NDRP has just published a very nice, charitable-and-yet-challenging review of Amy Olberding’s recent book, Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That. Myeong-seok Kim lauds the subtle insight that Olberding is able to extract from her attention to the Analects‘s “narrative depictions of Confucius in diverse circumstances,” while raising questions about her framework of “exemplarism.” Highly recommended!
Category Archives: Confucius
Moral Perfection in the Analects (and Beyond?)
As part of some commentary on Paul Goldin’s new book Confucianism, Bill Haines has noted the centrality of the idea of moral perfection in Goldin’s characterization of the basic convictions of the Confucian philosophical orientation. In a subsequent comment, he questions to what degree the ideal of moral perfection was actually held by Confucius. With Bill’s permission, I’m re-posting his comments on this latter subject here, because I think they deserve more attention than they may get buried deep in a comment string. Read on, and please direct your comments to Bill, the author of what follows. Continue reading →
Confucius in Contemporary Art at Useless Tree
FYI, Sam Crane has a great post over on his blog about the “Q Confucius” contemporary art exhibit in Shanghai.
Review Article on Several Books on Confucius
A recent article in T’oung Pao 97 (pp. 160-201) might be of interest to many readers of the blog. In “Recent Monographs on Confucius and Early Confucianism,” Oliver Weingarten of SOAS considers the following books:
- Il confucianesimo: i fondamenti e i testi. By Maurizio Scarpari. Turin: Einaudi, 2010. vi + 300 pp.
- Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics. By Annping Chin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. xiv + 268 pp.
- Confucius. By Rémi Mathieu. Sagesses éternelles. Paris: Entrelacs, 2006. 271 pp.
- Lives of Confucius. By Michael Nylan and Thomas Wilson. New York: Doubleday, 2010. 304 pp.
- Sang jia gou: wo du Lunyu. By Li Ling. Revised edition. Two volumes. Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 2007. 2 + 11 + 390 + 120 pp.
- Qu sheng nai de zhen Kongzi: Lunyu zongheng du. By Li Ling. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2008. 13 + 7 + 302 pp.
- Confucius. Spiritualités vivantes, vol. 198. By Jean Levi. Paris: Albin Michel, 2003. 322 pp.
What Does It Mean to "Respond to Enmity with Excellence"?
I’ve been recently thinking about an issue that comes up in both the Daodejing and the Analects. DDJ 63, specifically, is commented on in Analects 14.34. In the two texts, we see different positions concerning how one should respond to enmity 怨 yuan. DDJ 63 reads:
為無為，事無事，味無味。大小多少，報怨以德。圖難於其易，為大於其細；天下難事，必作於易，天下大事，必作於細。是以聖人終不為大，故能成其大… Continue reading →
I am virtuous, and I hate you.
Actually, both parts of that conjunction are false: I am far from virtuous, and I probably don’t hate you. (Really I don’t.) But say I were virtuous: what would be the problem with me hating some people? Would feeling hatred toward some individuals detract from my overall moral standing? And forget about poor old un-virtuous me. What about someone who, by all accounts, really was virtuous–Confucius. Would it detract from his moral standing if he hated some people?
Rodney Taylor on Confucianism on Huffington Post
Our thanks to fellow blogger, Chris Panza, for the heads up.
Rodney Taylor enlightens the Huff Post readership on what Confucianism really is HERE.
Just to get you interested, here’s something Taylor says in the piece:
By emphasizing the learning of the sages of antiquity, Confucius believed rulers ruled by the Mandate of Heaven. Confucius thus supported the theocratic nature of the Chinese state. More importantly, however, he supported the religious authority associated with T’ien as a principle of “purpose.” Because of T’ien, the universe had a purpose and that purpose was exercised on behalf of the state. For the Confucians, this “purpose” of Heaven was seen as a greater authority than the power of rulership itself. The ruler only ruled because of Heaven’s Mandate, and the Mandate could be taken away. To hold the Mandate, the criterion was the moral conduct of the ruler. In Confucian thought, much is made of the distinction between a ruler, wang, a true ruler of moral worth, and a tyrant, pa, one who exercises power only for his own personal aggrandizement.
New association for the spread of Confucian ideas established in Taiwan
Here’s a couple of links to news stories (one English, one Chinese) on the establishment of the 大成至聖先師孔子協會, or “Association of the Most Sage and Venerated Late Teacher Confucius,” announced yesterday in Taiwan. There aren’t many specifics yet about what they plan to do and I haven’t found a website for the association itself yet, but I’ll post more information if I come across any.
Confucius on Tiananmen Square – UPDATED
(AP photo)
UPDATED and moved to top: As Steve Angle reported in comments a couple of days ago, apparently the statue has been moved inside the museum! Confucianism revivalists are up in arms. Information about why this was done — whether long-planned, or not -– is contradictory. The English-language press is now reporting this, though they don’t have much information, either!
Here’s a New York Times piece about it from yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/asia/23confucius.html?_r=1
If you hover over the Times picture, it shows you a dramatic(?) before and after shot. Note this interesting quote from the piece:
Guo Qijia, a professor at Beijing Normal University who helps run the China Confucius Institute, said that only Confucian teachings could rescue China from what he described as a moral crisis.
“Students come home from school and tell their parents, ‘One of my classmates got run over by a car today — now I have one less person to compete against,’ ” he said. “We have lost our humanity, our kindness and our spirit. Confucianism is our only hope for becoming a great nation.”
Confucius Institutes – Chronicle Discussion
The current Chronicle of Higher Education has this piece, available to non-subscribers for a few days, on worries raised about academic freedom introduced by the proliferation of Confucius Institutes on university campuses.
