in other words, virtues that no longer have any connection with “noble blood” or “high social origin”.

For this reason, one absolutely decisive building-block in Confucius’s philosophy is the notion of the individual’s self-cultivation and self-perfection through education.

“In Education There Are No Differences in Kind”. Everything Presupposes Education But Education is Not Everything.

That education plays an outstandingly important role in Confucius’s thought is clear right from the Analects’ opening “excerpt” from the Master’s sayings:

But more important still, perhaps, is his unmistakable, uncompromising demand that there be free access to education for all:

Even two and a half millennia later, we are still working on bringing to realization this Confucian ideal. Because tuition fees remain a feature of the education systems in many societies around the world. It also remains the case that a disproportionate number of students come from upper- and middle-class backgrounds. Confucius’s demand for free and equal access to education is all the more impressive because in his China of around 500 BC it really was only the richest and most powerful members of the population who had any chance of learning to read or write at all. Confucius, however, made a point of seeing to it that, in his school, even pupils from the lowest and simplest strata of society could pursue courses of study. They were allowed to do so even if they could pay little, or almost nothing at all:

He educated his pupils so as to make of them “true gentlemen” and trained them to perform duties as civil servants and administrators. Some, indeed, did go on to take on high political offices. The number of these latter was, of course, limited, since most ministerial and administrative posts were still assigned on the basis of “good family”, not on that of success in learning and education. Confucius disapproved of these practices and recommended another course

entirely:

One should not, of course, envisage the school of Confucius as if it were a present-day university. The primary purpose of the school was to acquaint the pupils with various texts handed down by ancient tradition: texts bearing on law and order in the form of the Book of Documents, texts bearing on poetry and culture in the form of the Book of Odes, and texts bearing on history and custom in the form of the Book of Rites. In addition, certain practical skills were taught and learnt, such as archery and charioteering. In a broad and general sense, however, the goal pursued by the education offered at the school was that of a schooling of the character, a kind of set of instructions for self-cultivation. The cultivation of the character, particularly its cultivation to points of real refinement, is a process that is never concluded: a lifelong task from the cradle to the grave. No one, so argues Confucius, comes naturally, with fully developed knowledge and nobility, into the world. Were such a case to occur, although Confucius viewed such a thing as near-impossible, this would indeed be an instance of the very highest level of knowledge:

Regarding his own self, Confucius says:

In order to improve and increase one’s knowledge, Confucius goes on, what is necessary is not only the study of books but also the living exchange of thoughts with other human beings. For this reason, it is always worth one’s while to listen to other people and not to insist stubbornly on one’s own personal view:

If Confucius frequently emphasizes that even he sometimes learned things from other people, we should not interpret this as false modesty or coquettishness. The idea, revived today, of “lifelong learning” is one, in fact, that had already been expressed by Confucius. We need, he argued, to remain open, our whole life long, to the new and to think over critically whatever it is we learn, supplementing it or replacing it where necessary:

It is important both to think carefully about what one has learned while, at the same time, checking the thoughts that one has by comparing them both with the knowledge one already possesses and with the experience one has acquired:

Someone, for example, who merely follows his own thoughts and meditations before he has studied sufficiently or acquired sufficient experience will tend to try to subjugate reality too radically and completely to his own ideas and notions:

On the other hand, it is useless to engage in intensive study and pile up a great deal of knowledge without ever personally, critically thinking through what one has learned. Why is this so? Confucius illustrates the point with an example:

It is essential, then, to any true education that that which has been learned be also correctly applied. Necessary, in other words, is a certain moral or ethical orientation:

But how can we recognize “the Good”? Here, a decisive step forward is made in Confucius’s philosophical thinking. Although the first “movement”, as it were, of this philosophy consists in the assigning of great value to a lifelong process of learning and education, its “second movement” consists in an argument that, although education is very important, it is not absolutely everything. If one wishes to apply what one has learned, one needs an additional criterion by which one can judge and adjust one’s actions and one’s general conduct in life. This criterion is what Confucius calls “ren”, or true humanity.

Bringing “Ren”, or “True Humanity”, into Being

The Chinese word “ren”, which means “humanity” in the strong moral sense of the term, is the most important, and most often used, of the concepts deployed in Confucius’s texts. In the Analects alone it occurs more than a hundred times. One may say, then, that if one has understood the notion of “ren” one has understood Confucius’s core idea. This idea exceeds in importance all the others. Respect, or “xiao”, and the observance of the rites, or “li”, are important, indeed. The “junzi”’s cultivation of the virtues even more so. The decisive thing, however, and the crowning of the whole construction, is “ren”. In the last analysis, it is only the person who practices “ren” who acts justly and correctly. It is only “ren” that provides the “junzi” with the standard or criterion which enables him to apply his virtues and his education in the service of the right ends.

But what does “ren” mean? What, concretely, does Confucius understand by “humanity”? We can find an initial indication of this already in the Chinese character itself. The character “ren” consists, in its left-hand half, of the pictogram for “human being”, showing a person walking or standing:

and in its right-hand half of the signs for the number “two”, which is written in Chinese not, as it is in Latin for example, with two vertical strokes but rather with two horizontal ones:

The character for “ren” thus looks as follows:

Combining in this way the symbol for “human being” with the symbol for “two” shows quite unmistakably that true humanity can only be experienced in and through the relation to another human being. And it is this that is the essential thing for Confucius. “Humanity” is always a “co-humanity”.54 This means that, when seeing to the development of our own needs, wishes and goals, we must constantly bear in mind the development and the welfare of others. “Ren” comprises the obligation also to take on responsibility vis-à-vis other people:

But what does this mean, concretely? What does it mean to “take one’s stand” by “ren” and to help others to do so? Indeed, what precisely is “ren”? When a pupil posed this last question to him Confucius’s answer was simply:

“Ren”, then, is in the first instance a feeling of love and concern or, in other words, the capacity for empathy and emotional participation in the lives and fates of other people. This first aspect of “ren” is something that we all have some experience of: for example through the empathetic and caring love of a mother for her child. But even powerful rulers, Confucius argues, must be able to “care for” their people in this way:

“Ren”, however, also has a second aspect: a cognitive one. “True humanity” consists, for Confucius, not just in “love for one’s neighbour” as a mere sense of empathy with this latter but, above and beyond this, in a conscious, rational decision to pursue the goal of bringing about the Good. It is possible for us to take a rational decision in favour of “ren” and to set about developing “ren” in the world in a precisely targeted way. “Humanity” in this sense is a maxim for our actions that we should strive to apply and bring to realization in all we do. When the pupil Zigong enquired of Confucius whether there was “one word that could serve as a guidance for one’s whole life”, Confucius replied:

Confucius poses here, for the first time, the demand that any action that can genuinely be called ethical and good must be generalisable, or “universalizable”. That is to say, one’s own actions can only be evaluated as “good” if one can also wish that everyone in the world should act according to the same maxim as oneself. Confucius, indeed, formulates this idea in the form of a negation, or in other words of a “not wanting to be treated wrongly”; but the core idea is the same:

Thirdly, “ren”, in Confucius’s writing, is a kind of court of decision, internal to each person, judging what is right and what is not. Every human being bears within him- or herself the possibility and the capacity to do what is right. In cases where “what is right” seems doubtful, what is needed to resolve the question is not just the “li”, or the laws, the customs and the rites, nor just “xiao”, or respect for the instructions imparted by parents and by state. What is needed is rather, above all, one’s own inward self-examination:

When he was asked by a pupil what “ren”, or “true humanity” really meant, Confucius replied:

The decisive thing here is that Confucius accords to every human being the capacity to “restrain themselves” and thereby to draw and develop out of themselves the virtue of “ren”, or of true humane co-existence.

Confucius anticipates here very much of what the European philosopher Immanuel Kant was to formulate some 2300 years later in his “categorical imperative”. Much as Kant was later to do, Confucius is saying that it depends on us ourselves alone whether or not we act in such a way that our action is so exemplary that it can become a basis for the action of every human being. The standard by which “right and wrong” are judged, or in other words the standard for “right action”, is something that every human being carries within himself. Such a standard requires no help from outside authorities.

To sum up, then: “Ren”, or “true humanity”, has in Confucius’s writing three different important meanings. Firstly, it consists in the feeling of empathy and love, i.e. the capacity to emotionally participate in the lives of others. Secondly, it consists in a conscious compliance with certain guidelines for action, or with the fundamental rule of reason whereby one should behave with regard to others in the same way as one would wish others to behave with regard to oneself.

Thirdly, “ren” is a kind of court of decision, internal to each person, which enables the distinguishing of good from bad action and thereby creates a duty to bring about the former rather than the latter:

This applies as much to the simple man of the people as it does to the ruler:

Each individual should, if he is to be a “junzi” or true gentleman, think and act in an exemplary way, so that his behaviour can become a point of orientation for the behaviour of all others. For this reason, the means that such a man uses can never be in contradiction with the end: namely, true humanity:

Confucius also rejects the death penalty, which at that time was still generally used, since it implicitly raises the possibility of killing to the status of a standard for action, something which contradicts the realization of “true humanity” as the highest of all principles. When a prince put the question to Confucius: “If I were to execute those who lacked the Way in order to advance those who possessed the Way, how would that be?”65 Confucius drew his attention to the so-called Golden Rule and to his duty, as a prince, to himself behave in an exemplary manner:

He also reminds the prince of his duty to practice “ren” and to act exemplarily by always doing the right thing himself:

The ideal society, or the best of all possible governments, requires no death penalty, no corporal or capital punishment, nor even any prisons. Rather, such a society would rely wholly on “ren”, on “true humanity”:

“Ren’, then, possesses a sort of “radiating” force. If it is practiced by the ruling government, and by the rulers themselves, in a decisive way, then it will have the almost magical effect of attracting others to practice

it themselves:

This very high valuation placed on “true humanity” as the highest standard and principle of action means, however, that “true humanity” also stands above the laws. If a law or a ritual clashes with the principle of “true humanity”, it may be that one will have to refuse and resist this law or ritual. Confucius decidedly did not belong to the “Legalist” school of Chinese philosophers, who defined the strict observance of the law as the highest moral ideal. “Ren” stands above these. But what happens when rulers fail to rule according to the “Golden Rule” and the principle of “ren”? What is to be done when they follow rather immoral and selfish motives? Confucius’s answer to these questions leaves no room for misunderstanding:

This means, in short, that it can sometimes be one’s duty to resist when “ren” is infringed or disrespected. It follows that “li”, or the rites and traditions of one’s forefathers, and “xiao”, or the piety which bids one obey one’s parents, the government and the law, apply only so long as they prove to be compatible with “ren”. When he was asked by his pupil Zi Lu how someone could become a “complete person” Confucius replied:

With this answer Confucius once again clearly enunciates the principle that we must be ready to take a stand in defence of our moral convictions. “Ren”, in other words, ranks above “li” and “xiao”. Where there is a conflict between one and the other, the individual must choose compliance with the principle of “true humanity” over allegiance to father, family or governmental authority. Because for the “true gentleman” a life spent striving constantly to realize “ren” is the very highest ideal. But Confucius would not be Confucius if he were not aware that this is a very, very high aim to set oneself and one which a human being can hardly hope to achieve even in a

lifetime:

On another occasion he conceded that he was himself far from perfect:

But even if true and complete morality and humanity are difficult to achieve we must nonetheless try over and over to bring “ren” to realization. “Ren” is a lofty goal but is, in the end, not so far beyond our reach in our daily lives:

Nevertheless, each individual must find his own way to goodness, be it as father of a family, farmer, teacher, craftsman, priest, official, musician or artist. And each of us is capable, Confucius is convinced, of fully realizing “ren”, even if it is only for limited stretches of time, for example the length of a day:

Confucius’s central idea thus begins to take clearer shape. Each individual should strive, in his or her own way, strive to observe the “li”, or the rules governing family and society, while also putting into practice the virtues of the “junzi” and thereby bringing “ren” to full realization. Confucius’s great imperative runs: seek, in attempting to bring “ren” to realization, one’s own “dao”, or “right way”, to doing so, that is, a way to live in harmony with one’s fellow men and with oneself.

Find Your “Dao”, Your “Right Way”! The Confucian Philosophy of Self-Cultivation

“Dao” is a complex and shifting concept, not only in Confucius’s work but in the whole of Asian thought. Literally translated, “dao” means simply “way”. But in its philosophical usage, both by Confucius and by the rival philosophical school the “Daoists”, the term means “right way” or “proper way”. In a metaphorical sense, then, it stands for “the right way to lead one’s life”:

There is, indeed, a decisive difference between the way that the word “dao” is used in Confucius’s writing and the way that it is used in the works of the so-called “Daoists”, a mystical religious current of thought that enjoyed great popularity in Confucius’s day. Following the ideas of Lao Zi, the legendary founder of their school, the Daoists saw in the “dao” a divinely established cosmic path which human beings were called upon to follow and by the following of which one could raise oneself to higher spiritual levels. If one succeeded, so these Daoists taught, in adapting oneself perfectly and completely to the natural rhythm of day and night, winter and summer, becoming and passing away, it is even possible to attain to a degree of physical and spiritual immortality. Confucius’s notion of the “dao”, however, is a precisely contrary one to this. For Confucius, it is not the divine cosmos that prescribes for Man the path to follow toward self-perfection. Rather, it is Man who, through his thoughts and deeds, perfects the cosmos:

Or, in an alternative translation: