I will be giving an on-line talk next week on my new book, Growing Moral: A Confucian Guide to Life, hosted by the Center for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy at the City University of Hong Kong. The talk will take place via Zoom at 10 am on Friday, April 8 in HKT, which will be at 10pm on Thursday, April 7 EDT. So if you’re in East Asia, or are a night owl in the US, feel free to join! Details are on the attached poster.
Warp, Weft, and Way
Chinese and Comparative Philosophy 中國哲學與比較哲學
“So why is filial piety important, and why should we strive to be more filial? The answer given in the Analects is that filial piety is the ‘root’ of humaneness.” (p. 31)
I submit that
(1) that claim does not appear in the Analects;
(2) the ‘root’ presented at 1.2 pointedly straddles family and non-family relations; and
(3) that claim is radically out of harmony with the aggregate of statements attributed explicitly or implicitly to Confucius in the Analects, because (a) that character doesn’t put family first, and (b) that character doesn’t have the idea of a big virtue growing out of a smaller analog.
(1) and (2): http://warpweftandway.com/analects-about-family/
(3a): http://warpweftandway.com/confucius-family-model/
(3b): http://warpweftandway.com/analects-1-6-confucius-on-moral-progress/
(I’m mostly done preparing much-improved versions of those essays and others.)
– harrumph –